VICTORIA’S beleaguered myki ticketing system has hit another snag, with 20,000 seniors posted a new smartcard that does not give them the travel benefits they are entitled to, including free weekend travel and discounted weekday fares. — Age: New bungle hits myki Peter of Murrumbeena, a regular commenter on this blog, is one of those ... [More]
The inside of the new Myer in Bourke Street is quite spectacular. They’ve managed to create a very impressive light-filled atrium that goes all the way up to the roof.
My kids were in Hawaii over Christmas with their mum for a family get together. They looked for something uniquely Hawaiian to bring me back, and settled on this. I love getting a souvenir that is truly unique to a place. It’s just as is labelled on the can. They’re macadamias, but they’re spam-flavoured. Who ... [More]
Seems like half of Melbourne has got a new flat screen TV or computer monitor, judging from the number of CRTs left around the streets. In my view, you shouldn’t just dump them on the nature strip. Assuming it’s working, ask around to see if a charity somewhere wants it. Or list it on Freecycle ... [More]
My recollection is this clip used to pop up on the ABC when they had five minutes to fill. Nowadays they’d probably just run a bunch of promos and adverts for the ABC Shop. The song is actually called “Love Is All”, from The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper’s Feast. I can’t make it along, ... [More]
I was an early adopter of Myki, if only to see the problems it’s had first hand. But since I started using it, I’ve still carried a Metcard in my wallet. The last Metcard. A 10×2 hour zone 2, for my occasional forays into zone 2 — used on days I was only going into ... [More]
Go on then, name me something more Aussie than kangaroo sausages on the barbecue? To be honest I haven’t previously been that keen on the kanga bangers when grilled or fried. But BBQ makes everything taste better… right? Update 4pm. Amusingly given Tony’s comment, I flipped on the TV while I was eating and found ... [More]
Damn! Double the awesomeness, and I missed it. Seems like specifying the suburb name was an afterthought… and I wonder if there was a re-scheduling.
It appears I was the first person to successfully use the Myki vending machine at Bentleigh station, back on the first of last year. Hardly surprising as few people in Melbourne had a card at that point. And this afternoon I got Sales Transaction ID number 3370, when I dumped a bunch of change onto ... [More]
Kath Lockett found some old adverts, including this one: We sometimes had these cheese slices when I was a kid. It must have been my early computer-geek (binary) mind at work, but I would eat them by folding them in half, so one half broke off, eating that, then repeating with the half that was ... [More]
A few details have come out about the next lot of Metro train timetables, and there’s some big changes for some lines, as the process of completely re-writing them continues. Here is a summary based on some notes I saw the other day, and my initial thoughts. My assumption is these notes apply on weekdays ... [More]
Spotted around the RACV centre in Bourke Street… I’m not sure what these things are called. They’re from the days before traffic lights — before my time. The only problem with these ones is that two directions are getting a green signal at once, which would result in a crash. This street sign looks a ... [More]
Two weeks ago I noted that Myki mostly works. In most cases the charging is fine. The readers seem more reliable and mostly fairly responsive (and faster than inserting a Metcard into a slot and waiting for it to come out again). What doesn’t work? Well buses in particular have issues, it seems. As this ... [More]
I’m hearing that there are incredibly long queues for Brickvention today at Melbourne Town Hall. Shame… when we went in 2009, the queues weren’t too bad. Perhaps they’ve become a bigger event than they realise. (According to the web site 1000 members of the public attended in 2009, and 2700 in 2010. Clearly it’s growing.) ... [More]
This week’s events in Queensland are a reminder that precautions need to be taken to minimise the possibility and effects of flooding. So it’s good to see around my neck of the woods that the drains are being upgraded. These huge Lego-like pipe sections have appeared in some streets. Presumably they’re big enough to cope ... [More]
If you’re ever at Footscray Station on the footbridge (the one they’re going to have to knock down extend, even though they just built it), and you look towards the east, you’ll see something from a bygone era. You might just be able to make out the words “Franco Cozzo” on an off-white building in ... [More]