A notice at the South Brisbane railway station this evening warned of delays of "up to 30 minutes" during upcoming trackwork on the Ferny Grove line. Since the trains come half-an-hour apart anyway, why not just keep the delay to 30 minutes? Then nobody would know the difference.

There's news about The Ten Tenors, James Blunt, Sarah McLeod and The Veronicas on the ie blog and a new post on the Away blog.

As somebody once said, nostalgia sure ain't what it used to be. If you still haven't kept up with the news from, say, 1848, you can now find it on Google. The search engine company has launched a new service, the Google News Archive Search, which allows selected news story searches back to the mid-1700s. At the moment, that selection doesn't include stories I wrote in the 1980s, however.

"I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me." That, apparently, is why Captain Kirk actor William Shatner turned down Virgin Galactic boss Richard Branson's offer of a berth on the first passenger space flight, set to take off in 2008. He added: "I do want to go up but I need guarantees I'll definitely come back." The Daily Mail has more here.