Chocolatey and crackely goodies!

Today I made Chocolate Crackles. They are yum.

Steam at Greensborough

Steamrail's K153 leads a train of BW cars through the 'S' curves at Greensborough on a shuttle trip to Macleod on Sunday 4th December 2005. Unseen in the photo is K190 on the rear of the train which will lead the return trip to Greensborough from Macleod. The occasion was for the Manna Gum Festival (it's an Arts Festival) at Greensborugh.

USB applications

For years I used floppy disks to transfer my work between school, then TAFE, then Uni and home. During that time the files just kept getting bigger and bigger. Eventually I got to the stage where I had to burn and waste CD's or FTP my work around instead. FTP was better than floppy disks, the latter having a tendency to fail at the most inapropriate moment, but having dial up at home made ftp a slow process for larger files.

It wasn't until last year after a bad experience with a rather large Powerpoint presentation that I bit the bullet and got myself a USB flash drive. After a bit of shopping around the various computer stores near uni I got myself a 128 mb Shintaro branded flash drive for about $45, which at the time was a good deal. Since then I have never looked back except for the fact I fill it up with so much crap that 128mb never seems like enough. I don't how I could do without it.

Lately I've been loading applications onto it. So far I've got:

• Irfanview
  
• OperaUSB
  
• Quickmailer
  
• npop
  
• Frontpage express
  
• Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzles

The best type of applications to use on usb drives are those that are self contained in their own directory, which do not rely on recources stored in other locations such as the Documents and Settings folder, and/or those that install their own registry keys. A wide variety of applications suitable for USB flash drives is available, including simple text editors, image editors (Irfanview), email (npop and quickmailer), office suites (open office), browsers (Opera USB) and even various linux distrubutions that can boot straight off the usb drive or an acompanying CD.

Some sites that I have found with informaiton on USB flashdrives and compatible applictions include:

• USB flashdrive - Wikipedia
  
• The Portable Freeware Collection
  
• Kazias.net |USB Applications
  
• Standalone Applications
  
• TinyApps.org

Corporate Symbolism...

Recently I have become aware that Vision Australia has a new symbol. I can't remember what their old symbol looked like but the new one is wierd, just a couple of coloured dots. Last week after seeing it on TV it occuded to me that it might be braile for something. Then yesterday a lightning bolt hit me as I was walking past the Vision Australia office in Mount Street Heidelberg. The symbol is actually a "V" and an "A" in braile. Don't know why I didn't realise earlier...


So I checked it out on their website and sure enough there is a page that explains the new logo and how it conveys the image that they want to project to the public, as well as being clearly visible to people with poor eyesight. In addition to that, Vison Australia have created an audio logo. Being an organisation that are involved with people who are vison impaired an audio logo is a great idea. Basically it's a recording of someone saying their name and tagline with a short chime at the begining.

I just found it intriguing.

Steam at Hurstbridge

Steam locomotive J515 is approaching the home signal at Hurstbridge. The occasion was the inaugural Wattle Festival on Sunday the 4th of September 2004, the train was chartered from the Seymour Rail Heritage Centre. J515 is on this end while diesel loco T357 was on the rear. This arrangement was used to avoid the need for the steam loco to run around the train at Hurstbridge, which is impossible given that it is a dead end terminus. The train ran a number of trips between Hurstbridge and Diamond Creek throughout the day.

The Wattle Festival was held again in 2005, but this time the train was chartered from Steamrail instead.

To the end of the earth and back again!

Well not quite but it may as well have been...

What really happened was that I wanted to go to Photo Colour in Heidelberg to drop a film off to get developed and put on CD. So I decided to get the train to Heidelberg. On the way back I decided that I would get the most out my 2 hour (actually was more like 2 and a half hours) zone 2 Metcard by taking a ride to the end of the line as I still had over an hour left. My metcard expired at 6pm. From Heidelberg I got on the next train to arrive, which just happened to be a Macleod train. This was no problem though as I only had to wait a few minutes at Macleod for the following Hurstbridge train.

The trip to Hurstbridge was fairly eneventful except for a problem with a couple of level crossings just on the down side of Eltham. To me it seemed like a problem with the track circuits that trigger the bells and gates, most likely related to the rain we'd been having for most of the day. So I arrived a Hurstbridge with half an hour left on my ticket. As I didn't consult a timetable I had no idea when the next train back was, but as long as it left before 6pm I'd still be able to use it for the return journey. I was hoping that the train I came on would go back to the city but as I suspected the Comeng continued on and joined a lonely X'Trapolis in the sidings beyond the platform.

A quick look at the timetable revealed that the next train departed at 5:56, cutting it fine, but all was OK. So I walked up and down the platform a couple of times, checked out the sidings adjacent the platform, checked to see what the lever on the platform did and various other gunzel type things. The train was scheduled to arrive at 5:51 but it didn't get in until at least the departure time. As a result it departed a couple of minutes late. For the record it was a Comeng and the leading car (where I was seated) was real groaner.

On the way back one surprise was a staff exchange at Diamond Creek, which occured even though we weren't scheduled to cross another train there. Checking the timetable that I picked up at Hurstbridge an explanation of Diamond Creek being open as a staff station was found in that, the train I'd gone to Hurstbridge on would form the next up train departing at 6:10pm, and that it would cross the next down at Diamond Creek. We would cross that same down train at Eltham. Even though the train departed Hurstbridge late we still arrived at Eltham on time and so had to wait the full five minutes for our cross there. From there on it was smooth sailing back towards my home station.

Boring I know but it's all I can think of to blog at the moment...

What is the world coming to?

I caught four trains on Friday. One from Greensborough to the City, one from the City to Box Hill, then tat return trip, and finally one back to Greensborough. What ties all of these together? All four trains I caught on Friday were X'Trapolis or "crappers" as some people call them. On all my journeys I saw plenty of other trains, all were a mixture of Comengs and X'Trapolis, with the only Hitachi in sight looking all forlorn in the yard at Camberwell by itself. What is the world coming to?

In other news

Ever since playing with a 12" iBook in Myer a few weeks ago I've wanted one. One drawback of the 12" versus the 14" is the lack of a DVD burner, but it would be easy enough to use either the wireless networking or external hard drive for backups/transfers of large ammounts of data.

Although I reckon I could get along just nicely with one of the original colourful retro iBooks. Second hand of course, which is the more likely scenario for me.


The fact is that I would just like a laptop, and the iBooks just look so damn cool.

It has come to pass that...

You Are an Emo Rocker!

Expressive and deep, lyrics are really your thing. That doesn't mean you don't rock out... You just rock out with meaning. For you, rock is more about connecting than grandstanding.

What Kind of Rocker Are You?

While not altogether bad, it's not what I expected. Although a lot of the time I think I feel "emo". Man I wish I was 10 years younger, I'd be all like the uber emo. Maybe I should just grow up...

Back to school

Every Tuesday my mum picks my niece up from school. So today with nothing to do I thought I'd tag along. It's really wierd going back to a primary school after so many years (at least 12), everything is so small. The chairs are small, the tables are small, the students are small... These things weren't that small when I went to school were they?

What really shocked me was how low the drinking taps were to the ground. I was thirsty so while waiting for the bell I decided to take a drink from one of these oh so low taps. So there I was stooping over the tap when I depressed the lever, only to get squirted in the face with a jet of cold water. I'd forgotten how tempremental these taps are. Whether they are tempremental through through student or divine tamperings I don't know. After the bell rang I noticed a couple of kids come and take a drink and none of the used the middle tap (the one I used). It's almost as if they have a sixth "tap" sense. Wierd...

Static

Once again this blog has been neglected for a reasonable ammount of time. The reasons for this absence include:

1. Having nothing worth bloging.


2. The loss of my digital camera.


3. Thinking up blog entires and then forgetting them again.

So there you have it.

Orchids

This is one of my mum's orchids that has recently being flowering.

Silence

It's been a bit quiet around here lately hasn't it? This is mostly because I just havn't had anything worth saying. I think I'm better now...

By George, is that the time?

Hard to beleive I know, but today marks the first aniversary of Ben's Adventures: The Blog. Yep, one year already. In that year this blog has mostly been laying idle so my new years resolution is to post more often than I have in the last year. It may not make sense but by George (gotta stop using that) I'm going to post stuff. I like the idea of posting a photo or a series of photos so expect some more of that sort of thing.

The scenery channel...

broadcasting beautiful views 24 hours a day.

This is my desktop wallpaper. I took this photo in October 2004 looking west along the Yarra River from Birrarung Mar. Sometimes when I sit down at the computer I feel the need to put on sunglasses.

Tunnelvision Redux

This is a tunnel on the Sydney Light Rail looking towards Harbourside Convention station from Pyrmont Bay station.

The original Tunnelvision was taken here in Melbourne at the end of platform 1 at Parliament Station looking towards Jolimont/Flinders Street.

Alone in the dark.

Yes that's right, tonight I went to see a movie by myself. People seem to have an irrational fear of going to see a film solo. Don't get me wrong, sharing the experience with others is great, but it's actually not all that much different when you go by yourself. I mean you come into the theatre, sit down, watch some trailers and ads, eat whatever you brought with you (as if you'd pay that much for food, unless it's a really good choctop)watch the movie and then leave. The downside is that you don't immediately get to praise or put down the film, but you can do that latter. The upside is that you get to go and see whatever you damn well want.

In case you were wondering I went to see Wallace and Grommit: Curse of the Were Rabbit at the brand new Melbourne Central Hoyts cinemas. The film itself was > a laugh a minute (in case you didn't get it the ">" is a greater than sign), I recommend that everyone who hasn't already seen it to do so. Just great harmless fun.

The cinema itself was fantastic, the seats were comfy and had extra wide arm rests. As I overheard someone else say, you can still smell that new cinema smell.

I suppose I should give the film a star rating, so I'll give it ****(four stars).

shit weekend

Well here it is 12:30 on Sunday night (actually Monday morning) and I haven't been any further than the letter box since coming home on Friday night. Don't ask me what I did all weekend because it was all rather boring.

Friday was OK though as I went to the Dutch Masters exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. This is a collection of dutch paintings from the 15th and 16th century most of which were on loan from the Rieksmuseum (not too sure how it's spelt actually) in Amsterdam. Most notably the exhibition featured a number of paintings by Rembrandt. One thing that I got from the exhibition was how progressive the Dutch were during this time (arguably they still are in certain ways). Unfortunately it finished today, so now you'll have to fly to Amstredam to see most of the paintings.

We had lunch/afternoon tea in the cafe there and we were sitting at the table next to one of the actors off Blue Healers, not John Wood (I've seen him at the football), but one of the younger constables on the show. He has a really irritating voice, which is what made me look.

After leaving the gallery we had dinner in the food court at Southgate. I had BBQ chicken thighs from Nando's, which were nice, but had to have the mild peri peri as the hot had ran out. I just can't help but think that $11 is just a bit much for 4 skimpy bits of chicken, about $2 worth of chips and and small bottle of coke.

Roulette Photos

Here are a couple of photos of the Roulettes from Sunday. Having learnt from all the airshows I've been to I've realised that it isn't worthwhile taking photos of small aircraft in flight. If you do, the result is a photo of a dot or number of dots against the backdrop of the sky. So these shots on the ground will have to do.




These PC9's are one seriously cool piece of kit.

Today I went to the beach.

The T-shirt is right, life's a beach. Today after doing a few errands in the city I decided to go for a train ride somewhere. Being a nice day the beach sounded like a good idea. So I made my way to Flinders Street and got the first train to Brighton Beach.


This is the train I went on. Brighton Beach was originally the end of the line, but it was later extended to Sandringham another two stations on (I don't think there are any more stations after that though :-p ).


After getting off the train I crossed the road with the aid of an insane number of traffic lights (lets just say there's an intersection and they make you go the long way to get across) and arrived at the beach. Off with the shoes and down to the water, it's like a scene from Baywatch, except for the lack of the Hoff and Pamela Anderson. The tall things that look like buildings on the other side of the bay aren't buildings at all, they are actually the oil refineries at Altona.


Don't let the sunshine fool you, the water is freezing. The sand on this beach is really coarse with lots of little bits of shell. It's sort of like brown sugar, which would make the sand at somewhere like Bondi Beach in Sydney white sugar.


Time to dry the feet, brush off all the sand and put the shoes back on. This view is looking towards Sandringham. All the white things just bellow the horizon are the yachts at the Sandringham Yacht club.


This is the tunnel that used to link the beach to the railway station, it would have made it much easier for me to cross the very busy Beach Rd. There is an information sign next to it the tells of it's significance and that in days gone by it used to have a tramway to haul coal from the jetty that once protruded into the bay at this point to the station to fuel the trains. Apparently it is the only relic of the privately owned Hobsons Bay Railway Company.


This is a photo of an old photo on the sign next to the tunnel, it shows the general layout of the area some time in the middle of the 20th century. You will also notice the tram in the photo. Brighton Beach was once the terminus of the Victorian Railways operated street railway (aka tramway) that ran from St Kilda station to this point. The train at the platform is either a sliding door tait train or a swingdoor train, both more commonly known as red rattlers, it's a bit hard to tell.


The main station building of Brighton Beach is wedged between the original platform and the platforms built for the extension to Sandringham, forming a sort of "Y" shapped platform. (To get a better idea of the layout take a look here )

Sunday Drive

On Sunday I got to go for a drive. We went down to the force museum at the Point Cook RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) base for an aerobatic display put on by the Roulettes. The Roulettes are the RAAF's aerobatic display team who were in Melbourne for the previous days AFL grand final.

After attempting to drive through the security checkpoint without stopping (well it looked like the guard let the car in front through without stopping!) we managed to get security clearance and drive on to the base. The museum obviously does not normally expect this many visitors at the one time, so we had to park quite a way up a side street opposite the sergeants mess.

By the time we got to the viewing area the display had already begun, with one of the team members not flying in the display taking the small crowd through the pre-flight preparation. The most exciting part of this was the engine start up of the six Pilatus PC-9 aircraft. One by one the engines began to whine as the turboprop engines spooled up. The real noise began as each of the props reached operating speed a few seconds later. Then one by one the aircraft began to taxi to the adjacent runway and take off.

While the aircraft flew away and got into formation our commentator was taking questions from the crowd, most of which seemed to be related to ejector seats. After a few minutes the six aircraft burst from behind the crowd and the show was on. Our commentator took us through each of the manouveres and we even got to hear the radio comms between team members which were being fed into the PA system. As impresive as it was it seemed much the same, having seen them perform earlier this year at the Airshow at Avalon.

When the display was over the team made one final pass over the airfield before heading back to their home base at East Sale. Soon after this the commentator said his farewell and jumped into his own aircraft and flew off behind the rest of the team.

After his departure normal operations of the airfield resumed and we got to see a microlight and an ultralight aircraft land. Some ammusing banter heard on the radio which was still being piped into the PA system was thus:

microlight: "Sorry about the delay, we had a stronger than expected headwind"
unidentified party: "Don't those things have a built in headwind?"
microlight: "please repeat, we're having radio trouble?"
unidentified party "disregard"

Well I thought it was funny...

We then spent some time looking through the museum before leaving. It's been a number of years since I last visited the museum and it was good to see some new exhibits, but it seems this is at the expense of the Mirage fighter aircraft which used to be on display.

On the way home we took a look at the nearby Point Cook costal park which is quite nice with better facilities than I expected. The beach is not very wide, but you expect that on the western side of Port Phillip. As it is a marine national park there are many signs advising not to take any fish or shelfish, it must have some good diving.

Instead of taking the Western Ring Road home I went via the West Gate Bridge and the city for the nice view. All in all it was a good day out. I might even post a couple of photos in the next few days.

Saturday Gunzelling

On Saturday there was a meet of some of the members of railpage at Middle Footscray that I decided I would go to. It started at about 11:00am but I didn't arrive until after 12:00pm and didn't leave until about 6:00pm. Don't know where the afternoon went really, it wasn't that exciting or action packed. It was a small group of people all except two of whom I've never met before. The location was a vacant area of land adjacent to the rail line about 100 metres on the down side (thats towards Spencer Street) of Middle Footscray. We saw a number of Frieght trains in between the fairly constant stream of sparks (thats electric commuter trains) and V/line trains on the adjacent pass (passenger train) lines. I only took a few photos and I'm not one for writting down numbers of trains so I won't go into too much detail.

On the way home I bought some doughnuts from the doughnut van at Footscray station. These are highly recomended after an afternooon standing out in the cold watching trains.

Tunnelvision

Metlink - enjoy the ride.

Currently all the train station, tram and bus signs in Melbourne are being upgraded to these new fangled colour coded signs, Blue for trains, Green for trams and Orange for busses. They look good (for now at least!)and I guess the colour coding helps people. The Tram and bus signs also go so far as to list near by tram, bus and train connections, train stations have signs of near by connecting services as well. Just yesterday I noticed the first Metlink style sign of any underground station (that I know of anyway) at Parliament station.

Beetlemania!

The other night I was woken from a deep sleep by an intermittent buzzing sound acompanied by a tapping sound. At frist I thought it was some sort of electrical problem. I turned the light on only to find a beetle doing circuits of the room trying to get out. I lost sight of it so I went to the toilet. When I came back to my room I found the beetle had landed on my bedside table, so I grabbed the container I use to eject Huntsman spiders and captured it for release in the morning. Somehow after this I managed to knock over a nearly full glass of water and so spent the next five minutes cleaning up the mess.

By now I was wide awake so spent the next 3 hours listening to the radio before falling asleep at about 7:30. I didn't wake up until 11:30. As payback I didn't release the beetle until latter that night.

4000 Digital Photos!

It came as a surprise when reviewing some photos that I'd taken yesterday that I had just topped 4000 photos. So without further-a-do here is photo no. 4000:


Actually it is the 4000th image stored on this particular memory card. What happened was that when I bought the camera I didn't buy a memory card and so battled with the 16mb of built in memory for a few months. Therefore in reality I've actually taken more photos with the camera, but hey a milestone's a milestone. Get this though, at the time I paid $90 for a 128 mb Multimedia Card, I could have got an SD card of the same capacity for only $10 more, but I was tight arse (still am...). These days you'd be hard pressed to find the same cards for more than half that, if at all.

My camera is a dodgy little Kodak "EasyShare" CX4230. It's 2 Megapixel, with a crappy plastic 3x optical zoom lens. It goes a bit fuzzy towards the longer focal lengths but produces good images at wide angle (not always desirable). It also tends to freak out in less than perfect lighting conditions. I do however like to push it a bit, I've even taken a number of night photos using an improvised tripod (ie rolled up jumper or my backpack), an incresed EV of no more than a stop and the self timer to prevent any shake from pressing the shutter. Another thing I like to do is take glint shots looking generally towards the sun around sunset. This may be a point and shoot camera but I've been happy with some (definitely not all) of the results using the above techniques.

I picked it up in mid 2003 at $250, cheaper than normal as at the time the model was being phased out. For the same price I could have got a 3 Megapixel model without the optical zoom, I'm glad I didn't though. It's a though little bugger too, I've dropped it quite a few times and even kicked it like a football once, but it's still going strong. It does however have a few dead pixels, there are a couple of prominent red ones that show up when you take photos in very dark situations, nothing to really worry about though. All I can say is that it has served me well for the last two and a bit years.

The Art of Modern Dentistry

Yes that's right I went to the dentist on Thursday. While confident there was nothing wrong with my teeth, the fact that this was my first visit in two years had me worried. After a bit of a prod and a scrape with that little hook thing, the Dr proclaimed "finding decay in there is like finding a needle in a hay stack". I was glad because I really do try to look after my teeth, particularly because I had braces for two years as teenager at great expense to the Australian tax payer. So it was just a quick polish up with that tooth polisher thing that sounds like a drill but is actually a tooth polisher. All the fun of the drill but without the pain (drugs are for wusses!). And to top it off I got a free tooth brush, at least I don't think it was on my bill.

I think my dentist is really cool. On ya Dr. X*. He's jewish, just as a real dentist should be.

* - Not his real name, I don't think I should give his real name.

Not much...

That pretty much sums up what I've been doing lately. I should be working on my major project, but I've being really having a good go at putting it off. I don't think I'm going to finish on time, if I finish it at all. The report is due at the end of October and I am supposed to make an oral presentation to other students, members of the faculty and industry at the begining of that month. I should get in contact with my supervisor, but I really have nothing to show him. Basically I'm screwed.

The problem is that I just lack organisational skills and any motivation. Also I've never really had to work on anyhting like this completely by myself, I just feel overwhelemed. My topic is shit, I have no idea how I ever thought I'd get a sizeable report (say 40,000 words) out of it. All I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. I just need to get off my arse and do it.

I wish I had have taken some time off either last year or this year. I think I needed the break as I've been doing this course (Batchelor of applied science in Geomatics) for 4 years now. Before that I did 2 years at TAFE, an Advanced Diploma of Spatial Information. From there I articulated into the third year of the degree (it's a 4 year degree), so I should have graduated at the end of 2003, but due to various circumstances it's now 2005 and I still haven't finished.

All I need to do is finish the major project and uni for me is over...

Should I also mention that I need a job?

Korean Food

This interesting restaurant is in Bourke Street.


Why would anyone want to eat barbecued grandmas? I'm sure Koreans add that something extra to make them taste good, but really...

to blog...

All the time I see or hear someithing that I think might make an interesting blog. There is just one problem thoug, I never actually get around to bloging it. Of course I can't actually remember anything right now... I'm sure I'll remember someting or think of something else. I hope. My new philosophy on this blog is short but frequent. Plus I want to post photos so I'm going to work out some sort of image hosting thing as well.

Spirit of Progress

Today I travelled on "The Spirit of Progress" to Seymour. This was a special steam train ran by Steamrail Victoria for the June/July school (and uni) holidays. Over these holidays a number trips are being run to places such as Traralgon, Bacchus Marsh and Seymour. The consist for the train was R761-PCP292-BZ269-BS206-BRS9-BS2-BK700. Photos online at my fotopic site.

I asked my friend Daniel to come along and he arrived bleary eyed at my house at the ungodly hour of 8.30 am. From there we managed to bum a ride to the station in time to catch the 8.38 train to the city. in order to get to Footscray where the special was departing from we needed to change trains in the city, I decided Parliament would be the best place to do this. We boarded the first train to arrive on platform 3, which was supposedly only going to Flinders Street. On arrival at Flinders Street we discovered it had become a Sydenham train so we got back on and were soon on our way to Footscray.

We arrived at Footscray with nearly 20 minutes before the scheduled departure time of 9.57am. The first thing I noticed was the lack of a crowd waiting. More people did arrive towards departure time, but there were not as many as I thought there would be. Pretty soon the train steamed around the bend and had pulled into the platform. Once on board we bought tickets at the kiosk and found ourselves in a comfy compartment of ex Westcoast Railway car BS206.

Pretty soon we were pulling into the platform at Sunshine to pick up more passengers. After the short stop we were again on our way towards Albion where the train would take the goods line towards Broadmeadows. Soon after entering the goods line we came to a halt for about 15 minutes for what we were latter told was a point failure further down the line.

After an extremely short stop at Broadmeadows at around 15 minutes behind schedule, we left the wires and were making progress north towards Seymour. Along the line between Broadmeadows and Cragieburn prepatory works were under way for electrification. Soon after Cragieburn we passed through Donnybrook, then Wallan, followed in quick succession by Heathcote Junction, Wandong and Kilmore East. A few minutes after that we passed through Broadford followed some time latter by Tallarook. It wasn't long before we slowed down for the Goulburn River bridge and arrival in Seymour only about 15 minutes behind Schedule at about 12.30pm.

Not long after arrival the train cleared the platform and made it's way to Seymour loco where R761 could be turned, serviced and re-attached to the other end of the train. Unfortunately it was raining when we arrived so it was a bit wet to be standing around taking photos, so we made our way across the road to the bakery where we had lunch. Unsatisfied we then found a fish and chip shop to get some chips. By the time we left the fish and chips it had stopped raining. For the next half an hour or so we hung around the station and saw the midday (ex melb) down Albury train arrive and depart. Just after 1.30 our train had docked in the platform and everyone went nuts taking photos of the loco. After a few minutes of this we decided to find our compartment and settle in for the return journey.

Departing Seymour at 2.02pm (2 minutes down) the return journey was uneventfull, the exception being a short unscheduled stop at Heathcote Junction. We arrived at Footscray near enough on time at around 3:43pm. After everyone had de-trained the train made it's way back to North Melbourne. From Footscray we caught an up Werribee spark to Spencer Street and changed there (via new concourse) to the 4:13pm down Eltham.

Drivers are idiots

...especially the one driving the white ute who just tried to run me over. If i'm a fucking idiot, then you are just one incredibly fucking bad driver who's parents must be siblings, because stupidity like that isn't bred in a large gene pool.

At about 10.40 this morning I was crossing Franklin Street on the eastern side of the intersection with Swanston Street with a green man (traffic light, not a martian), when this rock ape in a white tray-ute thing decides to turn right out of Swanston into Franklin and not stop to give way to any pedestrians who were already crossing the road long before he arrived. He actually slowed down to call me a "fucking idot" after I jumped out of the way.

Is just me or are people who drive white commercial vehicles usually the least qualified to drive?

Driving me crazy!

I am 23 years old. I do not have a licence or a car, for this reason people think I am strange. I am sick of people asking me if I've gotten around to getting my licence, in fact the more people nag me the more I resist. Family functions are the worst, it seems like almost all of my relatives ask the question. A lot of people seem to forget that I do actually have a learners permit and have done a fair ammount of driving. I beleive that I may be the worlds most experienced learner driver.

The thing is, that at this stage I don't feel I need a licence. I'll admit that it would be handy sometimes. I do however realise that I am going to have to get my licence very soon, as I am finishing uni in the middle of the year and am then hopefully getting a job. For some reason a lot of jobs require applicants to have a drivers licence.

As for a car... well all I can say is that cars are more trouble than they are worth, especially with all the extra expenses involved. Additionally the highly fluctuating price of petrol is something I don't want to contend with.

FYI my learners permit is about five and a half years old.

Still here.

Has it been that long? I had no idea.

Must update a bit more.

I cant recall what happened for the first month, the rest of the time taken up with preparations for Christmas, and the last 2 weeks spent lazing around. That's all really.