Cathedral Arcade
Almost hidden away in the bottom of The Nicholas Building is the Cathedral Arcade.
I can’t say I frequent the quaint shops in there — I just use it as a shortcut — but that ceiling is quite amazing.
Significant Other
Sometimes memes are just irritating. For instance that “25 things you may not know about me” one. A few friends have done it. I’m not going to. You already got seven things out of me, and fer chrissake there’s 15 years of blog posts people can read if they want to find more.
I did figure out some answers for this one, one’s Significant Other. It’s months old because for whatever reason, I’ve taken ages to post it. It’s from Dooce via Kathy.
What are your middle names?
Mine’s Francis. Hers is Frances. Neat eh?
How long have you been together?
Five years and about nine months.
How long did you know each other before you started dating?
I think about a year. In person, a couple of months. We met through Tony, and I read her blog (now defunct) for a while.
Who asked whom out?
I asked her out.
How old are each of you?
She just turned 39; I’m still 38, though not for long.
Whose siblings do you see the most?
Probably mine. While my sister lives closer, she’s got more siblings.
Which situation is the hardest on you as a couple?
Hmm. Dunno.
Did you go to the same school?
We did go to the same university, but different campuses, and never met at the time. Just as well; I doubt she’d have liked me back then.
But separate to how we met, I was at school with her housemate’s brother — in fact I sat next to him throughout Year 8. Which is a bit freaky, really.
Are you from the same home town?
No. She only moved to Melbourne for uni.
Who is smarter?
One of the reasons I like her is because she’s smart — probably smarter than me — though we each have a different focus.
Who is the most sensitive?
Girls are always more sensitive, aren’t they?
Where do you eat out most as a couple?
It would be a toss-up between Saturday lunch at The Nook in Ripponlea, and takeaway pizza from Herbs in Carnegie (the latter being eaten in).
Where is the furthest you two have travelled together as a couple?
Not very far… which is further, Hobart or Canberra?
Who has the craziest exes?
No comment.
Who has the worst temper?
I think we’re both pretty even tempered. I probably get crankier.
Who does the cooking?
Both, though the most common meal I serve up is a batch of my frozen spag bol.
Who is the neat-freak?
Definitely not me. I agonise on it, but rarely do anything about it.
Who is more stubborn?
Hmm. Dunno.
Who hogs the bed?
Neither really, though if the doona drifts at all, it tends to drift my way.
Who wakes up earlier?
That’s probably even, though I am not, as a rule, a morning person.
Where was your first date?
The Nova cinema, to see the music documentary “Live Forever” at the Nova.
Who is more jealous?
Dunno.
How long did it take to get serious?
A few weeks.
Who eats more?
Probably me. I get peckish a lot.
Who does the laundry?
N/A.
Who’s better with the computer?
I’m the geek.
Who drives when you are together?
Me, as we’re usually in my car, and she doesn’t do Manuals so well.
Street name clusters
On my day off yesterday we sauntered down to Jaycar in Cheltenham for electronic gadget goodness. I noticed looking at the map beforehand that a bunch of the streets are named after newspapers: Argus St, Herald St, Age St, Times St. No Sun St that I could see.
There are plenty of clusters of street names about the place. Some of the others that spring to mind include:
Murrumbeena has streets named after Australian cities — Brisbane St, Perth St, Adelaide St, Sydney St, Melbourne St, Hobart Rd.
Elwood/St Kilda — lots of writers and poets: Tennyson St, Dickens St, Milton St, Chaucer St, Wordsworth St, Shakespeare Gv, Shelley St, Byron St, Mitford St, Southey St… and of course Poets Gv. There’s probably a few others around there that more cultured persons than me might recognise, too.
Elwood near the beach: Spray St, Tide St, Beach Av, Wave St, Foam St. Maybe Docker St as well?
Caulfield South, around the area once called Camden Town, formerly occupied by a camp site for timber workers — Olive St, Poplar St, Birch St, Cedar St, Sycamore St, Larch St, Almond St, Teak St, Beech St, Maple St. Would Jasmine and Filbert count too?
Perhaps this sort of thing saved time when large numbers of streets had to be named, and it might save agonising over who in a local community should get a street named after them and who shouldn’t.
Thankfully most of them are more imaginative than what they ended up with in Parkdale: First St, Second St, Third St, Fourth St, Fifth St, Sixth St, Seventh St, Eighth St. Then they threw caution into the wind and made the last couple in the group Bethell Av and Stewart Av.
My rights as a pedestrian
When I’m out walking, I actively (but not foolishly, I hope) defend my rights as a pedestrian. If I have an opportunity to walk safely and legally before a car goes, I will take it.
The main rules are not difficult to comprehend, but some motorists just don’t seem to understand them.
[Page references are those in the Vicroads PDF summary of the road rules.]
Red means stop. It doesn’t mean drivers can zoom through at the last minute. Given that Yellow actually means “stop if it is safe to do so” [p27], there’s no reason why drivers should still be travelling through the intersection after I’ve got a (conflicting) green man. Not that there’s much I can do about this but glare.
Drivers are meant to stop behind the stop line, not halfway across it blocking the pedestrian crossing. If blocked by the cars ahead, that’s the driver’s fault for not looking ahead to make sure it was clear. [p27]
The zebra crossing means vehicles have to give way for me to cross. If a motorist was driving so fast they had to brake sharply, that’s their fault [p58]. (I view extended periods of delays to motorists at busy zebra crossings, such as in Flinders Lane, with some glee. If they were stupid enough to bring their car into the middle of a big busy city, they’re going to face some delays in their quest to get to the next red light.)
Flagged Children’s Crossings are more strict. Vehicles have to stop if someone is waiting to cross, and not drive through until the last person is completely off the crossing. [p57] (I also recommend not trying to run down crossing supervisors at lighted intersections, such as some right-turners at McKinnon and Jasper Roads seem to do.)
Vehicles are not allowed to park on a footpath.[p78] Foot. Path. It’s really not that hard.
If a driver is turning across my path, they have to give way to me [p29] — unless it’s a roundabout.
Many motorists, myself included, give way when coming out of side-streets to crossing pedestrians. Strictly speaking vehicles don’t have to do this, but personally I consider it polite. Update: Commenter Andrew notes elsewhere the rules say: “At Stop or Give Way signs [...] you must not only give way to vehicles, but also to any pedestrians at or near the sign [...]”
If a vehicle is going into or coming out of a driveway or carpark or whatever, they have to give way to me. [p60]
Drivers have to stop for tram passengers unless there’s a safety zone/platform stop. [p60] The tram is a big thing on wheels that’s 3-5 times as big as a car; there’s no excuse for not seeing it.
I don’t have to cross at the lights if they’re more than 20 metres away (but I’ll certainly do so if it’s safer to do so).
The above rules are, I think, pretty logical.
But there are some others I learnt about while reading up on it, which I suspect not so many people are aware of.
- Motorists have to give way to peds when turning in a slip lane (including separated from the other lanes by just a painted island) [p30]
- Motorists have to give way to all peds (and everyone else for that matter) when making a U-turn [p31]
- Giving way to peds when turning includes instances such as turning into a main road that the pedestrian is crossing. [figure 24, p35]
Footnote: Why have VicRoads published the road rules in a PDF that doesn’t allow you to copy text out of it?
Digital TV
I had a dream last night that hundreds of new TV channels showed up on digital TV tuners. Weird.
I haven’t yet upgraded to digital TV. I’m in the unfortunate position of:
(a) having bought a 4:3 CRT TV at precisely the wrong time, about 7 years ago, just before the prices plummeted when widescreen LCDs and plasmas went mainstream, and apart from occasionally having a flickering line at the top (I think due to a bump while moving), that TV works admirably;
(b) not particularly wanting Yet Another Box and Yet Another Remote to have to deal with; and
(c) not having huge amounts of cash to throw around just now to buy a shiny new telly.
So I’m umming and ahhing. I suppose at some stage HD set-top boxes will become cheap enough that it becomes a no-brainer just to get the extra channels. Alternately a Digital Video Recorder might be the way to go.
I find the whole Freeview push amusing. All those ads. More than one person has asked what it actually means. They seem underwhelmed when I tell them it’s just digital TV. (And Freeview’s insistence that it’s all free is undermined somewhat when you point out that well, they’re not giving away set-top boxes, you do have to pay for them.)
The analogue signal won’t get switched off in Melbourne until late-July 2013, so I guess there’s a fair bit of time to continue procrastinating, but it would certainly be nice to get ABC2, and solve my slight ABC1 reception problem.
- Unbelievable. This article explains digital TV, but completely fails to mention that you must have an HD tuner (not an SD one) to get most of the new channels.
- Rob Kemp’s take on it
Something for your Pod
I don’t have a post for you this morning, so here’s something I prepared earlier.
This morning I had a chat to the people at 3CR about PT issues, and it reminded me of this recording from Joy FM back in April. I think they’d been intending to post the podcast themselves, but haven’t… so I’ll do it myself.
- Public transport — Joy FM “Heating Up” 6/4/2009 (MP3 — 8 mins 39 secs, 8Mb)
There’s a couple of spots where it seems to skip very slightly (though nothing that really causes an issue listening) — sorry about that, it was recorded off a slightly dodgy stream. When recording it I rabbited on and on… they’ve chopped it down to just over 8 minutes.
By the way, to clarify on the anecdote of Frank Casey, he wasn’t a disruptive passenger — he got cranky because the train he was on was said to be out of service and terminated, then once all the passengers had alighted, it left and continued on its journey, empty.
Hope it’s not too boring — happy listening!
Connex and Yarra Trams dumped
So, both Connex and TransdevTSL (operating as Yarra Trams) are being shown into the departure lounge, with MTM (MTR) and Keolis to replace them.
I don’t think the former is a surprise, though the latter is.
Some are celebrating. I know this for a fact, as yesterday morning at the station I heard one man say to his wife that he’d be opening a bottle of champagne if Connex got dumped.
(Note the newspaper advert!)
But how much will really change? If it’s the same old dodgy infrastructure (tracks that buckle in summer, signalling that fails, trains with unreliable air-conditioning, a lack of tram on-road priority), the new companies will face much the same issues. Just because MTR runs a great system in Hong Kong doesn’t mean they can magically do it here.
And who’s taking responsibility for planning the greater PT network? You know the sort of thing, actually ensuring that buses, trams and trains are timetabled to meet properly at interchange points, rather than the un-coordinated mess we have now? Like the infrastructure, that should be a role that sits with government, not the individual operating companies.
That said, there are things the operators can do to improve things: better cleanliness and maintenance, more staff, better handling of disruptions.
It’ll be interesting to see how they go.
- PTUA greets new operators, but warns real reform needed
- HS: Connex and Yarra Trams dumped in favour of MTR and Keolis
- The Age: New train, tram operators for Melbourne — check the video, featuring my timetable collection!
PS. Lunchtime: Audio of Mr Brumby fluffing the announcement, accidentally saying Keolis would run the trains. (MP3, 27 seconds, 218Kb)
Who will it be?
The big announcement may well come in the next few days: who will take over running Melbourne’s trams and trains from November?
Anybody want to put their predictions on the table? Leave a comment! Your choices:
- Trains: Connex (Veolia, incumbent) or MTM (Hong Kong MTR consortium) or Keolis
- Trams: Yarra Trams (TransdevTSL, incumbent) or Keolis
(I had a Google survey thing here for a short time, but it was too clunky, sorry.)
I think the thing to bear in mind is that none of it will make much difference unless the government commits to fixing the infrastructure and fleet problems that cause most of the issues. If all we get is another logo, little will really change.
That said, there is scope for the operators to run things better: put on more staff, voluntarily run more frequent services (at least outside peak hours, when trains are available), lobby more strongly for infrastructure improvement, better maintenance and security (eg around fleet depots and stations, where vandalism occurs).
