Part two of my three part plan for weight loss… (Part 1 is diet via FebFast) I’ve never been one for organised sport, but I’ve had a few failed attempts at an exercise regime over the years. In the late 90s, I would regularly go for a short morning run, but I kind of fell ... [More]
I’m doing FebFast – no junk food for a month!
Myki Monthly and Weekly Pass fares: more expensive than ever compared to daily fares
Happy Australia Day! Now I’m going to do the Australian thing and talk about real estate. Later this year it will be ten years since I moved into this house. It’s got me pondering maintenance, repairs and a little bit of renovation. It started when I got my stepfather, who knows more about this kind ... [More]
As far as I can see, since the January zone changes, there is now no monetary benefit to touching-off your Myki for trips in zone 1, or zone 1+2. This is because the Myki Money Default fare (the fare it assumes you should be charged if you touched-on, but never touched-off) is normally the same ... [More]
I don’t drive as much as many people (my average kilometres per year figure is about half the national average), but here are some recent random observations… Seat belts. Why do some people wait for a few hundred metres before they put on their seatbelts? Do they think they’re somehow immune from accidents for the ... [More]
Some of the arguments in favour of the Free Tram Zone seem very simplistic. Shaun Carney built a whole opinion piece around this in the Herald Sun on Thursday: basically, it doesn’t matter if it’s poorly thought out, sucks away resources, and doesn’t get people out of cars — if it’s cheap or free, it ... [More]
The recent anti-motorway protests in Melbourne are nothing new. In fact the very same area was subject to protests in the 1970s, when it was proposed to link the Eastern Freeway to the Tullamarine Freeway by way of an aboveground link, by converting Alexandra Parade to a freeway, ploughing through neighbourhoods in Collingwood, Carlton and ... [More]
Continuing my series of old photos from ten years ago… At the house in Carnegie, we had an old slide (which eventually got left there for whoever moved in after us) and a trampoline (which came with us, but in the end when we’d tired of it, got given to relatives who would use it ... [More]
At any station with multiple platforms, especially when they’re not adjacent (eg an island platform), you’re going to need to know which one your train leaves from. At many it’s easy — one platform is going towards the City, one is away. Some stations have three platforms. The third track is often used for peak ... [More]
Over the years there have been various problems with the Myki ticketing system. Some have been self-inflicted, such as the lack of a single use ticket, which was the result of a Coalition decision in 2011. Others are down to poor implementation, such as the slow and inconsistent read times for cards, or the difficulty ... [More]
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Welcome to the year 2015
Welcome to the year 2015. Sounds so futuristic, doesn’t it. A while ago, last century, I wrote a short story called The Year 2031, about a space mission to Venus, published in 19 weekly parts in 1998 as part of my (still going) Toxic Custard weekly email newsletter. Back in 1998, the year 2031 seemed ... [More]