Enjoyed very much: Murder Across the Lines (Warwick & Bell Crime Mysteries Book 2) by Janice Frost. 📚

At a busy crossing in Lincoln city a motorbike skids to a halt. A man jumps and grabs a young girl waiting at the lights. … The girl falls to the ground. She’s been stabbed.

Book cover: Murder Across the Lines.

Our dog Sasha, who’s 15, is pretty much blind. 🐶 She does not approve of the massive rearrangement of the furniture. What’s more I’m sitting in a different spot.

She’s been restless the whole time since we moved things around. 😳

It’s ~6 years since we moved to Waikawa Beach and yesterday we finally achieved the ‘right’ arrangement of furniture in the living area.

I took out all the small furniture to properly vacuum and mop the floors. Then we changed things round. So much better!

Living area emptied of most small items of furniture.
Rearranged lounge with cozy seating area.

Another in an excellent series: Goodbye Haldane Hill (A DC Holly Towns Murder Mystery) by Anne Shillolo. 📚

the body of a young woman in Haldane Hill Park rings alarm bells for DC Holly Towns. But can she even say the words ‘serial killer’ and be taken seriously?

Book cover: Goodbye Haldane Hill.

Sasha was a reluctant participant in this selfie. 🐶

Small black dog on a lap, more or less facing the camera.

Came across this photo of Harriette the Fox Terrier from back in 2004 when she was about 14. Taken at the top of Mt Victoria, Matairangi, in Wellington, Te Upoko o te Ika. 🐶

Harriette the Fox Terrier. Black and white dog in the outdoors.

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.

Black backed gull in flight with wings stretched.
Black backed gull in flight with wings bent.
Black backed gull in flight with wings down.
Black backed gull in flight, side on, with wings high.

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 🌌

Screenshot from the video.

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.

Book cover: At Close Range.

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.

Monarch caterpillars on bare stalks.
Monarch caterpillars crowding on a seed pod.

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.

Map showing Tonga.

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.

75 Strathnaver Drive aerial.

I haven’t spotted any Pukeko at the lakes recently so was glad to see a couple at sunrise today. 🐦

Striking large blue bird with red beak, walking on grass.

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.

Screenshot of tweet.

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. 🌋