For anybody with an NFC (Near Field Contact)-compatible phone (such as my new Google Nexus 5), you can use the this little app — Tag Info Lite to read Myki cards. Not that it’ll tell you very much — see below. All the actual useful information appears to be encrypted. Apparently in some parts of ... [More]
Category: Geek / tech
Technology fetishism
Over the years I’ve tried to avoid being sucked into buying the latest and greatest technology just for the sake of it. But I must admit being keen to check out the new Android 4.4 (Kit Kat) and Google Nexus 5 phone. What would I need a new phone for? I could put Kit Kat ... [More]
The Metro app is quite handy for finding out what’s happening on the train network, and can send notifications/alerts to tell you when something’s affecting the line(s) you use regularly. As previously noted, it’s not perfect — the SMS alerts that it replaced were customised to your specific station, so you didn’t have to try ... [More]
Refactoring is a legitimate strategy in software development. It’s where you feel the design is (more-or-less) right, but the software implementation has gone wrong, and needs to be completely cleaned-up, by chucking it out and re-writing it. So here’s a thought: if the single most annoying, unreliable, sluggish part of the Myki system is the ... [More]
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Every mobile phone I’ve ever owned
Inspired by Andrew’s post a few months ago, here’s a list of the mobile phones I’ve had over the years. Ericsson GH198 (from 1994). It had a twirly antenna that could be flat against the main part of the phone, or twirled around and up to make calls. I seem to recall it cost me ... [More]
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Computer names… what’s next?
For some years now we’ve named our home computers after characters in Tintin. First we had Tintin and Snowy, both desktops. Snowy was replaced with Haddock. The two of them were joined for a little while by Nestor, which was called that because it was a server. Haddock broke down (probably a motherboard failure, I ... [More]
How do they fix or upgrade a mobile phone tower? With a very big crane, that’s how. It wouldn’t be a job for someone with a fear of heights. In my family, my sister gave up her landline when she moved last year, and in her household now relies totally on mobile phones for making ... [More]
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New toy: iPad Mini
I was amused when I posted last week about using credit card points to perhaps buy an iPad Mini, the Apple-haters jumped in. The post wasn’t really about technology; it was about credit card points! But this post is about tech. The choice of an iPad over an Android tablet was deliberate. Yeah yeah, I’ve ... [More]
I finally got around to playing a bit of Cities In Motion. The game is fun, but in some ways is really not much better than the older Traffic Giant… though it looks nicer, seems to have more underlying complexity, and has more scenarios. From what I’ve seen, my main beefs would be: Trams and ... [More]
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The Java problem
I’d normally post something like this over on geekrant.org, but it’s worth mentioning here. Java has suffered from a series of serious vulnerabilities, the most recent found just a couple of weeks ago. This article makes a good case for removing it completely from your computer: Is Java the root of all evil and can ... [More]
As seen at google.co.uk on Wednesday. Very cool. (Large version found via the Going Underground blog) Note the subtle shading of fare zones, which reflects how they look on the official maps. It’s been claimed in the past that in Melbourne we couldn’t adopt an existing smartcard ticket system like Oyster because Melbourne had specific ... [More]
Back in 2010, Victorian government timetable data was released to the public, as part of the App My State competition. The PTUA submitted an app as part of a study that showed how bad train/bus connections were, which got some media attention — and also managed to progress the debate around connections: the government went ... [More]
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Personal geek history
A piece of personal geek history: yesterday I had heard that a system I worked on when just out of uni in 1993 just finally got decommissioned. Myself and my mate Brian got out of uni at the end of ’92, and looked for IT jobs. In early 1993 I landed a contract at a ... [More]
In the Apple Store at Southland the other day, I noticed they had all the iDevices maps set to satellite. It wasn’t hard to see why — it took all of a minute or two to find some glaring errors in the street maps. It’s not just that tram lines are completely missing; they’ve put ... [More]
Did nobody in their design department stop and think “uhh guys, that may not be the best design to go for.” Or is it just me who sees this?
Another $38.60 (per month) bill for my land line, which I barely use. That’s made up of: line rental $22.95 17 local calls $5.10 calls to mobiles $1.62 silent line $2.93 caller ID $6.00 Almost all of the cost ($31.88) is in the line itself, rather than the calls. My sister’s recently gone down the ... [More]