This has come up again since RACV are resisting the removal of a lane of traffic on Princes Bridge to give cyclists more than the part of a busy footpath and the mere sliver of roadspace they have now: What alternatives are there to RACV road service? Because if you disagree with the RACV’s stance ... [More]
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The past and future of retail
In one lunchtime walk yesterday, I saw both the past and future of retail. “As seen on TV.” Seriously, they still use this tagline to hook people in? Does it still work? It’s never the name-brand products which used this — always the slightly dodgy ones. I walked past this display twice, and saw nobody ... [More]
The Phase 2 Report from the High Speed Rail study was released last week — predicting that although HSR would cover its recurrent (running/maintenance) costs, it’d first take some $114 billion and 45 years to build it. As I’ve said before, I think a 3-ish hour trip from Melbourne to Sydney would be time-competitive with ... [More]
…this person, who ignored the convention to keep left of the white line in Flinders Lane, and came up against this tram coming around the corner. The tram actually had a fair pace making the turn — luckily it stopped in time to prevent a collision. The motorist backed out of the lane, and hopefully ... [More]
It was house maintenance week this week. I took a couple of days off to do some de-cluttering and get some people in. Hard rubbish got rid of two old mattresses, three former recycle bins, a big plank of wood, an old fan and two disused old bicycles. Amusingly, between putting stuff out/booking the collection ... [More]
A lot of the unfortunate jellybean characters are depicted around CBD railway stations at the moment as part of Metro’s Dumb Ways To Die campaign. I was amused at the placement of this one: …but this one is even better. (Only a short video — don’t bother with the sound; it adds nothing.) Perhaps I’m ... [More]
It’s inevitable that the passing of Margaret Thatcher would provoke mixed responses. Such polarising figures often do. She may have been a trailblazer for women in power in the western world, but I don’t remember her time as Prime Minister fondly. I was young and perhaps it was a naive viewpoint, but I remember the ... [More]
Ten years ago this week I got my first digital camera: a Canon A70. I’d held on until the price seemed right and they did a half-decent job of video recording (as my old Video-8 video camera had given up the ghost a couple of years before). I assume I only started with a fairly ... [More]
“We spoke to Infrastructure Australia and their advice was that the most pressing road priority in Melbourne was the east-west link,” Mr Abbott told reporters in Frankston on Thursday. “Now the Commonwealth government has a long history of funding roads. We have no history of funding urban rail and I think it’s important that we ... [More]
Those who have been paying attention might have noticed that the episode synopses for Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell (seen for instance in the Electronic Programme Guide on most TVs) have been getting weirder and weirder. Courtesy of the ABC TV web site, here’s a summary of them this year so far (including the next ... [More]
20 odd years ago, when I was into music videos (and television in general), I used to regularly record (yes, on VHS) a few hours of Rage on a Friday and/or Saturday night, and watch it the next day. I’d categorise each song as a 1, 2 or 3. 1s I would copy onto another ... [More]
Guess what? Another bug has been found in Myki. (No, this is not an April Fool’s joke.) You know how you can load a Pass (weekly, month, yearly etc) onto your Myki, and use it, and load a second Pass which won’t activate until the first one has finished? Well there’s a bug which sometimes ... [More]