Introduction
See below for a list and brief description of my offerings. These are all made available on the understanding that they are probably riddled with errors and ambiguities. They do not constitute any form of advice or recommendation.
Index of available items
These become less and less relevant to engineering as you go down the list.
Dynamic loadings on pedestrian bridges
A pair of presentations on the design & construction of the Alice Springs to Darwin railway line
Understanding and using your brain
A short story
An attempt to “decipher” John Clarke’s “The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse”
Dynamic loadings on pedestrian bridges
The text of a presentation I delivered in 2011. It discusses the dynamic loadings that heavy pedestrian traffic is likely to impose on a pedestrian bridge, and how to design the bridge to accommodate those loadings. The latest version is Rev 2, uploaded in May 2015.
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Alice Springs to Darwin railway line
The text and illustrations of two presentations I delivered to the Australian Railway Historical Society in March 2004. Uploaded in June 2024. (This project was the biggest I worked on in my career, in terms of time and cost and geographical extent.)
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Understanding and using your brain
The text of a talk I gave in 2007, and have updated intermittently since then. It attempts to present a layman-level discussion of various aspects of the behaviour of the human brain. Read it at your peril, and treat its content with total scepticism: firstly, it is by far the most ultracrepidarian thing I have ever produced since I have absolutely no training or experience in the areas it covers; and secondly, even if some of its content was correct once, neuroscience is such a rapidly changing field that many of its theories have half-lives better measured in months than in years. First uploaded in November 2012, most recent minor updates in January 2014.
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A short story
A short story I wrote in 1995. It is entirely factual, except that the names of some people and some places have been changed for precautionary reasons. I wrote it intending it to remain private, but was prevailed upon to enter it into a short story competition soon afterwards. Needless to say, it sank without trace. If you finish it with a question on your lips, the answer is that I did and they did. Uploaded in November 2012.
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An attempt to “decipher” John Clarke’s “The Even More Complete Book of Australian Verse”
John Clarke’s brilliant little book contains “Australianised” parodies of various well-known poems and poets. This downloadable document is a partially successful attempt by some friends and me to identify the poems/poets being parodied. You WILL need a copy of Clarke’s book with you to make sense of it. Latest version is 22, uploaded on 04 Dec 2023.
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