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Category Archives: Environment

South Coast Track Tasmania

01-Feb-10

Recently I walked the South Coast Track in Tasmania’s Southwest National Park wilderness with a friend and neighbour, Michael Sainsbury. It is regarded as one of the top bushwalks of the world because of it’s pristine, remote and wildlife rich nature. Having done it I completely agree. In summary the trip is a flight into [...]

Mars? Blade Runner? No it’s a Sydney dust storm

23-Sep-09

A surreal start to the day with a massive dust storm. The picture left is one of my snaps on the way to Hornsby Station in Sydney. There’s been some great photo’s of the event on Flickr.

Getting into nature, gets you into nature.

01-Feb-09

The easiest way to become environmentally sensitive is to get amongst nature. I always come back from a bushwalk feeling more enthusiastic than ever about saving what I have just seen. This weekend we took the kids and did a walk from Cowan down to Jerusalem bay in the Hawkesbury river (Ku-ring-gai Chase). The valley is [...]

Stick Creature

26-Nov-08

We saved this guy from our pool after a storm last week. The kids kept him as a pet for a day and then we released him. We didn’t think we would see him again but we were cleaning up the vege patch last night and he was still right where we released him munching [...]

Simplicity is Sustainables Best Friend

01-Jul-08

Simplicity is Sustainables Best Friend is an article I’ve just done for TheCalmSpace.com. Simplicity is a key area of interest for me on many levels, business and personal, so this article was a fun one to write. Society has somehow decided that simple is bad in many situations. There is a fight to give simplicity [...]

The Calm Space – The Sus in Sustainable

01-May-08

I have started writing for The Calm Space online magazine on the topic of sustainability. My first article is The Sus in Sustainable. I get asked to write for tech, saas blogs but time restricts me. The environment however is a topic which can’t wait as it will impact us all much sooner than we [...]

5 lessor known electricity saving tips

03-Apr-08

Pool filters – cut the hours by half in winter. Keep it clean, filter less. Second fridges -keep the grill dust free and don’t cool to much beer and soft drink. Oil column heaters – these devices are glacier melters. If you have a couple of these think about an alternative. Leaving your computer on [...]

Wasp Eating 37 Spiders

11-Dec-07

On the weekend I was cleaning old clay wasp nests of the eaves of our house when I accidentally scraped one off that hadn’t hatched it’s youngsters yet. Inside it where 37 spiders in total, all alive (twitching) but paralyzed by a parent wasp who had collected them to lay baby’s in. These wasps make [...]

Green Shopping Bags. Why Green?

10-Nov-07

Cool Hunting points out Japans forever-ahead-of-the-curve answer to the reusable shopping bag. Far less likely to lead to social death when you use them to take stuff to BBQ’s. Who will print the first version with Elvis on the side? Even a Sudoku puzzle? Hit Ponoko , spec it and it could be you!

Water Tanks vs Damns

08-Nov-07

Are we being too quick to ‘damn’ the ‘dams’? Is it better for the environment if we humans produce 1,000,000 water tanks and the required pipes, pumps, controls and labour or alternately build a 1,000,000 person supplying dam using the utility approach? I got to thinking about this today whilst looking into water tanks. My [...]

Amazing Aussie Lyrebird

25-Oct-07

There is an amazing Lyre Bird BBC YouTube clip that is a must see! It’s mimicking sirens and chainsaws. Emma, the kids and I went for bushwalk and we weren’t sure but we thought we heard a Lyre Bird mimicking a siren. We couldn’t see the bird though so no confirmed sighting. It reminded me [...]

Evolution Doesn’t Do Design

16-Oct-07

I was contemplating why we as humans design things in order to create the new and the better versions of what we have. It doesn’t seem to fit very well relative to nature which will tend to use chance and filter the good results. Evolution doesn’t do design. So an inquiry into what this means [...]

Saasu Sustainable Business

11-Oct-07

I posted about our plans for Saasu.com’s sustainable business on the Saasu.com blog. So I won’t comment in length here. It’s many hours of Saasu.com research that might be helpful in your own business.

Back Burning

30-Sep-07

They were burning the bush in our valley yesterday to reduce the debris load. I’ve seen the results of this at other locations and it’s amazing how all the feral species of plants get knocked and and the natives all seed and grow. It’s a great way of de-weeding the bush and reducing the fire [...]

Olive Snake Eating A Kangaroo

28-Sep-07

We received an amazing email today. It’s old news now but worth a run because it’s real, not a fake. Nature is amazing, nothing goes to waste even this dead kangaroo is getting eaten by an Olive Python. Here’s the original story on ABC. The picture was taken by a “Jody” who is a bush [...]

Dominant Species

05-Sep-07

Couple of photo’s I took yesterday, one taken looking outward from the Zoo and one looking inward  

Total Lunar Eclipse

28-Aug-07

My 3 kids loved seeing the pink moon (despite dad trying to take some photo’s with them hanging on my back). The photo’s were taken with an Olympus E500 with a 150mm lens. I worked out that using the 2sec delay timer to take the photo stopped camera shake (I had it on a $10 [...]

Commercial environmental incompetence

21-Mar-07

My good friend Grant Young had an interesting post today on his Synapse Chronicles blog about water usage not necessarily being just a mum’s and dad’s issue. It’s more about commercial use with respect to irrigation and other uses. I relate to his frustration at making an effort but at the same time seeing the [...]

Future Makers

21-Mar-07

The WWF Human Habitat project is finished. Check out the bi-product of their efforts at their Future Makers website. In all it was a very interesting project. It really made us think about how we do things around the house and at work beyond what efforts we already make.

WWF Australian Human Habitat Project

08-Feb-07

Wouldn’t it be interesting if someone studied the human habitat the way naturalists do. We’ve signed up to self-monitor ourselves in our habitat for WWF as part of “Australia Human Habitat Project”. We will be using a mini camera and mobile phone camera to send images back to base. Not exactly sure what the process [...]

Zoo View

05-Jan-07

Emma and I were at Taronga Zoo last week on Australia day with the kids. Amazingly it looked like the zoo moved to the harbour with all the monkey business going on the water and in the air. Those animals have got the best view in Sydney and they never paid a cent.

Carbon Trading Triple Backflip with a twist

19-Nov-06

My gut feeling tells me that this backflip has a twist. Usually the answer is easy, it relates to fear and greed. That is, the making of money or the potential loss of it. Who are the players in this game? The Investment banks have clients like hedge funds and superannuation companies who have very [...]

Michael Moore 9-11 Cannes Cleanup

25-May-04

Nice work Michael Moore cleaning up at Cannes with Fahrenheit 9/11. You continue to impress me. www.michaelmoore.com