blog, jurgen dot ca.

It's a tradition like the Refreshing Of The Melways, but generally celebrated more often: The launch of the new Good Food Guide. I'll be checking to see who won hats, who lost hats (apparently not too many), and who the restaurant of the year will be. I'm told the smart money is on Cutler & Co.

I'll be running in to Readings to pick up my copy as soon as they're available. The Age also streamed the awards live last year - I hope they'll be doing that again.

Futurebuilders is a programme set up to assist front-line third sector organisations to build their capacity to increase the scale and scope of their public service delivery.

There seems to be this *thing* in the UK.gov where they seem less afraid to try wacky and innovative new things that just might work. They don't seem to be as petrified of failure as politicians here (and in Canada) are.

I wonder if it has something to do with their entrenched system of Lords and Dukes and whatnots - people who can't be removed from their positions and who have the balls and power to push interesting things through. A bit of anarchy mixed in with boring old democracy.

Spotify’s streaming music service has taken the world by storm with a library that rivals iTunes — about 6 million tracks — and an interface to match. It’s dead easy to search, build playlists, and find new artists. It’s basically iTunes in the cloud — but free.

I wonder if Apple's planning to buy Spotify? They can certainly afford it, and adding Spotify's feature set to the iTunes feature set seems a natural fit, especially for Apple's push into the cloud. Perhaps that's what their new huge data centre is all about?

So I mean a typical example of a use case for this might be as he's coming out of a tube stop, he doesn't really know where he wants to go, where his friends are located. He switches on the browser. He switches on the ability to view where his users are located; all of his friends are located. He switches on the ability to see if there's any events happening in that area around him. He switches on the ability to see if there's any restaurants around him. And then he can also switch on any other data feeds and then just pull up the browser and then be able to physically see where his friends are, where events are and all sorts of other stuff.

I have a feeling that this kind of thing is going to be absolutely massive.

Punt Road Bridge, built at a dog's leg angle to Punt Road because a fellow who ran a one-penny punt, complete with jazz band and beer, continued his ferry where the bridge should have been built.

Oh brilliant! Onya, nameless penny punt person.

Anthropomorphism FTW!

Dredging has caused environmental damage beyond expectation at the entrance of Port Phillip Bay, with scientists reporting a biological shift in marine communities there.

Every major port around the world has been progressively moving itself away from the city centre. Central real estate is too valuable, and logistics too expensive or prone to delay. Why why why why are are still pouring money into a central port based on a financially and environmentally flawed model?

Moving the Port of Melbourne to another site will not only prevent the further pollution of the bay and massacre of sensitive wildlife, but promote more efficient movement of goods in and out of the port and provide a huge amount of inner-city space for much-needed residential use.