Well, the saga of the two nearby local governments stuffing up Broadway so that the bus could no longer run down it has been resolved. They're modifying the road so that the bus can traverse the road calming, bus resumes service next Monday.
This post is on another topic: government communication. I wrote to the council expressing my outrage at what had happened, albeit politely. I asked some specific questions. What I got back nine days later was a form letter, written so as to contain almost zero information. Said form letter didn't even acknowledge that the bus had stopped running, and the only promise of 'action' was:
We are currently working with PTA on what is needed to modify the design geometrics to further reduce the discomfort of bus patrons.If anyone is interested in the full letter I'm happy to reproduce it.
– Aaron Boshart, City of Subiaco, 3rd July 2009
Marched myself down to St John of God hospital yesterday, and was admitted to have my wisdom teeth yoinked. Unfortunately I arrived precisely on time but was fourth on the list, so had to sit in the waiting room for an hour before I was admitted. Not a problem, except that most of the people in the waiting room looked some combination of worried or upset, so it wasn't a great environment to sit around in when you yourself are feeling apprehensive.
Anyway, eventually ended up in a room, read a book for a bit, then Jimmy the orderly (that was actually his name) came and wheeled the bed off. Ended up in the theatre, where I talked to the anaesthetist for a bit about how amazing it is that they don't know how general anaesthetics work, then passed out.
Experience of being knocked out was quite different to the last time I had general anaesthetic. This time I actually dreamed somewhat and generally felt time pass; I was only out for about half an hour. Last time it felt like being switched off and on again with no feeling at all of anything in between.
The main alarming thing when I woke up: my tongue had swollen to the point where it stuck out of my mouth slightly, but I could breathe OK and just about swallow water. It's very, very odd having your whole lower face numb; interesting how difficult it is to drink water when you can't really move your lips (or feel where the cup is on them.) Brain felt quite wooly so started counting the Fibonacci sequence to wake it up, god knows why. The nurse's lotto syndicate had won so they were all talking about that, and I swear one of them was a friend of someone who I'd seen at a party once, but I could be totally mistaken (one of Michelle's friends?)
All in all it's twenty-four hours after the operation now, and my face doesn't look particularly swollen, I don't have a lot of pain, and I think so far this experience has been a lot less unpleasant than I'd expected, The hospital was really great too, looked very shiny and smelled nice, the nurses were super-friendly and even noticed when I accidentally knocked the pulse oximeter off my finger :-)
Up at Mum's place with my dog Chloe to keep me company, border collies that want to play are a good distraction from aching mouths :-)
Spent the weekend (yes, I have no life at all) porting a work application over to D-Bus. I'd finally become sick and tired of Bonobo, so used D-Bus plus GtkPlug and GtkSocket to replace it. I'm mostly writing this paragraph as a reminder to myself to blog something about how I did it in case it's useful to others; managed to avoid using D-Bus activation and came up with a few other tricks.
Actually, what'd be really nice is for the intro-to-dbus-glib documentation to be just a bit more helpful. I figured out what I needed to know, but there were a few times I was stumped by just-plain-wrong stuff in the dbus tutorial, so this is also a reminder to fix that!
Oh, and on eBooks, I did find out that HarperCollins will sell you eBooks in ePub format (with DRM), direct from their US website. I bought one of them (Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson) to try it out. Amusingly, the document opened fine in Adobe's ePub viewer but didn't work on the Sony PRS-505. Turns out that in an ePub document no chapter is meant to be > 100K; if it is, you are meant to break it into two chapters. This is so that small devices don't have to cope with huge chapters; a bit lame. Anyway, the Sony Reader enlighteningly gives you a "Page error" message, leaving you wondering if something has gone with the DRM stuff.
Managed to convert the book into BBeB format, thanks to a couple of Python scripts I found by Googling. Still more than a little depressing; you could hardly expect someone without computer skills to sort that mess out. I wonder if we'll ever get the Kindle in Australia?
I've been very keen on ebook readers for quite a while now. They're getting a lot better with time, to the point where I think my Sony Reader is pretty well as nice to read as paper. So what am I going to rant about?
Business models.
The way you buy ebooks is based (loosely) on the way you buy paper books. There are a few digital only bookstores, but you typically still go through a retailer rather than buying through a publisher. The price charged for a (often DRM infested) ebook is roughly the same as buying the book on dead tree. I feel like you should get some discount for not getting the dead tree, not requiring its physical haulage about the place, and so on.
So the fact that you still have to go through an intermediary instead of just buying from the publisher (at the rate of, say, $5-$10/book would seem fair) is annoying. Looking even further down the road, why would large publishers exist in an ebook world? I recognise that the big publishers bring editing, marketing, and other services to authors, but I'm still surprised that the smaller publishers have failed to create a cottage industry around ebooks. There have been attempts, but most seem pretty dire.
At least ebook formats seems to have sorted themselves out. epub seems to have firmly taken hold, which is good. It's pretty much a JAR-style zip file of HTML + CSS + images + ... with a manifest in a text file. Simple, seems to be well supported on my reader (including neat annotations indicating the page boundaries on a dead tree copy for reference, but still reflowing and allowing me to scale the fonts.) We just need to be able to get recent (in-copyright) content, preferably cheaply and without DRM.
The day people stop churning out eBooks in PDF will be a good day. PDFs generally don't reflow well, or scale dynamically; there's support in newer versions of PDF but most eBooks I've seen aren't reflowable. Not useful (tm), I'm not quite sure why they're so popular.
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif){kind=small}
cheerfulHello I'm the resident of redacted, Crawley. This falls within Subiaco council, however I am sending this complaint to the Nedlands council as well, as Broadway falls between both council areas. I have just been informed by Transperth that the installation of traffic calming devices on Broadway means the number 24 bus will no longer operate on Broadway. This is the main bus running down Broadway providing service to Subiaco, West Perth, through the city and on to East Perth. I and many others use this service heavily from stops on Broadway. How was your planning so inadequate as to cause buses to no longer be able to operate on Broadway? This demands an explanation. The environmental impact of more residents using cars may be substantial, and how much of rate-payers money is going to be used to correct this error? Regards, Grahame Bowland
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angrySo I know Singapore doesn't like Indians much, but taking us off the plane and screening our hand luggage specifically before being allowed to transfer through seems whacky. I've never had that when connecting through Changi before; security seemed pretty tight in the Mumbai airport so odd. Oh well.
Had a good day yesterday, went and saw the gateway of India, the Taj Hotel, lunch at Cafe Leopold, all the famous things tourists with one day are meant to do. Got an absolutely awesome extending telescope from a market, much help in haggling from a guy who was with me. Heh.
Anyway, off I go to Jakarta!
Navi Mumbai
Woke up this morning and toodled out to update my iPhone to the new software. Not that much of a fuss to get it, but I had been looking forward to it for a while. Anyway, down it came and onto the phone it went. Half-way through the installation the power went out (not that uncommon in Mumbai), but that was okay as the laptop battery was charged. Anyway, update completed and the phone booted, and insisted on being re-activated via iTunes. Which requires a working network connection.. and the power was off.
This is the one thing about the iPhone that really bugs me. It was okay in this case, as the power came back on and I could activate, but the iPhone will also demand to be re-activated if it is turned off and on and hasn't been activated for a certain period. As you might not reboot your iPhone for weeks, this tends to happen to me when I go to the movies or a play or something, turn off the phone, then turn it back on to find it's decided to brick itself.
Pretty inconvenient, particularly if you travel!
Grr, argh, and so forth!
Corridor dogs, Navi Mumbai
The building we're in has a fair few dogs in it most of the time, was there quite late tonight and even more had come in. Took this opportunity to snap a shot of two of the cuter ones, looks like a bitch and her pup.
And I'll leave you with this. India makes the most scary warning signs!
People in the office here are clearly a-feared I'm in danger of starving, for they keep getting me massive lunches delivered. I think I'm going to pine for the food here when I go back, it's such so fantastic. Quite a lot of vegetarians in the office, and I've got some neat tips for when I try to replicate things at home. Feel like I'm toughening up a bit for spice too, managed to liberally dip samosas in a green chilli sauce yesterday without embarrassingly running screaming in search of water.
Have taken lots of photos, many disappointing. Light is a problem when trying to take outside photos, as is the often murky visibility. I think some fancy filters would help, going to go outside and try to take better shots tomorrow. There's lots of interesting fishing vessels on the water to be photographed!
... as someone setting up a large number of rack mount server machines at once.
Still in Mumbai, and having a pretty good time. Every single meal is a feast of vegetarian deliciousness! The actual city reminds me a bit of Jakarta, and probably every rapidly developing mega-city; great poverty metres away from great wealth, really fancy buildings right next to shacks people have built out of whatever they could find (usually big sheets of corrugated iron.)
One of my photos from flickr ended up on this website, some sort of online travel guide. Mine is the photo they used for the London Eye. They have obviously been pulling down tags from flickr, but they did ask my permission before using it, so pretty neat.
... that's what the man at the front of the vegetarian restaurant said when I asked for a table. I thought I'd have to wait ages for dinner, as there were about thirty people waiting, but it turns out they were several largeish families wanting big tables, so I managed to preempt the queue :-)
Anyway, I've just gorged myself silly on delicious vegetarian food at vegetarian restaurant under and behind the hotel (Café Vihar). No idea of the names of the dishes, I just ordered things from the menu that I didn't recognise from Indian restaurants in Perth. Ended up with a really really nice mushroom starter, and then an absolutely fantastic tomato and mushroom curry for a main. Scarfed down with two large bits of roti :-)
Managed to get lost trying to get back into the hotel (turns out I was at the back, so you can't get in without asking someone), so went for a wander. Saw an awesome lizard on the side of a security checkpoint thing. People in the booth showed me how to get back into the hotel, so all is well :-)
Managed to tip the hotel porter 500Rp which was more than my meal just cost, in a display of massive fail at mental maths. I really do think my brain is slowing down in my old age, perhaps I should start doing crosswords and sudoku to try and get it working again!
Can't see that much to photograph near here, without standing on the side of the highway and trying to photograph people's cars. A lot of people have creative stuff written on the back of their cars, Ok Honk Please is on the back of most trucks, not sure why - perhaps a reaction against the government, and projects like this, there's lots of signs up telling people to stop honking so much :-)
Anyway, Mumbai seems pretty fun. My job is awesome for sending me places like this!
Will be on a tiny little Airbus A319, VT-SCK. Can see it out the window, now to take some photos.
My flight from Perth was delayed by about an hour. Raced off the plane once it landed in Singapore, thinking I had just enough time to make it to my connection to Mumbai. Someone was waiting for me with a sign. It turns out that if you miss a connection here, they actually realise it ahead of time, figure out a flight to chuck you on to get you where you are going, and hand you a filled-in form to take to the transfer desk. Pretty impressive.
Contrast with Heathrow; I missed a connection through there once, again due to flight delays. I had to queue in a long line of grumpy passengers, then a fairly grumpy person (fair enough, they've just had to deal with a lot of fairly irate passengers) tries to find you a way on to where you are going.
NIce to see some efficiency in the world!
Am hoping the taxi driver person who was picking me up at the airport in Mumbai can be contacted. Have rung through to a person at the company in India, but it went to a "this phone is off" message, (surprisingly, for an automated telecom message in India, it was in English?). Hopefully he'll get my SMS or email before the driver gives up and abandons the terminal :-)
Fun and adventures!
Thanks to an invite code from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
alias_sqbr, I've set myself up a dreamwidth account. Not sure how much I'll use it for the moment.. it looks like it might be a less annoying place to have my blog than Livejournal.
Congratulations to velithya and myfr! They had a lovely wedding, it was a great time. In addition to seeing the happy bride and groom, caught up with a bunch of people I don't see terribly often. It's really great to see people you like so happy.
There's ample photographic coverage of the event provided via arinellen and theducks :-)
In other respects it has also been a good weekend. Haven't done an awful lot, but have relaxed and caught up with people. Only a four-day week too, which is nice!
Now, to business: I'm thinking of having a party! The idea hatched while talking to flyingblogspot at the wedding; my taste in Scotch apparently needs to be improved. Thus, I'm thinking of having a bring-a-bottle Scotch party. Who's interested in coming? Post a comment if you are, and I'll then try and figure out a date. I'm thinking approximately a month from now.
You won't actually have to bring a bottle yourself, I guess we'll sort it out so that there are bottles split between people (or something.) This part of the plan requires further thought! Anyway, the idea is to have a few bottles of scotch, maybe some nice food, and spend an evening appreciating it!
Who's in? It'll be fantastic!
Free to a good home, not necessarily awarded to the first person asking...
cheerfulShook the iPhone and kattiko and I ended up going to Ha-Lu in Mt Hawthorn. It's a Izakaya-style place, where you order lots of dishes to share. Lots of vegetarian options on the menu, a really nice feel to the place, and delicious food :-)
Then wandered down and saw Star Trek, which was freaking awesome.
I'm thinking that a regular shake-the-iphone outing is a good idea; urbanspoon seems like a good way to stumble across good restaurants I'd probably never find otherwise.
Edit: hmm, poking around urbanspoon a bit shakes my faith a little. The list of Perth's "best" restaurants comprises far too many pubs, so I suspect their ranking algorithm relies heavily on the number of votes received. The reviews are skewed by conflicting expectations; there are people (like me) that are happy if the food is nice and the staff friendly, and others who think that having an order of a beer forgotten ruins their evening. Overall it seems to suffer from the same problems as tripadvisor. The systems need a way of measuring user expectations and calibrating the rating accordingly (or just showing reviews by people with similar objectives), but obviously that's a very hard problem.
happyWell, got down early and voted in Western Australia's Daylight Saving Referendum. Nobody for or against had set up stalls, which isn't surprising, but there was the usual P&C types running a raffle, selling cakes and doing a fry up. I always like to see that, it's something that makes voting in this country nice - I'm glad we've still got that informality around polling places :-)
In the end I decided to vote No; while in general daylight savings is more convenient for me, it just seemed overly self-interested to vote Yes; it makes no sense at all state-wide; the north of the state is in the tropics where day length doesn't fluctuate much. It's not great for the farmers, and there's reasonable evidence it drives up power consumption.
I'm a little disappointed this came to a referendum anyway - it's something parliament has every right to just go ahead and legislate. Come to think of it, there are very few things parliament can't just legislate! We've voted on this several times in the past, always said No, and it's pretty obvious that's what will happen today. It seems like an issue that should just go away!
cheerful
I've never seen Facebook advertise on billboards before, it's a surprising thing for a "new media" company to do. Strange, isn't it? Maybe there's something about the market in Jakarta that makes it worth doing advertising on billboards..
Well, I've done very little the last few days. It's been a fairly nice change. So I'm just going to use this post to pose a few questions:
So, coming in through international arrivals at Perth Airport is a bit hair-raising at the moment. There's a whole mini-medical facility that you walk through, and a bunch of doctor-looking types sat on a desk staring at a screen. I had a look behind the desk out of curiosity, and the big camera is IR.. I guess they are looking for elevated body temperature.
It all seems a little ridiculous and just to look like something is being done?
I look a bit like lurch today. For some reason the muscles just above my knees which clearly work when moving the leg backwards in a step are really sore. Presumably this is from walking up the sides of volcanoes, although why there should be a one day delay in the soreness is beyond me!
I'm actually okay once I get walking and warm up, but getting off planes I must look pretty funny. :-)
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