Archive for February 28th, 2006

Civic Bus Fare Scammer

People walking around busy areas asking people for a certain amount of money, supposedly for a bus fare, whilst not looking in the least bit hard pressed for cash are not new nor rare, but they are a problem. In most cases I completely ignore these people, however one such “non-hard-pressed bus fare scammer” caught my attention today.

About 11:30 this morning I was walking to the bus stop opposite the Legislative Assembly building to catch a bus to Tuggeranong, and on the way passed one of “the regulars”, the people who seem to spend half their life wandering around asking for a bus fare and never catch a bus, this particular regular was probably the most regular, being blonde, of slim build, about 25-35 years old and about 175-180CM tall. As per usual he was asking for 40 cents for a bus fair (seemingly oblivious to the fact that a concession bus fare is $1.30 minimum in Canberra, as would be most Civic office workers who probably don’t catch a bus to or from work anyway) and bothering many many people. I avoided him and continued on my way, not paying any further attention to him or his activities.

I went to Tuggeranong, had lunch with my bus driver friend, came back into Civic and had a coffee at the previously reviewed Coffee @ Helen’s. While I was in there enjoying a flat white, the previously sighted regular bus fare scammer walked in and asked the staff if they could change some coins into a $10 note, they agreed and he spent the better half of the next minute unloading his scammed booty of 20c, 10c and 5c coins, which was then counted by the staff and exchanged for a $10 note. The bus fare scammer then walked back home, which as I know is up at the top end of Ainslie Avenue in a set of apartment blocks I seem to have forgotten the name of.

I don’t know if there is anything legally wrong with this situation, but there is certainly something morally and ethically wrong with it. I spent some of the afternoon pondering the question of whether I should have intervened and pointed out that he had scammed at least 25 people to gain the amazing quantity of silver coins. Maybe I should have, but I tend to see, or at least pass this person once or twice a week, and would be in fear of my own safety if I had taken that course of action. Of course, it would have been nice to, at that moment, have been a Today Tonight reporter who had been following the scammers activities all day, and then pounced when he tried to convert his illgotten mini-fotune into a plastic note. There would have been an element of satisfaction in catching him red-handed, alas it was not to be, and I am left pindering the legal, moral and ethical ramifications of the situation.

I suppose I should summarise this by advising you not to give 40c “bus money” to someone in Civic who is blonde, of slim build, about 25-35 years old and about 175-180CM tall. That’s probably the best advice I can give you.

Samuel

33 comments February 28th, 2006 at 11:15pm

Underground Cabling: The Reasons, The Map

You may recall my recent series of articles and photos of the underground cabling work being undertaken in my area by UEA (here, here & here).

On a recent walk with Nattie I uncovered the path of this underground cabling, and confirmed my theory that it may be electrical cabling, which I theorised when I saw ActewAGL looking at various sections of the route.

Anyway, the underground cabling is a new electricity feed to a new transformer in a new building in Civic. The cable runs from the Mount Ainslie substation (location is no secret, it’s marked on the UBD printed maps), along a bit of the nature reserve, down the side of and under a couple streets in Ainslie, along the Mount Ainslie side of Limestone Avenue, under Limestone Avenue, down one side of Allambee Street and the under the road at the corner end, along the side of Currong Street, under Currong Street, Along Boolee Street, under Kograh Lane, continuing along Boolee Street, under Ballumbir Street, under Glebe Park, under Bunda Street and finally at its destination.

A map of this follows.
Map of the Underground Cabling

So why am I telling you this? Quite simply because the whole process has interested me, and I am happy to finally know what it is all for. The work is by no means finished, and the intersection of Boolee Street and Kograh Lane remains closed for a few more days until the finish whatever they are doing there, one can only assume that this is a major part of the job, perhaps the location where the cable is being monitored from. None the less, with the building nearing completion, the electricity supply will be more than welcome, and I must say that the work appears to have been highly professional and well organised.

You could say that it is bring “power to the (office) people”…or maybe not.

Samuel

9 comments February 28th, 2006 at 03:59pm

2CC Are A Potential Podcaster

It occured to me over the weekend that 2CC would be a very good podcaster. They have a lot of very interesting programming which would work quite well in a podcast format, and provide them with a new business opportunity.

My idea is that 2CC’s local programming could be released later in the day without the broadcast ads, but with a reduced number of podcast ads, the podcast ads for a 2CC podcast could be somewhat Canberra centric as the majority of 2CC’s podcast audience would probably be based in Canberra.

I should probably explain why I think their programming would make good podcast material. Firstly, it deals with Canberra and Australian news and contains a lot of interesting interviews, which would be of interest to many people, not just in Canberra. Some people may want to hear a certain interview again, or may be referred to an interview they missed. It could even add an extra dimension of listener interactivity to the programming, and make emails a bit more prominent. Many ex-Canberrans may be interested to hear what is happening in Canberra, in much the same way ex-Australians often listen to the 2UE webstream.

I ran a few quick calculations, based on 10 minutes of news and 12 minutes of commercials and found that Breakfast would run for 133 minutes and Drive for 114 minutes, which would, at 64kbps mono, work out at 63.84MB and 54.72MB respectively. These figures do not take into account the podcast ads, and they could probably get away with a half the bitrate and still have decent audio quality for speech.

The weekend programming would also be good in podcast form, and I think the 2CC podcasts would be quite popular.

I suppose they would probably need another staff member to handle the podcasts (I’d be happy to put my hand up!), but I still think they would make a profit from them if they had podcast ads.

Of course, another useful thing would be webstreaming, although I’m not sure if they would be allowed to stream network programming, and if they’re not able to, then I doubt that they would be inclined to run a part-time stream. None the less, I think the podcasts are a good idea.

On that note, Samuel’s Persiflage #3 has exceeded 100 downloads this month, the first episode to do so.

Samuel

9 comments February 28th, 2006 at 08:40am


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