← Feed

Posts

• View post

  Just got home from a good 2hr long walk around the Botanic Garden slinging bird lens. In case you're wondering: No, I still haven't seen the celebrity big bird (falcon) The closest I came was when I ran into a mother daughter (?) pair who were also wandering around (and said that the specific area we were in, someone had apparently spotted it about an hour ago, and that it supposedly was usually only around 3m off the ground) What I did manage to see + photograph: Most of the...

• View post

  Just saw a post saying there might be Aurora activity tonight (when it gets darker enough tonight), and that there might have been some last night too! Me: I'd been looking at all those "grey clouds" last night wondering if by some chance we might have had Aurora activity, but didn't bother grabbing my camera to check (even if that would've taken just 2 seconds for do)... Doh! 🤦‍♂️😅

• View post

  Here's my favourite snap of the two fantails from today (The black morph seems to have a tasty snack in is beak, while the other one has a fluffy bum!) Full album of the best ones below https://www.flickr.com/photos/aligorith/albums/72177720335962041 #Birding #NZBirds #Fantails

• View post

  Ugh... not feeling too flash this morning. Kinda woozy / sleepy still 😵‍💫️ Had two weird dreams this morning: 1) Somehow I was in a meeting where someone was trying to get me to sign off on a new wing-mirror sized + shaped display that had an info display built in QML 2) Ended up sitting in a vehicle that was being slowly moved through a weird dimly lit roller-coaster like shaft (it was nearly always either going upwards or turning corners or something), with some heavy duty black rollers (top +...

• View post

  Eek! It's more than a little concerning that there's been a "lab related death" from a "pneumonia type" illness... from Russia this time! 😬 While I don't trust China (especially having seen multiple Chinese science labs with my own eyes), my own dealings with Russian folks (I.e. in short - eventually screwed over badly each time) leave me even less trusting of a disease lab from Russia! (Heck, as much as we need some disease exper...

• View post

  #JukeboxFridayNight theme this week is #Royalty eh? Well then: #1) Lorde's "Royal" comes to mind first #2) Then, there are all those "most British" sounding things, e.g. * William Walton - Crown Imperial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCP9M50rOYw * Doreen Carwithen - Suffolk Suite https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXKJuZ2kaS8

• View post

  Here comes a strong wind blast, and what looks like a murky gray cloud layer!

• View post

  You know, I still can't believe that FIFA's current chief is literally called: "Infantino" Which, as any non-Italian speaker would surmise is how you'd "Italianise" the word: "Infant-like", or more directly, "Infantile" Then again... we did name a government department "Oranga Tamariki" for many years here... which TBH I can't help but think of as a crude hodge-podge slur...

• View post

  Hah... turns out the Spirit of Douglas DC3 was flying around this afternoon again. I thought I had heard something like it when leaving Briscoes this afternoon, but then brushed it off as the SUV rolling past at that moment 😅

• View post

  #JukeboxFridayNight #Waiting Several different songs titled "Waiting" (or variations on waiting) from the same artist. (Honestly, I usually just think of the first one though) --- [1] IU - "Waiting" cover from The Producers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpt0SMtRmWs [2] IU - "Waiting" from Dream High https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EhGA72gmcA [3] IU - "Wait" from "Modern Times" album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1i9ZhJJufiM (This...

• View post

  Had to pop into the office to do some testing today (I usually don't come in on Wednesdays) * 1) The room is boiling hot - the folks in the office today don't usually sit by the windows, so didn't bother putting down the shades, AND have only turned on a single aircon unit. * 2) Ops had another crash (in the time I spent getting in), with a rather exotic presentation (I.e. a "window not responding" popup that is usually only seen on Windows, and *never...

• View post

  Woah! That's the first time I've heard a magpie in our garden! 😱

• View post

  Reposting this from something a friend shared from evil network. Can concur with that assessment! Image: "Unofficial NZ Forecast" - Shows "COLD AF" everywhere... except for those banana farmers up at the very tippy top 😜 (I assume they're all the way up there, and not slightly down from there, right?)

• View post

  Woah.... the office apparently has only 21% humidity today / currently. It had been sitting around 30% all of last week, going as high as 32 and as low as 29. (It used to be up around 40-50% a few months ago) For reference, my room at home had 47% after keeping the heatpump on all night long too, after usually being in the 55-64% range. (Heck, the one in my other house usually shows 63%, but I discovered that the cold has done in that one's battery, so I didn't know how cold...

• View post

  What other brands does the multinational conglomerate owner of Heinz Watties own? Perhaps it's time to slap that corporate behamoth with punitive tariffs and fines on its other non-NZ produced brands it is selling here, in response to its "rationalising" of its production facilities to only include those from outside NZ, while continuing to ship externally produced stuff here 😜

• View post

  On that note, have you taken a good look at the country of origin of stuff you're regularly buying? We've been recently very surprised to find that: * Sunrice (Australia) now import from Thailand + India only IIRC * Practically all cooking oil now comes from Malaysia... But god knows if some of that actually secretly comes from China now! (For record, China had scandals involving "recycled" cooking oil scraped from filthy back alleys... and/or other ones invo...

• View post

  You know, the type (*) where you sign in for the day/week, and straight off the bat have a "not so great" looking defect to investigate from the weekend... Only to then roll straight into investigating defect number 2 (that crops up just when finish analysing number 1) But oh wait... number 3 rolls in mid morning too! (Before you've now finished writing up a ticket for fixing the first one!) Then somehow, several hours have passed by (from the back and forth of eve...

• View post

  Dad just texted to say that this morning (right now actually) marks 40 years since they've been living here in NZ! 🥳 They moved here with literally just a suitcase and very little in savings, so that Dad could take up his job as an academic at the University of Canterbury, where he is still working today! (IIRC, apparently, they were offering a tenured position with citizenship, which made this the favoured option over taking up a similar position in St Louis (?))

• View post

  Had a very productive trip to the Mitre10's garden centre today LOL: * Got a replacement "Little John Bottlebrush" for the one that *DIED* this autumn as a result of the interminable roadworks outside our house making it hard to return home to tend to the garden for a good 2 months (after spending the first month enduring the shit)... Therefore, I'm officially putting this on the tab of debt owed by the blasted roadworks company (on top of all the extra petr...

• View post

  Wow! Someone has finally figured out one dialect of bird language - i.e. the one used by Zebra Finches (i.e. "Honky Honky"... not to be confused with "Big Honk" used by geese and other large waterfowl) [1] A news article mentioning this https://www.freepressjournal.in/education/breaking-the-bird-barrier-scientist-decodes-zebra-finch-language [2] The original paper https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ads8482

• View post

  Well, that was unexpected! After nodding off after an early start this morning, I staggered out to find the oldies were blasting a Yip Lai Yee concert from 2003. The last time I saw her in concert was over 20 years ago: Well it had to be, as Grandma was still alive (i.e. she died 20 years ago this September), and it was the one time that she (of really any HK singer of note) came and gave a concert in the Christchurch Town Hall! When exactly this was I can't remember though 😅 What I do...

• View post

  Oh... so it seems Israel's militant war monger in chief had / has cancer! No wonder he's been going all in on doing all the bad stuff ASAP 🙄 * If he succeeds, he dies one of the greatest leaders of his country * If he fails and tosses the world into chaos, there's a good chance he wouldn't have to care about the consequences as he'd die first Bastard! https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/netanyahu-hid-prostate-cancer-from-public-because-of-iran-war/46SDM4A...

• View post

  Yay! My laptop is finally booting from it's SSD from Linux (instead of the live usb only)! 🥳 This has taken about 3 install attempts: 1) First one I made the mistake of trying to set up a manual GPT setup on what was apparently a legacy BIOS that could only support MBR and MBR only (presumably... or I stuffed it up, and only after wasting *ages* grovelling over the partition sizes in MiB vs MB/GB) 2) Second time, I tried doing a MBR one with multiple partitions again. This time sti...

• View post

  Based on my experiences today, I'd like to offer the following feature requests to Linux install tool partition editor UI devs: 1) If you have to use MiB, just give us an alternative units drop down for MB (defaulting to MB), and do the necessary calculations / conversions under the hood 2) It's high time to add the option to do a "Standard multi-partition install" equivalent of the "Erase Disk (and create single partition install)". This wo...

• View post

  Tried to pop downtown after dinner to check out what it was like tonight with the stadium in action. Some firsthand findings: * 1) If this first weekend's traffic management plans are indicative of the future traffic management for this venue, then: a) Madras St (running right in front of it) is *CLOSED* to traffic 1-2 blocks either side of the thing (i.e. starting St Asaph, and up till the one in front of the Cardboard Cathedral I think (but cannot confirm)) b) All the streets...

• View post

  Headline: "Skin cells remember inflammation for life. Here’s why" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-your-psoriasis-flares-up-in-the-same-spots/ Oh great... it's our old enemy again: Inflammation! 🫩 This does not bode well personally or for Dad, but does somewhat explain why I've had skin issues reoccurring in a few spots - e.g. the "stress patch" on my wrist that is always a reliable indicator of when I need to chill, eczema el...

• View post

  Just saw some nice footage of that restored Electra that flew into West Melton yesterday Is certainly quite a stunning restoration + clearly very well cared for! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwRFJMhLa4Y

• View post

  RE: https://mastodon.nz/@joncounts/116158712574719662 Aliens! I swear it was the aliens! Interfering with our weather again! Aliens!!!