Things have been pretty quiet here recently, and I’m afraid that they are likely to remain so, at least for a little while. I’ve just commenced a PhD at the university of Queensland, so naturally enough, that’s where nearly all of my mental energy is being channelled. And rather than keeping things simple by basing my PhD on this website, I’ve chosen a different direction altogether. I’m looking to explore large-scale text analysis and data visualisation as methods for examining social discourse.

And as if I needed a further distraction, I have started another blog as an outlet for my text analysis and data-viz experiments. It’s called Seen Another Way, and the first post may be of interest to followers of this site. It features some animations that I created with the Queensland Government’s database of groundwater bores. The animations show 144 years of groundwater development history in the space of 72 seconds.

But I have not completely switched off from oncewasacreek.org. On Tuesday 17 October at the Kenmore Library from 6pm, I will be speaking at the Brisbane City Council’s Biodiversity Seminar. The theme for the evening is ‘Creeks: past, present and future’, and there are no prizes for guessing which part of that theme I will be focussing on. There will be three other speakers — Leo Lee, Grant Witheridge and Andrew Wallace — who between them will discuss topics including fish distribution, flooding and creek restoration. It promises to be a very interesting evening.

Full details about the forum are available here. The forum is free, but if you wish to attend you will need to book, as places are limited.

Perhaps I will see some of you there!