Miraz Jordan

Wow, I joined a mailing list and look at this first email: it's clean, clear, uncluttered. Sentences, well spaced. No photos, images, ads, fancy fonts, layout, upsell, 'stuff'.

It's so refreshing.

I joined after viewing I Sucked at Photography, Until I Understood This. by That Icelandic Guy.

We went in to Wellington today for brunch with half a dozen old friends at The Lab.

It has high ceilings and is very noisy, especially when full of folks chatting, and with the noise of the coffee machines.

My scrambled egg and bratwurst was delicious though.

Will Harlow talked (32 minutes in) about a Deload Week — 15 Mistakes That Stop You Gaining Muscle After 50:

You're still turning up. You're still lifting weights, but doing much less than you normally would. You might cut your workout time in half. You might cut your weights in half. You might cut your reps in half.

… you're just going in, going through the motions, then going home. … it keeps muscle on your body for that week that you're not really pushing yourself, but it also gives your body a chance to recover and rebound.

I tried that this morning and it felt good.

This is an interesting 16 minute video — Rebuilding Mum & Dad: See Frailty Reversed Through Strength Training | 5-month Update:

catch up on my parents’ progress five months after starting weight training in their 80s, as they work to rebuild lost muscle and retain their independence.

See my dad grow in confidence as he takes on heavier weights, and watch my mum’s incredible progress with her mobility as she walks longer distances unaided.

So glad I've taken up weight training at 70.

Today I made a tasty Simple Mushroom Barley Soup.

I'd never heard of baby bella mushrooms but established that our supermarket's online store did list them. On the day though there were none so I bought Swiss Mushrooms instead as they looked the same.

A curious use of the words "may" and "some". I would have thought "will" and "all" would be more appropriate.

Via a friend — New Astronaut Camp for Girls Named After Star Trek Actress Nichelle Nichols, Honored as Role Model:

the Nichelle Nichols Space Camp honors someone who pioneered … an idea that color barriers didn’t exist in outer space.

… Nichelle Nichols was the first black woman to star in a primetime American TV show when she took the role of Lieutenant Nyota Uhura on Star Trek. As a bridge officer, it wasn’t just that she had plenty of screen time in the show, but she was one of the highest ranking characters according to the show’s plotline.

So cool!

I have an M1 MacBook Pro with 8 GB RAM and a 1 GB [10-Jul-2025 oops] 1 Terabyte hard drive. I really hope to upgrade to the latest MacBook later this year, if we sell our house and our money frees up.

The machine has been great, but recently has shown up some problems I attribute to having only around 300 GB free space, the low RAM and maybe some unknown factors.

In the 4.5 years I've owned this Mac, Apple Pay has worked approximately twice in spite of numerous attempts. It usually just silently fails. Apple Pay does work on my phone.

Recently I had problems with the Messages app silently quitting. That seems to have stopped now I've scoured my hard drive and increased free space from about 250 GB to just over 300 GB.

Now I suspect 8 GB RAM is insufficient (I always worried about that). Impressed by easily setting my iPhone to display random photos from my Photos Library as Wallpaper I tried to do the same on my Mac.

In short: grrr! After lots of attempts and failures, web searches for a solution, frustration, what I've done finally is to export a folder of 35 photos whose max dimension is the width of my screen, and point the Wallpapers to that folder. At last I have randomly displaying photos from my own collection.

I suspect this is a matter of RAM.

Anyway, first world problems …

I'm now much more careful about storing large files, or multiple photos of the same subject from the same photo session, and have taken to quitting apps that don't strictly need to be open all the time.

The former will be a good habit, I'm sure; the latter is just annoying.

Two excellent word games that are new to me:

1. Waffle:

   Rearrange the letters into the correct words, horizontally and vertically. Drag letters anywhere on the board. The letters will change colour to show whether they are in the correct position.

2. Stackdown:

   clear the stack of tiles by finding all the 5-letter words. There is only one possible word to find before you can move onto the next word.

In a dry spell within several very rainy days I finally did my part for the annual New Zealand Garden Bird Survey.

Scores were low, as usual:

• Blackbird x 2
• Pheasant x 1
• Chaffinch x 1
• Black backed gull x 1
• Magpie x 1
• Waxeye x 1
• Sparrow x 2
• Fantail x 1
• White faced heron x 1
• Starling x 4

The world seems dark and grim. These 5 links are about bringing a little light. 💡

1. 'They're baaaack!': Eco herd of goats return to Toronto for grazing project (2.5 minute video):

   Goat grazers have returned to the city as part of an eco-friendly project to get rid of invasive species at a popular Toronto park. Afua Baah reports.

2. Kids learn dog safety lessons, as roaming attacks continue:

   A pre-school in south Auckland is teaching its tamariki how to be safe around dogs as roaming pets continue to attack and harass families.

   Recent run-ins with dogs have left locals shaken and some children afraid to go to school.

   Youngsters at the Barnados Early Learning Centre in Clendon went hands-on with a group of friendly pups this week to build their confidence and learn animal safety skills. …

   the most important lesson for kids was not to panic if they encountered a dog.

3. Tara iti recovery: Record fledgling numbers, daring journeys offer hope - NZ Herald:

   DoC surveillance of the sites revealed the 2024–25 breeding season saw 19 fledglings successfully take flight, a dramatic improvement from just nine last year and only three the year before.

   There are estimated to be fewer than 45 adult tara iti remaining in New Zealand so each new chick represents a critical step forward for the survival of this fragile species.

4. How a bushcraft programme helped turn a 13-year-old life around:

   his bad behaviour started with getting in trouble at his intermediate school.

   That then progressed into small crimes, from petty stealing to encounters of verbal and physical abuse... trying things that, you know, 12-year-olds shouldn't... running away from home, driving cars long distances... being expelled from school. …

   [after the programme] there was no changing his mind that he wanted to be on the right path and that he could see that there were many ways to be a powerful man and without hurting others and without causing chaos in his wake.

5. Via Fix The News (article may be paywalled).

   Kiwi scientists accidentally cut cow manure emissions by 90%. Researchers discovered that adding polyferric sulfate, a chemical that's widely used in wastewater treatment, [to the waste ponds] cuts methane emissions by up to 90%. The innovation is now being rolled out across 250 farms, and has the potential to ultimately reduce New Zealand’s dairy farm emissions by between 7% and 9%.

I made a very delicious Broccoli, Cheddar & Spinach Frittata for lunch.

I made half the recipe, left out the onions, and added a couple of fresh mushrooms.

Delicious.