Some brief thoughts and half-arsed things that I can’t be bothered developing into fully-fledged blog posts: Luz Station in Sao Paulo. Looks externally very similar to Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station, well if you don’t look too closely. Coincidence, or is one modelled on the other? Probably the former. I haven’t seen anything that suggests Luz ... [More]
Here’s the second instalment of my best Twitter posts. Interestingly I was reading a blog post by reknowned Geek Robert Scoble where he highlighted a number of issues with Twitter, including the exact reason I’m doing this: I canât get to my old Tweets. Seriously. They are, Iâm sure, on a server somewhere in San ... [More]
Subway — noun — Australian/British English — underground walkway, tunnel for pedestrians. Subway — noun — North American English — An underground railway. There’s some quite witty lyrics in there that went totally over my head when I was a kid, reflecting perhaps the love-hate relationship many users have with busy railways.
It seems at my place that once or twice a year, the back toilet will become a temporarily slightly clogged. The flush fills up the bowl with a suspicious amount of water, and empties more slowly than usual. And it becomes a battle of wits: should I call in the plumber (with his special machine) ... [More]
I was reading my old copy of The Beatles Recording Sessions the other day, in particular about the creation of A Day In The Life — which recently was voted number 24 in Triple J’s Hottest 100 of All Time. I was interested in the orchestral crescendo of sound halfway through the song and again ... [More]
ABC AM on Wednesday on Green power: JEFF ANGEL: Polluters are using our money which we’re paying as a premium for GreenPower, in order to report lower emissions, when in fact they’re not doing anything. DAVID MARK: Jeff Angel is the director of Total Environment Centre in Sydney. He says the schemes don’t work, because ... [More]
Digital radio was launched today. Interesting, and they’re crowing about a number of new funky features. But the bottom line for me is: Q: Will AM and FM radio be switched off soon? There are no plans at this stage to switch off AM and FM radio services. As there is an estimated five radio ... [More]
Nice bit of product placement there, Priceline. (They’re not just in the same aisle, they’re virtually opposite each other.) If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth half doing: This advert for VoteMyPet.com.au (promotion for Advocate, a product of Bayer) was nailed to a tree in the park. You reckon they had permission from Kingston Council ... [More]
Cynics have described carpooling as “a transit system with one round trip a day” — which means that while the trip itself may be faster and more comfortable, in terms of scheduling it’s less convenient than all but the very very worst public transport. Even if you don’t believe that, it would appear that any ... [More]
I’ve been looking at Topfield PVRs. Looks like one can get a dual-tuner standard definition (SD) model for about $300-350 (retail), whereas it’s about $750 for a high definition (HD) one. You can also get a single-tuner HD model for about $399, but sometimes I want to be able to record multiple programmes at once. ... [More]
Advertising on public transport is big business. In Melbourne around 360,000 people a day use the train system for starters… and buses and trams get spotted on the road by many more. Personally I don’t mind the ads if they’re not intrusive. They help subsidise the system. I wonder how it works when advertising on ... [More]
I’ve used Twitter since August 2007. It feeds through to Facebook and generally keeps friends (on FB) and others (a couple of hundred people on Twitter; I don’t know who they all are) up-to-date. Good stuff. But the danger with these things is that one day the companies involved might go under or lose your ... [More]
My rough estimate is that at home it takes about three litres of running the hot tap before the water actually gets hot. One of my most commonly-used taps is in the laundry sink, which doubles as a sink for the back toilet. Being a laundry sink it’s big enough for a ten litre bucket, ... [More]
This is cool: it’s a representation of Melbourne’s trains across the day, and from a cursory look, appears to be pretty accurate to the timetable (possibly more so than the actual trains!). Ebb and Flow of Melbourne Trains by Flink Labs from Flink Labs on Vimeo. From a mob called Flink Labs, who explain how ... [More]
Is it extreme stupidity, or just carelessness not to spell-check your advert before putting it in the newspaper? What were they thinking? (from today’s Age)
The other week I met a thoroughly nice bloke who drives a four-wheel-drive. But while he gets some flak from his mates about it, he doesn’t live up to the cliche. He regularly uses it out in the bush as part of green activism while monitoring loggers. Interesting. So not all 4WD owners fulfil all ... [More]