Kids who sing like Adults

I find them unnerving and really quite freaky. The Sound of Music was on TV last night and starred Julie Andrews, who was one such musical mutant. She had a five octave range and debuted on the West End at about the age of 12, according to Wikipedia.

As I was browsing YouTube recently, I came across a performance by Bianca Ryan, who is reputed to be 11. It’s very, very odd to be watching someone that young sing and perform like that.
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Effective Public Transport web site – shock!

I’ve been impressed at the web sites available for public transport, overseas. I’d given up on the hope that Melbourne would get some decent websites for its public transport system, and now I’ve come across two of them in a matter of weeks.

Firstly, there’s the Journey Planner that Metlink runs. It’s just like the one I came across in London, and liked a lot. It schedules train, bus, tram and walking between a flexible set of end points. Previously, looking up timetables on their site and figuring out what to catch when – well, it was a total nightmare. I expect I’ll be using this new one a lot.

And I’ve also come across the best map of Melbourne’s trains and trams I’ve ever seen. It has everything, all on one map. In colour. Print it in A3 and give it to everyone.

I have no idea why I’m so excited about public transport web pages. It’s really not the sort of thing I would normally care about. But these are so much better than what I’d expect that I can’t help but tell people.

I hope I get over it soon.