You’re invited — bring a slave
I wrote about this ages ago, but it hasn’t changed, as it still works the same way on my newish Nokia N95 phone:
The predictive text, which usually works really well, reckons if you press 752737, the most likely word you want is slaves. I always want plates.
So if I’m not careful to change it (using * ), my message could end up saying something like Could you bring some slaves to the picnic?
Without wanting to make too many assumptions, are there many people out there who would be more likely to be texting about slaves than plates?
Other than that the N95 is good. The camera is fantastic — it’s actually slightly more megapixels than my old Canon A70 camera, though the quality isn’t as good, especially in low-light situations.
I love that it has Wifi so I can check my email at home for free without even turning a computer on, or on-the-go via the airwaves, though I confess I haven’t figured out yet how to send an email from it.
Oh, but there was something else: on my old phone the date/time of an SMS was the sent time. On this it’s the received time. So if I turn on my phone after a few hours of it being off, I have no idea how old the messages arriving really are.
That’s the only annoying thing. Apart from the slaves.
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No more cigarettes
I was in the barber shop last week getting a hair cut. I’ve been going there for something like fifteen years, and things have changed little over that time.
One thing that used to be different is they had ash-trays in the waiting area to accomodate smokers. Those disappeared some years ago.
But now for the first time, they’ve stopped selling tobacco products.
While I got my hair cut I had a chat with the barber (one of the proprietor’s sons) about the reasons.
Less and less people are smoking. The market is shrinking. (Or dying, perhaps?)
The profit margin isn’t very high, as there’s a lot of competition, apparently.
Conversely the value of the stock is high, which means even for just a moderately-sized shop display, they had tens of thousands of dollars of cigarettes sitting there, which raised concerns over burglary.
And finally, the hassles of keeping track of stock, sorting out inventory and orders and so on are a big overhead, which I can relate to, having dealt with such issues during my retail experience.
So they stopped selling them.
And the moral dimension? He knew full well that smoking is an unhealthy, unpleasant, dangerous practice, but more practical considerations appear to have been the catalyst for the change.
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Bike hire
Pre-state budget, there were strategic leaks of various initiatives. One that got a lot of press is the bike hire scheme. It’s a $5 million dollar scheme to have a bunch of inner-city bike stations where people can hire a bike.
Obviously there’s some detail to come out here. Where will they put them? How much will it cost to hire? What will they do about helmets?
In truth though, I’ve got my doubts.
Melbourne MP and Education Minister Bronwyn Pike said the plan would be sustainable and affordable and help alleviate inner city congestion.
Will it really alleviate congestion? Cycling, walking and particularly public transport already dominate inner-city trips, especially those into the CBD.
If you’re the type of person who is still driving into the CBD, it’s either because you’re finding the PT so poor for your particular trip (over-crowded, or not serving your suburb) or because you’re the type of die-hard Neil Mitchell-loving revhead who won’t give up their car for anything — and certainly won’t be getting onto some lycra-loving hippy bicycle.
So actually I think it’s unlikely to do anything for inner city congestion.
If you’re coming into the inner-city by public transport, do you really want to hop on a bike? Only, perhaps, if the last bit of your trip takes you beyond walking distance from where you jump off the tram/train/bus, and the connections aren’t very good. It would depend on where the bikes are located, but if you’re travelling for work, I’d guess you’re unlikely to rent a bike if you have to pay for 8-9 hours while you’re at work. But even if not, I’m not sure most people would bother.
For people who are inclined to cycle, what’s stopping them from doing so now? Bikes are dirt cheap, that’s not really a concern. I suggest the number one thing stopping more people cycling now is exactly why I don’t cycle very much: I’m chicken. With the lack of a fully-functioning bike lane/path network, most people have to mix it with general traffic to get where they’re going, and their sense of self-preservation means they aren’t willing to do it.
As Harry Barber, CEO of Bicycle Victoria said at the senate inquiry hearing last month:
We remain sceptical. We do not think the barrier is the bike; you can get a bike from the hard rubbish. The reason people are not riding is not because they do not have a bike. It is because they do not have somewhere to ride. As soon as you provide places to ride, people will get bikes. As the bicycle ecosystem develops, when it is comfortable for kids and cautious women to ride, as Senator Hutchins was talking about before, you may need hire bikes available that you can pick up for a small fee to get yourself, in Melbourne terms, down to St Kilda Road or something like that. We think that we are not quite there yet: that is a bit of an after-university thing and we are still at high school in the business of bikes. So we think it is very early to make this investment. They are quite expensive; all up, if you were to divide the number of bikes by the investment, they are going to be $8,000 bikes sitting on the side of the road.
I think I pretty much agree with him. I’m unlikely to use it, and my own bike will continue to sit at home most of the time until I see bike paths and lanes that’ll take me where I want to go.
(I could see myself hiring a bike for a joy-ride along the river. But that’s possible now, and would only ever be an occasional thing.)
What do you think? Would you use it?
PS. 4:45pm. Forgot to mention, apparently the bike hire trial conducted by RMIT has had a lot of registrations, but few people actually hiring the bikes.
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Why yes, I have done that
Ever tried to do a press conference at Southern Cross station and compete with a locomotive for the microphone? Don’t try. Locos 1. Me 0.
– Kevin Rudd PM on Twitter
Amusing.
It occurred to me that there’s not very many people who would be qualified to reply in the affirmative to that, so even though I know the man himself probably won’t read it, and it was a rhetorical question, I thought I’d pipe up:
@KevinRuddPM Yes actually, I have done that. Speak loudly and clearly and hope the microphones pick you up!
– danielbowen on Twitter
I’m sure he’d already figured that out for himself.
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This blog is sponsored by…
If you’re wondering, yes, the Lasoo.com.au banner advert is due to a sponsorship deal.
I was quite pleased to see they produced a graphic that fits in well with the blog — in a similar vein to my post last week on contextual advertising.
Lasoo is a web site that compiles and indexes retail catalogues — particularly handy for someone like me who has opted not to get them in my mailbox. Personally, I’ve used it in the past to find a good price on an iron, and when hunting for a specific birthday present.
I’m not going to go overboard in singing its praises just so you click through the banner, but it does seem to work well, and if you’re in Australia and ever, well, spend money, it’s worth a look.
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No more flavoured instant noodles
Us Bowens occasionally get an upset stomach, something we have dubbed Bowen Belly. Recently it’s been less frequent for me, thankfully.
But on Monday I was foolish.
I was passing through the supermarket and bought one of those instant noodle meals. I wanted a quick cheap easy meal. I must have temporarily forgotten about “tasty” and “nutritious”.
It might sound innocent enough, but in this one was a sachet of chicken-flavoured chemicals which seems to have done me no good at all.
Monday night was not pleasant. My stomach was groaning, gurgling, and painful. The nausea kept me up much of the night. Not nice.
Tuesday morning I was suffering from lack of sleep, and still feeling queasy, so decided to work from home, at least periodically, in between bouts of sleep. Happily most of it had gone by the afternoon, and I was able to venture out of the house.
Now I know why in old Britcoms they take the mickey out of pot noodles. For example, Red Dwarf’s Dave Lister saying he’d rather eat dog food. I note from the Wikipedia entry that one flavour, “Bacon Sizzler” was withdrawn after health concerns…
The lesson here: don’t eat crap. If I want a quick easy noodle meal (at a not unreasonable place) there’s a perfectly good noodle place near home which will do me a freshly cooked meal for about $9 — as well as several other options on the way home from the station.
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How many places have you lived?
Here’s a list of all the places I’ve lived. Some of the info from my early years is a bit vague. I suppose I could ask my mum for more details, but I’m not sure it’s that critical.
- 1970: A flat somewhere in Sydney — for a short time after my birth
- 1971ish: A flat somewhere in St Kilda, around Fitzroy Street
- 1971-3ish: A house (I think) somewhere in South Melbourne
- 1973-4ish: A house in Thornbury, I think in Hutton Street, though I couldn’t swear to it
- 1974-7: 7/62 Hotham Street, East St Kilda [Pictured]
- 1977-81ish: 11/62 Hotham Street, East St Kilda — we upgraded to the first floor
- 1981-82ish: 2/298 Inkerman Road, East St Kilda — apart from the semi-detatched house we rented, we also rented a bungalow at the back, which for a while was home to nothing but my small collection of model trains
- 1982-5ish: 6/23 Pine Avenue, Elwood — this was great, being so close to the beach. I used to regularly get on my bike and ride up and down the beachside bike path.
- 1985-6ish: 1b Staniland Grove, Elsternwick — above a shop. The night was regularly punctuated by passing trams, shop alarms and the lady in the neighbouring flat getting rat-arsed.
- 1987-9ish: 6/27 Beena Avenue, Murrumbeena — right next to the Dandenong line. After about a week we didn’t notice the trains going by, apart from it drowning out the television. In year 11-12 I’d regularly meet up with a bunch of other students on the 7:40am train.
- 1989-1993: My mum’s place in Hampton, though it’s closer to the Hampton East (should be called Moorabbin) shops
- 1993-1995: Power Street, Hawthorn — the first time I moved out of home. From memory the phone number also ended in 1666, which was perhaps just co-incidence, or perhaps by-design, I don’t know. Being right next to the tram stop was handy, and in fact you could hear the city-bound tram coming around the corner, indicating if you wanted to catch it you might need to run up the driveway.
- 1995-2003: Booran Road, Glen Huntly — which was good, apart from being on a main road and having neighbours who occasionally left the TV blaring at night.
- Briefly in 2000: a flat in Waratah Avenue, Glen Huntly
- 2003-2005: Ames Avenue, Carnegie — the old cold house with the huge back yard which took forever to mow
- 2005-: My current place in Bentleigh
Hmm, 16 places (in 38 1/2 years), which is more than I thought it might be.
I know from going past and looking around on Google Streetview that most of them are still there, but many of them have been renovated and look little like they did when I lived there.
How about you?
See also: Commutes of my youth
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Non-identical twins
These two are dizygotic twins. That is, non-identical.
They used to be identical. How did it happen? Here’s the potted history.
These Comeng trains were built during the 80s.
As part of privatisation, the then-two operators M>Train and Connex took half each, and refurbished them. Added CCTV, automated announcements and signs, put in new seats, that kind of thing.
Somewhere in this tale, you’d expect a stuff-up, right? Here it is: Nobody (eg the government) thought to ask the two companies to refurbish them in ways that kept them compatible. In case, y’know, say one company dropped-out and a single operator ended up running the whole system.
As happened in 2004.
So then they spent a bunch more money making the two halves of the Comeng fleet talk to each other again.
But internally and externally they still look a bit different, as the picture above shows.
PS. 12:30pm. I’m told we can expect more handholds to be installed on Comeng trains in the next few weeks, similar to the doorway H-bars on the test train.
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