October 30, 2007

Complaint

Filed under: Life, Rant — Alex @ 4:51 pm

Dear Sydney Buses,

You suck.

  1. Having about four buses come all at the same time is not cool. Also, at least have the buses spread the load of passengers, instead of having everyone hopping onto the first bus, with the remaining three completely empty.
  2. Drivers who don’t know where the bus stops are isn’t cool either, especially if they’re the second-most used on that route.
  3. Is it hard to provide more buses to services which are obviously overcrowded? Closing an eye to the situation isn’t going to help.
  4. Can’t you fucking respond to ‘good morning’? If I can be bothered to say it when I’m half-awake, you better be able to at least say something. This doesn’t apply to all bus drivers - there are some real champs out there - but most of them are just plain dickheads. In addition to being rude, some can’t even drive (including instances where drivers will drive into trees and smash the side mirror off, requiring passengers to get off the bus - it’s illegal to drive without a side-view mirror).

Also, to those who think that travel passes permit ‘free’ travel, it’s not free. It’s subsidised travel. Not free.

I honestly believe CityRail is doing a better job with their trains. I mean, morning peak hour is absolutely ridiculous, more so than buses, but the rest of the time they’re generally equal or better. At least you can get a damn seat and they come on time. Though, I do live pretty close to the city, so I’m not sure if it’d be the same if I were travelling from Hornsby or Granville.

State-government-provided transport in Sydney is an utter disgrace. Especially you, Sydney Buses. Actually, to be honest, infrastructure in Sydney is generally poor(er) of that of other states/cities. I refrains from inserting political views about the current (Mr. Iemma’s) state government.

Kind regards,
Alex Hixon

October 27, 2007

Bongo wiki

Filed under: Bongo — Alex @ 10:23 pm

Hmm, it’s been a bit of a while since I last blogged anything Bongo-related.

I’ve been working on a bit of wiki bling lately, and as of tonight, I think I’ve got the general layout and look pretty much squared away. Seems to work great in Firefox, Epiphany, IE7, IE6 (albeit without transparent PNGs at the moment), Opera, and Safari. I’ve also been trying to do a bit of cleanup generally around the place on the wiki. Hopefully I’ll get a bit more of that done tomorrow (and possibly some Dragonfly hacking before M3).

If you’d like to enable the theme yourself and have a play, log into the Bongo wiki, click open your preferences, and scroll down until you see ‘themes’. Select the “bubblegum” theme from the list, and click OK. Tada!

Of course, this wouldn’t really be a proper blog post from me without a screenshot or something, so here’s what the skin currently looks like:

New ‘Bubblegum’ theme

Please remember that this skin won’t necessarily become the new wiki skin; we’ll sort that out shortly, probably with a vote or something if there’s any disagreement.

If you notice any rendering issues or have any suggestions or complaints, please ping me on IRC or email me.

October 24, 2007

Scissors, paper…

Filed under: Life — Alex @ 6:33 pm

Rock always wins.