I was on the tram. A man in a nearby seat looked rather familiar. Was he someone I knew, or an undercover ticket inspector noticing I hadn’t bothered to re-validate my already several-hundred-times-re-validated Yearly ticket, so the tram company beancounters would get their flawed and meaningless statistics for the month?

He got up. “Daniel, how are you?”

As I almost always do in such situations, I feigned recognition in the hope that I’d work out who he was by how the conversation proceeded. “I’m good, how are you?”

It didn’t work. He must have seen the quizzical look on my face. “It’s Fraser.”

“Of course!” Then with a little more familiarity “How are ya?”

Of course it was Fraser. Met him a handful of times, but my excuse for not recognising him this time was he wasn’t in a suit (day off?) and he looked perhaps slightly less perky than usual (up late the night before?).

Having now gained a positive ID, the conversation got a bit more meaningful, at least for one more stop, before he got off the tram.

PS. On the subject of trams etc: Myki? They called it Myki?! I suppose we’ve already had Sheena Easton do an ad… maybe next it’ll be Toni Basil.

A few notable signs on my recent travels…

Seems like a reasonable request.

I don’t want to know what might have prompted this one.

Quick! What does it say? Every time I pass this one my eye catches a word that isn’t there. (By the way it’s next to the Indian/Italian place.)

Oh, speaking of signs, the clock on the silo has broken down again.

I’m no fan of Connex’s obtuse “Don’t Hold Others Back” campaign. Some of the TV ads make no sense when seen in isolation: you have to go to the web site to find out what it’s about. Of those that have ready web access, how many people would bother? Some advertising people will probably win an award for it.

At least the billboards at least make it reasonably clear what the message is.

Then of course there’s the message itself. Connex’s own statistics show passengers cause a minority of delays to trains. (I can’t find the stat right now, but from memory it was something like 20%.) I’m not about to claim there aren’t people out there who deliberately hold doors and things cause delays, but most people don’t, and I somehow doubt those that do will be convinced to stop by these ads.

Then of course there are other methods of being inconsiderate, this guy in a sopping coat on the train this morning:

He probably rendered the seat unusable for the next hour or so. Wouldn’t be that hard to either take the coat off before sitting, or stand for the three stops. Given the amount of water on him I find it hard to believe he didn’t realise.

Given the risks some highway charity collectors seem to take dodging cars, I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever see them collecting for injured highway charity collectors.

Has anybody published a book listing 1001 “1001 things” books you must read before you must die?

I just got asked if my History of the World is accurate enough for a uni assignment. Hmmm. Well most of the dates are reliable enough, but the facts have been changed around a fair bit for laughs… I’d imagine most people would want to check it against something a tad more authoritative.

In each generation, most kids show boundless enthusiasm for creative pursuits. Whether it be drawing, building things, play-acting, whatever.

When I was a kid, there was a lot of Lego building going on. My sister and I constructed whole cities. Sometimes we’d stick to the official designs of the sets, sometimes we’d go out on a limb with our own creations.

Later I moved onto computers, and writing. And at one stage, I was helping with some of my friends to make videos. Video cameras and editing equipment had reached the price point where high schools could afford them, and so over a number of years, we churned out a Blakes Seven tribute, a Doctor Who tribute called “The Battle for Mecros”, and a whole series inspired by The Professionals.

The tapes of all these still exist. I must talk to Raoul (who wrote and produced most of them) about putting the best of them onto YouTube or Google Video. I’m not going to pretend they’re Oscar-winners, but we had a lot of fun doing them, and they do serve as a permanent reminder of our teenage years.

My kids have seen the Doctor Who tribute. They really enjoyed it. They noted my contribution in the title graphics (which alas didn’t meet my expectations, and led me to do a much better later version in preparation for a re-edit that never happened) and my credited appearance hidden inside a Cyberman suit. They watched the blooper clips, which included numerous fluffed lines and footage of putting out a burning Dalek with a fire extinguisher.

Combined with the presence in our house of a digital camera (that shoots movie clips) and Windows Movie Maker, it has inspired a flurry of short film-making. Not just in my house, of course — Chris Anderson mentions the proliferation of free movie editors in The Long Tail book, which I’m reading at the moment. This and other advances in technology are leading more and more people from being just consumers, to also being producers of content.

In fact both kids are embarking on separate Doctor Who tributes, with Isaac and his friend Adrian having been in pre-production for some months now. I’m not sure what the state of the script is in, but I did note with some amusement that at one point Adrian was declaring just about anything that would involve more than a smidgeon of effort to film be deferred to post-production. If they continued down that route, there’d be not a lot actually filmed, and an awful lot of post-production work involved. They have started work on getting props and sets and so on ready, but it seems there’s a way to go before the main shoot commences.

Thankfully some other films have made it to completion. Between them Isaac and Jeremy have completed about 10 short films, varying from live action (the “Two Guys” series… guess who have the starring roles?) to animation (starring a Lego Jack Stone figure).

Anyway my point is that kids’ creative outlets move with the times. And it’s great to see their minds at work.

I seemed to spend most of Fathers Day doing dadly things.

Like putting oil in the car. And cleaning the windscreen.

And painting (well okay, it was just street numbers on the bins).

And climbing ladders (just to move the John Brack a few inches downwards).

And pulling the computer apart to put a new video capture card in.

The kids gave me some cards made at school, and some nicknacks: chocolates, a bottle holder, car cleaning stuff, that kind of thing.

Hope all the other dads also had a good day today.

I just know I’m going to be tired later today.

Last night I got to bed about 11:30pm or so… but couldn’t sleep. Maybe a combination of the… well, not exactly heat, but certainly an unexpected lack of cold, and the ideas swimming in my head (which I’ll tell you about another time).

I got up again at about 12:20 for a few minutes to try and quash the brain activity by some temporary computer-generated stimulus, then tried again to sleep.

By 1:15 I was still tossing and turning. Got up again, grabbed an issue of Geek Monthly to read in bed for a few minutes, then hit the pillow again at 1:30. And finally slept.

Inevitably, due to the light at this time of year, I was awake again by 6:45. Well short of the seven hours sleep I normally need to function.

Sometime later today, it’s going to be yawn-O-rama, I just know it.

In fact, when I’ve finished breakfast I might see if my body will agree to trying to get back to sleep for a short while.