Thursday, April 26, 2007

Nothing in particular

Why do posts always have to have a title?

I'm thinking of resurrecting Mathematique, seeing as I'm back into pure maths for work at the moment. Last semester was calculus, and it was just too hard to write in HTML. My HTML-FU it pretty low, unfortunately. I know there are funky things you can do with MATHML and stuff, but after half and hour I couldn't get it to work so I gave up. Weak, but whatever.

I've added a new feed to the sidebar - my shared items from Google Reader. Anyone who cares what I'm reading can check it out. It'll probably consist mostly of xkcd comics that I find particularly amusing. It may end up being just a mirror of their feed, come to think of it.

Tuesday night I caught a bus out to Ashfield for Annabel's party. Miss Krin got on the bus, so I said hi. We chatted. She's going to England in July. Oh, so am I. When does she leave? The 28th June, in the evening. Oh, so do I. What airline is she flying? Cathay Pacific. Oh, so am I. What time? You can guess the rest.

Then we moved so we didn't have to talk over someone, and sat across the aisle. Right behind Delphne, who was expounding about something to her friend oblivious to our shoulder tapping until we were almost hitting her.

And I thought Wollongong was too small.

Oh, and I'm sick. Again. Or should I say still? Breathing hurts. Poor me.

Friday, April 20, 2007

Buses are Stupid

There's got to be a better way of getting around Sydney than the
current bus system.

I know, I know, I tend to harp on about how good the trams are in
Melbourne and Basel. But honestly - the public transport situation in
both those cities is many orders of magnitude better than it is in
Sydney. And they both have trams, whereas Sydney has buses. Is there
really no correlation? (or causation? or whatever the right term might be?)

Trams are longer, wider, they hold more people, they don't have massive
big engines taking up space, they have more doors, people get on and off
more quickly, and you can't buy tickets from the driver, so the whole
tram isn't held up while little old ladies pay in 5c pieces.

Sure, they're more unwieldy, but they also can't do unexpected things
like throw themselves across three lanes of traffic at a moment's notice and just expect everyone to get out of their way.

Sure, it takes more infrastructure to support trams that it does buses.
But that infrastructure means they're cleaner (i.e. no diesel fumes),
greener (potentially - depending on the source of electricity), and
don't have to carry around large engines.

What have I missed? Why are buses better than trams? Why do we have buses and not trams?

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Just too funny

http://xkcd.com/c244.html

Ahahahaha *gasp* *snort* *snuffle* HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA *wheeze* ...