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Wrapping up 2021

If you celebrate it, I hope you’ve had a good Christmas. The strangeness of 2020 has continued in 2021, and looks set to continue into 2022. COVID infections are now rife – not just overseas (one UK uncle and his entire family have had it, and last week a UK cousin tested positive) but now  ... [More]

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Australia’s tiny timezone

Here’s something I learnt yesterday: There’s a small town called Eucla, WA, near the SA border. Population: 53. Get this: It has its own timezone, which is halfway between Perth and Adelaide time. The timezone abbreviation is ACWST, though it’s usually called Eucla Time. It’s shared with a handful of other nearby small towns. It’s  ... [More]

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End of year blog clearout

It’s the end of the year, so I’m going to clear out some blog drafts, snippets of writing, going back a bit over a year. The Great Australian Transport Dream If the Great Australian Dream is home ownership, preferably a quarter-acre block with a huge backyard, then the Great Australian Transport Dream might be free-flowing  ... [More]

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General Toxic Custard newsletter

What should I blog about?

Happy new year! Noting that the most-viewed and commented-upon blog posts of last year were all transport-related (yeah this blog has moved to mostly transport in the past few years), I’m wondering what topics people might be interested in for posts this year. I have a number already in the works, but if you’d like  ... [More]

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Geek General

The Last Post (of the year)

One last post of miscellaneous stuff to mark the end of 2017. Grandad My Grandad was born on this day in 1924. He passed away on Boxing Day, just shy of his 93rd birthday. Being one of our UK relatives, we didn’t visit him much, but we did manage to see him during our UK  ... [More]

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General Photos

Photographing the moon

(No time to write a new blog post; scrabbled around and found a draft I never completed.) There’s been a full moon again this week. It was very impressive last night. I didn’t snap it, but here’s a photo from last year when I was first dabbling with my (then new) DSLR camera: It requires  ... [More]

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General Sydney 2014 Toxic Custard newsletter transport

Sydney day 4, and wrap-up

Backdated. Posted 17/11/2014. Day 4 — Sunday Not much to report. Breakfast at Darlinghurst’s Jekyll & Hyde — which was a bit meh. M’s order came with unwanted eggs, which I adopted. Afterwards I realised it was one of the breakfast places I’d ruled out because some of its Urbanspoon reviews didn’t sound that great  ... [More]

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Herne the Hunter

Target’s window decorations are presumably meant to be about Christmas… …but for me they just remind me of Herne The Hunter in Robin of Sherwood.

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Where’s my phone? (New levels of dopiness)

Need to leave. Where’s my phone? Not on the counter. Not on my bedside table. Not on the desk. Not on the kitchen table. Not on the dresser. Not on the couch. Look again in all those places. Not found. Really need to go. Reach for home phone. Dial mobile number. It rings. It’s in  ... [More]

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It’s Turbo Chicken!

(from the same day as this pic)

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Maribyrnong’s underwater park: an update

Do you remember the pics of the brand new Maribyrnong playground from a couple of weeks ago, showing severe drainage problems? On Saturday night there was heavy rain in the area, but evidently the City of Maribyrnong’s drainage experts have been busy, because on Sunday morning the park was almost dry — and certainly not  ... [More]

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The prepaid phone saga

A while back I gave eldest son my old (but quite capable) mobile phone, and got him a SIM card that looked to be a reasonable cheap basic prepaid phone service: Woolworths Everyday Mobile. This worked fine until early October when the phone stopped working. Or to be precise, the SIM stopped working. We tried  ... [More]