I looked after the neighbours’ dog last night, and I was very pleased to do it, I might add. But it’s a 6 month old kelpie cross, and I’d forgotten that they chew things.

I heard a few noises during the night (I keep the dogs inside at night) but didn’t worry about them. I got up this morning to find this:
It’s my portable 250GB USB powered hard drive for use with a laptop. All the plastic and rubber bits had been chewed off and there are a few dents and toothmarks, as you can see. But it still works! I plugged it in and away she went. I copied everything off (it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d lost it anyway) so nothing was lost, but I’m not sure if I’ll trust it for critical files any more.

Actually, it was full of video files from my trip last year, and they’re PAL. I wonder if the dog smelt them? Woof.

Pete

I had the first injection of saline solution into my Lap Band yesterday, a whole 3mls. What do I feel? Nuffink. Maybe a bit less appetite, but food still goes down without any obstruction.

I’m supposed to go back onto the liquids-only diet that I was on in the first week after the operation. That’s OK, it’s not that difficult, if you allow yoghurt and packet soups like Velish. Easy.

I’m fired up now about losing weight because of the bargain air fares on offer at the moment. Perth – KL $99 each way, and KL – London return for $630 – $680 depending on dates. Air AsiaX. It’d be a crime to pass them up, wouldn’t it? Hmmm.

Cheers, PC

Perth 1969.

I was thinking today about all the businesses around here that have gone, vanished, since I moved into the area. I’ve lived at my address in Trigg for nearly 23 years now and I’ve seen a lot of changes. When I think about it, they’re virtually all for the worse.

I needed to buy some light globes today, 60W reflector types or similar, nothing special. In 1986, when I arrived here, I would have had the choice of a walk to a supermarket and a hardware store, just 500m up the street from my place, a supermarket at North Beach 1.5Km away, or a choice of two other supermarkets, a hardware store and two department stores at Karrinyup Shopping Centre 1.6Km away.

Today, I would have had to go to Karrinyup for a choice of one supermarket (Woolies) and one department store (BigW), and that’s it. I suppose I can’t blame the supermarket at North Beach for not being there for me, since they still haven’t re-opened after a fire three months ago, but it set me thinking about what we’ve lost in the last 20 years or so. These are the things we’ve lost:

Three service stations, Caltex Trigg, Ampol North Beach and Mobil Karrinyup;
Two taverns (Karrinyup Tavern and the Flora Terrace hotel);
Two supermarkets – Macs at Karrinyup and Macs/Foodland in Trigg (independently owned);
A doctor’s surgery (North Beach);
Two delicatessens (Trigg and North Beach)
Two video libraries (North Beach and Karrinyup)
One bank (Westpac North Beach);
One newsagent (Trigg);
Two greengrocers (Trigg and Karrinyup);
One bookshop (Karrinyup);
One CD/DVD shop (Karrinyup);
Three hardware shops (Trigg, + two at Karrinyup);
One children’s playground (didn’t meet standards, so removed!)

They’re all gone. All that’s left is Karrinyup Shopping Ctr with one supermarket and one greengrocer and North Beach Plaza with the same, except that the supermarket has been closed for 3 months and we wonder if it will ever reopen.

What have we gained?

An expanded and much improved post office (North Beach, franchised);
An ATM, but it’s a Redicard type which attracts charges;
Two nice, but expensive, beachfront cafes;
An improved walkway along West Coast Drive.

I can’t think of anything else. I’ll be happy to be corrected.

This is very disheartening. There is no hotel or tavern anywhere on the coast between Scarborough and Sorrento Quays, 8Km apart. No full service hardware stores apart from the all-pervasive Bunnings are left except one in Scarborough Beach Road, which I deliberately patronise whenever possible, but it’s a 5Km drive. I have to drive everywhere now.

Until three years ago, there was a small shopping centre 500m up the road with a service station, supermarket, good deli, greengrocer, fish & chip shop, hairdresser, chemist, hardware shop, newsagent, dress shop and St Vinnies. It was bulldozed and turned into a mass of identical townhouses. The fish & chips, chemist and hairdresser are housed in the complex, but that’s it.

This is a clear trend. The Coles/Woolworths duopoly is now dominant except for IGA. Twenty years ago there were at least four other grocery chains; full service petrol stations; full service delis; hotels where you could have a quiet drink and a reasonable meal; local banks; local video libraries…

This is a beachside suburb with a median price of around $1m, but we have to drive elsewhere to get anything. What’s going on? It seems to be a chicken and egg situation – people go elsewhere because there’s nothing here, so no-one can afford to risk setting up here because people shop elsewhere. Is that it? I’m not sure.

Comments, please. PC

Sink, sank, sunk
Who woulda thunk
That the ABC
Would say the bedding stunk?

Watch 4 Corners last night? It was pretty depressing and quite scary.

But what got my goat was the person saying the bedding ‘stunk’. I’ve noticed for a long time that the ABC News finance segment presenter often says “the market sunk today”.

Pleeeease, ABC: the market might sink, or it sank, or it has sunk. I will swim, I swam, I have swum. I might stink, I stank, I have stunk. Well, maybe that’s going a bit far but you get the idea. Future, present, past. I wish they wouldn’t mix these tenses.

I’ve had in mind to email Alan Kohler for some time:

Sink, sank, sunk
Who woulda thunk
That the market sunk
Or are you talking bunk?

Often, I think
The market might sink
That could cause a stink
And dealers go to clink.

Alas, the market sank
Before I reached the bank
But then I think I thank
My stars; it’s all a wank!

PC

Is everyone aware of digital radio? It started up only a few weeks ago and for once, Perth was first DAB off the wank, if you’ll pardon the expression.

In case you don’t know, we’ve had AM (Amplitude Modulation) radio since the early 1920s and it’s that crackly, static prone ‘wireless’ that we all grew up with. The thunderstorm to the north at this moment is putting its lightning flash crackles into my speakers.

Then in 1978 (or thereabouts) we finally got FM (Frequency Modulation) radio, decades after the rest of the civilised world. Did you ever notice how clear and static free the sound from TV was, compared to radio, especially out in the country? That’s because TV sound was always FM. It’s inherently pretty immune to interference and has wider bandwidth, hence it sounds better. We had FM TV sound from the start of TV in 1956, but it took another 20 years before the paternalistic governments of the day thought we were mature enough for FM radio. “No demand”, they said. Yeah, no demand because most people had no idea it was available.

Anyway, that led to stations like 96FM, which if you remember, dominated the Perth music scene in the 80s. It also allowed the ABC to start ABC Classical FM on 97.7MHz, still the only source of serious music in Perth, unless you count the ABC and SBS radio channels on digital TV.

Which leads to the next point: if you like listening to classical music, even FM is not completely noise and distortion free. It’s way better than AM, but is prone to noise (hiss) because of its wider bandwidth (15KHz), and multipath distortion. This is exactly the same as ghosting on TV, a second image displaced from the main one due to reflections from buildings or aircraft or whatever. You need just as good an antenna system for FM radio as you do for TV, and pointed at the transmitter.

Cut to the 1990s and Britain and Europe developed digital TV (DVB, for Digital Video Broadcasting) which is the system we adopted. Britain, meanwhile, also developed DAB, digital radio, which after nearly two decades of delays, we’ve finally got, albeit in a modified form called DAB+.

What are the benefits? Stereo for one. But the main benefit is the same thing that makes digital TV (DVB) so clear and free of ghosting and interference – it’s digital. It’s transmitted as ones and zeros which are coded and interleaved with error correction. Once decoded in the receiver, you have an exact replica of what was transmitted, despite noise, electrical interference, multipath, etc etc. You also have a wider bandwidth, as wide as CDs (20KHz), lower distortion and a signal to noise ratio of 96dB, as for CDs.

But more, you also have the capability, in fact it’s inherent in the design of the system, for multiple channels from the same station’s signal. That means the ABC can broadcast ABC Classical, for instance, plus other music or speech channels on the same signal, just as they can with digital TV. Have you noticed ABC1, ABC2, ABC3, ABC Kids, ABC Jazz all coming from your set top box?

But wait, there’s more! Being a digital signal and with memory being so cheap now, some digital radios will let you record the program in the radio, rewind it, and play it again if you want.

And more! The station can also send text and images along with the music, so that you no longer need wonder what’s playing, you can look at the display on the radio and see, 6IX – Rolling Stones, Route 66, 1963 for example. They’re not doing that yet, but we live in hope.

Which leads to the final point: when we plebs were finally deemed sufficiently mature enough for FM radio in 1978, we were only allowed three stations to start with: ABC-FM, 96FM and what’s now called RTR-FM, the University volunteer station. Established AM stations weren’t allowed to change to FM.

Then, in their wisdom, the government placed ethnic foreign language and talk stations on FM. No doubt they appealed to some, but using the hi-fi band to broadcast talk never made sense to me.

Eventually in the early 1990s, tenders were called for new FM licenses, but existing AM stations had to bid for licenses. That meant only well heeled proprieters could afford the move and my favourite station, 6IX, missed out.

So for the past 15 years or more, we’ve had to put up with noisy, distorted, muffled AM if we wanted to listen to 60s and 70s Greatest Hits. 6IX got a restricted, low power FM license for the northern suburbs (105.7MHz) a few years ago, but the transmitter is not co-sited with the TV stations, so unless you bought a separate antenna and pointed it at the 6IX transmitter, reception has not been good.

Finally, at last, 6IX is now on the digital radio band! Oh frabjous joy, I can get decent reception at last! Unfortunately the ABC isn’t there yet, but they assure us they’ll be on digital on July 1. DAB+ receivers are a little expensive at present ($195 is the cheapest) but they should come down. There’s no car radio version yet, but I live in hope.

Boring technical stuff, sorry. There’s a lot more I could write about all this, about the politics and shenanigans that have gone on, as well as the interesting techo details. If you’d like more, please leave a comment below.

Cheers, PC