Cafuego

I got a bit of a surprise last night.

It was decided some time ago that we wouldn't do presents, but instead all put a set amount of money into a piggy bank, to spend on a suckling pig banquet early next year.

However, just as we were about to go, I was herded into a room with a huge box, which turned out to contain a 650mm f/5 newtonian "zoom lens" on an equatorial mount, for use with the digital camera :-)

Woot!

Having tried to drive near the Queen Victoria Market just before lunch time this morning and failing miserably due to people from the suburbs, the pre christmas shop this afternoon turned out to be the complete opposite.

My hot inner city grocery shopping tips for your pre-christmas needs:

1. Safeway at Docklands, just off Bourke street.
2. Coles in Fitzroy on Johnston street, just near Brunswick street.

For some time now Yarra Trams have had a little form on their website that allows you to get the arrival times for the next three trams for a specific tram service at a specific stop.

Unfortunately their site renders extremely badly on Firefox 3 and they don't provide a documented API, so the only way to get this data is to scrape it by submitting the form on their site and parsing the results.

A friend pointed me at http://outreach.atnf.csiro.au/visiting/parkes/parkeswebcam.html, which I think is rather cool.

Mary Gardiner wondered about easy backups for Linux, possibly something like Tima Machine. As far as I know, work has been progressing on a project along these lines, called TimeVault.

Unfortuntately Marys blog doesn't allow comments and I don't do LiveJournal, so I'll have to reply via the blog-o-tubes ;-)