Recently, I have been learning a new language. It takes a long time and is not easy, requires a lot of concentration. Definatly not for the silly billys. Of course it is a hobby.

Yesterday, I found out about this device called the Theramin. It is a musical instrument which you play by waving your hands around the antenna. What this means is that musically, you become the master of your own density. There is all sort of information regarding the invention of it which again is interesting as it was the offspring of some kind of Soviet spy thing years ago. It would probably take around an hour to make one of these, given by the diagrams I have seen widely available online. Cool thing.

So, another day passes, nothing new, just the usual punks roaring round town in cars etc. An interesting thing was playing on my mind about the worldwide weather situation. The last I read on Insurance was that the laws are looking at most of the severe weather as man-made disasters rather than natural occurances or acts of god. This would make sense in some cases, whereby entire districts are being destroyed and expecting payouts and assistance rebuilding the areas, when the simple reality is that there is too much utees running round the places blowing loads of carbon in occupied areas, encouraging persistent rainfall, with the net effect of collateral damadge.

After returning from a brief shopping trip, there was a dead dog on the main road, so I took it off the road and laid it to the side, in case of causing an accident. It had been knocked cold and was stone dead. No gore or anything, just dead, which is not so good. I am unsure as to what type of dog it actually is.

On the subject of the heavy rain, I did a little calculation to try and figure out how much carbon I had personally used over the last 3 or 4 months at work using heavy machinery. The optimistic figure of 27 Tons of carbon was used from spent diesel fumes. This would equate from the calculations found within Wikipedia. Follow this link for more in depth analysis:- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere Somehow, I doubt this is good for the environment, but no one seems to listen until they are flooded out the door...

Paris City Hall in Paris


Trogir in Croatia


Lerwick Harbour, Shetland in Scotland


The Click Mill, Harray, Orkney in Scotland


City of London in London


Montuiri, Mallorca Pool from Hotel Son Manera in Mallorca


"Sa pujada" trail in Spain


Helsinki Park in Helsinki


Trollstigen and Stigfossen Waterfall, Romsdal, Norway in Norway


Burj Al Arab, Dubai, UAE in Dubai


Mount Eden in New Zealand

In no particular order, I decided to embed some of the locations I have seen so far over the years. These are not all of them, as some of the places have not been digitised as yet etc. I think this is better than showing someone a photo with a smiling face of where you have travelled to. Pretty much, these scenes are more or less exact replicas of the places. Very good thing this VR photos, credits to the 360 cities for the images. The quality is stunning.

After a day of heavy heavy heavy rain, decided to snap this one from a vantage point in this town, due to the cyclone warning in this area. As I type this now, the rain is coming in hard again and a hard wind is all around, it's hard to say if it will settle soon...

Here is the Christmas Toady, this is the new way of delivering the presents to the flood zones....

BroadwaynullCnullAlcatraz in san-francisco-bay-area

Basically, I was sitting in my cube looking through the internet 360 cities the other night, when I found an interesting panoramic taken of the famous Alcatraz prison, when I realised that the living conditions were almost superior, or in some cases actually are superior to some of the jobs facilities I've had in past. In general the cleanliness definatly outranks the hygene standards. Of course, I suppose the obvious bad thing is that you can't really leave until the time is spent. It is intersting how clean the place is. Even the prisons are a business nowadays i suppose.

This horrible stick insect was stuck to the wall yesterday evening. I hate stuff like this and when it's wet here you see all sort of ill stuff like this.

After seeing that this area was issued a severe weather warning, as per cyclone, I decided to take a photo from a vantage point. It seems possible that either a cyclone or flood may prevail in Townsville on Christmas day. The main highways are already flooded aka The Bruce Highway in certain parts. It would be hard to exit this area in a proper emergency in my opinion, given basic human nature to panic and fly off in any car, pandemonium would quickly ensue...

No real change today regarding weather. From brief dialogue with a trucker, who informed me that he couldn't get past a local main road known as Ross River Road due to rain. Last week a similar incident occured on a load destined for Mackay, or at least, it was mentioned. Obviously, this problem is ill out of hand worldwide. This isn't looking good.
Most trucks have the sign shown in these images, however given the change in weather circumstances they probably really should be modified to reflect the current driving situation.

I have been giving this a lot of thought. Personally, I think the gas vehicles should be phased out, or sales banned in favour of the EV given the current situation, which should basically just be the law. IE no selling new gas ones. Also the company vehicles should only be EV which would be legally enforcable also. Until something like this takes place, it's pretty pointless investing in houses or stupid crap like this, because the carbon offset is literally going to wash it all away.

Basically, somehow I managed to go for a very short walk, maybe perhaps a few meters at the weekend and saw a nice duck. I'm guessing it was damn bored with all the false promises of redevelopments around this town, it looked like it had itchy feet.

The other night, I was thinking back to the early days, when we threw our TV away and stopped buying the newspapers around year 2000. In fact, we threw several TV's away and gained minor enjoyment from burning our own rubbish material when I noticed this cunning looking moth on the wall, which I decided to snap. The last actual physical newspaper I can recall purchasing was an edition of the Press & Journal, many many moons ago.

Like everywhere else nowadays, the rain never stops. Most of the time I am feeling like a land, based skipper aka landskipper.
It isn't funny now.

After seeing the amazing possibilities of the panoramic photographs I decided to try taking a landscape image. The scene here is basically a digital painting, much as I'd rather draw things oldschool style, usually I am not having the time or drive to do this. This scene was taken with 6 shots or 8, I can't remember, then ran through some basic software filters and slotted into the panoramic viewer. It is not a true 360 spherical image, but cyclindrical, so there. The reason for this, is that I do not have the equipment to hand that makes taking spherical images easy. It can be done, however, you need something silly like 60 images. All the best locations have been done anyways, but I have some good ideas for this type of photographic twistedness.

Speyside Cooperage, Craigellachie, Banffshire, Scotland in Scotland

After spending many nights avoiding the weather here, of course, basically holed up in the cube surfing the internet, I found a great website for photographs like nothing I've seen before. These images twist all over the shop. I've never seen any normal digital photo do this before. The website is 360 Cities, but there are others. Above is a distillery, close to where I was brought up.

My concern of the environment which is not being taken seriously had me thinking of some basic solutions which are clearly not being implemented in the majority of areas.

Obviously, the intense flooding which is happening needs to be curbed via basic means of engineering which the romans worked out centuries ago using common known structures like viaducts, waterwheels and also the archimedes screw (for moving the water uphill.) These basic structures would easily prevent the majority of urbanised areas from being literally washed away. Sometimes the stupidity of people amazes me.

Add also to the fact that the oil drilling technology appears to be advancing, with regards to the fact that using drillpipe probably won't even be needed, because lasers can drill the hole now (but information on companies specialising in this will be limited for now.)

Anyhow back to the basic problem, while the majority of sensible motorists are probably looking to get the electric car or bike at some point, while the silly ones still like the scenery ruining petrol ones. The urban engineering as in civil needs to be looked at again, otherwise we probably are not going to have homes to go to sooner rather than later.

The attached images are the basics I believe that need implemented on a grand scale in or near populised areas around the world.

These simple provisions would enable a lesser extent of preventable damadge in civilised areas.



This snap is of a laser drilled hole, but not of rock. The idea is there though and there is probably a likelyhood that possibly laser drilled oil is likely. It would seem that the advancement in lasers has made this feasible.

After listening to a small selection of the "best" birdsongs, most agree the Common Koel is the top choice in this field. Something I wondered after looking at the graphs through the mediaplayer software is if a lie detector would pick up traces of deception among the birds as it would on normal human voices... It would be very interesting to see in practice.

The image above is credit to graemechapman.com.au who seems to know a lot about the birds on the website mentioned.

A sample of the bird song of the Koel is available at:- http://birdsinbackyards.net/images/audio/eudynamys-scolopacea.mp3

Well, today never saw any drastic change in world events as far as i'm aware, but that may be due to the fact, no longer am I watching TV or have done for probably around 6 years (as in following it.) Highlight of the afternoon was finding a slightly scrached BP petrolcard at the station, which obviously I handed in to the checkout. The mainstream news is too depressing for me, internet, TV, the works, I can't handle it anymore. I did manage to track down a company that specialises in providing good news, however the cost is $20 per edition, so at that price, basically no news is good news. Also, I have taken a liking to listening to birdsongs off the internet now, since most of the music just doesn't cut it for me now, unless its classics of course.

The other night, I paid a relative a visit. Note the tired out look, and exhausted expression. This couldn't be helped due mainly to a variety of things, mostly just tired hoping that things would be vastly different here, but the people have moved around, so basically the same situation in a different location... I was hoping the electric vehicles would be available easily here and the weather good, but this is not really the case. Currently I am learning a foreign language in order to take my mind off this sort of thing. From paying close attention to the global media, especially the weather, I'm very unimpressed and dissapointed in what is happening to the world. Other factors are exaccerbated with regularly checking on the notable death list of Wikipedia. Most of the top people are gone now, it's sad and very exhausting. Maybe I need to get out more.

Recently this area has been experiencing some thunderstorms like the image above clearly shows. It is quite cool to see this, the wind was also kicked up with a fair fast onset of whirling rain at the time. I'd definatly keep an eye out for this type of weather, at least no body got hurt from it, as far as i'm aware and also, it's rather artistic at the same time.

Saw this thing a few days ago and killed it. This is the third one now. I don't know what it is, but looks like it means harm. At first I thought, perhaps a bee, or wasp, or dragonfly, or locust. After checking through the charts, I can't see any trace of what this thing is. Perhaps a new species of insect? It's puzzling me. I'll just keep killing 'em until I find out what they are.

Managed to scrape by again today without falling asleep with the heat. Just for off-topic, can't remember if I posted this but for some reason the petrolheads here is always wanting to show off about cars. I too, was young once and have had a lot of experience in this field of writing vehicles off (in a completely legal manner, of course without any injury or others involved at all.) All of these ones above was involved in either a minor or major incident of some sort causing concern for safety without a doubt. There would have been varying factors such as weather/fatigue involved. The Renault 5 was probably the most scary for me, as I was thrown out of the vehicle into a field facing a stone dyke, in the snow. The seatbelt actually broke. I recall, sitting face first looking up at basically a totally trashed car thinking, thank god that's over. Most of the other ones were pretty bad too, mostly drift offs in snow, or hitting trees in the rain. Some was even others running into mine (usually young lads.) There is more than these photos show, but at the moment I literally can't recall them all. Oh the Volvo one was a beaut, i'll share that story another day... The reason, I discuss this now, is that one of the lads at work, seems to take a lot of interest in this type of thing. I'm pretty much over all this stuff a long time ago. I just want the electric ones now.

These days the tiredness is getting to me... Every day just now i'm dawg tired out all the time. I know the reasons why... It's sad to see the electrical vechicles not being taken seriously by the mainstream in Aus. You spend the entire day listening to guzzly jeeps etc, loud grinders, people barking orders all day. It leaves no room to really enjoy anything properly. Soon as you finish, it's not really over, the cars fly round all day generating noise etc. If you're lucky, you may get home from "work" without being sucked away in a flood or bitten by a snake - that's if a trucker doesn't gore you on the way home from work...