Almost sci-fi pictures
There was a bloke on the train covering his eyes. A picture of him could be captioned: Don’t blink!
But it would be wrong to publish such a photo without his permission.
Instead I give you this, found in a street in Footscray. Let’s hope it’s bigger on the inside.
And it was nice to see this in Dudley Street, West Melbourne.
Tags: Doctor Who, Max Headroom, Photos
2 comments
Diversity of culture
In the history of recorded music, given the choice, there are few tunes I would be less inclined to listen to than “Careless Whisper” (perhaps better known by the lyric “Never gonna dance again”) by George Michael.
Yet a lady on the train on Wednesday morning was listening to it on her iPod. All the sappy saxophone, every moaning lyric, loudly enough for me to hear it nearby — and for it to subsequently burrow its way into my brain.
Perhaps she had been prepping herself for Wednesday night’s concert.
One could take the piss out of her for having such a taste in music, but perhaps it just underscores the diversity of culture in the human race.
It reminds me of the time I was at the station reading Brian Bagnall’s “On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore”. I was utterly rivetted to it — it’s excellent (though sloppily written) for geeks who had a Commodore computer back in the day.
The station host lady asked me what it was, and upon telling her, paused, and then remarked “We really are all different, aren’t we.”
Yep.
Meanwhile, I’m off to place something off my Loud list. Some Spiderbait might get rid of Mr Michael.
Tags: George Michael, music, Spiderbait
8 comments
Quick reviews
A few quick reviews of things I’ve read or watched recently…
(The DVDs fall into the category of “I’ve been meaning to watch that; I’ll buy that if it’s less than $10. Ooh, there it is!” One book was borrowed, the other I got for Christmas.)
A Hard Day’s Night — got this cheap on Amazon, and thought the kids would enjoy it, which they did. Occasionally the accents are a tad hard to follow, but the antics of the Beatles, together with Paul’s “very clean” grandfather got some laughs. And because it’s based loosely on the real life experiences of The Beatles, it’s also a view into life in 1960s Britain.
Tron — found this cheap in JB Hifi. It smells a bit of 80s computer-age wonder cash-in, with users having real beings inside the computer who run all their jobs. But it was quite enjoyable, and very interesting graphics for a 1982 film.
A Nest of Occasionals, Tony Martin — very funny stuff, particularly the tales of writing radio adverts, which had me in stitches at one point. I’m going to have to check out his other book, Lolly Scramble.
Jasper Jones (by Craig Silvey)– Superb, a real page turner, really enjoyed it. And again, fully intending to get hold of his other novel, Rhubarb.
(Currently reading Shane Maloney: “Stiff”.)
The timewaster
The curse of the Internet and the short attention span — there’s too much stuff to look at.
So I check my email.
Then I have a look in Google Reader.
What’s Twitter doing? Okay.
Facebook? My turn in Scrabble yet?
Might check a couple of the news sites and see what’s happening.
And the Whirlpool forum?
OK, all under control. But hey, I wonder if there’s any new email?
Rinse and repeat. How do I break this cycle?
I once had an idea for it: a combined mega-reader/aggregator that would grab data from all those sources and more, configured by the user. It would rank everything according to a priority — again, configured by the user — perhaps the emails from your boss and/or spouse at the top, the dull email newsletter which you should read but don’t want to at the bottom, and news bulletins somewhere in the middle.
So you could see everything in one hit, all prioritised.
I even came up with a name and a domain name for it: View My World.
And I did some rough designs on it, but never got to the coding stage.
I still think it’s a good idea, and anybody who’s got the time and inclination to work on it should give me a shout, maybe we can come up with a collaboration.
Meanwhile, amusingly, ViewMyWorld.com is now registered by Microsoft, and appears to be a recruitment web site.
(Anybody who wants to develop the Screaming Room idea should also give me a scream shout. I already have a prospective subscriber in Derrimut.)
Tags: email, Facebook, Google, Internet, shouting room, Whirlpool
9 comments
ISP shopping part 2
An update on my ISP shopping post from a couple of weeks ago:
Netspace rang me up to discuss my concerns (they found the post themselves), and to let me know there was some progress on resolving them:
Advice of network outages — they said there is already a project underway to advise of outages via SMS direct to customers. Sounds pretty good. Whether or not they’d open up their network status page was unclear — sounds like not. But at least SMS alerts would make it easy to know what’s going on without being online.
Revision of plans without telling anybody — apparently this is being discussed with Netspace management, and it is recognised that this isn’t great customer service. No promises, but at least they’re looking at it.
And they said that they recognised I was a loyal customer (since about 2003 I think), and wanted to keep me, and made me a very good offer to upgrade me. Combined with the fact that there’d be no hassles with switching ISPs, and no outage, it was an offer to good to refuse.
So I’ve upgraded and am sticking with Netspace, on a 75 Gb plan (30 Gb peak, 45 Gb off-peak; about double what I had before) for $59.95/month (the same as I was paying before).
So far it’s been good, the speed difference is noticeable. In fact, they switched me to the faster speed before the modem arrived, so almost instantly my speed went up from 1500 kbps to about 8000 kbps (the fastest possible ADSL1 speed). And the ADSL2+ speed is about double that.
And of course because there’s no contract, I can jump ship anytime if I want (though in the fine print there is a $65 “network termination fee”). But for now, I’m happy again, and provided Netspace are true to their word and fix the outage notifications, I’m more than happy to recommend them.
Another lesson here: I’m not sure if this is universal, but it would seem that people on ADSL1, using ADSL1 modems, are able to get a speed upgrade from 1500 kbps to 8000 kbps fairly painlessly just by switching to an ADSL2+ plan. Because for many ISPs, ADSL1 uses others’ facilities (eg it’s reselling) and ADSL uses their own, the pricing is likely to be comparable — in my case it was identical. In fact, why Netspace (and other ISPs) don’t encourage this?
Tags: ISPs, Netspace
5 comments
The Age’s new home page
This is what appeared on The Age’s home page this morning (with my additions).
They explained that there’s a new video tab, which you’ll see when the lead story is best told in video.
Eh? How is Ultimate Fighting in any way to be regarded as the lead story? Unless Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott jumped in the ring.
And why is a pr0n star (I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess it’s about Tiger Woods; I didn’t click on it) a related story to anything on that page?
What I do like is that they’ve split the Victoria and National stories apart, though as-of lunchtime some stories appear to be in the wrong spots — I doubt for instance that today’s Myki story has much national significance.
The Today’s Paper link reflects what’s in the print edition for the day, which is probably a good idea. I like the way it gives more prominence to the PDF copy of the front page.
And I wonder if this declaration is laying down the gauntlet to News Ltd, who have said in the past they’d be moving to a paid content model: But some things haven’t changed. We still bring you the latest breaking news as it happens, free, all day every day, in words, pictures and video.
Anyway, despite the teething problems, interesting to see them changing things around. Now, if they can just get rid of the annoying habit of having the video stories autostart…
Tags: Media, The Age, web sites
11 comments
Navigation
A few years ago I did a comparison of the results from online trip planners. Here’s an update of sorts.
I tested 247 Flinders Lane (which is an address on a one-way street, in an area with lots of turn restrictions and pedestrian streets) to see what the various navigators would do. For the destination I just put Bentleigh (my neighbourhood).
Yahoo Maps couldn’t give me an answer, reporting that “Driving directions cannot be determined between these locations”. I tried giving it a specific destination, but it wouldn’t do it.
1. Head west on Flinders Ln towards Flinders Way 0.1 km
2. Turn right at Elizabeth St 0.1 km
3. Take the 1st right on to Collins St 0.5 km
4. Turn right at Russell St 0.2 km
5. Turn right at Flinders St 0.2 km
6. Take the 1st left on to St Kilda Rd 4.6 km
7. Turn left at Fitzroy St 77 m
8. Turn right at St Kilda Rd 1.3 km
9. Continue onto Brighton Rd 1.9 km
10. Continue onto Nepean Hwy 4.1 km
11. Slight left at Centre Rd 1.5 km
Google decided that just entering the suburb for the destination would go to the post office.
The directions are pretty good, but St Kilda Junction confused it; you don’t (you can’t) turn at Fitzroy Street when headed southbound; you turn briefly onto Punt Road, which then leads you onto St Kilda Road.
1. Continue on Flinders La, Melbourne – head towards Degraves St
2. Turn left onto Degraves St, Melbourne at Punt Hill
3. Turn left onto Flinders St, Melbourne
4. Turn right onto Swanston St, Melbourne at Young & Jackson Hotel
5. Continue along St Kilda Rd, Melbourne at Arintji Cafe & Bar
6. Veer right onto Punt Rd, St Kilda
7. Continue along St Kilda Rd, St Kilda
8. Continue along Brighton Rd, St Kilda
9. Continue along Nepean Hwy, Elsternwick at McDonalds
10. Veer left onto Ramp, Brighton East
11. Continue along Brewer Rd, Brighton East
12. At the roundabout – take the 2nd exit onto Brewer Rd, Bentleigh
13. Arrive at Brewer Rd, Bentleigh
Curiously it’s led me to somewhere well outside the logical centre of Bentleigh, though it might be the geographic centre of the suburb.
It figured out St Kilda Junction, but got the initial directions completely wrong, directing me to turn into Degraves Street, which is mostly closed to traffic, and then to do an illegal right hand turn from Flinders St into Swanston St. I kinda like the use of landmarks for directions though.
1. Depart -37.81673, 144.96600 on Flinders Ln (West)
2. Turn LEFT (South) onto King St (0.1 km)
3. Road name changes to Kings Way (2.3 km)
4. Bear RIGHT (South) onto Queens Rd (2.0 km)
5. Turn LEFT (East) onto Union St (0.4 km)
6. Turn RIGHT (South) onto Punt Rd (0.3 km)
7. Keep STRAIGHT onto St Kilda Rd (1.3 km)
8. Road name changes to Brighton Rd (1.9 km)
9. Keep LEFT onto Nepean Hwy (4.1 km)
10. Keep LEFT onto Centre Rd (1.5 km)
11. Turn RIGHT (South) onto Loranne St (0.0 km)
12. Arrive -37.91806, 145.03544 (0.0 km)
This one has also led me to the post office. Unlike the others it preferred Kingsway to St Kilda Road, but I can’t see any flaws with its logic, though it did decide I should go all the way along Union Street to Punt Road — that may well be faster than turning off Union Street at St Kilda Road.
And for non-drivers, how about Metlink’s journey planner?
From 247 Flinders Lane (Melbourne City)
Walk about 220 metres to Flinders Street Railway Station (Melbourne City)1. Continue along Royston Pl 20 m about 1 min
2. Turn right at Flinders Lane 80 m about 2 min
3. Turn right at Swanston St 120 m about 2 min
4. Continue along St Kilda Rd 10 m about 1 min
5. Arr: 10:08 am To Flinders Street Railway Station (Melbourne City) 210 m 4 minDEP: 10:08 am Flinders Street Railway Station (Melbourne City) Platform 8
Take the train towards Frankston — Time 21 min
ARR: 10:29 amGet off at Bentleigh Railway Station (Bentleigh) Platform 2
DEP: From Stop Bentleigh Railway Station (Bentleigh)
Walk about 50 metres Time 7 min
10:36 am To Bentleigh (Bentleigh)
Metlink decided “Bentleigh” meant a street next to the railway station. Not sure why.
The instructions to walk to the station assume that Royston Place is a thoroughfare; It’s a deadend; you can’t get to Flinders Street station that way. Update: Ah, it assumed I was starting in Royston Place, not walking through it. Not sure why it would do that though. And it didn’t send me via the quickest pedestrian route, which is the Degraves Street subway.
But the train trip itself is correct.
Unknown why it thinks it’ll take 7 minutes to walk 50 metres at the end of the trip. Maybe it’s adding a bit in case the train is late, or you have to wait for a train at the level crossing.
So, Bing gave the best result. All the others appear to need some attention.
Tags: Bing, Google, Metlink, navigation, web sites, Yahoo
7 comments
TV news
Superb! Charlie Brooker on what makes a generic TV news report:
(via Mumbrella)
