Categories
transport

The bike share scheme

Melbourne’s bike share scheme is meant to start today, and the bike stations have been going in. I found this one at Federation Square, evidently almost ready to go, the only thing missing is the bikes: Curiously, just across the road outside St Paul’s Cathedral is another one. I wonder what the bogans who often  ... [More]

Categories
Melbourne

People are such damn slobs

City of Melbourne have announced a change to the fines for littering smokers, with the fine going up to $234 for throwing away a lit cigarette. Smokers or non-smokers, it just staggers me that some people are such slobs. Regularly, I see footy-goers at the Parkside Edgewater oval (Maribyrnong) rock up to watch a local  ... [More]

Categories
PTUA transport

Myki doesn’t always give you the best fare

One of the selling points of Myki is that ‘Myki Money’ will charge you the best daily fare, if you touch-on and touch-off on every trip. It turns out not to be always true. There’s at least one specific set of circumstances where it doesn’t. The PTUA got asked a while back about travel around  ... [More]

Categories
Health Working life

The health check

Apparently there have been some alarming results from the workplace health checks underway at the moment. Victorian workers have been given a scare by a State Government-run health program which has found a high percentage don’t exercise enough with a number of people asked to see a doctor within 24 hours. We’ve had ours on  ... [More]

Categories
Consumerism

The moral quandary of the self-serve checkouts

At the local Safeway, the renovation (and eventual transition to “Woolworths”) is underway, and the self-service checkouts are now operating. There’s five of them, compared to three express checkouts, and eight “normal” checkouts. From memory there used to be more normal checkouts, though as at most supermarkets, I don’t ever recall all of them being  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Blast from the past: found on the train

Found this on a train this afternoon: I’m guessing a bookmark that’s been sitting inside someone’s book for fifteen years and they decided to re-read the book, and subsequently left it behind on a seat. These scratch tickets were used before Metcard was introduced in the late-90s, and were notorious for fare evasion. They didn’t  ... [More]

Categories
News and events Politics and activism

Fewer than 5% of asylum seekers arrive by boat

I was following a link in a comment on The Australian’s amusing story about a Federal government media adviser accidently leaving an email trail on a media release (reminds me of the Windsor affair), which led me a document with some interesting factoids about the arrival of asylum seekers from 1976 to the present: Boat  ... [More]

Categories
transport

Flagstaff station turns 25

Next Thursday marks 25 years since the completion of the City Loop. Flagstaff Station was the last loop station to open — on the 27th of May 1985. It’s the only station in Melbourne that is closed on weekends — being in the middle of the legal precinct, it’s a bit quiet around there on  ... [More]

Categories
Politics and activism

The perils of public speaking

(Let’s see if I can make all this week’s posts nostalgia-based.) My uni course (Bachelor of Computing — Information Systems) included some business-oriented subjects, and I remember studying and practicing public speaking. I don’t remember specifically what lessons I learnt from it, though I suspect like much in the course, the knowledge sifted into my  ... [More]

Categories
Friends and loved ones

Flashback to 1993

My old uni buddy Brian recently emailed through a copy of a photo from graduation day at Monash Uni, from 1993. It was at the main Clayton campus, which we rarely actually went to in our student days, though I do recall one memorable session in the campus radio station recording a demo tape of  ... [More]

Categories
music

Right now

Right now I’ve got no blog post written for today, so here instead is Van Halen’s Right Now (1992) — one of my most favourite ever music videos. I wouldn’t like the song half as much if it wasn’t for the video. (Better quality copy here which can’t be embedded.) Here’s another old music video  ... [More]

Categories
News and events

News spreads fast

Seen on Elizabeth Street at lunchtime: They’re special posters for the opening of the Titanic exhibition at the Melbourne Museum.