Tag: caltrain

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The 9pm Caltrain

Caltrain at San Jose Diridon Station: click to embiggen

The sharing economy explained in just two minutes. A Florida meth lab is a threat to dolphins. And the failure of hashtag diplomacy.

This episode of The 9pm Edict heads to the United States, at least in some strange warped sense.

There’s a story of a meth lab in a Florida hotel room, and we encounter both an episode of Hannity on Fox News and a “sharing economy guru” on the BBC.

There’s also mention of Glassholes harassing a New York restaurant, a bread line in San Jose. and a plan to reverse the California Aqueduct.

Continue reading “The 9pm Caltrain”
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Weekly Wrap 206: Two saints and a Caltrain, with wine

Caltrain locomotive 925 Jackie Spieir: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 12 to Sunday 18 May 2014 was spent in San Jose and San Francisco, covering NetSuite’s SuiteWorld conference and more. And as I write this, I’m still in America.

Podcasts

I am very pleased to say that The 9pm Edict has, finally, returned with The 9pm Shire, an episode that includes a visit to Cronulla, shellfish, and a little Joe Hockey.

I am rather less pleased at the phenomenal amount of time it took to produce — at least 27 hours, once travel and the re-recording journey is taken into account, rather than the eight hours a “normal” episode would have taken. That was the cause of the delay. Once the podcast had overflowed its original spot in my schedule, it had to wait until a sufficiently large gap had opened up again. With travel booked, that was always going to be tricky.

In fact, the 11.5 hours I spent in writing and recording the links and post-production on Thursday really should have been spent on writing, or at least reflecting on SuiteWorld. Which is why in this next section…

Articles

… there are none. I did start doing some analysis of Australia’s Budget, because I may have had a piece to write for Crikey, but in the end that didn’t happen. Too many other, bigger Budget issues to be discussed.

Media Appearances

None. Thank the gods.

5at5

Only one this week. But why don’t you subscribe to 5at5, and then I don’t need to keep telling you about it.

Corporate Largesse

  • NetSuite paid for my trip to the US to cover their SuiteWorld conference. That included economy flights from Sydney to San Francisco and return; airport transfers; two nights accommodation at Hotel Vitali; a Sonoma Valley winery tour, with tastings at Cline and Gloria Ferrer wineries and a bottle of wine from each (a Cline 2011 Live Oak Zinfandel and a Gloria Ferrer 2005 Royal Cuvée Brut), pre-dinner drinks and antipasto at Tosca Cafe in North Beach, and dinner at the Americano Restaurant at the Hotel Vitale; coach transport to San Jose; four nights accommodation at the Marriott San Jose; dinner and drinks at ARCADIA by Michael Mina; breakfast and lunch in the press work room throughout the conference; dinner at Thomas Fogarty Winery (although I didn’t go, deciding to have an early night instead); and the conference party at the City National Civic Theatre. NetSuite also gave us all a goodie bag, which contained a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 tablet (Wi-Fi 8GB model); toiletries by Burt’s Bees; gourmet popcorn from Garret Popcorn; a chocolate sampler from TCHO; and a NetSuite branded hoodie from Alternative Earth, t-shirt and spiral-bound notebook. From the trade show floor: Jitterbit-branded earbuds. I could have taken advantage of much more alcohol and much more stuff from the other vendors, but I am not a bowerbird.

The Week Ahead

As I write this, it’s still Saturday in the US, and I’m spending the rest of the weekend here in San Francisco — wandering around and, in between drinks and occasional food, pondering all manner of things about the world and my life. I believe that’s called having a weekend. But that said, I’ll also be recording some bits and pieces for The 9pm Edict.

I fly out of San Francisco on Sunday night, which means I arrive back in Sydney early on Tuesday morning. I’ll be spending Tuesday and Wednesday in Sydney, taking care of various meetings, interviews and errands, before returning to Wentworth Falls on Wednesday night.

The rest of the week, including the weekend, is unplanned. Please feel free to make suggestions.

[Photo: Caltrain locomotive 925 Jackie Spieir , photographed at San Jose Diridon Station on Friday 16 May 2014, just before it was to power the 1310 to San Francisco..]

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Announcing the Return of “The 9pm Edict”

Screenshots from The 9 O'Clock Resurrection progress videos: click for YouTube playlistMy crowdfunding project, The 9 O’Clock Resurrection, has been successful. We have resurrected the finest goat-oriented political and social commentary podcast in the galaxy, The 9pm Edict. Haha. What have we done?

What we’ve done is fund two episodes for May.

First up, “The 9pm Shire”, by which I mean Sutherland Shire in Sydney’s southern suburbs. Our Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Scott Morrison, said last month:

“I get so much encouragement when I walk through Cronulla mall, go down the beach, or up to Miranda Fair… On Australia Day we were at the fireworks at Cronulla and I was walking through the crowd and people were coming up to me to say ‘g’day’ and encourage me and congratulate me on what we had done so far, and basically saying ‘keep giving it to ’em and don’t back down’.”

He said residents weren’t against immigration or asylum-seekers but wanted a process that was done “the right way”.

That episode is being recorded this Saturday 3 May, and should be posted on Sunday 4 May.

And because I’m in San Francisco and San Jose later this month, the following episode will be “The 9pm Caltrain” — the Caltrain being the train that runs through that part of the world. That episode should be posted on Tuesday 20 May.

I’ve recorded an announcement, which you can listen to below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe automatically in iTunes, or on SoundCloud.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:02 — 5.1MB)

If you’d like to comment on this (non-)episode — or suggest people, places or things that I should check out — please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

You can also check out the progress videos I made on the YouTube playlist.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission.]