Books 2025

Pinball Wizards: Jackpots, drains and the cult of the silver ball - Adam Ruben
Sydney's Transport - Gary Wotherspoon
Paddington: A History - Greg Young
Car Wars (How the car won our hearts and conquered our cities) - Graeme Davison
Open Council - Issy Wyner
Snowcrash - Neal Stephenson
Killing Sydney - Elizabeth Farrelly
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Life in Cold Blood - David Attenborough

Articles:
How developers captured the housing debate
Where is Rose Jackson, boarding house tenants ask
Active Transport Projects Must Be Prioritised, But Haylen Kept Back-Pedalling
Speech for Palestine at Sydney Town Hall
Streets for People: The Erskineville Uprising of 1985
No promises, targets or truth: NSW Labor’s betrayal of public housing
Community’s green space win in Ultimo shouldn’t mean trade-offs

Presentations & videos:
Road Wars - an incomplete history of resistance to cars in Sydney
A short history of public housing in inner Sydney
Background to the Erskineville Street Closure Battle of 1985
Erskineville's Road Wars 1985

DJ mixes
Tangerine Dream ft florian - No Man's Land (club remix)
dj florian's brainbeat hardcore '91-'93
Echoes in the Bush of Ghosts
Everybody get down
Everybody get up
We are the resistance

we are the resistance DJ mix

dj florian · we are the resistance

Books 2024

Karl Marx - Francis Wheen
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and other travel sketches - Bashō
In Praise of Shadows - Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
Connections - James Burke
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Housing: The Great Australian Right - Kevin Bell
My Israel Question - Anthony Loewenstein
Paved Paradise (How Parking Explains the World) - Henry Grabar
Life in the Undergrowth - David Attenborough
The Great Housing Hijack - Cameron Murray

Articles:
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/graphic-journey-rojavas-revolution-and-resilience
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/cities-need-people-oriented-development-not-developer-handouts
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/handbook-changing-everything
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/making-right-housing-reality
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/towards-human-centred-cities

Video:
The Future of Transport in a carbon constrained world:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mn5He8l4Dw

The Music of Steve Roach

I've been a fan of Steve Roach from around the time his Dreamtime Return release came out in 1988. My friend Hans Stoeve played a lot of his music on The Quiet Space on 2SER radio in Sydney.

Steve Roach's music was often lumped in with 'New Age' but it was so much better than nearly all the music put into that category. The synth textures he uses are never cloying or syrupy, but have a drier and darker feel that evoke timeless moods of wide landscapes and the night sky.

He started out strongly influenced by the likes of Tangerine Dream but in 1988 he took an extended trip to outback Australia, meeting didgeridoo player David Hudson which resulted in the Dreamtime Return album.

According to Roach, his interest in Australian aboriginal culture was sparked by the Peter Weir film The Last Wave.

Through the early 90's his music became increasingly tribal sounding, inspired by the desert landscapes of his home in Arizona, and incorporating traditional instruments.

Significant collaborators during this period include Kevin Braheny, Robert Rich, Vidna Obmana and Jorge Reyes.

Although Roach was from a completely different and earlier scene to later electronic dance, he found a new audience on that fringe through being picked up by dark ambient / gothic label Projekt in the late 90's.

He has continued to release music on Projekt and on his own label to the present.

I made this playlist covering his best tracks from the start of his career until 2000. Tracks ordered chronologically:

cloud motion
structures from silence
the memory
towards the dream
the continent
the other side
magnificent gallery
specter
desert solitaire
origin
closer
fearless
the grotto of time lost
la luna
touch
glimpse
the face in the fire
your own eyes
begin where i end
flow stone

Books 2023

Transport for Suburbia (Beyond the Automobile Age) - Paul Mees
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
Weight of Evidence (The Newtown Ejectment Case) - Matt Murphy
Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert
Their Blood Got Mixed (Revolutionary Rojava and the War on ISIS) - Janet Biehl
Life of Mammals - David Attenborough
A Century of Film - Derek Malcolm
The News - Alain de Botton

Articles written:
No demolition of public housing
Business vote gerrymander abolished in City of Sydney
NSW government told not to demolish Explorer Street public housing
Victory against unwanted advertising billboards
Nimby Name Calling: A Developer Distraction
The housing crisis needs housing action
'Paying the Land' review
'Maus' and 'Berlin' combined review

Course notes reviewed:
MATH1021 Calculus of One Variable
MATH1023 Multivariable Calculus and Modelling
MATH2061 Linear Mathematics and Vector Calculus
MATH2069 Discrete Mathematics and Graph Theory

"A Century of Films" in twenty years

Twenty years ago, I got this book A Century of Films by film critic Derek Malcolm. In it, Malcolm decided his 100 favourite directors and then chose the best film from each of them. I had already seen maybe 20 of the films in the book and liked those, so I started watching some of the other ones on the list. I kept coming back to it, and eventually I decided I'd make a serious effort to watch all of them. I finally finished the list this month.

Here are some synopses I wrote of a few of them.

Books 2022

Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-tech Driving - Peter Norton
The Last Days of Socrates - Plato
Our Members Be Unlimited - Sam Wallman
Green Bans and Beyond - Jack Mundey
Paying the Land - Joe Sacco
New Treasure Island - Osamu Tezuka
Maus I & II - Art Spiegelman (re-read)
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Sapiens (a brief history of humankind) - Yuval Noah Harari