Categories
Consumerism

Quick and polite

When asked “Do you have an Everyday Rewards card?” at Safeway, what’s the quickest, most polite way of saying: “Yes I do, it’s tucked inside my wallet somewhere, but I know full well that there’s no benefit to me if it’s scanned on a transaction less than $30. This one is only $15, so I  ... [More]

Categories
driving

Manual vs auto

Sometimes I ponder if I should have gone ahead and bought a manual car. I can handle it okay, but gears are just another thing to deal with. As summer comes along, one has to remember to rev it a bit more when the aircon’s on, otherwise you make an unscheduled stop in Stall City.  ... [More]

Categories
Home life transport

The fifteen minute network

During the school holidays, the kids and I will often leave the car at home head out to not just attractions in the CBD, but also to parts of the city we might not normally get to. Partly for the joy of exploration, but also partly because Jeremy is keen on hunting down secondhand video  ... [More]

Categories
Melbourne

The psychedelic playground

The City of Glen Eira has some pretty psychedelic playground equipment in some of its parks. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what you’re meant to do with it. This one I don’t think many people would have problems with. You get on and it spins around, alarmingly fast. Pretty easy. This thing however, reminds  ... [More]

Categories
Social media

Local goss via Twitter

Twitter allows one to search, and provides RSS for search results, so you can feed it into RSS readers like Google Reader to keep track of Twitter references to your preferred keyword. So I thought I’d set up one for Bentleigh, which tells me what’s going on in my neighbourhood. Happily I don’t live in  ... [More]

Categories
Politics and activism

Giving a hand-up

Was having a chat to somebody the other week when Liz, a fellow Bentleigh resident and fellow troublemaker, wandered past and said hello. Liz has got active in the debate over social housing, following the furore over a proposed development in the very SE-corner of Bentleigh to accomodate disadvantaged women. (In my book given it’s  ... [More]

Categories
Net

ISP shopping

I’m ISP shopping. I’d been considering it anyway, as I’m still using ye olde ADSL1, and in the past couple of years, ADSL2+ has become available in my neck of the woods. I’ve been using my current ISP, Netspace, for about 7 years, I think. Over that time they’ve been pretty reliable, but not without  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism

Adults-only Lego

I found this Lego set on Amazon UK. It’s actually way more elaborate (and expensive) than any I remember seeing in the Australian catalogues, but what I thought was really funny was that Amazon has attached a legal-sounding age restriction to it, as if it was an adult video game or DVD, or alcohol. “Not  ... [More]

Categories
Geek

ABC web site useable again

I noticed the other day that the ABC Local web sites were down for maintenance. They got a revamp in mid-2008 that left it incredibly messy. Apart from the garish green and black colours, it was impossible to find things. It’s like they forgot that they’re most often promoted via the ABC Local Radio stations;  ... [More]

Categories
Photos

Some pics

“Food”? What, it’s not really food? (Frankston) Could this be a conduit to the future? (Northcote Station) Road sign that actually goes around a corner (Wonthaggi)

Categories
transport

Sydney’s new PT fares

Sydney’s introducing a new public transport fare system called “MyZone”, from April. At first I pretty much believed the name and the colourful graphics on the web site, which implied that it’s a Melbourne-like multi-modal zone fare system, working on every train, bus, tram and ferry. But it isn’t. It’s mostly still paying by distance  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism

Put it on plastic

On AM on Thursday they noted research which shows four in ten people use credit for basic purchases such as groceries, the implication being that many of those are doing so because they can’t use cash as they need to defer that spending to stay afloat. PETER RYAN: So credit cards being used for entertainment  ... [More]