Miraz Jordan

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.

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.

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.

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today when I had 32 photos to deal with: Create a Contact Sheet of Thumbnails with Automator in Mac OS X. Slightly outdated, but still extremely helpful.

How lucky was I to get this shot of a Greenfinch on a moving flax spear! The flax spear was waving around all over the place, yet on this one shot the bird’s clear and in focus, even with a glint in its eye. All other shots deleted for being utterly blurry.

I know others have felt unwell for a day after their Covid booster. I’m not quite up to par after yesterday’s jab, but it’s mainly just a bit of a headache and needing some extra naps. That could be equally attributable to not having slept at all well for a couple of nights.