Lines? What lines?

(Outside Officeworks, Highett)

No time to park properly! Emergency stove purchase!

(Outside Clive Peeters, Braybrook)

Tomorrow is ANZAC Day. Obviously up until now I haven’t really been paying attention, because this week I’ve read things I didn’t know about it until now:

• Four days before ANZAC Day 1918, Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, was shot down over France, probably by Australian anti-aircraft gunners. (Thanks Jayne)
• On ANZAC Day 1918 (following an offensive launched the night before), the town of Villers-Bretonneux, France was liberated by the ANZACs. According to one report, the town is now affectionately known by Australians as “VB”.
• Birdwood Avenue, in front of the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, is named after William Birdwood, who was first commander of the ANZACs — though he apparently didn’t visit Australia until after the war had ended.

It would seem that there’s always something new to learn about days gone past. And that the knowledge of what our forebears fought achieved will continue on. Lest we forget.

Went to the dentist last weekend for the not-quite-six-monthly-more-like-nine-monthly checkup. They reckoned my brushing is going well. I didn’t tell him I only floss every couple of weeks…

I brush my teeth two or three times a day. When the kids are around, it’s the latter, as I brush with them at their bedtime, then again when it’s my bedtime.

Some swear by their electric toothbrushes. I’m happy to stick with analogue. In the past I’ve been told off for not giving the gums enough attention, but that seems to be okay now.

Dunno if I’m taking the best care of my teeth that I possibly could, but if the dentist is happy, then so am I.

Safeway and Coles are going to put self-serve checkouts into their supermarkets, starting with newly refurbished locations.

I’ve used these for a couple of years at Big W at Southland and QV. You scan each item, then put it in a bag in a tray of the checkout, and it appears to weigh the items to make sure what you’re putting in the bag matches what you’ve scanned. Then you pay using the usual methods, with a staff member having to come over if a credit card signature needs to be sighted.

You also need to pay attention and ask for help if the item you’re buying has a physical security tag on it. I once made it all the way home with a tag on some clothing (I don’t remember if it made the alarms go off — I guess not), and had to take it back in to get it removed. Magnetic (or they might be RFID) tags get automagically disarmed.

There are about 8 auto checkouts, usually with 1-2 staff on duty, so I suppose it saves the company money overall.

I wouldn’t assume the weighing is foolproof, but I suppose with staff (and presumably cameras) there’s a disincentive to try and trick the machine to make off with more than you paid for.

It works quite well for Big W, especially when you’re only buying a few items and the queues-served-by-humans are long. Dunno about supermarkets though — if you’re doing the week’s Big Shop, having a professional weigh and scan and pack all your items would have to be faster, wouldn’t it?

I wonder what happens if an item won’t scan? Do you get to reach for the PA and yell “Price check!”?

I know 774’s traffic and train updates are done directly in the studio (I saw it happen when I was in there the other week). Channel 10’s are done from a helicopter — you get to see the lady in it as she talks.

What about the other radio stations? Many of them make it sound like someone’s on a mobile phone somewhere, but do they really go to the expense of having someone out there in a chopper (which would only let them see a portion of the traffic), or is it just someone on a phone from an office somewhere reading off the VicRoads TrafficInfo web site?

1. Contrary to this report in the Geelong Advertiser, the term “bustitution” has been around for years. I don’t know who first coined it.

A number of regular services to and from Geelong have been replaced by coaches through April, giving rise to a new term being coined by the Public Transport Users’ Association - “bustitution”.

Association Geelong secretary Paul Westcott said yesterday that while some delays and faults were understandable, one of the most frustrating things for passengers was a lack of communication.

Paul says the reporter hadn’t heard the expression before, and was quite taken by it.

2. When you’re creating a little museum quiz (as seen on billboards at stations at the moment), you should at least try and get the multiple choice answers right.

I don’t pretend to know everything about Melbourne, but thanks in part to a book I’ve had since I was a junior gunzel, I do know that Melbourne’s first electric trains ran in 1919, starting with Sandringham to Essendon:

As the Sandringham line was a very busy one during the early years of the [20th] century, it was chosen along with the Essendon/Broadmeadows line, with which it was through-worked, as the first line to be electrified. It was opened for electric traction as from 28 May 1919. — The Electric Railways of Victoria, Dornan/Henderson, 1979.

You know what narks me? It’s the argument that we have to build lots more roads because people have to drive so that they have personal mobility.

It’s an argument from the road lobby that is basically saying wherever you go, you have to be able to take your car.

And it gets traction because in much of Australia, the alternatives are crap. PT often does well for commuting to work, if your trip is along a frequent route, but for most it’s awkward to live the rest of your life without driving, unless you confine yourself to places within walking and cycling distances.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There’s no reason we can’t set up our cities so that people can live their lives without having to drive. Check this short, reasonably amusing, advert:

(Catch the Gordon Ramsay cameo? Better quality, but shorter, version here.)

This guy in the advert manages to do a myriad of activities in just one day, without ever getting behind the wheel of a car. He has personal mobility.

In Melbourne, people who come into the CBD without their cars don’t complain about a lack of personal mobility for getting to lunch, or meetings, or running errands. Most things you need are within walking distance, and the trams run every few minutes if you need to get further.

But most of the rest of the city misses out on this convenience. If the whole metropolis was covered in a grid of trains, trams and buses running every few minutes all day, backed-up by better pedestrian and bike facilities, then we could all leave the car behind more often, or even choose not to have one, with no consequent cramping of our lifestyles.

And while some may claim Melbourne’s population isn’t dense enough to do this, count the cars on a main road in any developed suburb and it’s obvious that if you really wanted to get a substantial number of trips out of cars and onto PT, services every few minutes would be viable.

It can be done right. And it does make a difference. As the Wikipedia article for New York City notes:

New York is the only city in the United States where more than half of all households do not own a car (in Manhattan, more than 75% of residents do not own a car; nationally, the percentage is 8%).
…
New York City’s dense population and low automobile dependence help make New York among the most energy efficient in the United States. The city’s greenhouse gas emission levels are relatively low when measured per capita, at 7.1 metric tons per person, below the national average, 24.5.

(The Australian average is 14 tonnes per household. My rough estimate for my household is 9 tonnes… though I need to re-do the calculations, and more accurately.)

I used to give either thumbs up or thumbs down. I’m switching to thumbs up, thumbs down, or neither.

Microserfs — This is the kind of book I should just lap up, isn’t it? A geek novel? But I didn’t. It dragged.

J-Pod — More enjoyable than Microserfs. Douglas Coupland’s self-referential bits were a bit hard to take, but overall I enjoyed it a lot more.

Torchwood series 2 — Less gratuitious L/S/V, it’s calmed down a bit. The insertion of Martha and more Who references (especially in the penultimate episode) made it all more enjoyable to watch, though I didn’t think there was a stand-out episode this year, not in the same way I enjoyed Random Shoes. The finale was a bit of a let-down, but came up with some surprises. I’m not a hard-core Buffy fan, and don’t know what those that are would have made of Captain Spike. The BBC actually put out a PG-rated version, but I think even that is pretty dark for kids to see. I’d watch it again one day — it wasn’t brilliant, but it had its moments.

Fistful of Quarters: The King of Kong — Great stuff. Not so much about classic video games as about the personalities involved in the world of classic video games — so non-gamers will enjoy this. The people involved are geeks, and know they’re geeks. The trust from the score referees in the messianic Billy Mitchell, and their mistrust to his challenger is particularly interesting. Not surprised Mitchell wasn’t happy with the way the film portrayed him. Definitely thumbs up. (Maybe I should start giving the double-thumbs up where appropriate?)

Next I need to see Chasing Ghosts.