Good news about our dishwasher: a 2-hour empty hotwash followed by a 2-hour hotwash with cleaner might have sorted the problems. The 2-hour hotwash after that cleaned the dishes that had been left dirty previously. Phew!
Fascinating 25 minute video about how Aotearoa New Zealand uses genome sequencing data to guide policy and public response to Covid-19 in almost real-time. Short film on genome sequencing | Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor.
On Sunday I used Drafts Pro on my iPad to take notes at a meeting. I’d started the note on my Mac. Somehow what I wrote on the iPad just disappeared in the following day. Now I discovered that Drafts has versions!!! All restored. Hooray for Drafts and versions.
In today’s dumb move: our dishwasher has been failing to clean the dishes. Step one is to buy a cleaner and run it through. I bought the cleaner today but failed to remove the cap before I put it through a 2-hour wash. 🤦🏻♀️ Trying again, but the wax plug no longer exists…
I haven’t had a pan au chocolat for a very long time. This is a great size for a mug of tea too. Yum. Thanks The Gorge in Ōtaki.
Every summer our beach community runs a Sand Sculpture competition, with categories for little kids, older kids, families. While the littlies make simple ‘castles’ some of the group works are masterpieces. Corona Virus; dog and bone; surfing dolphins; Te Waka and Te Ika a Maui.
I often long for the ‘good old days' when I could just enter a username and password to log on to a website.
My gorgeous Sasha. 🐶
The Kiwi accent [is] one of the most variable accents in the world… “Over the last 120 years every single vowel has changed its articulation, which I think is probably unheard of in any other accent.”
Via Major new study into how New Zealand accent changes in childhood.
There is so much to Wow about and to quote in this article: Scooped: The history of ice cream in New Zealand. Just go and read it!
Includes how ice was shipped from the USA to Aotearoa New Zealand in the 1860s (across the equator!!!). Egads! 🍦
Reminder to self — when my new M1 MacBook Pro eventually arrives, install this: Hush: Noiseless Browsing for Safari.
We really enjoyed So My Grandma’s a Lesbian!, another Spanish movie:
When Eva’s grandmother decides to marry her best friend, Celia, Eva worries what her conservative fiancé and his family will think.
Set on the Canary Islands which look intriguing.
Using algorithms, machine learning, and satellite technology for good: A New Method Has Been Enlisted to Help Save Elephants, And It Involves Space:
images from a satellite orbiting 600 km above Earth, could survey upward of 5,000 square km of land in … minutes.
I enjoyed Holy Camp! a bizarre Spanish comedy musical:
two 17-year-old girls spend summer at the camp they have attended since they were little. Both love … music; but God’s apparitions to and calling of María begin to change all their lives.
I adore listening to Spanish!
Good point:
only the impossible problems make their way to the [leader’s desk]. Everything that’s clean and easy? That gets decided down lower in the chain of command. It’s the intractable, no-win situations that get escalated to the leader’s desk.
The Ōtaki Festival of Pots opened today, and I bought a garden ornament of 3 birds on driftwood: a Tūī, a Kereru and a Piwakawaka. Now we need to work out where in the garden to put it.
I’ve never before paid the slightest attention to the inauguration of any US President, but today I watched the event live on the web. I’m so relieved that previous stain on humanity is now gone and no longer has delegated power. May Biden and Harris bring hope and humanity!
I frequently admire our neighbour’s large Tīkouka or cabbage tree. What a fine specimen!
Something to keep in mind — You Are Dying Every Day:
It’s easy to see death as this thing that lies off in the distant future. …We think of dying as an event that happens to us. It’s stationary—whatever date it will happen at—and we’re moving towards it, slowly or quickly, depending on our age and health.
Seneca felt that this was the wrong way to think about it… Instead, he said, death was a process—it was happening to us right now. We are dying every day, he said.
The Shoreline movie theatre in Waikanae is one of those small ones with two-seater couches. Since our last visit they have installed (presumably) Covid screens.
