June 2007 – woowoowoo

RACV misses the point… again!

Don’t get me wrong – the RACV does a good job, I’ve been a member for over 25 years and have little cause for complaint, but the “A” in their name is really what they are about. It’s cars they care about, they do consider bicycles and motorcycles, but it’s patchy and somehow always dismissive. Take this month’s Royalauto magazine as an example.

The article asks: “Can two wheels be better than four?” and more or less concludes that fuel economy is the only advantage. Based on their flawed information, this is a reasonable conclusion, but they’ve chosen to ignore a number of important factors.

All through the article, it talks about ‘big bikes’ – the 900cc+ machines (A Ducati 916 is mentioned) with high price tags, expensive spares and fiddly maintenance. These bikes are the performance equivalents of Ferarris, but the article compares them with the ‘average family car’ (a Camry is mentioned). Sorry, did I miss something there? Hands up who thinks a Ducati 916 compares in any way with a Toyota Camry? What about comparing these bikes with their equivalents – top of the line sports cars – the sums might even out a little there.

That’s one myth exploded, but it’s only a minor one.

They talk about the time taken to ‘get your gear on’ as negating any advantage to the trip time. OK, it does contribute, but when I take my bike to work, I park outside the door, not a ten minute walk away. Oh, and I park for free. That’s right, it doesn’t cost me any money to park my motorbike. In time, I expect this will change for the really busy areas of the city, but by then car drivers will be paying a congestion tax… I look forward to it!

Here’s another one to really rile the poor old cage dwellers: Motorcycles pay no tolls. That’s right, at least for now, there is no satisfactory way to attach an eTag to a bike and the law does not require a font number plate, so it’s too hard to charge tolls. So, while an average trip on Citylink racks up a toll charge of at least $5 your average motorcyclist pays nuthin!

Finally, if we get real and start talking about a commuter bike like my dear little CB250, you would be amazed how the dollars vanish from the balance sheet. It cost me less than $2000 to buy in good nick (30,000k) second hand. It hasn’t been off the road once in 2 years. Because it’s a very basic bike, I service it myself for typically less than $50 parts + liquid. I put a new (top quality) battery in it the other day for just $50… and it takes just $12 to run it for over 300km! (yep, just over 3l./100km.)

So, let’s say I lived in Essendon, commuted to South Melbourne five days a week. If you just count the tolls, petrol and parking, I’m going to be something like $20 a day better off. Over a typical working year of 220 days I’ve saved $4,400!

Unfortunately, I don’t have the readership of the Royalauto, so I doubt the truth will leak out and convert many car drivers any time soon – especially in the depths of winter as we are! Maybe the ‘journalist‘, David Morley, will read this, realise his mistake and take appropriate steps to rectify it in the next issue… maybe!

annoying news

Two items on tonight’s news got me annoyed for different reasons.

1. Politicians pay rises. No, I’m not against them getting a pay rise… lets face it, it’s a shit job!. No, the annoying thing was the smug way they say the raise was ‘fair‘ because it was awarded by an ‘independent judge’. That sounds alarmingly like the old Wage Tribunal process dismantled by this government in the process of setting up it’s current unfair system. In fact, isn’t it almost collective bargaining? I thought that had been outlawed? Truly, one law for them, another for all the rest of us.

2. Chris Hurley found not guilty of killing an Aboriginal man in custody. No, I’m not saying he’s guilty or any of that. Like anyone, he’s entitled to the benefit of the doubt, and there is room for doubt in the circumstances (it’s a squeeze, but it’s definitely there!). No, the really sad thing about this story is the perpetuation of mistrust and division, when 17 years ago a Royal Commission made recommendations that, if implemented, could possibly have avoided this terrible situation altogether. Another life lost and another ruined, arguably through government inaction.

Google is the new axis of evil

The Fairfax created “Brisbane Times” site blares out Terrorists also find Google useful, obviously this google maps thing is a threat to all of us! Presumably the terrorists also found computers rather useful – oh, and the internet! and probably Microsoft’s operating system… yep, we should ban the lot of them.

Alternatively, perhaps we could look at treating the cause of these problems rather than patching over the symptoms… nah! way too hard.

Apple’s new browser ;-)

Was doing a bit of ‘drag and drop’ on my mac a while back, when I accidentally ‘dropped’ in the wrong place. The result was a web page that rendered in the software update window.

Not really so surprising given the ubiquity of the webkit in Mac OSX, but to have it render pages so nicely – even with Javascript – was an amusing find.

I don’t know if this opens up a potential security issue, but I could see it as attractive to a nefarious person if they could render their own content into this window in an attempt to trick a user into doing something stupid.

So, how did Google do it?

Well, the fact is, they didn’t – entirely. Sure, it appears in Google’s wonderful maps, but the images were captured by a company called Immersive Media, who have developed these innovative products.

Immersive Media's wonder car It seems that Immersive’s main thrust is moving images – spherical video with embedded geodata – very impressive stuff. In typical Google fashion, however, they’ve released a lo-fi version that really hits the spot. Other blogs have pointed out that the flash player used by google references individual tiles and stitches them together on the fly – very clever stuff.

Immersive say they’ve been taking these photos since 2005. I don’t know what the schedule was, but there is ample evidence of an improvement in the technology over time – the more recent images are substantially higher resolution – compare a New York shot at full zoom with one from San Francisco.

Further evidence of a time lag can be found by comparing the racy little VW with the groovy little camera – which you can occasionally catch a shadow of, with the shadow of a much less streamlined version.

All interesting enough – but really, we know it’s just damn good fun!

newly found – great close up of the van, and a blog post about google van self portraits too!.