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Melbourne

Yarra Glen Balloons

Yarra Glen Balloons

When you get a view like this an early start seems worthwhile.

Abandoned …

A quiet drive through the suburban Frankston can reveal a few unusual sights. But this takes the cake! I just hope that the current affairs shows don’t get hold of this story – Tiger lion’ around Frankston childcare centre.

Abandoned TigerAbandoned Tiger 2

Hyland’s Bookshop

Sometimes you just lose track of a business.

Hyland’s Bookshop in the City was a place that I hunted down – a little oasis of British Railway Books in Melbourne.  It was hidden away in a upstairs dark building  in Flinders Lane. I can’t remember how I found out about it, but I used to visit there as often as I could browsing books. We more reading than browsing – but that never seemed to be an issue.

Then they moved to an even more out of the way premises on Flinders Street, but I was visiting enough to to find the sign on the door of the old shop and be pointed to the right place. But I didn’t pay enough attention – because the next time I went to visit I couldn’t find it. I just thought that I wasn’t looking in the right place, and looked a few more times on visits to the City, then gave up.

Of course I could have always looked in the Yellow Pages – but where’s the fun in that! And this was back in the days before wide-spread internet use – the mid to late 1990s. For some reason today the memory of Hyland’s popped-up. A little Googling later I found it – on the other side of the CBD with a website, and a good stock of railways books according to the catalogue. Bonus – now I just need an opportunity to go there; Hyland’s Bookshop [^] – Level 1, 29-31 Heffernan Lane, Melbourne, Victoria 3000.


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More on Tablets

I posted recently about a wanting a tablet. A big part of this want is so that I can be connected to the ‘net anywhere. From sitting on the sofa at home to standing in the middle of a paddock. That means being either hooked into a WiFi signal at home or out-and-about by 3G – just what a tablet is designed for. Simple!

In the meantime I have trudged around the major electronic retailers, in no particular ordAndroid Not Available Googleer. And I found that they are all the same; JB Hifi, Harvey Norman, OfficeWorks, The Good Guys … . They all have one thing in common. Their 3G tablets, especially iPads and usually Galaxy Tab 10.1s all connect to the ‘net, either through their WiFi network or a Mobile network (3G). That is if the screen saver isn’t password locked!

But the WiFi models are different. Hitting the browser icon doesn’t bring up a nice white Google page, it gives you a blank screen with a little green android “Web Page Not Available” 🙁 . Is this so that everyone realises that these models don’t have “the internet” on them? Come on guys, people don’t just buy a tablet to play Angry Birds, or do they? Will the staff connect them to the network for ‘serious‘ buyers I wonder – and would they know how?

I hope that this isn’t a cynical attempt to sell more of the 3G models. After all they do cost $200 more than the base WiFi version. After all a wireless 3G Hotspot cost a darn sight less than $200.

Australian Postcodes

Robert Kosara has created a map linking all of the most of the Australian postcodes [^] together in what he calls a “scribble map”. It’s something that I have always wondered about but never bothered to research. This infographic makes it obvious were the dense clumps of people are with the close zig-zags all down the south-eastern corner of the country.

There are plenty more maps on the website – including Germany, France and the US – so go check them out.

ibbleMap-Australia-color-names-borders-thumb