The first part of A Fine and Bitter Snow (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 12) by Dana Stabenow seemed to involve a lot of recaps of things we knew from previous books. Then there were some deaths and things ramped up. Mid way I recalled the who and why from when I first read it. I was wrong. 📚
It's cold (7C outside) and grey this morning so for a bit of cheer here's a photo I took of Lake Waimarie — only a few hundred metres from our place — the other morning. I love these colours.
Around Equinox and Solstice I run a casual naked eye star watching event called Starry Time for the local community.
For tonight's session I created a set of Keynote slides for me to refer to during the session. Here they are as a PDF. Probably of limited use to northern hemisphere folks.
One of the great things about taking my neighbour to the ophthalmologist in Palmerston North was that she then shouted me lunch at my favourite eatery, Mr Choi's. Superb chicken teriyaki was consumed. Yum.
My neighbour unexpectedly needed me to drive her to Palmerston North hospital today for an urgent and painful eye problem. Hospitals are so big and complicated and busy.
A very handy tip for those who don't want to be blinded by a page of notes while looking at stars:
put your ipad or iphone into red mode easily …
To enable this: Settings->Accessibility->Display and Text Size->Color filters (enable) [more specifics] … (enable Filter Shortcut)
Now press the home button 3 times fast.
This is a good book. The concepts about crime and treatment and punishment are interesting, but I can't cope with the ghastliness of it all and am stopping reading at about 25%. The Treatment: A mind-bending gripping speculative crime thriller by Sarah Moorhead. 📚
That classic looking over the shoulder pose. Kōtare | Sacred Kingfisher (Through a window.) 🐦
Dana Stabenow's The Singing of the Dead (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 11) was split between a crime on the campaign trail of a state senator and a crime that took place back in 1915.
Eventually the two crimes were shown to be linked, but I'm not sure the book really worked as a whole. 📚
At 5 am I was making a cup of tea and looking at the starry sky when I noticed a weird small column of orange light among neighbouring houses on the hill to the north of us. Maybe a fire in a house? … but it wasn't flickering.
Binoculars revealed … a mere sliver of rising moon.
Biked along the new shared path from Otaki to the cafe at Pekapeka (10 km). All gravel so a bit nervewracking. The cafe’s the best bit. Not in my top 10 of bike paths.
Out at 0520 and the sky was clear, the magpies warbling. Crux Australis was low in the southeast. Then the SkyTrain glided past — beautiful, yet so problematic. You may need to make the video large on screen to see it traverse top right to bottom left. iPhone shots.
Serendipity. 30 minutes to sunset I took a burst of 3 shots of a small plane flying past. But wait, is that a gull or something nearby?
Look at this extreme zoom crop of the middle photo!
I hope this morning's D'oh moment will fill my quota for the next few years:
Oh no! All my photos are blurry!
Checks lens, filter etc.
Aargh! I may need a professional to fix it. My Autofocus is broken!
A few moments later. Hmmm, maybe if I take it off Manual focus…
🤦🏽♀️
Me at the beach: this glare is terrible. I wonder if it's possible to get sunglasses that go over my prescription specs?
After a search: TIL there's a whole category of sunglasses called fitovers
that do just that. Wow.
Note: If I'm taking photos I find sunglasses make everything too hard.
The Spinoff once again demonstrates brilliance! 🤣 Plucky Foodstuffs takes bold stand against children on bikes:
The new route would allow thousands of Wellingtonians to safely cycle to their store, and the retailer simply will not stand for it.
It’s a hard life being a small independent food retailer. Climate change, cost of living, and supply chain failures have wreaked havoc on the industry.
And worst of all: sometimes people ride past your shop on bicycles.
I really enjoyed the first episode of the Korean TV show Extraordinary Attorney Woo. Fortunately I could listen in English, rather than reading subtitles. It was delightful, funny (not at the expense of the lead character) and interesting. 📺
Being different from neurotypical peers, [Woo's] manner of communication is initially seen as odd and awkward, and her strong emotional intelligence remains unrecognized.
I liked Blood and Money (McBride & Tanner Book 1) by Rachel McLean pretty well. It seemed fairly straightforward. Apparently the author has written a couple of other previous series that might have been useful to read first. 📚
It was 2 minutes after sunrise when I arrived on the beach and spotted this end of a rainbow.
