April Updates

Wow it's been a while. Time has gone so quick this year, must be getting old. Which is funny because I just had a birthday. Not quite out of my 20's but the "Big One" is looming as people like to remind me. Oh how much time I have wasted in my 20's, I think I need to have a 1/3 life crisis and go wild.

Well I havn't really been doing much in the way of my so called "adventures". I've been living a dull suburban existence and haven't been any where near the city for nearly a month, and for a at least a month or two before that as well. This is what happens when you stop relying on public transport, as before when it was convenient to just hop on a train and go to the city to do what I needed to do, now I just drive around the north eastern suburbs.

I sort of lied about not having adventures, as since my last post about my trip to Canberra I've been to Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra again, Sydney and Brisbane. I just have so many photos to go through and I am to lazy to do a write up. But I will get something up about some or all of my trips as time allows.

And another thing, a person on a forum that I lurk around has signed up and is posting under the name "Ben's Adventures". While most probably a freak cooincidence, I feel like someone has stolen my identity. "Ben's Adventures" is not a name I use on forums and such, I have other identies for those. If it is anyone reading this, leave a comment.

St Kilda and City

Still back two weeks ago. After the market I got a tram to St Kilda. There I decided to go for a walk on the St Kilda Pier.

Going forward

...Looking back

On the breakwall

I read somewhere that the breakwall was built to create a harbour for the sailing events at the 1956 Olympics.

The end the breakwall is home to some criters, the Little Penguin
and the Native Water Rat.

While I was looking at the sign above I overheard the following


"how cute"

"oh yuk, it's a rat, oooo!"


You just can't please some people. As far as rats go it is pretty cute.

Looking towards the city skyline

going down wind...

I sat on a rock for a few minutes waiting for the yacht to get closer so I could take the photo. After it passed I headed back towards the shore.

Say aloha to Captain Cook.

I don't know why, but this statue seems somehow out of place here.

I then walked along the Esplanade to the Palais and Luna Park.

The old Palais looks really run down.

And again somehow out of place here.

The show that was on this day was a live version of the childrens TV show Yo Gabba Gabba. I have no Idea who they are or what they do, but it seemed pretty popular with the kids.

Then I saw this restored fire truck, which a maxi taxi kindly decided to park in front of just as I was about to take a photo...

Never mind double parking illegally blocking entry to the street,
or the space a few metres down the road where you could safely unload,
or the person standing in the middle of a traffic island with a camera clearly trying to
take a photo of something...

After a few minutes he settled his fare and finally drove off after asking me if I needed a taxi. I was after all standing on a traffic island to take this photo.

click

Around the back where all the hoses and attachments go.

I guess you could call this the money shot if there

were such a thing as fire engine porn.

AFter getting sick of St Kilda I travelled back to the city on a tram via St Kilda road. I don't know why but I am always surprised that this route usually does not take any longer than the light rail to get to the city. I got off the tram at Lonsdale Street and slowly made my way down to Southbank where I was due to meet my mother.

Southbank Footbridge

Am I the only preson who does not like the design of this footbridge? Not in looks, but in the way it handles pedestrian traffic. There is no clear path across, you spend the whole time trying not to walk into the handrails and dodging people coming the other who are also trying not to walk into the hand rails. All because of the way the bridge zig zags. Not to mention that there are always tourists taking photos, not that that is a bad thing, but because of the design of the bridge they get in the way. My other gripe is the narrow subway under Flinders Street Station that the bridge feeds into, it is all rather uncomfortable. And the often terrible buskers impede the flow of traffic.

Eureka! Tower

Looking back towards Flinders Street Station

After theis I met my mother who had been to the opera and we ate dinner in the Foodcourt at Southbank before catching the train home.

That was my day on the 30th of May 2009

First post of November

This post has no rhyme nor reason other than to bring in the new month.

Tuesday is Melbourne Cup day and I will be returning from a short interstate trip that evening. At work I entered the cup draw/sweep thing and got whatever horse will be in barrier number 2. As far as I know the barriers haven't been drawn yet. I really am not at all interested in horse racing or gambling but thought I may as well go in it. I'm in the $5 draw which has a first prize of about $75 (there are also a $1 and $2 draw). As they say, you have to be in it to win it.

My interstate trip is to Adelaide of all places. It is not quite Australia's least favourite holiday destination, that honour goes to Canberra. when I booked the flights about 6 weeks ago I was trying to get a good deal to Queensland, but all the really cheap flights were already sold. So instead I picked somewhere I hadn't been in a long time. That place just happened to be Adelaide.

I last graced (if you could call it that) her wide streets (I believe King William Street is the widest CBD street in Australia) in 2002 when I did a triangular rail journey from Melbourne-Adelaide-(Broken Hill)-Sydney-Melbourne. I stayed in the YHA hostel in Adelaide and met some interesting people, strangely most people in my room were Australian. There were this young English couple though who I got talking to. For some reason they told me that I was the friendliest Australian they had met on their trip, and that up until that point they thought Australians were stuck up. Mind you they had only been to Queensland, Sydney and Melbourne, and I still wonder who exactly they had been mixing with until that point (perhaps I was the first Australian they had really talked to), or if they were trying to butter me up for some free accommodation or something.

This time however I've opted for more luxurious accommodation, a 4 star hotel no less. Although if the reviews on trip advisor are anything to go by the place should be condemned. The hotel is in an excelent location and has recently been refurbished, so I'm actually looking forward to it.

While in Adelaide I plan to ride the tram to Glenelg and perhaps some of the train lines too. Other than that I'll probably wander around the CBD. Oh I always forget about the O Bahn bus, I should go for a ride on that too. I should try and find some more places to go before I leave.

The first few days of November will be pretty busy for me, but I have no idea what the rest of the month will bring.

Q. When is a toll road not a toll road?

A. When you ride a motorcycle apparently

I find it hard to swallow that today a large group of motorcycles is travelling along Eastlink in protest of the tolls for motorcycle use of the road. What don't they understand about the term toll road? Although they take up less road space than a car or truck they are still using the road, and should still pay to use the road.

This from a group that already gets free parking, and is largely immune to road congestion anyway.

Station Street

I like streets that have descriptive names. Things like Station Street, Jetty Rd and Sydney Rd. They tell you what you can expect to find when you go down them. Some describe things that can be found in that street, others after other places the street leads to.

Every town has a Station Street, sometimes even when the railway line no longer exists. Wandin North is calls its Station Street, Rue de Gare, the gare is long gone but the rue remains. Station street could have multiple meanings, if both the police station and railway station are located along it. I'm not sure about the origin of Police Road though. Bridge road leads to a bridge. Daylesford has a Hospital Street, obviously that's where you go when you want a bit of medical attention. Bank Street I assume houses/housed a bank or two.

Why is it that St Kilda has a Fitzroy Street and Fitzroy a Brunswick Street, but Brunswick does not have a St Kilda Street? Strangely enough St Kilda Street is in St Kilda. None of those streets lead you to places they are named after, except Brunswick Street at least points in the right direction kind of...

Many towns in Victoria have a Melbourne Road which invariably points the way to Melbourne. Melbourne in turn has a lot of roads poking out radially that lead to far off places in the country (some are now suburbs) for which those roads are named. Sydney, Geelong, Ballarat, Dandenong, Point Nepean (now Nepean highway) Burwood, Toorak, Plenty and Williamstown. Although the latter no longer has a link to it's namesake, a long gone car ferry over the Saltwater River.

Maybe I'm stating the obvious but I like a road or street name with meaning, one where you look at the sign and think, wow that road could take me places.

Rail to Doncaster

In The Age today is an opinion piece written by Graeme Davison. He rightly asserts that the Doncaster rail line should have been built 40 years ago when the area began to be heavily developed, but is against the building of a line because of the issues involved with tunnelling and the fact it would travel along the Eastern Freeway away from where the potential passengers live:

Yet, for more than half its length, a Doncaster railway would run through the Yarra Bend National Park and across the parkland and golf courses of the Yarra River flats. Golfers and bushwalkers might welcome it, but it would generate next to no commuter traffic. At North Balwyn (Burke Road), passengers would alight about half a kilometre from the nearest houses, while on the north side of Bulleen station, students from Marcellin College are about the only prospective customers. The line would cross Doncaster Road about 1.5 kilometres from the main transport and shopping hub, Shoppingtown. You would either have to tunnel several kilometres under Shoppingtown to East Doncaster, extend the Doncaster tramway to Shoppingtown or rely on feeder buses to reach a station on Doncaster Road.

Davison claims that the railway would travel mostly through parkland and would not create patronage. He seems to conveniently forget that the freeway runs through there too, and does not gain much in the way of traffic from those areas either.

Davison also asserts that you would need to tunnel for kilometres under Doncaster Shoppingtown to East Doncaster. I don't know where he has been for the last 40 years, but a vast amount of tunnelling has always been on the agenda in the Doncaster area. This is not a new thing, and in fact it will help bring the line closer to where the people are, something he uses against the building of the line in the same paragraph.

Davison goes on to claim that:

Transport research shows the reluctance of commuters to put up with bad connections. Any break in transport mode — say, from bus to train — creates frustration, especially if the scheduled service doesn't come. If the Doncaster rail requires a network of feeder buses, the passengers might as well stay aboard the existing express bus services and ride down the freeway along a dedicated lane all the way to the city. Maybe that's why the Eddington report hasn't opted for a Doncaster railway but for a major upgrade of the existing DART (Doncaster Area Rapid Transit) bus service. You may be asking: but don't buses run on polluting and fast-depleting oil? Yes, but although trains run on clean and abundant electricity, that power is generated from the most polluting of all fossil fuels, brown coal. It's only when trains and trams are full that they come out ahead of cars. Railways and trams wear a halo of environmental respectability that is only half-deserved.

To that I say that if the rail frequency and feeder bus frequency are sufficiently high then issues of missed connections will not be a problem. If the rail frequencies on this line were near metro levels (and I would expect the Doncaster line to be part of a segregated network than an extension of the current system) of a train every 5 minutes in peak and every 10 minutes in off peak. Have the feeder buses run every 10 minutes on main roads intersecting the rail line throughout the day, which means the longest connection in the peak would be about 5 minutes and at most 10 minutes off peak. Overall this would equate to an average waiting time for the whole journey of 7.5 minutes peak and 10 minutes off peak. If the connections are good (and by current Melbourne standards these are very good), people will use them.

He does make a good point with the fact that we get our electricity from brown coal. Cleaner and more sustainable energy sources are something that we need to work on. However that does not diminish the fact that all forms of public transport whether powered by electricity generated by burning brown coal, or by burning diesel fuel in a combustion engine, are more efficient at moving large amounts of people than cars are.

This paragraph confuses me though:

The Melbourne 2030 plan was based on the shaky assumption that increasing residential densities around the main public transport system would improve the viability of public transport. But even when density increased, residents often continued to drive their cars. Now there is a swing in the other direction, towards the equally erroneous belief that if you provide the transport, the residential patterns will change and the passengers will come. The Doncaster railway dream is a perfect illustration of that belief.

If anything Davison appears to be having a punt each way in this paragraph. What little development that has occurred under the auspices of Melbourne 2030 has been stymied by contrary government policies and local interests. I would argue that because of this densities have not increased that much in the Melbourne 2030 transit cities. The reason the few new residents continued to drive is exactly as he states, the public transport improvements were not forthcoming, and while they are slowly happening are not happening fast enough. The government is to blame for not having enough will to back up it's own strategies. If anything you only need to look to Perth for examples of where this sort of strategy has been implemented successfully with the Northern Suburbs rail line. In comparison a rail line to Doncaster should be child's play.

In his final paragraph Davison is spot on by stating that public transport needs to be constructed at the time of development, and should have been the case at Doncaster. He is also right that the there needs to be a rail service along Wellington Rd to Monash University and Rowville where there is also a high demand for such services, but there is demand in Doncaster as well.

No idea

Can't think of anything else to blog about

Ooh just got distracted for several minutes by the fireworks out the back... The finale of a Defence force school of music concert. You should hear it when they do the 1810 overture...

Patriotism

Ah yes. I happened to read a certain blog on The Age website today at work. It is about flag-cape wearing yobs using patriotism as an excuse to be rude and obnoxious those they deem as "un-Australian". The writer of the original blog post was over generalising (again), but I guess that is his job in order to create a discussion. I dislike the racist under(0ver)tones. I've seen a few of the "Lovie it or leave it" stickers on cars, usually a hotted up Toyota Hilux with a massive bullbar, 400 gigawatts of lighting, a Conargo pub sticker, and some other sticker about pig shooting.

I guess some of the comments were correct in that harmless symbols become associated with certain groups over time that everyone else tries to disassociate themselves from. The example of the man who had a swastika tattoo before the Nazi's adopted it as a symbol was a good one. I quite literally cringe very time I see a youth (I feel old now, but it's apt description) with a flag as a cape. Like tonight on the way through Richmond station, they were everywhere.

On the topic of the flag itself, I don't really care about it. I don't mind the one we have, and I understand the meaning behind the parts of it. If it were to change , it would have to be a good design, so far I haven't really liked any of the proposals over the years. I guess I could get used to it if it were to change, I'm not a total stick in the mud.

Sunburn: The Saga Continues

In other news, my face has just about stopped falling off after Sunday's major sunburn incident. I think I've gained some insight into why it's rude to stare at people who don't quite look "normal". It may be that I'm a bit sensitive or delusional, but it's damn annoying having people looking at you all the time. I feel like telling them it's highly contagious.

The two days I took off work earlier this week did me some good though. And I know sunburn sounds like a weak excuse, but on Monday I think I would have struggled more than usual for a Monday, I was quite sore. Tuesday I was less sore but all the same, felt it best to rest. I did end up playing some backyard cricket with my nephew though, first ball and he belts it over the fence. The neighbours have given up and just allow him to go in and out of the back yard at will, and leave the ladder permanently up against the house for when a ball goes on the roof.

On Wednesday I thought I'd better go to work. after 5 minutes in the dry air conditioned air on the train my face started cracking up and flaking everywhere, and continued for the rest of the day in the air conditioning at work. I did take my Aloe Vera, which did help, but only lasted for a about an hour after I put it on before it started again. Thankfully on Thursday it stopped hurting so much, but I had a major "face-dandruff" problem. This morning most of the redness went away, but the shedding continues. My forehead, nose and chin are clear now but my right cheek (face!), ear and neck are having a go now. In general though, I feel a lot better.

When "The Lot" is not actually "The Lot"

Why is it that my local fish and chip shop charges extra for pineapple on all it's hamburgers, including the "Hamburger with The Lot"? Obviously if you have to pay 60 cents extra for something you are not actually getting "The Lot". I don't know if this happens at other Fish and Chip shops, I'll have to take note next time.

Food for thought...

Why are all the TV shows I like so hard to find...

I was checking the ABC website to see if ABC2 is repeating Enough Rope at all. Alas no, but it is available as a download. But what caught my attention is that Red Dwarf is on at 6:30pm on Sunday evenings. This was one of my favourite shows back in the day, I used to borrow the videos from the video library all the time. Now I just need to remember to be in front of the TV at 6:30 on Sunday.

Now if only the ABC or ABC2 would screen Wild West again at some stage. What I liked about Wild west was that it was completely absurd, and it took "west country" stereotypes to a new level. It was pretty well hidden away in the middle of the afternoon while I was unemployed, and that's the only reason I saw it. I think this was the same timeslot used for My Family which I also found quite amusing, which reminds me somewhat of the Singaporean sitcom Under one Roof which SBS used to screen about 10 years ago. Wild West is available on DVD, but not something I would actually buy.

A show I've been watching lately is Marx and Venus on SBS, it's only a short 5 minute filler but it's actually quite good. Each storyline was selected from public submissions and worked into a script by the shows writers. The basic premise of the show is that Marx has just broken up with his girlfriend who has moved out leaving behind just the other house mate Venus and himself. All the episodes are available as streaming downloads.

Another good show on SBS that I just discovered is back on is the Broken News...

"I'm Richard Pritchard"
"and I'm katie Tait"
"still to come"
"coming up next"

And speaking of digital channels, bring on ABC3 aka ABC kids! And finally I ask, why are the proposed commercial multi channel services only going to be available in HD?

Saturday. Another winner another loser and a whole lot of apathy

Another grand final has come and gone. Geelong reign supreme, while Port Adelaide can hang their heads in shame at the absolute drubbing they received. As for me I didn't watch the game at all, I just was not interested. Instead I spent the day out and about in town. I bought some DVD's ,Star Wars Episode VI The Return of the Jedi and Police Story. I now own 5 Star Wars movies. I'm reluctant to buy the abortion that is The Phantom menace, but I guess for completeness I should, and I suppose it does have some good points. Police Story is a Jackie Chan film set in Hong Kong with the dialogue in Chinese (the DVD also has the English dubbed version), no Chris Tucker in sight. I think I've seen it, or maybe it was one of the sequels? I'm looking forward to seeing it anyway.

For lunch I went to Burger Edge at QV, and had a "feel the cheese". Not bad for an $8 Hamburger, could have done without the fries though, as the burger was so huge. After lunch I decided to hit the rails and went to Melbourne Central and decided to get whatever the first train on platform 3 was. The lucky winner was Upfield. I only made it as far as Brunswick, before deciding I'd had enough. I walked down to Sydney Road for a bit, the place was dead, and decided to head back to the City. I'd just missed a tram back to the city so went back to the station just in time for the next train.

I alighted at Southern Cross Station (it really does sound like Southern Crustacean sometimes) and had a quick look at all the VLocities (propaganda here and here) waiting for the post grand final/Saturday evening rush hour while making my way to DFO. I didn't intend buying anything but I bought a pair of jeans at regular retail price despite the fact that it's meant to be a "Direct Factory Outlet".

Uming and aring, I got on a Frankston bound train to Flinders Street, but ended up staying on as far as Malvern, where I decided to hang around for the empty Football specials returning to Richmond to pick up spectators on their way back to Geelong. No disappointment there, I managed to see three push-pull P's with H sets and an N class loco (propaganda) hauling a massive N set (see V/LineCars.com for the H and N sets). I did take some photos, but the light was failing so they are a bit dodgy.

Getting on for 6pm it was time to go home, as quite frankly I was stuffed.

Classic Mac

So I found this article on a Mac emulator and followed the instructions and voilla. The above is the result. I ended up using a different ROM to the one suggested, which didn't work (use google to find a different ROM). You do need a 68K or PowerPC Mac to extract the Mac OS disk images too. Not sure why I needed to do this, probably just to see if I could.

I found the original link to this on portableapps.com when I was checking out what I could put on my new USB flash drive (a post about my old USB Flash drive). It's a SanDisk Cruzer micro (with skins!) 2GB, I would have looked harder for a 4GB drive, but I was in Officeworks and the price was right. Officeworks is one of my favourite stores, I could spend hours looking at all the stuff in there. It's a bit like the office version of Bunnings.

Back to the 90's

Early in the 90's I was really into Nintendo. I had a NES, a SNES and a Game Boy, but by 1996 I'd began to lose interest in games. This was just about the time the Sony released the PlayStation console. Needless to say that I completely missed the PlayStation phenomenon. That is, until today.

So I was waiting for the bus on the way to work and had to wait about 20 minutes until the next one. So right next to the bus stop is a Savers store. For anyone who doesn't know, Savers is like a super-sized op shop (they do donate some of their profits to the Diabetes Foundation), their stores are the size of supermarkets (in fact this particular Savers was a Woolworths many years ago). They tend to price their stock quite a bit higher that op shops, so be prepared to pay (they are still cheap though).

Lo and behold there was a PlayStation in the electrical department, minus controller and cables. After a quick search of the near by "great wall of electrical cables" I had found the missing parts and was ready to go. For $16 I am now the proud owner of an original Sony PlayStation.

When I got home I plugged it all in and turned it on, and it starts up fine. I don't have any games for it yet so I put an audio CD in the drive. It played without any problems.

As for games, impossible to get new these days, I'm thinking eBay and stores like Cash Converters are the go. I've seen new Playstation games in The Warehouse, but our local Warehouse closed down earlier in the year and is now (or soon to be) an Aldi supermarket.

The wash up

So I did end up going fishing on both Saturday and Sunday. I caught nothing.

I ended up going to Yarrambat Park. Yarrambat Park lake, along with a number of others in the Melbourne Metropolitan area get stocked with Rainbow trout before the June and September holidays. The lake was full and there were a number of people fishing, so things looked good. I really don't like messing around with bait, so as I said in my last post I just used some lures. While a Rainbow Trout would be nice, I would have been just as happy with a redfin, which usually jump at the chance to hook themselves on a lure. As it is turned out I caught nothing, and to make matters worse I ended up losing one of my green celta lures.

When I'd all but given up one of the others landed a small Rainbow Trout, I struck up a conversation as I passed and gained the information that he was using tinned corn (the open tin was on the ground) as bait. He reckoned that the guy at a fishing shop had told him that the trout in here were too small to go after lures and that corn was the go. With that in mind I stopped at the supermarket on the way home and bought some corn. When I got home I called my brother to see if he and my nephew would like to go fishing on Sunday.

Sunday wasn't much better. It was a bit wind and not as warm as Saturday, I think the changing weather conditions put the fish off their food. I seem to recall that a falling barometer means the fishing will be no good. My brother decided to have a sleep in the car while I taught my nephew how to cast the line in. He's getting the hang of it, but it pays to stand well back. Some of the local birds enjoyed some of the leftover corn though.

So that's it really. I hope to go fishing a bit more over the warmer months, it's something I've always enjoyed. Truthfully, it's not really about the fishing, more about just being outside (yes cliched i know!).