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]
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]
So much for Weekly/Monthly/Yearly tickets being valid in any zone on weekends. From January this benefit will be removed. You’d think they’d be trying not to discourage people from using these tickets, since they help cut down queues and encourage PT loyalty… but it looks like it’s a simplification of the rules to make implementation ... [More]
Leader Newspapers have joined ABC Local Radio in redesigning their web site into a hideous, difficult to navigate mess. For instance, the Caulfield Leader, at www.caulfieldgleneiraleader.com.au, with a page showing the same news stories as the printed version of the paper, plus a few other links, apparently wasn’t good enough. So now it’s the ... [More]
I thought the police were having issues with high petrol bills. Apparently not, as they’re going to patrol nightspots in Hummers. Maybe instead they should have gone for Police Priuses. They’d be distinctive. Did you know that a Prius actually has more legroom than a Hummer H3? Seriously, inspired by a comment from Tony H, ... [More]
Tony spotted a hot air balloon above his house this morning. I spotted one in Collins Street at about 9:15am: I wonder if it was the same one?
Have you seen the pictures of the Large Hadron Collider to be switched on today? Wow. It just looks so sci-fi, doesn’t it. I don’t think it’ll destroy the world, but it almost looks capable of it. (It wasn’t invented by Osterhagen, was it? Oh, whoops — spoilers!) PS. The kids are looking on the ... [More]
Sigh. In retrospect I probably should have shut my big mouth rather than comment on the upgrade to Hamer Hall. UNIONS and community groups have slammed a State Government plan to spend $129 million on an Arts Centre facelift. “Patrons of Hamer Hall are lucky they’re not seeing performances in the same conditions that public ... [More]
M and I were heading from her place in Footscray to her friend Clare’s party in Armadale. Train into the city, then either: train to Armadale (quicker, but a 15 minute walk) or tram 6 (slower but much closer). The train had just gone (next in 15 minutes), so we walked over to the tram ... [More]
When I was a kid, my dad would take us to Camberwell Civic Centre every April or so, to see the huge model train exhibition they had there. We’d wander around for a couple of hours and I would dream that one day I’d have a really big, detailed train set. Early on I had ... [More]
Too busy to blog this morning. (Reasons: 1 2 3 4 5) Found this article on a Chinese language web site. I can’t read it, so I fed it into the Google translator facility. I’m sure in the original Chinese, it’s completely grammatically correct — it’s the automated translation back to English that’s so entertaining. ... [More]
I got a bunch of good stuff for my birthday last month — books, CDs, a groovy t-shirt, some terrific framed old photos. One particularly good book was a book about street-artist Banksy. I hate stupid meaningless graffiti (and have been regularly contacting Connex about Glenhuntly Station… they’re not quite meeting their own “clean within ... [More]
Home again, still not well. Some kind of stomach bug combined with headaches. Blargh. Not pleasant. Meanwhile my sister is getting over a cold, some of the kids have had colds too, my mum’s been unwell, my dad’s had to go into hospital with a blood problem. It seems to be one of those weeks.