TV, movies, music, that kind of thing
Every so often I’ll splash out on a new toy for myself. Last year it was a new camera. The year before was a hifi. The year before (just over two years ago in fact) that was an iPad Mini. Those paying attention will know that I had considered adding a multi-room music setup to ... [More]
I can be a bit of a pedant, so this photo caption in Saturday’s Age caught my eye: “Former NGV director Patrick McCaughey” pictured in 1986 — so was he the former NGV director back then? No — the article text makes it clear he was the director in 1986. There’s a simple way of ... [More]
Brace yourself… a non-transport-related blog post. A couple of years ago I bought a Yamaha surround sound setup, which has been fabulous. I’d single out the sound track on Mad Max Fury Road in particular; very immersive. Heck, even later seasons of the West Wing had some subtle surround going on, adding to the viewing ... [More]
I’ve started publishing Singapore trip posts, backdated to the day they happened. Click here to see them. I found this amusing, way back in the day. This is a scene from an old episode of The Bill: “Bad Company”, from 1989, repeated on the ABC recently. Can you spot the production error? How many views ... [More]
I used to love The Bill, way back when it was a cop show with a sense of realism, rather than a full-on soapie. The episodes I enjoyed the most, season 4 (from 1988) are currently airing on the ABC, in the middle of the day (around 3pm, and again the next morning around 5am). ... [More]
Star Wars episode seven is officially out today on DVD and Blu-ray, but I managed to buy it yesterday — some shops with a name starting with Big and ending in W jumped the gun, as did some with the initials J and B, apparently, though the large W establishment is selling it for $23 ... [More]
Let’s see if I can go a whole week without writing a blog post about level crossings. Video shops are dead. For a while there was one (or more) in every suburb. Where I live now in Bentleigh there were at least two. Even Glenhuntly, where I lived in the late-90s, had two. They were ... [More]
Ten years ago this month Melbourne was in the grip of the Commonwealth Games. As I noted at the time, it was a good excuse to Blame The Games for any delay or anything else going wrong. (Including crowded trains.) But it was also a lot of fun. These photos are from the baton relay ... [More]
Ocean Colour Scene played last night at Max Watt’s (formerly known as the HiFi bar — I assume the current name is a pun about loud music, rather than being named after a person). As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve wanted to see them play live for decades, but this is their first ... [More]
Liberal Caulfield MP David Southwick has a campaign running to get the Glen Huntly level crossing grade separated. I somewhat cringe at the “Blame Labor” rhetoric, but the rest of it I agree with completely. A 2014 report by VicRoads found the Glen Huntly Rd level crossing to be of the highest priority for removal ... [More]
After the mess of the last attempt, and noting the large number of people reading on mobile devices (phones 39%, tablet 10%), I’ve switched to a plain but hopefully more mobile-friendly blog template. Here is a photo of some people doing geeky things to test the pictures. I’ll probably do some tweaking, but any feedback ... [More]