Mandar Marathe

The “internet” is the system of data connections between different networks of computers; it can support a variety of protocols for sharing data between computers, allowing activities such as email and FTP. The “world wide web” is a system of linked documents (“web pages”) accessed via the internet with a web browser.

I started using the internet on a regular basis in 1994 while at university. We had workstations that used an early web browser called NCSA Mosaic. The number of web pages in existence at that time could be counted in the thousands. I setup my own website on the university’s servers in 1995.

The utility of the world wide web has been growing exponentially over the past 10 years to the point where many people like me can now think of it as a modern-day oracle.

This week I bought a second-hand car. Sure, I found it on the WWW at autotrader.co.uk. That itself is not surprising. It is a 1999 Ford Focus.

When I collected the vehicle, I found that the heating system was not working properly. The fan has 4 speed settings. On 1 and 2 there was no fan action at all. It would only work on 3 and 4.

Rather than taking a day off work and taking the car to a garage and paying hundreds of pounds on labour, I Googled for a solution.

After spending a little while reading through a number of forum posts, I realised that this was a common problem with the Ford Focus. More importantly, it was really easy to fix - this forum post gave detailed instructions including photos.

The next day I went to the local Ford garage and spent £11.95 on a replacement part. It took about 30 minutes to fix the problem. The hardest part was accessing the damaged component, as it was in an awkward corner behind the glovebox.

Now the heating system and fan works perfectly, and I have saved myself a lot of money and hassle.

In the past, people and societies used to consult oracles for answers to their problems. These days we have the WWW which is fulfilling a similar function.

A car park at Melbourne Airport.

Surfers Paradise is a suburb in the Gold Coast area in south-east Queensland.

This is a 3-image HDR taken from the Q1 tower observation deck in the early afternoon on a cloudy winter day.

Manchester Airport at dawn.

I had to hold the camera outside the driver’s window for this shot.

In rural Australia you can see lots of “road trains”. They are very long articulated trucks upto 150m long. They are used to carry all manner of goods. Probably the most unusual (as shown in this video) is the double-decker cattle transporter.

Road trains can be quite fun to overtake on the open outback roads.

Overtaking a road train

A 3-image HDR taken at sunset in outback Queensland, Australia.

Sunset in Emerald, a town in Central Queensland, Australia. Emerald is a service town for a large number of industries in the area, especially coal mining and cotton growing. The train line that runs through the town is an important asset and vital link.

I took this photo while driving back to Brisbane from Roma.

Longreach, Queensland is an interesting place. It is the town where the airline QANTAS was born. In recognition of this, there is a museum called QANTAS Founders Outback Museum at Longreach Airport. As part of the exhibits, they have QANTAS’ very first Boeing 747 aircraft on permanent display - for AUD$19 you can get a guided tour of the aircraft too.

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