I’ve spent the last week catching up on all the reading that I didn’t do last month – sigh. Last month was `assignment month’ with 4 of the things to do. Each one seems to take about a week, and I find it difficult to concentrate on an assignment and keep up with readings.
Guess I’m too used to consulting engineering, where you just go in hard on the `current project’ until its finished. No point in having 3 half done projects if you can have one completely finished and another half done. Means you’re only getting phone calls from 2 clients asking where the project is instead of 3!

The course this semester is pretty good, although there is a fair bit of stuff I already know or has been covered in other units. Things in boga are quiet. Particularly now that the olympics have finished and there is nothing on TV! hmmm… I want to move to Germany and take up handball.

Off to see the asthma specialist again next week. If anything my asthma is continuing to get worse. Had to give up my daily afternoon bike ride a couple of weeks ago because it was just too tiring. Bit worried about how I’ll do at the frisbee tournament next weekend, but hey we’ve got a big team I suppose.

Forget Farmer wants a Wife. It’s time for a tv show that the world is screaming out for.

Engineer wants a Wife!!

There is a definite need out there. With only 10-15% of engineers being female the male engineers don’t have much of a chance – unless they’re in enviro I suppose. I’ll accept that most engineers work in cities or towns, and hence have a better chance to meet other people than farmers, but still, have you met most male engineers? We’re definately starting as backmarkers.

I think the show would struggle to have the glamour of farmer wants a wife. For a start we’d be swapping the akubras, leather boots and rivers clothing for hard hats, safety vests and steel capped boots. Plus, it wouldn’t be a `romantic meeting in the grapevines’, but a meeting on site at the bottom of an open cut mine, or watching piles been driven for a bridge, or on an oil rig! How romantic would that be and such great TV!

However, the `assessment process’ would be a bit more rigourous. Instead of watching farmers leaf through 100 photo/cv’s of the potential wives and trying to make a gut decision, there’d be a montague of engineers performing multi-criteria analysis, cost-benefit calculations, Net Present Value and maybe even filling in quality system and OH&S documentation. Possibly even a full blown tender process!

I’m awaiting the tv networks call as we speak.

(yes this is sarcastic, I can’t believe that I actually watched some of farmer wants a wife, but hey, I was in Adelaide and nothing else was on TV)

Interesting quote from Vuchic V.R. (200) `Urban Transportation Policies: United States and Peer Countries’ Chapter 4 Transportation for liveable Cities, Centre for Urban Policy Research, Rutgers, New Jersey, p148

“In urban transportation the concept of free market is utopian because of three factors related to basic competing modes – highways and transit. First, they have very different compositions of capital and variable costs. Second, the combination of government and private ownership among infrastructure and vehicles differs between the two modes. And third, the two modes have numerous positive and negative externalities that are not fully reflected either in their costs or in their user charges. Such a complex situation requires a major government role, rather than application of free market conditions. Yet, despite these strong arguments and warnings, dogmatic views of the universal supremacy of the free market prevailed (and Britain’s bus system was deregulated). ”

I did about 2.5 weeks work in late June/early July in between university semesters. Along with a few more road safety audits – a fairly standard type of job that I’ve done a lot of over the last couple of years – I did three fatality road crash investigations.

It wasn’t the most enjoyable work that I’ve ever done. I had to do both a day and night time site visit, and then analyse the road environment to determine what aspects of the road contributed to the crash and what should be improved. Usually I don’t mind site investigations, but when there’s still skid marks, burn patches, broken glass and flowers at the site it is not particularly enjoyable. But hey, its better than been a paramedic, police member or firefighter and actually have to turn up at the accident site in the immediate aftermath I suppose. Plus, there was an crash in June involving some family friends, one of whom passed away, so I wasn’t really in the best frame of mind to be investigating other crashes.

I won’t go into details, but driver error, fatigue or decisions were a major aspect. All I can say is be careful out there on the road.

I wrote a paper on zero fare public transport for a university subject. Read it here.

I haven’t being following the discussion on the Eddington report into Melbourne’s transport needs all that closely. It’s always a bit hard to get to the bottom of the issues in these big reports that end up splashed all over the newspapers.

The proposals that have caught my eye are the big ticket items; the proposed road tunnel linking the eastern freeway to western melbourne, and the railway tunnel linking caulfield to footscray. These both feel like `big box’ solutions. Spend a huge amount of money to provide huge infrastructure projects.

I’m not convinced that either of these proposals are justified – but then I haven’t done the numbers. Sir Rod isn’t an idiot, and I’m sure that there are valid justifications to back up these proposals.

Unfortunately, from a big picture point of view, these projects will just continue to feed societies growing desire for mobility. Another example of a `predict and provide’ approach to transport planning rather than managing or retarding demand. This approach has a tendency to induce more demand. I know that living in Carlton I would have driven to work in Glen Waverley much more often if Eastlink had been open, rather than taking the train. Heck, I’d even think about living in Footscray if I could drive via a tunnel to the eastern freeway and then onto eastlink.

I feel that a more restrained approach to transport infrastructure planning in Melbourne would be more effective. There seems to be plenty of room for more trains within the current infrastructure before we start thinking about huge tunneling projects. But then, hey – I haven’t read the report yet!

I am working through my Quantitative Methods coursework today. Got up to a section on Index Numbers, which discussed how price indexes such as the NASDAQ, CPI and Dow Jones are calculated.
It seems odd that these sorts of measures aren’t more widely used outside economics and the stock market.
Imagine if an index number was used in traffic reports on the radio, rather than the typical “the ring road is heavy”. Maybe “the ring road is at 110, and the monash freeway is at 140″ would have more meaning.
It would require up to date volume figures, which aren’t too hard to get from modern traffic counting equipment installed at a permanent site.

I am giving Twitter a go. No particular reason to give it a try, other than it sounded new, hip and cool.
Turns out I only know one person who is on twitter, and he is currently in San Fran. Not all that useful to know when Martin is on Castro St, as I a) can’t meet him there and b) don’t even know where it is.

So if anyone else who knows me is on twitter, add me too. Otherwise this will end up being yet another web-craze site that I have an account on but never use.

In other news, study is going well. I am ploughing through the reading material at a decent rate. Feeling a bit sick at the moment though Off to Sydney next weekend for the Terrigal Towel frisbee tournament, and then back in Melbourne for one day on Monday the 10th.

I noticed Barak Obama’s campaign slogan on the tv news the other night. “Change we can believe in”.

Appears to be a case of ending a sentence with a preposition. I didn’t listen to his speech very much – because the slogan was posted at the bottom of the screen and the grammar was driving me nuts.

Maybe it should be “Change in which we can believe”. I prefer the approach taken by Walter Slovotsky which would render it “Change we can believe in #$%%hole”. Probably not a winning campaign slogan, but it is grammatically correct.

PS Feel free to point out my poor grammar and spelling in this post. I am nothing if not inconsistent.

Went for my first flight in a small aeroplane yesterday. Very exciting.
I’ve been thinking about learning to fly for a while. The amount of driving I do for work is ridiculous at times. Averaged about 1000km a week during November. It would be so much nicer (and probably safer) to just fly from place to place. And a lot more fun too! (who cares about whether it’s practical or not)

Anyhow, I went up in a 2 seater out of Swan Hill aerodrome. Flew around for about an hour or so, including over our house. Did a couple of landings and takeoffs and that was it.
It was pretty exciting, but once you’re up there it seems a lot like sailing. Point the thing in the direction you want to go, and then just leave it alone until it balances out lift, power and the like. Make some minor adjustments and then enjoy the view.

I was holding the stick for the whole trip, although the instructor certainly did a lot of subtle pushing and pulling on various controls as we came into land.

It would be moderately expensive to get a private pilot’s license, (a little under $8,000). However, could be a lot of fun and something to break up the full time study during 2008.