Bah, I should know that the reason Google leaves things in “beta” for years and years is so they can sneakily add features to them without necessarily telling you. Features you may have been waiting for.

So I’ve been using the Google personalised homepage (I think they call it “individualised”) for a while now… www.google.com/ig. And I only just discovered that sometime between the last time I checked and today, the weather module has been updated to include various international weather locations as well as the US (like, for example, Melbourne AU); and the “roll your own” module now lets you use a RSS feed, not just a Google search. Which is infinitely more useful, at least to me.

So now I’ve pretty much doubled the number of things on my Google homepage. Heh heh. Some of you may have heard my harebrained scheme for producing my own personalised newspaper with a few RSS aggregators, a bit of Google News’s parsing code, and an A1 printer… This homepage seems to be getting closer to that dream (without the A1 printer bit of course).

Screenshot:

You’ll notice, of course, that the weather, while being Australia’s weather, is still in American units. Feh.

(link, while it’s still there)

IT workers dubbed ‘worst dressed’

By Louisa Hearn
November 17, 2005

More than 150 tech professionals attended a corporate fashion show in Sydney as organisers officially dubbed the industry “the worst dressed” in Australia.

Short sleeved shirts, man-made fibres and the wrong coloured socks were some of the most common fashion faux-pas cited by corporate stylist, Melanie Moss, who hosted the event on Wednesday night.

“Because the majority of IT people are not in front of customers all the time, they tend to slack off,” she said.

Help-desk staff were named as the worst offenders, followed by those working in technology start-ups, many of whom had continued to wear T-shirts to work as a consequence of the casual web culture of the ’90s.

“The Internet is now such a massive industry but people haven’t caught up in terms of their dress,” she said.

Trudy David, a training manager for Apple Computer, conceded her industry had some image problems when it came to style but felt the event had helped to give attendees a “mindshare” that it was important to present oneself well.

“I think the way in which you present yourself is very important to building relationships and is integral to business and personal success,” she said.

The Corporate Chic show was devised by computer training company, Cliftons. Managing director Andrew Cameron said: “It seems Sydney is ready to consider corporate styling, and we hope to take the concept to the rest of Australia”.

MS Moss believes money should be no object when it comes to dressing well.

“This is not only about wearing suits, just a good quality shirt with a nice print and smart slacks is often enough as long as everything co-ordinates.”

She added that wearing natural fibres was also important. “Polyester doesn’t wear well, and gets sweaty and smelly,” she said.

Her top tip for those seeking a fresh look is to photograph a variety of nice combinations from your wardrobe to use as a reference when dressing in the morning.

She also recommends looking through magazines to get a feel for what suits you. “This is about thinking about what suits you instead of following trends,” she said.

And if you must wear jeans and thongs in to work, feet must be in a good condition. “That means no yellow toe nails,” she said.

MS Moss said retail ranked as the second most unfashionable profession with some of the salesmen in the industry displaying “quite shocking” dress sense.

Frankly, I’m shocked. (although possibly not surprised.) I mean, really… reference photos of successful combinations from your wardrobe!?

Never fear; if you’re no good at making excuses and don’t have any friends to bail you out, Virgin Mobile has the solution:

SOS RING

Stuck in a disastrous date? Small talk and uncomfortable silences galore? Wish you were anywhere but there? Don’t want to make a scene? Fear not – now you can dial 767 (SOS) and hang up without saying a word and then Virgin Mobile will call you back a minute later with a perfect excuse to get you out of there. We’ll even talk you through what to say.

The SOS RING™ is the perfect excuse to get out of that disastrous date without causing a scene.

A post for those of us doing the Shakespeare Challenge. If you’re not already groovy with that, go check it out.

If you have lots of spare change, have a look at this: http://www.bbcshop.com/invt/ebbcdvd1767. Quote:

The BBC Shakespeare is a unique collection of some of the finest dramas in the English language, each production a celebration of the greatest talents in contemporary British Theatre and Television. These plays feature the cream of the 20th Century’s acting talent. Some of the great actors featured in these plays include:

Laurence Olivier, Brenda Blethyn, Colin Blakely, Leo McKern, John Gielgud, Jonathan Pryce, Michael Hordern, Felicity Kendall, Cyril Cusack, Anthony Andrews, Diana Rigg, John Hurt, Bernard Hill, John Cleese, Trevor Peacock, William Hurt, John Fortune, Robert Lindsay, John Bird, Julia Foster, Annette Crosbie, Zoe Wanamaker, Mark Wing-Davey… The list goes ever on. Suffice to say, the finest productions of the Bard’s work extant. :

This 38 disc box set includes the following BBC Shakespeare Adaptations:

1. Romeo And Juliet - Directed by Alvin Rakoff (1978)
2. Richard II - Directed by Jane Howell (1983)
3. As You Like It - Directed by Basil Coleman (1978)
4. Julius Caesar - Directed by Herbert Wise (1979)
5. Measure For Measure - Directed by Desmond Davis (1979)
6. Henry VIII - Directed Kevin Billington (1979)
7. Henry IV: Parts I & II - Directed by David Giles (1979)
8. Henry V: Parts I & II - Directed by David Giles (1979)
9. Twelfth Night - Directed by John Gorrie (1980)
10. The Tempest - Directed by John Gorrie (1980)
11. The Taming Of The Shrew - Directed by Jonathan Miller (1980)
12. The Merchant Of Venice - Directed by Jack Gold (1980)
13. All’s Well That Ends Well - Directed by Elijah Moshinsky (1981)
14. The Winter’s Tale - Directed by Jane Howell (1981)
15. Timon Of Athens - Directed by Jonathan Miller (1981)
16. Antony And Cleopatra - Directed by Jonathan Miller (1981)
17. Othello - Directed by Jonathan Miller (1981)
18. Troilus And Cressada - Directed by Jonathan Miller (1981)
19. The Merry Wives of Windsor - Directed by David Hugh Jones (1982)
20. Henry VI: Parts I, II & III - Directed by Jane Howell (1983)
21. The Tragedy Of Richard III - Directed by Jane Howell (1983)
22. Cymbeline - Directed by Elijah Moshinsky (1982)
23. The Comedy Of Errors - Directed by James Cellan Jones (1983)
24. Two Gentlemen Of Verona - Directed by Don Taylor (1983)
25. Coriolanus - Directed by Elijah Moshinsky (1984)
26. The Life And Death Of King John - Directed by David Giles (1984)
27. Pericles: Prince Of Tyre - Directed by David Hugh Jones (1984)
28. Much Ado About Nothing - Directed by Stuart Burge (1984)
29. Love’s Labour’s Lost - Directed by Elijah Moshinsky (1985)
30. Titus Andronicus - Directed by Jane Howell (1985)
31. Hamlet - Directed by Rodney Bennett (1980)
32. King Lear - Directed by Jonathan Miller (1982)
33. Macbeth - Directed by Jack Gold (1983)
34. A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Directed by Elijah Moshinsky (1981)

Well, I’ve solved the dilemma of whether I should blog on LiveJournal or Blogger. I’ve moved to Wordpress instead. (Aha!)

Actually, this is cooler because Wordpress is much more fully-featured than Blogger, allowing me to do things like put up a proper blogroll (i love that word), links to the rest of my site (although who knows why you’d go there anyway), and of course it just damn looks better.

And also, there’s a plugin to make Wordpress send any posts I make to LiveJournal as well. Wow.

excerpt four

X followed a trail that led to a dead end. Some creature had skilfully covered most traces, but xe knew that there had been woodlanders here. The camouflagers had not been entirely successful in covering everything; there was still scent and the odd broken twig. Xe scratched about in the undergrowth, trying to reveal further clues.

“Lost something?”

Xe was startled by the voice. Xe whirled round, attempting to discover its owner. All xe saw was the silent woodland. Quite suddenly there was another fox standing alongside xim.

excerpt five

On the afternoon following xer brother’s birth, Y stood silently at the window of xer bedroom. Xe was crying, the tears following one another down xer flushed cheeks as xe stared through a smarting film at Gormenghast Mountain. Mrs Slagg, unable to comprehend, made abortive efforts to console xim. This time there had been no mutual hugging and weeping, and Mrs Slagg’s eyes were filled with a querulous, defeated expression. She clasped her little wrinkled hands together.

“What is it, then, my caution dear? What is it, my own ugliness? Tell me! Tell me at once! Tell your old Nannie about your little sorrows. Oh, my poor heart! you must tell me all about it. Come, inkling, come.”

But Y might as well have been carved from dark marble. Only xer tears moved.

inspired by mesongles’ can of worms: http://www.livejournal.com/users/mesongles/77205.html

Read the following excerpts carefully. Do not google them or do any other research, just read. Then, comment on this post telling me what gender each of the characters has. If you don’t know, say so. (some names changed to protect the integrity of the experiment. I’m also using “xe” as a gender-neutral third-person pronoun :-P)

excerpt one

Not until one summer evening when, passing for a shadow, I heard through the open doors of the black foreman’s cottage a conversation which convinced me that X and I slept in real danger. The slaves knew now we were not ordinary mortals. In hushed tones, the maids told of how, through a crack in the door, they had seen us dine on empty plates with empty silver, lifting empty glasses to our lips, laughing, our faces bleached and ghostly in the candellight, the blind man a helpless fool in our power. Through keyholes they had seen X’s coffin, and once he had beaten them mercilessly for dawdling by the gallery windows of his room. “There is no bed in there”, they confided one to the other with nodding heads. “Xe sleeps in the coffin, I know it”. They were convinced, on the best of grounds, of what we were. And as for me, they’d seen me evening after evening emerge from the oratory, which was now little more than a shapeless mass of brick and vine, layered with flowering wisteria in the spring, wile roses in summer, moss gleaming on the old unpainted shutters which had never been opened, spiders spinning in the stone arches. Of course, I’d pretended to visit it in memory of Paul, but it was clear by their speech they no longer believed such lies.

excerpt two

Frankly, that last bit was something of a surprise. I’d honestly thought xe was already dead when I left xem lying there. Misadventure, the coroner said. I couldn’t agree more. More proof, if any is needed, that you can’t help bad luck. THe cause of the fire was attributed to a radiator accidentally left burning all night in the administration area. Speculation that arson was involved was dismissed by both the company and the police as groundless. The insurance was paid out in full.

Y left an estate worth the best part of two million dollars, including a Broadbeach condominium, an Adelaide motel and part shares in a macadamia nut plantation. It just goes to show what hard work, a bit of thrift, and a remarkable fifteen-year-long winning streak on the horses can achieve.

excerpt three

The difficulties and shortcomings of TCPdump were also noticed by Z of the Ohio State University. Z wrote a program called Review that is specifically a postprocessing analysis tool for sifting through gigaheaps of TCPdumpdata (that’s a lot of data!). As with TCPdump, Review is freely available. (The full sources and documentation for Review and its associated log gathering tools are available upon request. Requests should be made by mail to security@——- The current version is a collection of programs written in C and Perl.) For further information, see Z’s white paper at ——

(all excerpts selected at random from my bookshelf.)

A response to my public transport post:

Martin,

Good work on your plans!!! - Great ideas!!!

Now, wouldn’t it be nice if the government were to actually do some of that???

In my humble opinion, there are 6 items that could be improved with the current system, in addition to your ideas.

1. There are some extensions and additions planned for some of the outer suburbs. These have been promised by the government and they have either dropped or not finished them. They should be completed. =)
   • South Morang extension
   • Craigieburne extension - The track is there, as is Craigieburne station, it just needs a couple of stations (and trains of course)
   • Langwarrin station on the Stony Point line.
   • Cranbourne East station after Cranbourne.
2. On this subject, short extensions to the next suburb on some of the outer arms of the star would also be good:
   • Link the Upfield line up to the Broadmeadows line extension - the track is there, it just needs trains to run on it.
   • The Yarra Valley Tourist Railway could be used to extend the Lilydale line out to Healesville.
   • And use the Mornington Peninsular railway to extend the Stony Point line out to Mornington

   Basically, the idea with these is that they get:

   • Government funding to restore their infrastructure.
   • Validators / vendys for metcards.
   • Their share of the profits from the sale of these.
   • And timetabled platform space at Baxter/Frankston and Lilydale.

   In return they would run somewhere in the reigon of 4-6 trains a day over their tracks as commuter trains ticketed with Metcards. They’d also have the option of running their usual steam / whatever services whenever they want with their own tickets.

3. There probably should be a tram link to the airport too => tourists seeing the classic icon of Melbourne, it’s trams, immediately upon entering the city. (It’d have to be light rail to keep transit times down, maybe along the highway, and joining up with, or extending, the #59 on the Tullamarine Freeway.)
4. The Geelong line: (does this mean that Geelong is now part of Melbourne???) I think it should be extended from your plan to go out to the new Marshall station. (Via breakwater for the Geelong Cup =) ) Yay, one ticket to go from home in Melbourne to home in Geelong. Sadly it’ll cost about the same as it does now with V-Line. V-Line should run the Werribee-Marshall line with their new fast trains. (Basically, the same service they run now, but terminating at Marshall more often, accepting suburban passengers within the MET, and accepting Metcards for the journey, possibly with ticket machines / validators on the trains).

For the long term:

5. maybe a “zone 3″ linkup between the Frankstone line through Cranbourne and merging with the line to Pakenham at Officer, and a similar thing for the Belgrave line, through Belgrave south, and looping back to the city on the Pakenham line at Berwick.
6. Maybe also resurrect the South Gippsland Railway as an extension of the Cragieburne line.

Hmm, maybe I’m getting a little obsessive about this =)

Maybe I’m also putting too much thought into it =)

So, why not continue?

I have updated your big map with what I’ve described above. (points 1,
2, 4 in dark red, and 5 in orange) It’s 2.6 MB, so if you want it, email / talk to me. I’ve also attached an updated version of your train diagram with the new extensions and stations filled in

Have fun!

–

Julian Calaby

Here’s the pics to go with it… unfortunately the Healesville rail extension is off the edges of the Melways map that I produced: