A raingarden harvest

In today’s update of my raingarden diary*, I’m reaping the harvest promised by this paper: Tom, M., Richards, P., McCarthy, D.T., Fletcher, T., Farrell, C., Williams, N. & Milenkovic, K. (2013) Turning (storm)water into food; the benefits and risks of vegetable raingardens (Evaluation des performances et des risques d’un jardin de pluie potager).  Novatech (eds…

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The treeflap macro

I occasionally get an email seeking an old excel macro that I wrote (back when I knew a lot less about such things, and frankly, I still don’t know very much) called treeflap.xls. It is referenced in this paper: Rees, G. N., Baldwin, D. S., Watson, G. O., Perryman, S.,…

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The economics of water supply in Melbourne

This article by Kenneth Davidson cites some disturbing numbers on the extent to which Melbourne Water’s budget has become dominated by paying off of the desalination plant sitting idle 100 km south-east of Melbourne.  The arguments that Davidson makes concerning Melbourne’s plentiful supply of water running off the metropolitan area are…

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Raingarden diary

Work and home life are blending as I attempt to practice what I preach in our newly renovated home.  The tank and raingarden system in our new house is teaching me a bunch of new lessons, which I thought are probably worth recording. So, I’ve begun a separate diary about it.

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A big step forward – escape from Optus

Happy days!  We are finally moving out of our rental house, meaning that we can at last part ways with Optus as an internet service provider.* So, with a new IP address, urbanstreams.net can finally drag itself out of a dark, unvisited corner of the internet, with a proper URL….

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Compromising normal human activities

An insightful perspective from Jonathon Green on the ABC website today on the ongoing dismal state of Australian politics.  He concludes: “As the IPCC says, climate change, unchecked, will destroy the economy we recognise. Isn’t that what we can read beneath its anodyne, phlegmatic phrasing: “compromising normal human activities”? The…

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Attention: Sen. Brandis

Another pertinent contribution from xkcd to the dismal state of Australian politics.  As Mr Monroe notes in his footnote for this cartoon “…someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you’re saying that the most compelling thing you can say for…

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