nic & I went for a walk on the beach at Gonubie, where I made this quick and dirty pano of Gonubie river, as it flows into the sea.

I came across this fascinating web site showcasing gardens built on vertical surfaces. It struck me as showing a desire to cover up the built environment; so turn parts of our concrete and glass environment into something more 'natural'. However, going to such lengths (even though it is relatively low tech, apart from automated watering and feeding systems) says more about our need to control than our love and appreciation of nature, to my mind at any rate.

From: xxx.xxxxx@jcu.edu.au
Subject: URGENT NOTICE: Total campus computer and communications outage required NOW!
Date: 21 September 2007 1:20:46 PM
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@jcu.edu.au

To: The JCU Community

After discussion with Peter Benda we decided that Basecamp was the best option.

I came across this set of sunset piccies on flickr and even though they're somewhat schmaltzy they evoked a real visceral response in me. Some of them might not even be 'sunset' photos - they might just be photoshopped to have sunsettish colours. I think I was surprised - I'm sure my heart-rate went up and there would have been a measurable change in my galvanic skin response - but how do you measure the lump in my throat?

I very much enjoy making panoramas and simple ones are very easy to make. It seems a number of people find them fascinating - it's much more than a typical picture of a view. I'm not at all certain why they are fascinating. Is it because often they're displayed a bit at a time - a sort of revealing? Is it because they put a view of a landscape in a larger context? Is it because you can 'see' a wider angle than you would normally - if you didn't turn your head? Does it mimic turning your head in some way?

In Vanuatu it's common for people to travel home from work by out-rigger canoe. At various places along the coast, in close proximity to the nearby islands, you can see canoes drawn up on a beach during the day whilst their owners are at work, shopping or whatever. Some of the canoes are padlocked to mangrove roots. Quite an amusing sight - but not really. Once again, I'm just experiencing the discord between my view of nature and natural places and someone else's. It's common in the Sinai to see bundles of belongings, usually wrapped in a piece of cloth, left in the fork of an Acacia tree.

I came across this interesting discussion in a forum for a game (Crysis by In-Crysis) to be released in 2007 Q3. Gamers are keen to see effects of weather in games, if this is anything to go by. Read entry #16 and beyond, for example.

On further investigation, apart from the weather, there are a number of interactions with the environment, some of which are shown in this brief video I particluarly liked the difused light in some of the screenshots; it seems that they have an interesting engine.

This was sparked by a conversation with truna - thanks, truna. I'm starting to think about what we mean by 'natural place'. If for a moment I take a dualist, Cartesian position, and say that by 'natural place' I mean that part of the world independent of humans, truna's question would be, "Are there any?" To which she would answer, "No." The whole earth has been tramped upon, even if no-one has visited. Witness the amount of plastics in beach sand and the oceans. There is nowhere where the effects of humans are not felt. An alternative would be to think of nature as a discursive concept.