But that was on the outside
The TV soap Prisoner is 30 years old this year.
For a year or two in the 80s, our family was hooked on it. I don’t remember how or why we started watching it, but some of the characters certainly stick in the mind: “The Freak”, Bea Smith, Mrs Morris, Lizzie Birdsworth, and that guard played by Maurie Fields. Of course the story lines were mostly pretty unlikely, but that’s how it is with some TV.
Lizzie Birdsworth was played by Sheila Florance, who used to live in Elwood, somewhere off Ormond Road, I think. Probably after she’d left the show, when we also lived in Elwood, I used to see her around there, often on the 600 bus.
ABC 774′s Conversation Hour had a special with some of the cast on Wednesday. It should show up online soon. It’s available as an MP3 download here.
Speaking of 80s TV shows, does anybody remember Whiz Kids? Kind of a WarGames for TV, but with BMX bikes thrown in. … OMG, it’s on YouTube. I bet it’s not as good as it was back then. Few things are.
“Don’t you know anything? I’m not a nerd, I’m a hacker.”
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Let the green man go first
At this intersection, as at most, vehicles turning have to give way to pedestrians.
Given that, why have they designed it so that the green man appears several seconds after the cars start moving?
It was changed a few months ago when they modified the intersection.
It sends the wrong message. Surely, to improve safety and remind drivers of their obligations, it would be better to have both lights go green at once, or even have the green man go first.
Perhaps it’s only a little thing, but at a time when we should be encouraging more pedestrians, it’s indicative of the lack of thought going into managing our streets.
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Speaking of…
A few quick things…
This Daily Show segment about Obama’s inauguration was mucho funny.
Speaking of Obama, as with Rudd before him, I’m still getting used to the words “President” and “Obama” in one sentence.
Speaking of Rudd, clearly he needs to do more on education, as the misused apostrophe in one of his Twitter posts proves: KevinRuddPM Join Australian’s in 1 minute twitter silence @ 4pm today in memory of those who lost their lives in Vic & QLD #bushfires
Speaking of, erm, things from the last few days, this is the favourite card design I’ve ever given for St Valentine’s Day (to Marita last year, I think):
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EB Games
Reasons to like and dislike EB Games.
Good — price matching. I walked into the Elizabeth Street store with a printout showing that Big W had Mario Kart $30 cheaper and the guy didn’t blink, and happily matched the price.
Good — unlike many of the staff in the department stores (especially the cheap ones), most of their sales people know what they’re talking about and seem genuinely interested. The same guy was frank when pondering the release of Rock Band 2 — probably another year away so EA can maximise their profits.
Mostly good — preowned games. They’re about the only place you can now buy classic out-of-print (old) XBox games, for instance, and generally quite cheaply. Mind you, for anything recent, the pricing makes it hardly worth it.
Good — that Nintendo area in the Swanston Street store where the kids got to play Wii tennis on Christmas Eve (before they got their own Wii), though apparently now it’s closed for renovation, only a few months after it opened.
Good — range, much better than most places.
Bad — what’s with charging $35 for 2000 Wii points? You’ll pay $30 at Dick Smith or using a credit card on the Wii itself. Yes I guess they’ll price match, but why not charge the standard amount in the first place? I guess as per usual, caveat emptor applies.
Bad — in fact, the odd special aside, the pricing is pretty much RRP, so be prepared to look elsewhere to buy cheaper or get them to price match.
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Load shedding
I wasn’t affected by the heatwave power outages the other week, though I know people who were, and at one stage I got off the train heading for home to find a lot of the shops had lost power, with many shopkeepers having left early for the day, and the supermarket throwing out all of its refrigerated goods (though their frozen section was okay).
You have to love the spin that surrounds “load shedding”. Take for example this press release from power distributor Jemena (formerly Alinta):
Load-shedding involves taking customers off the network in order to reduce demand.
Ha! That’s a laugh. Talk about trying to make it sound positive.
No fellas. Demand didn’t reduce. The demand was still there. Those people being disconnected didn’t ask to be disconnected. They didn’t volunteer to shut down their fans, lights, air-conditioners and TVs. They still wanted power. It’s got nothing to do with demand. It’s a lack of supply.
Evidently all the government bravado about our big filthy coal-fired power stations having plenty of capacity to cope with demand (claims made before the load shedding commenced, obviously) were crap.
So, how about we get on with the job of better home designs to cope with the heat, getting more solar panels onto houses, and more wind and solar farms out there to get our increasingly harsh environment working for us, instead of against us… and commence phasing out the coal, so we can stop making it any worse than it already is.
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My new USB drive
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Just a few more thoughts
Just a few more thoughts on the fires.
Blood: I was going to wait a little while before donating blood, as I wondered if this might happen: the Blood Bank has been overwhelmed by donors and is asking people to stagger them, as people can only donate every three months, and blood products have a limited lifespan.
Money: Likewise the Red Cross web site has been overloaded, which means people are digging deep. Good. Happy to see they’re taking donations from outside Australia, too. I’m sure there’s a lot of people around the world who are willing to help.
Data: From The Times: Mrs Parkinson and her husband, Colin Buckler, grabbed their two-year-old son Sam, a bag of nappies and a computer hard drive and tried to flee by car. I know I’m not alone in having some of my most precious memories in electronic form on my computers’ hard drives. But one of the reasons I use an online backup service is to avoid any problems should my computers have problems — of any type.
Photos: There are many amazing stories and pictures out of the fires, but the Boston Globe with its Big Picture series has captured some of the best.
Shopping: Coles have announced profits this Friday will go to bushfire relief, somewhat gazumping Safeway/Woolworths, who are doing the same for farmers next Friday.
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Brian told me
One night in 1983, we sat on our upstairs porch at 23 Pine Avenue in Elwood, watching the red of the Ash Wednesday bushfires on the horizon. Overseas relatives were concerned it was close to us… which I suppose it was, but of course suburban Melbourne wasn’t directly affected. All the same, it was an eerie sight.
In those days, in my family we were news junkies. In the 80s, it was common for us to watch Channel 9 news at 6pm, SBS’s then half-hour news at 6:30pm, the ABC news at 7pm, and then the 7:30 Report. I don’t recall if we got bored seeing the same stories multiple times.
At the time, Channel 9′s 6pm news dominated the ratings, no doubt in part to host Brian Naylor. The promos told us we knew everything we needed to know ‘cos “Brian told me so”, and in those days, when there was little access to news compared to nowadays, it seemed to be true.
(Gawd, look at the clothes.)
Brian Naylor was so popular that when he retired in 1998, it was said that Channel 9 paid him a retainer just to ensure he didn’t go and work for the competition.
As we now know, he and his wife died in the fires near Kinglake.
Of course they were only two, of well over a hundred victims. That figure is still rising. They all have stories, and family who will mourn them, and they’ll all be missed.
And it’s not over yet.
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