Buildings and statues

I had to run an errand in the city so I took some photos on the way back.

Chimera outside the ‘Gothic Bank’ building on Collins Street

Photo of a chimera sitting on a pedestal fixed to a wide column that’s part of a building with a gothic facade. A chimera is a fantastical or mythical figure depicting a combination of multiple animals carved from stone and fixed to the walls or roof of a building. This one is a lion with wings that is holding a shield.

Prince Alfred’s Tower at the Melbourne Town Hall on a bright, sunny day

Photo looking up at a tall clock tower that is flying the Australian flag. The photo is partly washed-out because of the bright sun that’s just out of frame.

Pigeon on the Captain Matthew Flinders Statue on Swanston Street

Photo of a tall bronze statue mounted on a large granite slab located outside a cathedral. The statue depicts Matthew Flinders in his Commander’s uniform, standing on the prow of a boat, braced against the wind, brought ashore by two seamen. A pigeon is standing on the statue’s head.

AUS v PAK ODI at Melbourne Cricket Ground

The Pakistan men’s cricket team is touring Australia so I went to watch the first one-day international (ODI) match of this series at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG).

Naturally, I took some photos while I was there :)

Skycam at Melbourne Cricket Ground

Photo of a cable-suspended camera system above a large cricket stadium.

Behind the scenes at a cricket match

Photo showing Australian cricketer Mitchell Starc talking to one of his support team members at the boundary of a cricket stadium. Behind them in the photo are the water station and medical station. To their right is the kit station. In the foreground of the photo is a television camera operator.

Melbourne Cricket Club logo next to the MCC stand

Photo showing the stylised “MCC” logo of the Melbourne Cricket Club on a metal railing separating two stands at a stadium.

Pakistan cricket team supporters

Photo showing a crowd of spectators in the stands of a large cricket stadium. Several spectators are dressed in green team colours and uniforms, and several are waving large Pakistan flags.

Lights coming on for the day-night one-day match

Photo showing a tall light-tower behind the stands and massive LCD screen of a large stadium. The sun in starting to set behind the stadium so the lights have now been turned on.

Copilot’s integration in Microsoft Office is really shitting me

I pay an annual subscription fee for Microsoft Office – or what is now called ‘Microsoft 365’. That means I always get the latest versions of Microsoft’s Office apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Well, the latest versions of these apps all now have Microsoft Copilot integrated into them in the most irritating way possible.

The revenge of Clippy

In Word, for example, Copilot muscles its way into your writing flow through an icon that appears at the start of every new paragraph on your page (highlighted by the red square in the screenshot below).  

Screenshot from Microsoft Word showing the first two paragraphs of this post being written. There is a Copilot icon in the left margin, just next to where the author is about to start typing the third paragraph. That icon has been highlighted in the screenshot by a red coloured, rounded square.

Infuriatingly, in PowerPoint this icon appears above each slide, forcing you to reduce the zoom on your slide if you want to be able to go from one slide to the next using the ‘Down’ arrow on your keyboard or the scroll wheel on your mouse with just a single keypress/scroll.

Screenshot from Microsoft PowerPoint showing a Copilot icon above the top-left corner of the slide. That icon has been highlighted in the screenshot by a red coloured, rounded square.

Tell Microsoft to stop it. Just stop it.

I’m not the only one who finds this incredibly irritating. Unfortunately, an online search on how to remove these icons gave me only questions and no answers:

I did, however, find two requests in the Microsoft Feedback Portal about these annoyances:

So if you’re someone who also uses Microsoft 365, could you please do me a favour? Sign into the Microsoft Feeback Portal to both vote for those issues and add a comment of support under each as well (since that counts for more than just your vote).

Thank you!

What does the fox say?

For the hell of it, I asked Copilot how I could remove that icon from PowerPoint and the answer it confidently gave me was completely wrong (though it all other situations in PowerPoint this answer would have been completely right).

Screenshot of a Microsoft Copilot window in which Copilot tells the user to right-click on the Copilot icon and select “Hide Icon” from the context menu.

I down-voted that answer and asked again. It gave me another wrong answer. (Though, again, if Microsoft had integrated Copilot in the usual way, this answer would have been right.)

Screenshot of a Microsoft Copilot window in which Copilot tells the user to go to File > Options > Add-ins and disable the Copilot Add-in to PowerPoint.

To its credit, when I told Copilot both answers were wrong it asked me reach out to Microsoft Support and to provide feedback on the Microsoft Q&A Community. It even offered to help me post my query and feedback. So at least that’s something.

Screenshot of a Microsoft Copilot window in which Copilot tells the user, “I understand how frustrating that can be. It seems like this is a common issue, and there isn't a straightforward way to remove the icon through the PowerPoint interface itself. I recommend reaching out to Microsoft Support for more specific assistance. They can provide guidance tailored to your version of PowerPoint and system setup. You can also post your concern on the Microsoft Q&A Community with the tags PowerPoint and Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 Development. The experts there are proficient in handling such customization queries.”

The beatings will continue until morale improves

Microsoft will continue to shove Copilot down our throats until enough of us complain and maybe then they’ll give us the option to disable it. Or better yet, make its annoying icons opt-in instead of opt-out.

Though given how user-hostile and user-indifferent Microsoft has been over the last several years (aka how they’ve been on the path to enshittification), who knows if anything will change without governments fining them heavily and forcing them to change.

*sigh*

The POSSE approach to your online presence

In 2019 I explained how I was going to decentralise my online presence by cross-posting all my really interesting content to both social media and this blog. Since then I’ve posted all my content here first, and then shared snippets of that everywhere else.

This is not a new idea, of course, and I’ve been preaching variations of this owned-media-first approach for years at the places I’ve worked.

Screenshot of a flow chart from a slide deck. The flowchart shows stories pitched by Jetstar to the media with a wide arrow. A much narrower arrow goes from the media to the audience. Parallel to this is a wide, darker coloured arrow showing stories written on our own platforms. An identically-wide arrow goes from there to the audience, along with a smaller arrow showing stories on our own platforms being picked up by the media.

However this week, thanks to Molly White’s [citation needed] newsletter, I discovered that the phrase that’s been used to describe this approach since 2012 is POSSE, which stands for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

I thought I’d note that here and share a few interesting and relevant POSSE-related links:

  • The first item in the ‘Worth a read’ section of [citation needed] ‘Issue 69 – Nice’ (2 Nov 2024) is Molly White’s most recent mention of POSSE.

  • She talked about this approach in more detail in an earlier edition of her newsletter: ‘POSSE: Reclaiming social media in a fragmented world’ (27 Sep 2024).

  • Cory Doctorow is someone who follows the POSSE approach and in his most recent Pluralistic newsletter instalment, ‘Bluesky and enshittification’ (2 Nov 2024), he talks about why he isn’t joining Bluesky.

  • Here are the IndieWeb wiki articles on ‘POSSE’ and ‘PESOS’ (Publish Everywhere, Syndicate (to your) Own Site.

  • Finally, David Pierce wrote a good article in The Verge about POSSE that is worth reading: ‘The poster’s guide to the internet of the future’ (24 Oct 2023).

Close-up photo showing a person typing on a laptop. (@Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash)

Syndicate or post natively?

The one aspect of POSSE I don’t do is the automatic syndication my content to other channels.

While I love using RSS to read content from lots of different sources, I don’t like doing the opposite: using a tool to automatically write content to lots of different sources.

I did use IFFT back in the day to automatically post my Flickr photos to Instagram and Twitter, but I don’t do that anymore.

I enjoy posting natively on the channels I use and, in turn, seeing what everyone else is posting there.

The only automation that comes in handy is Buffer, and that’s to schedule photo posts to Mastodon and Bluesky in the middle of the day when my desktop computer (where all my mirrorless camera photos are saved) is turned off.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it

If you’re someone who wants more ownership of the content you’re putting into various social media walled gardens, I recommend you check out the POSSE approach and join us in a more decentralised web.

Giving up on Outlook (new) at work

I like the theory of Microsoft Outlook: an all-in-one personal information manager that handles your email, calendaring, task management, contact management, and RSS news aggregation.

Outlook for Windows promo graphic showing a screenshot of Outlook (new) on a computer and smartphone screen. (Source)

In practice, however, Outlook is a pain. It doesn’t fully comply with internet standards, for example, and its Windows app takes up a lot of computing resources.

Importantly, its latest version, Outlook for Windows – aka ‘Outlook (new)’ – is terrible. And after trying it for several months at work, this week I finally switched back to ‘Outlook (classic)’.

Outlook for business promo graphic showing a screenshot of Outlook (classic) on a computer and smartphone screen. (Source)

Let me list the reasons why

Now I’m someone who loves to use bleeding-edge software. I regularly try out alpha and beta releases of various apps and, as a Linux user, I’m comfortable with apps that have a little less polish (or sometimes a lot less polish) than commercial versions of the same thing.

But there were a bunch of things in ‘Outlook (new)’ that I just couldn’t deal with anymore. I even made a list.

Some functionality was missing or severely degraded compared to the older ‘Outlook (classic)’:

  • You can’t open shared mailboxes

  • Auto-replace text is not fully functional

  • Filtering/sorting of emails is much more difficult

  • Spell-check functionality is inconsistent: sometimes it only works half-way through an email and sometimes the red squiggly lines that are supposed to appear under the misspelled word don’t align with the text (the line appears in the middle of the word or it appears a line or two above the word)

The lack of compliance with internet standards is really irritating too. Especially when it comes to paragraph spacing around bullet points because that is rendered in an inconsistent manner:

  • sometimes the paragraph space before/after your bullet points remains and

  • sometimes it disappears when the email is read or replied-to.

The most annoying annoyances

What annoys me the most, I think, is how you keep losing focus every time you perform a basic action:

  • When you press the ‘delete’ key to delete an email, focus doesn’t immediately move to the next email in the inbox. So if you press ‘delete’ again, nothing happens because no email is selected. Yes, it shows you the next email, it’s just that this email is not selected in the inbox.

  • The same happens when you (click-and-drag) move an email to another folder: it shows you the next email in your original folder, but that email isn’t selected (ie in focus).

  • When you unpin an email from the top of your inbox (which is the one piece of functionally I loved in the new Outlook), you lose focus on that now-unpinned email. So if you were thinking of moving this email to a folder (now that you’re done with it), you can’t do that easily. You have to scroll down through your inbox to find the email again. And because it’s no longer selected in your inbox, it’s not shaded in a different colour and so it doesn’t stand out.

These lost-focus annoyances all stem from the fact that ‘Outlook for Windows’ is basically a web app in installable-software wrapping. Meaning the kind of intuitive focus-shifting that you used to get in ‘Outlook (classic)’ you can’t replicate in the web version of the same thing. Or maybe you can and they just haven’t gotten around to it yet? Either way, this focus loss was really starting to shit me.

Happy days are here again

The upshot of all this is that I’m back to using ‘Office (classic)’ – which is basically the latest version of ‘Outlook for business’ from Office 2019 – and I haven’t been happier!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering. For my personal email, calendaring, etc on my Windows and Linux computers, I use the fantastic Mozilla Thunderbird (10/10 would recommend).

Thunderbird promo graphic showing a screenshot of Thunderbird on a computer screen. (Source)

[Photo walk] Collins Street, Melbourne #4

It’s been almost ten months since I last walked down Collins Street to take some photos!

Blue-on-blue of the sky and the building at 567 Collins Street

Photo looking up along a tall office tower with reflective, blue-tinted windows that are reflecting a clear, light blue sky. The photo is taken from under some trees, so the green canopy of these trees frame this scene.

Framing a scene through the ‘567’ forecourt sculpture

Photo taken through the stainless steel bars of a 14 metre tall piece of artwork at the front of an office building. The photo shows a woman in a long dress sitting in a public bench while looking at the phone in her hands.

Layers of tyres at the motorcycle parking on Collins Street

Photo taken through the spokes of a rear motorcycle tyre that has a sporty, bright orange rim. Through these spokes you can see another rear motorcycle tyre behind this one, through which you can see yet another tyre behind that.

Motorcycle parking on Collins Street

Photo of several shiny sports bikes parked at an angle along a street that runs through the central business district of a metropolitan Australian city.

Bikes parked in a line along Collins Street

Photo taken from a low angle of several shiny motorbikes parked at an angle along a street that runs through the central business district of a metropolitan Australian city. There are cars driving down one side the street and two trams running down tracks in the centre of the street.

Flower Boutique on the corner of Collins and Williams Street

Photo of a footpath flower shop with several bouquets of flowers arranged along the front of the shop.

Photos from my desk

I was checking something on my camera while at my desk when I saw a couple of photo opportunities.

Afternoon scene from a window

Photo looking through a window from inside the house. The scene through the window shows the roof of a neighbouring house, the tops of some trees, and some power lines.

Maggie is snuggled up in her bed in the corner of the room

Photo of a red/brown dog sleeping in a round fuzzy bed with her face pressed up against the side of the bed.

[Video] Helvetica is boring, use Franklin Gothic instead

I think Franklin Gothic is cooler than Helvetica, so I made a video about why you should use it more often. And since the Franklin Gothic font you get with Windows and Office 365 isn’t particularly good, I recommend a few great free and paid alternatives.

I guess I make font explainer videos now

I had a lot of fun making the ‘Stop using Times New Roman’ video and so I’m back with a new one. Let me know what you think!

Video transcript

Links and references, in order of appearance

Font downloads and purchases

Photos and screenshots

Text and articles

Other

[Photo walk] Along the Yarra River #3

I think I’m finally back in the rhythm of walking through the city on Friday afternoons after work to take photos.

Blue Tongue bike rental next to Batman Park

Photo of several blue push bikes parked outside a yellow, single-storey building with a sign that reads, “blue tongue bikes”.

Old Melbourne Aquarium sign along the Yarra River

Photo of a large, blue neon sign in the shape of two stylised fish. The sign is mounted on two tall, white poles next to a large building.

GOBOAT renters arriving back at the dock on the Yarra River

Photo taken through a railing of four people in a small motorboat approaching a dock alongside an urban river. In the background a low, flat, tour boat passes under a bridge that spans an urban river.

Motorboating along the Yarra River

Photo taken through a railing of a figure wearing shorts, a hoodie, and thick puffer jacket sitting along in a motorboat that is crossing under a bridge that spans an urban river.

Eureka Tower as seen through the Sandridge Bridge across the Yarra River

Photo of a tall office and residential tower seen through the steel girders of a pedestrian bridge.

What’s on tap at AFLOAT, along the Yarra River

Photo of two windows set into a covered outdoor bar area. Visible through one window are several beer taps, while through the other window you can see wine bottles and other bar paraphernalia. In the background, looking through the windows, you can see a few tradies in orange and yellow high-visibility clothing sitting on outdoor furniture arrange around this bar.

Glasses and taps at AFLOAT, along the Yarra River

Photo of two windows set into a covered outdoor bar area. Visible through one window are several beer taps, while through the other window you can see spirit bottles and several rows of drink glasses. In the background, looking through the windows, you can see several patrons sitting on outdoor furniture arrange around this bar.

Traffic on the Yarra River outside Southgate shopping centre

Photo of a river running through the middle of a metropolitan city. In the background are several tall buildings and a pedestrian bridge that spans the river. On the river are a few boats moored along the banks, while one tour boat is making a U-turn in the middle of the river.

Sweep rowing training on the Yarra River

Photo four sweep rowers (in which each person holds only one oar with both hands) and their coxswain (who steers the boat) training on an urban river. They team has just passed under a stone bridge that spans the river. Their trainer is travelling behind them in a rowboat and is giving them instructions via megaphone.

Sweep rowers on the Yarra River

Photo of two sets of sweep rowers (in which each person holds only one oar with both hands) and their coxswain (who steers the boat) training on an urban river. Their training is following behind them in a small motorboat. In the background, and on the opposite side of the river from the photographer, are several large buildings. A few boats, include two tour boats, are moored alongside the far bank of the river.

[Photo walk] University of Melbourne #3

I took a few photos at Melbourne Uni when I was there for an evening event.

Study nook at Arts West

Photo taken from a higher floor looking down at a corner space in a large building. There is a grey, square study table with an electrical power board in its centre. Blue, plastic chairs have been placed around this table.

Research lounge in Arts West

Photo of an armchair, coffee table, and reading lamp surrounded by fully stocked bookshelves in a cozy library space.

Study table in Arts West breakout space

Photo looking straight down at a long study table installed along one wall. The table has an orange, padded bench running along one long end and an office chair placed on the other side. The table has a large, orange lamp clamped to one end. A television screen and another orange lamp are mounted on the wall at the other side of the table.

Thursday night at the Baillieu Library

Photo taken from the outside of a large, four-storey university library with floor-to-ceiling windows. The inside of the library is brightly lit, while the area outside is relatively dark.

Ticketmaster is a pain: "Secure Ticket selection is required"

tl;dr If you get a “Secure Ticket selection is required” error when trying to pay for a ticket on the Ticketmaster website, temporarily turn off all your adblockers and reload the webpage.

Nadia and I have gone to the Australian Open tennis tournament in Melbourne pretty much every year since 2007.

Collage of selfies of a man and woman at a tennis tournament. In most photos the pair are outdoors and are wearing hats. In one of the selfies they are standing in front of Rod Laver Arena.

So when the pre-sale for AO25 kicked off today, I went to buy us a couple of tickets.

Screenshot of an email that reads, across multiple lines, “AO25. The hottest tickets in town. Get Set! Your AO25 Pre-Sale hits today. Your access code to early tickets.”

But the Ticketmaster website kept spitting out this “Secure Ticket selection is required” error every time I tried to make the final payment.

Screenshot of a website form-submission error that reads only, “Oops! Secure Ticket selection is required.”

The problem, of course, was that there was no ‘Secure Ticket’ selection visible on this page for me to make.

So I did what any normal person would do: I fired up my favourite search engine and ran a search on that phrase :)

To my surprise, I got only a single hit to a Reddit thread from about a year ago.

Screenshot of a search engine result from the Moto GP subreddit on the topic of ‘Phillip Island race’.

Since most of the people on that thread didn’t have an answer, and the solution only comes at the end of the thread, I figured I’d write this quick post to add to those search results.

Basically, the ‘Secure Ticket’ selection loads from a third-party website and that third-party website component gets blocked by your adblocker. The fix is to temporarily turn off your all your adblockers and reload the page. When you do that, you’ll see the ‘Secure Tickets’ component that was missing from the page before.

Screenshot of a webpage component titled, ‘Secure Tickets’. This upsell tells you that “By upgrading your tickets to a Secure Ticket you will be eligible to receive a refund if you are unable to attend this event for any of the reasons in our Secure Ticket Terms and Conditions”. This component forces you to make a choice between, “Yes, please upgrade me to a Secure Ticket for an additional $8.62” and “No, thank you. I do not wish to upgrade to a Secure Ticket”.

It’s a pain that you’re forced to actively say “no” to this upsell, but I appreciate that they don’t automatically opt you in to it. (Which they’d be fined for if they did, of course.)

But it’s a bigger pain that they haven’t yet implemented this upsell into their main ecommerce sales path, and so it has to load from a third-party domain.

I would have assumed they did this deliberately, thereby forcing people to turn off their adblockers. But if that was the case, they would have told us what to do in the error message. Since they didn’t do that, we can’t attribute this stuff-up to malice – which I guess is a plus, given all the other reasons to dislike Ticketmaster!

Anyway, now you know the workaround so you know what to do if you get that error. (*sigh* What a world we live in.)

PS, for completeness’ sake: a search on Google for that error notification gave me just 14 results, with the top one being the same as the one from DuckDuckGo.

Screenshot of search engine results, the top one from the Moto GP subreddit on the topic of ‘Phillip Island race’.

COVID-19 booster FTW!

It’s been eight months since I got COVID-19, and with some travel planned for the end of the year, it was time to get a booster.

Selfie of a man sitting in a car with his t-shirt sleeve rolled up to show the band-aid placed on his upper arm.

And like I said when I got my flu shot a couple of months ago, does a vaccine even work these days if you don’t take a selfie and post about it? :)

Belinda Carlisle – finally!

In August 2021 Nadia and I bought tickets to go see Belinda Carlisle in concert in February 2022.

Screenshot of a ticket purchase confirmation email that reads, “Ameel, You’re In!”. The ticket is for a Belinda Carlisle concert at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda for 8pm on Friday, 11 February 2022.

Unfortunately, the concert got rescheduled thrice: twice because of pandemic lockdowns and once because Belinda was having knee-replacement surgery.

But three years later it all finally worked out :)

Photo of a man and woman standing in front of a massive poster for Belinda Carlisle’s ‘Decades’ tour at the Palais Theatre.

And the concert was great!

Photo of an indoor concert stage on which Belinda Carlisle and her band are performing.

I thought I’d come out of this with one of her mega hits stuck in my head, but instead it was In Too Deep and Big Scary Animal – both of which I love. So yay!

[Photo walk] Seafarers Bridge

I had some time before an all-day work offsite along South Wharf, so I took some photos around Seafarers Bridge.

It was a clear, bright, winter morning and the sky was so blue that some of the photos almost look fake!

Bright winter morning in Melbourne

Photo of several tall buildings with an urban river in the foreground. There is also a Ferris wheel on the other side of the river.

The Polly Woodside as seen from the Seafarers Bridge

Photo of a historic, iron-hulled, three-masted ship (called a barque) permanently berthed on an urban river.

The structure of the Seafarers Bridge almost looks fake against the bright blue sky!

Photo looking up at the white-painted steel arches and support cables that are holding up a bridge. The arches are streaked with dirt from the rain and wind. The photo almost looks fake because of the bright blue sky in the background.

Looking up at the arch-shaped structure and steel cables of the Seafarers Bridge

Photo looking up at the white-painted steel arches and support cables that are holding up a bridge. The arches are streaked with dirt from the rain and wind. The photo almost looks fake because of the bright blue sky in the background.

Traffic safety mirror along South Wharf Promenade on the Yarra River

Photo of a large, convex, traffic safety mirror installed on a pole in a blind curve along a cycling and walking path next to an urban river. The photographer has captured his own distorted reflection in this mirror.

Photographer in a convex traffic safety mirror

Close-up photo of a large, convex, traffic safety mirror installed on a pole in a blind curve along a cycling and walking path next to an urban river. The photographer has captured his own distorted reflection in this mirror.

Seafarers Bridge spanning the Yarra River

Photo taken on a bright, sunny morning of a concrete, steel, and glass pedestrian and cycling bridge spanning an urban river. This suspension bridge is held up by asymmetrical arches supported by steel cables - all of which are painted white. The bridge deck is made of steel and concrete, and has clear glass balustrades running along its length. A few people are crossing the bridge. There are several tall buildings on the other side of the river from the photographer.

[Video] Stop using Times New Roman

I made an explainer video about why you should stop using Times New Roman and which font you should use instead (based on your needs).

What did you think? This is the first time I’ve made a video like this, so all feedback is appreciated. A voiceover artist I am not :)  So if you have any specific voice acting tips for me, please share those too. Thanks!

Where did this come from?

You know how they say, “if you can’t find what you want to read, you should write it yourself”? Well I’m now applying that to explainer videos too :)

Designer Oliver Schöndorfer from Pimp my Type is the only person I know who creates videos like this one. They’re excellent and you should watch those on his YouTube channel. He also does weekly ‘Font Friday’ reviews on his mailing list.

But most of the other online discussions about typography are in blog posts, forum threads, or webpages – like these alternative-to resources on Typewolf and Practical Typography.

I myself wrote a couple of blog posts about recommended alternatives to Times New Roman a few months ago (original, follow-up).

The videos that people have produced about fonts are either from a graphic designer’s perspective or they’re one-offs – like ‘The controversial story of Times New Roman’ by The Middle-Aged Hack.

But since I’ve never seen anyone do an explainer video of this type before, I figured I might as well make one my own.

And since I had so much fun creating this video, I’ll think I’ll create a bunch more. Maybe one every couple of months? *crosses fingers*

Let me know if there’s any font you want me to talk about, by the way. I love researching and getting into the nitty gritty of typography, and I’m more than happy to take requests :)

Video transcript

Links and references, in order of appearance

Font downloads and purchases

Photos and screenshots

Text and articles

Other resources

 

[Photo walk] Webb Bridge and surrounds

This is the third of three photo sets from my walk between South Melbourne and Docklands.

Scooting onto the Webb Bridge

Photo of a man in blue leather boots, light khaki pants, navy blue jacket, and black helmet riding a stand-up electric scooter. The scooter has a carrier in which there is a small dog that is also wearing a navy blue jacket. The man is about to ride the scooter up the incline of a pedestrian and cycle bridge that crosses and urban river.

Corner seat at Hooks At The Yarra

Photo of the corner of a building with floor-to-ceiling windows. This floor of the building is a restaurant with several tables and chairs, all of which are currently unoccupied.

A little litter goes a long way

Close-up photo of a Bandalong litter trap installed on the banks of an urban river. This trap has collected a large amount of litter floating down this river. A sign affixed to this trap reads, “A little litter goes a long way. Keep the Yarra River clean. Bin your litter.”

Almost ready to press record

Photo of two people, a man and a woman, standing on the cemented banks of an urban river. The man is a camera operator and is manipulating a DSLR camera attached to a sturdy tripod. The woman, who is about to be filmed, is looking down as she composes herself for the recording take. The two are standing near the intersection of two cycle paths. In the foreground of the photo is a series of small directional signs mounted on a pole. These point to the three directions that cyclists can go in.

Crossing the Webb Bridge to Docklands

Photo of several people and cyclists crossing a bridge that spans an urban river. The bridge looks like a grey metal pipe that has been cut in half lengthwise.

Cleaning our rivers

Close-up photo of a Bandalong litter trap installed on the banks of an urban river. This trap has collected a large amount of litter floating down this river. A sign affixed to this trap reads, “Cleaning our rivers”

Heading up the Webb Bridge from Docklands

Photo taken along the length of a pedestrian and cycle bridge that spans an urban river. The bridge has several rings going around it at regularly spaced intervals.

Fishing along the Yarra River

Photograph of three people fishing along the banks of an urban river. On the other side of the river there are several large and small boats tied to their berths.

The Webb Bridge on the Yarra River

Photo of people walking along a curved bridge that spans a river in the middle of a metropolitan city. This bridge, the Webb Bridge, is modelled after a Koorie fishing trap used to catch eels. It is curved on one end, and this curved portion is covered (like a tube) by an organic, irregular net design made out of metal beams.

Cycling down the Webb Bridge

Photo of a cyclist heading down a curved bridge that spans a river in the middle of a metropolitan city. This bridge, the Webb Bridge, is modelled after a Koorie fishing trap used to catch eels. It is curved on one end, and this curved portion is covered (like a tube) by an organic, irregular net design made out of metal beams.

[Photo walk] South Melbourne, Docklands infrastructure and cars

This is the second of three photo sets from my walk between South Melbourne and Docklands.

Looking through to Yarra’s Edge buildings with a zoom lens

Black-and-white photo of two tall, residential buildings as seen through a gap in the bare concrete underneath of a series of elevated roadways and off-ramps.

Queueing for the Power Street exit on CityLink

Photo taken from between two elevated roadways of a large, overhead LED sign that shows icons of cars queueing. There is text on the sign that is cut-off by one of the elevated roadways, however you can make out the words ‘queueing’ and ‘power’.

Caution: queueing for the Power Street exit on CityLink

Photo taken from between two elevated roadways of a large, overhead LED sign that reads, in all capital letters, “Caution: Queueing traffic at Power St exit”.

Happy graffiti on the Charles Grimes Bridge Road off-ramp

Photo of a bright white graffiti spray painted onto perforated, black coloured metal sheets that line the underside of a road. The graffiti is a of a classic smiley face.

You can see a lot with a big zoom lens (this is a 31 storey tall building)

Zoomed-in photo of the very top of a 31 storey building with the green Linkt logo affixed to one side.

Portal across the West Gate Freeway

Black and white photo taken from ground level of several elevated roadways. A large concrete archway structure has been constructed around one of these elevated roadways. This otherwise-rectangular structure (called a portal) has been built with a slight rotation, so it looks like it is twisting clockwise.

Cars for sale at City Mazda

Photo taken along the back of several Mazda cars parked in a line at an outdoor car sales lot.

[Photo walk] Bolte Bridge

I repeated my earlier ‘South Melbourne and Docklands’ photo walk a week later because my car needed some additional repair. This time, however, I took my long lens with me and got a bunch of interesting photos along the way.

These are the photos I took of the Bolte Bridge, and there are two more photo sets to come.

Morning traffic across the Bolte Bridge

Photo taken along the length of an urban river that shows two bridges crossing this river. In the foreground is the Webb Bridge, a curved cyclist and pedestrian bridge. In the background is the Bolte Bridge, a large road bridge. The Bolte (as it is known) is a large, twin cantilever road bridge with two 140m tall towers that hold up the roadway that spans the width of the Yarra River and Victoria Harbour.

Busy morning on the Bolte Bridge

Photo taken along the length of an urban river of a large road bridge and the shipping dock in the background. There is bumper-to-bumper road traffic on the bridge and behind the bridge a large container ship is docked at one of the berths. The bridge is a large, twin cantilever road bridge with two 140m tall towers that hold up the roadway that spans the width of the Yarra River and Victoria Harbour.

Bolte Bridge just before sunset

Photo taken just before sunset along the length of an urban river that opens up into a sea port. There are tall buildings on both banks of the river and crossing the river is a large road bridge with two tall towers at the centre. There are several shipping berths along the length of the river.

Bolte Bridge stretches across the Yarra River at sunset

Photo taken at sunset along the length of an urban river that opens up into a sea port. There are tall buildings on both banks of the river and crossing the river is a large road bridge with two tall towers at the centre. There are several shipping berths along the length of the river.

Bolte Bridge silhouette at sunset

Photo taken at sunset along the length of an urban river that opens up into a sea port. Crossing this river is a large road bridge with two tall towers at the centre.

Village drive-in FTW!

I wanted to watch Twisters at the drive-in cinema, but it had just stopped playing there. Oh well. Our alternative film was Deadpool & Wolverine and that was a really fun watch too :)

Photo of a large outdoor projection screen at a drive-in cinema. The screen shows the Village Cinemas logo. There are few cars parked between the photographer and the screen.