Cruisin’ down the block like I was Po’Po

I’ve come to find that Australia, or at least Melbourne, is very efficient. I don’t mean this in terms of speed, but more in terms of conservation. Actually, maybe efficient is the wrong word. But Australians do seem honest enough to save the environment and reduce waste in general. For example, since moving here, I’ve realized that the hall lights to my apartment only turn on when somebody is moving about. If you are bored enough (like me), you can stand very still in the hall and watch the lights go off after a few minutes of idleness. This is a great “feature” of my apartment complex and I think a lot of American buildings would benefit from such an idea (The Hearst building where I previously worked at in NYC had this automatic lighting feature so I guess some modern buildings are beginning to take note).

I’m sure that it’s not isolated to Australia, but coming from New York, where waste is more common than conservation, these little things do make quite an impression on me. Even grocery shopping is a whole different idea here than in NY. For instance, when you go to the supermarket here, you are encouraged to bring your own bag to bring your groceries home or else pay for plastic bags that you can bring back and re-use over and over until they break. Now, I’ve seen this concept done in NY stores before, but the major different between the two is that Melbourne basically forces the rule to be applied while NY only suggests that it’d be “a good idea” for you to do. How is this done? Well, in NY, even if the store says that you should bring your own bag, they still have plastic bags for you to use in case you “forget” (or rather, dismiss the message). If you forget your bag here, you are basically cornering yourself into buying the bag because if you don’t you’ll be left to carry your groceries home under your arms!

Thx Jim. This is the best one yet. Scary!

Here are some interesting Facebook stats from Tech Crunch.

If my internet connection weren’t the traveling speed of roadkill, I would totally install Joost and watch the dedicated Transformers channel. Not fair!

Be sure to look at my movies page to see what I thought of Meet The Robinsons and Hot Fuzz.

What would comic strips look like if the artists who draw them were blind-folded? For some reason, I really loved looking at this site. [via]

Here’s the periodic table of the internet. If it was anything close to what the actual periodic table of the elements was like, many of these “elements” would be hazardous to our health. Thankfully, they aren’t alike in any way and that means the internet is harmless. Right? The internet is harmless, right? Right?

Heh, I find color schemes from monsters and dubious characters very satisfying to the eye. I’ve linked to Colour Lovers before, but I guess I’ll do it again since the site has changed a bit since my last visit.

HAHAHA! They blended an iPhone.

It’s weird to read news about Australia from news.com.au. I’ve linked to news articles from this news site before, but only now am I beginning to really read it for its news content instead of just picking out individual stories here and there that may seem interesting. There seems to be some sort of link with Fox News, which I guess should be assumed since Robert Murdoch’s News Corporation was formerly Australia-based.
I guess I could always read The Age too. That seems to be another prominent newspaper in this area. Any others?

What the hell is that weird “thing” on the Australian Yahoo! website?

Please, somebody, save me some Buzz Cola.