The other day I took photos of a Karoro, Southern black-backed gull as it flew by. Hand held. Pretty pleased with the results. 🐦
Black-backed gulls are often seen on the water’s edge where they scavenge corpses and fish frames washed up on the tide.
Dr Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford does excellent monthly night sky updates. She includes how the sky will look for us southern hemispherics too! Is Pluto a planet again?! Plus JWST updates | Night Sky News January 2022 🌌
Excellent article: Love letter to the electric bike 🚴🏼♀️:
New Zealand imports of new e-bikes … are on track to outstrip imports of new cars. For every electric car on our roads, there are at least 5 electric two-wheelers. The EV revolution is happening under our noses.
This is a really interesting 30 minute video about concussion — Why I stopped watching football:
I discovered so many awful truths about football (and contact sports in general) and their relationship with concussions, dementia, and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
This is a learning site I want to explore more: BBC Bitesize. For example, my Physics education was over 50 years ago and I suspect things have changed. I’ll review: Physics to brush up. I landed on English after searching for a particular punctuation rule in fiction writing.
I really enjoyed At Close Range (Detective Sarah Burke Book 2) by Elizabeth Gunn. 📚
… a double homicide in a rich neighborhood. While the property developer husband is away on business, his party-loving wife winds up dead in their king-size bed along with her latest boy-toy.
Eating oneself out of house and home… The multitudinous Monarch caterpillars have stripped every leaf from the Swan Plants and now, in desperation, are working on the seedpods.
Tonga may not get comms back any time soon: Tonga’s undersea cable could take weeks to repair:
The cable carries … internet and phone communications in and out of Tonga.
It was damaged after the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcanic eruption … could cost … $US250,000+ to repair
Tonga is tiny islands in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean. It’s no surprise that a huge volcanic eruption on the doorstep of the capital cut off communications with the world. Internet is via a now-broken undersea cable. Satellite comms are impossible through the ash cloud.
Many thanks to Batch Resize Images Quickly in the OS X Terminal for giving me a quick and perfectly adequate way to make thumbnails for a web page from 32 photos:
sips -Z 256 *.jpg
Destructive! Work on copies.
Waikawa Beach For Sale: 75 Strathnaver Drive; Offers over $849,000; 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 95m2 floor area, 8794m2 land area, 2 garages.
I haven’t spotted any Pukeko at the lakes recently so was glad to see a couple at sunrise today. 🐦
Fiji to Tonga is 800 Km! Turn up the volume and watch this video clip of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano eruption as heard in Fiji. Must have been deafening in Tonga.
It seems the Hunga eruption in Tonga was a one-in–1000-year event:
Radiocarbon dating suggested one major eruption of this scale occurred about AD1100 and another in AD200
And we heard it here at Waikawa Beach, 2,500 Km away. 🌋
I very much enjoyed the Swedish book Still Waters (Sandhamn Murders Book 1) by Viveca Sten (Author), Marlaine Delargy (Translator) 📚
On a hot July morning on Sweden’s idyllic vacation island of Sandhamn, a man takes his dog for a walk and makes a gruesome discovery
Watch these videos at Stunning satellite animations of extremely powerful volcanic eruption in Tonga. That’s amazing stuff. Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano.
Lots of aroha for our neighbours and friends in Tonga!
What’s that repeated thumping / booming we asked one another as we ate dinner outside. It sounded like maybe the army shelling nearby. The answer apparently is: shockwaves from the enormous volcanic eruption in Tonga about 2,500 Km away! Astonishing! 🌋
Kee-yah!
On our Swan Plants some Monarch caterpillars are thriving. Meanwhile, the gory scene in the second photo shows a Paper Wasp devouring a young caterpillar.
This proved very handy today when I had 32 photos to deal with: Create a Contact Sheet of Thumbnails with Automator in Mac OS X. Slightly outdated, but still extremely helpful.