Ever since I returned from my holiday there hasn’t been anything all that exciting to come in my e-mail inbox … until today, when I was invited to be one of the new round of guinea pigs testing Transperth’s SmartRider system.

I had read somewhere that folks in the current test group are getting all of their fares reimbursed, and there’s a tiny clause in the terms and conditions which says that the same thing will happen in this new trial. So I signed up, even though I’m a touch worried about all of the crazy glitches that I’ve heard of (fare gates at Perth station refusing to open, card readers that take like twenty seconds to do a single transaction, random errors in the online check-balance thingy). Actually it seems weird that there are so many problems (and so many delays) with this system when a similar smartcard’s been in use in Hong Kong for a decade now … then again, that system is run by ERG (a Perth company in which I own a few shares) while SmartRider is provided by the British mob who made the old MultiRiders.

Also today, I had a chance to see the Doctor Who Christmas special, the first full episode with David Tennant … and it’s bloomin’ awesome. He wears pyjamas for half the episode — “very Arthur Dent of me!” — and brings down the British PM with six words! Everything he does is with just as much panache (if not more) than the last Doctor. Aside from Battlestar, this is definitely the best sci-fi in production right now.