Category: Uncategorized

The Bank Beside Old Cleveland @ Carindale …

Is the steep rocky rise at the south end of Cadogen Park, a sports field surrounded by a narrow strip of vegetation.

Northfacing, the bank might as well be known as a commercial bank for its richness in biodiversity.

I suspect it was planted out purposely at one time, as the presence of human-spaced tuckaroo, acacia, and other native trees illustrates.

Just as many fast growing weedy non-natives have filled the spaces where originally, I suspect, slow-growing natives struggled to make a living.

The section above shows about a third of the total length. The east-bound arm of Bedivere Road encloses the western end of the bank, while at the eastern end—where I came in—a foot/bike path runs past.

In the foreground of the photo the newly mown cricket ground where two species of birds, two swallows and a willie wagtail, were busy picking up stunned insects. Though I don’t have good photos of either of them, or lol, shots I can post on the FB Crap Bird Photography group, I’v put both birds on my ‘bird species sighted’ list.

Most of the first third of the bank is influenced by this very large … still working out what it is … used to be called Angophra … a species that appears weedy in Brisbane … though this one may have been planted purposely.

This tree is on its way out. Almost every joint in the larger branches has a bunch of mistletoe hanging from it in various stages of life or death.

Mistletoe, also an unknown species

Mistletoe, the brown leaves are new growth, the grey green mature. The shape of its leaves resemble the generic Eucalyptus leaf-shape, so I wonder whether the very comfort of this mistletoe on this tree means it’s finding this … easier to eat?

Above, some of the many branches of the Angophra/Eucalypt with a bunch of its leaves in the left foreground. At my eye height all leaves were infected with black mould with every do often a sprig of tiny red new tree growth trying to push through.

This is not a tree you would happily sit under for its shade while watching the cricket, and, mindful of suddenly falling branches, I decided not to take a short cut back to the path by walking under it, either.

An Early Spring?

Saw a few small trees flowering … A little surprising since we haven’t even had the shortest day of the year.

Cupaniopsis sp aka Tuckeroo Tree

The flowers above have already been fertilized, seeds are starting to develop.

Acacia sp

I don’t know if it’s the same species as the one following, foliage on second one seemed greener.

Acacia sp

This vine too is flowering. The tree it’s growing up is pretty well dead, just being held up be the vine, I think.

Smilax sp

All these trees within a five hundred meters circle (1km diameter) surrounding the place where I live.

Birdwatching: Kookaburras

This morning opened the curtains to see two kookaburras on the lightpole out front of my unit.

Bit of a crummy photo, it having to have been cropped severely. I was inside, behind glass, the birds were probably about seven metres (23ft) distant, and the camera just is not interested in middle distance detail.

The kookies don’t look like they’re watching for insects in the grass at the foot of the podium, but they are canny hunters.

The lawns at Carinya are being mown, and grasshoppers will jump up to get away from the blades.

There goes one of the birds.

He glides a long slow flight to the whirring insect, snaps it up with his beak and turning his aileron-feathers slightly, changes course for a perch on a fence down there.

Gulps down the prey.

Reading ‘Weaponized’

Reading Weaponized by Neal asher (2023) was a marathon.

Section of the Front Cover

There are a couple of Asher’s novels I’ve enjoyed, The Skinner and The Voyage of the Sable Keech, for example, the first two instalments of the Spatterjay trilogy, published in the early 2000s.

I found those inventive and engrossing. I still think with fondness about the living ship. The Polity novels that intervene between those and Weaponized are set in a human universe ruled by AIs.

In Weaponized a bunch of human characters from the polity intend to colonize an outer planet. They’re all in their second or third century and are bored. They intend to go back to basics somewhere new.

Ursula Ossect Treloon is their leader. The plot is a relentless competition for superiority between the human would-be settlers, and the native wildlife.

Neither of them wins when both appear to be taken over by superior Jain technology, from yet another universe. The end is is circular, a mystery, when a fragment of Ursula is saved by the Polity mole.

Most of the story is the ‘science’ describing the adaptations that need to be made to continue the struggle to survive an ever evolving enemy.

And this is an evolution happening at a daily at most week’s pace. The actual plot was told with a series of one liners buried in the almost baroquely detailed descriptions of the technology. Non-stop action as the back cover promises.

By about a third of the way through, I was wishing for a bit of ordinary narrative, describing the settlers ordinary time. But if anything proceedings notched up, there was never any relief.

User-Friendly

Part Two of Blog Usability

Having a good night’s sleep often helps me to ‘think’ things through, with that kind of thinking being done in the unconscious. So while sitting down for breakfast this morning and checking the weather and my mail, I also checked how my latest blog post appears to people reading it on the their mobiles/cell phones or tablets.

First there are the four lines below: Title, Author, Categories and Date & Reading Time

Then the BLOG CONTENT, arguably the meat of the meal. My stats page tells me 8/10ths of people read just the email and they have the opportunity to Comment and or Like. Eight tenths of the time I do the same. Most mornings I have time to read things, but not comment.

People who click through and read on the Reader interestingly get the Tags in a header at the top. Nobody else does. Clicking through and reading on the Blog gets you the following list of additional bits and pieces.

Share this and Likes, another important bit. Then, Related posts. Then Tags, I was surprised to see. Then, the Published by … and About Me paragraph, followed by Leave a Comment. Finally, one after the other, the three new widgets. First the Search Box, followed by the mashed up Categories list and, finally, Recent Posts.

A lot of superfluous stuff in that list that I doubt anyone will read. One thing I dislike about the internet in the last 3 or 5 years … the amount of bloat and padding a reader needs to negotiate their way through!

It’s as if since no one is accountable for the amount of web-space being used … like we have vast distances of free geography to fill up and never mind the amount of electricity needed for cooling towers … and 3000 words looks far more impressive then 1500 words … repetition and padding are the new normal.

I grew up when paper newspapers and magazines were the go, when every inch of print had to be paid for, and flab, repetition and padding were cut ruthlessly. It seems to me we need to renew that contract. To save on cooling towers and save readers.

So. This is what’s going to happen. Starting at the end of my list, Recent posts is gone, as they are more or less taken care of in the Related Posts item. The list of Categories is gone, as the categories pertaining to that post are covered in the third line of the title block, and they are more useful to me in their nested format in settings.

While the Search Box is useful, I don’t know how useful it’ll be where it is. Wait and see is the go with that item. Then there’s Leave a Comment. I’m leaving that where it is.

Then, Published by … and About Me is starting to look rather jaded. It’s up for a make-over. Tags are said to be important but I often suspect the post’s title and categories are doing the grunt work. I might be able streamline Tags … they are a work in progress. Related Posts, Share This and Likes are all to stay.