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15-16 November 2008
Out of LA and down the San Diego Freeway – a steel and rubber exodus from one level of Hell to the next. Cocooned in the vinyl luxury of our rented Jeep Patriot we track through Southern California to the Mexican border
Click for more images of Southern California
Tijuana clings to the razorwire separating it from its big brother like a determined parasite on a festering sore. Prescription drugs, cheap dentistry, and sexually transmitted diseases – they’re all available here, as the city mirrors the US in a grotesque recursive feedback loop. There IS a real Mexico, I’m sure, but the place is too dependent on its neighbour that the Mexican flag flying high as you cross the border has a certain defiant irony. An afternoon is enough.
San Diego provides a comfortable counterpoint, but even here the stark beauty of the area is undermined by the Navy influences. Frigates scour the bay along with 19th century sailing ships. Point Loma has a wonderful view of the city and it’s pinnacle is a monument dedicated to the missionary Cabrillo. At the same time, the drive is arrayed with the clinically uniform gravestones of dead service people who have fought tragically for putative causes.
Another day and another drive through the freeway desert to Barstow, a town that exists as a metropolitan in-between. Missing the turn-off and finding Calico, a mining ghost town turned tourist site, at sunset was a highlight. Tired movie extras in Victorian garb paraded the wooden parapets of the ramshackle buildings for a non-existent audience. No-one was at the gate to the town and we got to see the desert sun decline over the burnt Californian earth, casting languorous shadows of a distant pioneer memory.
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13-15 November 2008
Finally kicking some life back into this sagging carcass of a blog with some photos of Los Angeles. This is a trip I have always avoided in preference of the picturesque parts of the US such as Hawaii and Colorado. LA didn’t disappoint. While Venice offered some glimpse of a funky counterculture beating [...]
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2 July 2008
The following article appeared in Wednesday’s edition of The West Australian and includes some comments I make about the value of WiiFit and pictures of the kids playing the game.
Download the full article [pdf]
Let’s Gamercise
Technology can help kick-start fitness, but only if you don’t cheat, writes Alison Batcheler (picture: Rob Duncan)
Electronic games have [...]
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2-5 December 2007
Singapore is a strange city. It is friendly and welcoming, at the same time there is a tone of polite officiousness that seems to permeate the culture. The city is garishly modern and clean by South East Asian standards, to the point of claustrophobic sterility. Places like Clarke Quay on the Singapore river [...]
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25-28 November 2007
Create World is a different type of conference. This difference is marked by the fact that it is supported by the Apple University Consortium (funded by Apple through educational rebates) and perhaps more importantly, it’s not an excessively academic conference. Instead it’s an exploration of what creativity means within the academic, professional and research [...]
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6 October - 3 November 2007
The Serious Games Institute is a brand new facility, based in Coventry University’s Technology Park. It is an inititiative that has broad goals. It is an incubator for the serious games industry, at the same time a centre for appplied research into social impact games. It is emblematic of how [...]
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6 October - 3 November 2007
This last month has been spent with Coventry University, based at their Centre for Excellence in Product and Automotive Design as well as the Serious Games Institute.
Many thanks to Jim Hensman who did much to organise the visit as well as Karen Bull from CEPAD who looked after me so [...]
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Saturday 3 November 2007
Coventry’s new cathedral sits comfortably among the concrete formalism of the new city. It’s not that assuming from the outside, though its contrast to the adjoining old ruins hints at a deeper aesthetic underpinning its design. It has been said that moving from the old to the new cathedral is like from [...]