blinnov’s blog

A few years ago we became proud owners of a book called “Sydney Region Outline Plan”. The book, printed in 1968 is nothing else but a large 111-page report about what Sydney and surroundings looked like back then and how they were expected to look today. Surprisingly enough, that was rather interesting reading.

In “Transport” chapter a few paragraphs were focused on that by 2000′ a second airport should be built in Sydney. No doubts it should have already happened. But it did not. I remember how amused I was when I learnt that the largest and busyiest air hub in southern hemisphere is closing for any flights every night. Well, to be honest, I could hardly imagine a modern city with the airport nearly in its center before!

Anyway, that book pointed a few options where second airport could have had been built. Of course, we already heard of options like “somewhere on West” or “in Richmond” but there was another interesting option – they were also talking about Wyong shire and even considered it as one of the prefferred options. Never happened though. Yet (?).

Well, this is all about a front cover of today’s “Central Coast Sun Weekly” – it says that the government is once again revisiting plans to build a new airport for Sydney and there  are “many feasible reasons” why it should be build in Somersby. Not far away from Wyong, but nothing new – they already shortlisted in in 1969 and there was a 500-people demonstration against it back in 1971 (see aph.gov.au).

I am not quite sure how feasible is it really – from my impression landscape here on Central Coast is anything but suitable for airports. I am not airport architect and I don’t know all the details – may be Somersby plateau is large enough for long runways required for A380, but that besides the point. Even the fact that some businesses have already backed the proposal (which is understandable) so as that it is not know yet how would it change the face of Central coast and affect the enfironment are not important yet. I rather curious about whether they decide or not finally? This discussion already seems to last for over 50 years.

-Why did they build the Great Wall of China?
-To keep rabbits away!

Ok, that does not seem a joke anymore. Even news.com.au finally popped a little note about it – Australian government is really pushing forward its plan to implement compulsory content filtering in internet.

In press releases available they mention that there will be two levels of content filtering – the one that filters “adult” material (remember previous government testing it and apparently failed?), which could be opt-out and the second compulsory filter which is supposed to block “illegal” material.

There is very interesting detail – they are ready to spend (or should I say “waste”) more than $40 mil on this. Waste because they don’t know what really are they going to block and don’t give a shit how an whether it is going to work at all! Two weeks ago they claimed it would be only child pornography that will be blocked, one week ago they added mysterious “illegal materials” to the list, today they say “euthanasia and anorexia” will be banned. Personally I don’t give a shit if they block this indeed, but I think the idea of leaving to some unknown person to decide what is illegal and what is not is ill. And those who come up with such idea are mentally sick and should be banned from society before they implement any of their crazy plans.

Another interesting detail – it won’t work. They’ll waste these money for what is not going to work at all. Providing that they are not going to build an iron curtain around the country. Let me not to go deep into technical details, just believe me – it will just reduce internet speed to the bottom, will not filter half of so-called “illegal” sites and have a high rate of false positives.

So why the government is so insane about getting that done? They want to protect our fragile minds from horrible contents of anorexia sites or what? Or, which is more likely, they want to build a base to outlaw P2P file sharing? Or, which is ever more likely, someone really wants to get 44 mil of our money for free? In one very corrupted country this is called “to saw the budget”

From my point of view, there are way more things in the country that urgently need those 44 mils. Public transport, hospitals, education, any other infrastructure, at the end. But this government does something weird – they gave 35 millions of taxpayers money to Toyota, then went forward with controversial desalination plant, then want to “protect us” by giving 44 millions to mysterious “internet filter” inventors, and it seems there are more to come.

So dear Kevin, aren’t you afraid of that by trying to keep rabbits away, you may really get there?

Links:

• No Clean Feed
• EFA website
• Internet filtering is just a wast of money

Another exciting news for anyone hoping Woy Woy road will be finally fixed some time soon.

It looks like there is another “little crack” in the road. And it looks like the crack has been known since April this year but still nothing has been done. And it looks like the crack is just as little as 50 meters long and it continues to grow. And, surprisingly, it looks like the crack is caused by rainwater escaping damaged underground pipe, which happened to be situated right under that section of the road. I have a feeling that I already heard about some road been washed away by rainwater…

Anyway, according to todays “Express advocate“, the issue was addressed with “High priority”. Which apparently means nothing has been done. Yet?

Something is definitely wrong with roads on Central Coast. Have you heard that two weeks ago we were just centimeters away from another road collapse on Kariong Hill? That’s why they doing those urgent roadworks on Saturdays’ nights.

Let’s just hope this is simply a surface crack, which could easily be caused by numerous reasons but don’t usually lead to road closures; at least as far as I can judge from newspaper’s photo, it is about as serious as that. I want to go there during daytime to see it by myself. Not sure If I can scrap a moment this weekend, but may be it is the time to sell the car as driving around Coast will soon become impossible?

Chaser’s team did it once again!

Only the dead does not talk about soaring petrol prices these days. 1.70 per liter of unleaded mixed with ethanol (Folks! There is far more better application for C2H5OH!) is not a joke anymore. Last week TV showed how overcrowded public transport was struggling with rapidly increased number of commuters; and I especially remember an interview they took from a man who complained he could not afford to drive his V8 to work anymore. Sure, that’s the real issue.

And what is government doing? I’d say “nothing”, but that would not be true as they are really up to something. Something, that Chaser’s team explained in just a few words

Read the rest of this entry

Great news, everybody! We will pay 35*10^6 bucks to Toyota so they can possibly start delivering Camry Hybrid by maybe 2010. They promising outstanding fuel economy – only 5.7 liters/100 km! Woohaa, we saved!

What a joke. You know, these days there are plenty of cars around that have about the same thirst, for instance, my Civic 2007 (not a hybrid, thanks God!) only takes 6.5-7.0/100 km (and I am not joking!), not mentioning dozens of diesel cars freely available on the today market that can run 100km on even less than 5 liters offering truckloads of torque at the same moment. I simply don’t see the point of building hybrids – they are at least as twice as complex as average modern petrol car, they still have that mistake called Internal Combustion Engine under the bonnet, what from engineer’s point of view is nothing else but a joke – several hundreds moving parts, dozens of sensors, neutralizers, computers built for the only purpose to convert less than 20% of energy concluded in fuel into the move (another 80% are simply heating the environment), in addition all this zoo of “state of art technologies” requires once-a-10K oil change, toxic coolant, timing belts, spark plugs and counting. Simply get rid of it, use the space and weight saved to put extra batteries and you get emission free vehicle that costs almost nothing to run, requires almost no maintenance and is easy and fun to drive. How about 300 N*M at zero rpm? That’s what electric vehicle (EV) is.

(more…)

It has been only a year since a part of the major road on Central Coast collapsed in a heavy rain, claiming five lives and only two months since only a miracle prevented even possible worse when part of Woy Woy road was washed away, and we finally know who is responsible for those deaths.

Of course, ladies and gentleman, not surprisingly it is the driver. He was pissed off (0.002 over the limit) and might have possibly smoked “some substance” some time before. Thanks God, we all know that driver simply was drunk and therefore did not notice the gap until very late.

What a bunch of crap, I think. Whole 0.002 over the limit! Did anyone notice any reference on how accurate that blood alcohol test is? But regardless, in the first turn they did not hit the power pole that crossed the road, they did not park in the tree – they drowned in a river of dirty water in the same spot where a road was supposed to be, and, which does not make it any easier for those who really responsible for road collapse, the drainage issue was known well before and the collapse was completely preventable. But nothing has been done. The driver might be drunk but isn’t his and four other people death a bit too severe punishment for not predicting what should and could be prevented?

Living in Australia, we are relatively lucky – we don’t get black ice on the road (awesome feeling of sudden and total loss of control, a fresh change of pants may be required, if you were lucky), we don’t have six months of snowfalls, limiting visibility to tens of meters, the roads are mostly built on rocks instead of swamps, there are still plenty of room for new road (opposed to crowded Europe). The only we need is to build a road and make sure that when rain finally falls, it will go into sewage alone, without taking the asphalt with it. It is as simple as it is and not a rocket science at all – I bet building the house on the slope may be much more challenging than constructing a road. But why the hell things like this still happen? What are they waiting for? For a school bus full of children, sorry, don’t even want to think about that.

They have got their whipping boy, but why should we even care about who to blame? There is nothing we can help them or their families, there is only one question that should be asked – what has been done to stop roads from being flushed away in a country suffering from worst ever drought? Woy Woy road makes me think that very little indeed…

I am very, very frustrated, ladies and gentlemen.

Well, only 50 minutes from Gordon to Woy Woy today. As it was before.

They opened Woy Woy road in one direction and it apparently eased a pressure on evening commuters. But there are no evidences of any work in progress at Bulls hill, everything I could notice was a barricade and 25 km/h signs.

Another question is why did it open it in one direction only – while there is only one line available it still could be reversible, all they need is bring a pair of temporary radio controlled traffic lights and put them on the top and on the bottom of the hill – they do it all the time around roadwork sites anyway! In peak hour the whole thing could be one-directional, but there is no point of leaving it like this permanently – the traffic there has always been far from heavy and a couple of minutes wait in front of light would be much better than 25 minutes “drive” from Tascot to West Gosford.

Did they just never consider this option or there was another reason?

And will remain closed for a long time. See below.

It happened quitely and without broad media coverage. Of course, who cares about forgotten suburb one hour drive north from Sydney?

The thing is that our one hour drive turned into almost two as motorists forced to take a detour via Gosford. The distance seems almost the same on the map, but in fact traffic around West Gosfors is just hopeless – in evening rush hour a traffic jam starts at Kariong! And still no “breaking news” and even any pictures. Isn’t it because what happened is very similar to Pacific hwy collapse at Somersby last year?

Thanks to Internet, there are some info and pictures available

But still no oficial information about when the road can be opened again…

Middle Ages, that left Europe with heaps of what today is mainly used as tourists attractions, did not happen to Australia. Well, the Black Death and other little happinesses of these times such as inquisition and accompanying obscurantism did not happen here too, which is some sort of luck. But Black Death is gone (forever, hopefully, despite humans keep inventing new methods of reducing its population) and Acropolis in Greece, Stonehenge in UK are left. In comparison, Down Under can offer something even more ancient – aboriginal engravings, some of which can even be found in Sydney and which age can sometimes be compared with fossil mammoth’s shit. May be, this is the reason why they did not attract crowds of tourists yet.

Things aren’t better with architectural masterpieces. Want to see baroque, renaissance, Gothic or whatever it is called – there is Versailles, Saint-Petersburg and German castles. But those who say there aren’t many historic places in Down Under are wrong – they are almost everywhere, one just need to have a look around. For example, take a look at this panoramic picture I took in one of sought after locations in Woolloomooloo

Read more about Woolloomooloo…

Before writing this post, I sent this picture to my friend in Russia and got just an awesome reply “What the hell is this?”

After a short introduction to animals’ world of Australia and a short (40-45 minutes) lecture on that topic I got a little bit more fitting description concluded in its comparison with a mole.

Read more about the mole…