Because you can never have too much redundancy redundancy. (During last Friday’s Grand Final parade.)
Categories
Categories
You’re welcome, but your car isn’t
Neil Mitchell in the Herald Sun last week, has some strange ideas about the City: Second, there’s transport. It is difficult to get into the city and difficult to move around it. As Jeff Kennett said this week, those monster tram stops have clogged traffic and undermined the principle behind the magnificently simple design of ... [More]
Categories
Predictive text
I love my mobile phone’s predictive text. It makes writing messages quite fast, considering the tiny keyboard. But it seems some people don’t know this: if it comes up with a word that you don’t want, you press * to look at alternatives from its dictionary. If you don’t find the one you want, you ... [More]
The new Customer Information Centre at Flinders Street Station is a funny looking structure. The native grasses growing out of the sides… well, I don’t know who thought of it, but it’s certainly distinctive. Staff will answer customer queries there, and additional staff will be on the platforms from November. Extra staff on Melbourne’s busiest ... [More]
Categories
Doctor Who 2008
I enjoyed this season. I know I’ve loved the show for decades, but they do seem to keep coming up with new, clever stuff. Voyage of the Damned: A little over-long and plodding in places. I suppose it was a Christmas episode. Partners in Crime: Got the shock of my life at the end when ... [More]
I couldn’t fault the trains on Tuesday going to the Show. But despite all the talk of fighting fare evasion, things at the Showgrounds station on Tuesday were incredibly sloppy. While the Show tickets were individually scanned on entry, we didn’t have our train tickets checked when arriving or departing. And when we left, we ... [More]
Categories
The spring cluster
Spring has sprung. The weather’s getting nicer. My mind has turned to the cluster headaches that I got for the first time at this time last year. I haven’t had any again yet, but there’s something about the light which just hints that they might be on their way. Or maybe it’s just that my ... [More]
Categories
The Show
The kids and I set off for the Show on Tuesday morning. It had been about a decade since I’d been — ditto for Isaac, who went with a childcare group some years ago, and we’re not sure if Jeremy had ever been before. Tuesday turned out to be a good day to go. Despite ... [More]
Categories
A few pictures
Apparently Jay has a bowel movement. Not sure why he feels the need to immortalise it on his licence plate though. There can be few things less appetising in the supermarket than this: Ham & chicken flavoured knob. Grand Theft Panto? (Sorry, a little joke for the gunzels.) By the way, my old car finally ... [More]
I don’t claim to understand a great deal about the share market, and the current turmoil it’s enduring. I’ve heard the practice of short selling explained twice on the TV or radio in the last few days, and while I think I get how it works, I can’t understand why the owners of the shares ... [More]
Categories
Myki — what goes next?
The government backed down on one of the January fare changes — making Seniors Dailies only available in packs of 5. Not in a pack, really, but on a single ticket. Which meant a couple wanting that fare would have to cough up $33 in one hit. (Some might argue that Seniors shouldn’t get any ... [More]
Categories
Etiquette and crankiness
MISCONDUCT IN FRANKSTON TRAIN Although there have been many convictions for rowdy conduct in the trains to Frankston at weekends, offences of this kind constantly occur. At the Malvern Court on Monday, before Mr. Cohen, P.M. and Messrs. Patterson, Hattam, and Carroll, J.P.’s, the Railway Department proceeded against Bernand Molloy, 214 George street, Fitzroy, and ... [More]
Categories
Bad planning
Recently they’ve done some work on the streetscape in my local shopping centre, Centre Road in Bentleigh. Now, I may not know much about road design, but I think this, at the taxi rank next to the station, is a bad layout. Why? Because when the front taxi gets a fare, the others in the ... [More]
The stations between Malvern and South Yarra are colloquially known as the MATHS stations. Malvern Armadale Toorak Hawksburn South Yarra The first four of them (that would be MATH) also match architecturally. I’m assuming they were all built around 1915 when the line was quadruplicated. I can’t think of any other station group names of ... [More]
I’m getting used to the “new” car. You know how it is when you switch, especially between manual cars, and you have to learn the feel of the accelerator and clutch for the new vehicle? Otherwise you either take off too fast, or stall it. Things I’ve noticed about the Astra which are different from ... [More]
Not for the first time, a blog post of mine has been adapted into a newspaper story. Today’s Sunday Age reports on “ghost trams”: On our tramway’s secret service. Interestingly, Yarra Trams uses the term “ghost tram” for something else already — a tram that’s out of radio contact. Last year The Age did a ... [More]