Abut 700 Km away Ex-Cyclone Tam is wreaking havoc on the north of the North Island (where we'll be living before long):
Meanwhile at Waikawa Beach it's overcast and so calm there's only one wave breaking.
My video for the Pacific Wave Appreciation Society is disappointingly blurry. 🌊
In the last 65 days rainfall added about 8,000 litres to our water tank. That covers about 30 days of use.
That's why for the first time ever the water tanker returned today, within just a couple of months, to add another 12,000 litres. 💦
At least we won't run out over Easter.
I believe tomorrow the pre-wire of our new house will take place. Meanwhile, here's our front door from the inside. Photo by the builder. 🏡
I almost exclusively use Safari on my Mac and for years have watched TV shows via Safari. Since the latest Mac OS update though (to Sequoia 15.4) I can't stream any videos at all. I can watch YouTube just fine, but nothing from TVNZ, Acorn, Netflix or others.
All kinds of troubleshooting has failed.
I feared A Case for the Winemaker (Ainsley McGregor Book 1) by Candace Havens would fall into the dumb cops / smart amateur groove, but luckily it avoided that trap. 📚
Ainsley is surprised by how well things are going–right up until the moment her Great Dane finds a dead body. With her friend accused of the murder, it’s up to Ainsley to find the real killer.
I quite enjoyed it.
Luckily our Netflix sub didn't cancel when it was supposed to so we got to watch the excellent show North of the North 📺 :
A young Inuk mother tries to reinvent herself after a spontaneous and extremely public exit from her marriage with the town's golden boy in a tiny, tight-knit Arctic town.
Fun, funny and delightful. I so hope there will be a second series.
The other day I cooked The Best Chicken Soup You'll Ever Eat | Ambitious Kitchen and it was delicious.
Somehow the celery fell off the shopping list and I suspect I used less fresh ginger than suggested (it's so hard to grate). This was also the first time I'd heard of or used Pearl Couscous.
Yummy!
D.B. Borton's Two Points for Murder (The Cat Caliban Mysteries Book 2) is a fun lightweight book. 📚
No task is too small for a detective-in-training, so Cat takes on the routine task of finding the lost kitten of a heartbroken boy. But the case takes a surprising turn when she discovers a mysterious notebook.
The new case centres on a basketball team, so there were a few pages of detailed descriptions of games where I understood not a single word. 🤣
Wow, something I'd never thought of, but insurance makes sense — Add Protection from Scammers with Cybercrime Insurance - TidBITS:
We all hope we are clever enough to recognize malicious interactions, but criminals are becoming ever better at exploiting our worst fears, triggering our panic responses, and reeling us in. …
If it can happen to a security expert like Troy Hunt, it can happen to anyone.
In the last few days our new house gained windows and doors. I've processed the photo from the builder to bring out the red of the new front door. 🏡
Turns out my flu and Covid jabs are a bit harder to get over than I expected. I need to remember that as we age it takes just that bit longer to recover from anything. Today my neck's really stiff — more so than yesterday.
Taking things easy …
This was a lightweight but enjoyable read, that was free when I 'bought' it. A Mid-Summer Murder (Shop 'Round the World Book 2) by Geri Krotow. 📚
Only Angel Warren, a retired Navy Pilot and owner of Shop ‘Round the World, can turn a summer day at the river into a murder investigation. But when her brother Bryce’s unicorn float snags on a corpse’s hand, suddenly Angel and Bryce are suspects.
Two days ago I had my flu and Covid jabs. I expected I'd feel a bit greebly for a day or two, and that was indeed the case. Today I feel pretty good, but my neck's really sore. Makes my morning neck stretches pretty uncomfortable, but it should ease by tomorrow I think.
NASA to launch rugby stadium-sized balloons from Wānaka Airport | RNZ News:
Two super pressure balloons, each the size of a rugby stadium, will put NASA's technology to the test …
The heavy-lift balloons would travel the South Hemisphere's mid-latitudes for 100 days or more.
The first would … take measurements more than 100 kilometres above the Earth's surface [to] help scientists predict changes in the ionosphere, which affected communication and navigation systems, NASA said.
The second flight would support several scientific missions, including measuring light and sound waves in the Earth's atmosphere.
The balloons, with a volume of 532,000 cubic metres, would float at an altitude of about 33km, well above the altitude of a commercial plane.
Abandoned: The Complete Detective Bailey Thrillers by Kate Watterson. 📚
When it comes to solving crimes, Detective Chris Bailey plays by his own rules.
You'd think the first book would be about the detective solving crimes, but it's mostly a tedious exploration of the romantic relationships between 3 characters who are pretty much incidental to the crime.
From about half way through Book One I skipped to the end. I'm unlikely to read the other 3 books.
Not exactly "news", but something everyone should know about. This will be going on in every single country in the world (that even allows women in government). Research finds rape threats against female MPs common | RNZ News:
A new research paper has found misogyny and racism are pervasive in the harassment of female politicians, their staff and their families. …
University of Otago researchers interviewed 11 MPs across the political divide in 2023, who reported being assaulted with weapons, threatened with rape and subjected to death threats.
One MP said she received "deeply, deeply vile" abuse, including a threat to cut her throat
Vaccination status: Flu and Covid shots received
Covid JN.1 variant:
The Comirnaty (JN.1) vaccine targets the JN.1 variant of COVID-19 and is expected to provide better protection against currently circulating strains of the virus.
Flu 2025 egg-based vaccine strains (PDF) (Influvac Tetra, Fluad Quad, Fluquadri, Afluria Quad), Flucelvax Quad:
- A/Victoria/4897/2022 (H1N1) pdm09-like virus
- A/Croatia/10136RV/2023 (H3N2)-like virus
- B/Austria/1359417/2021 -like virus
- B/Phuket/3073/2013 -like virus
Well, we just had a torrential downpour: 10 mm in 30 minutes, with a bit of thunder and a blip of a power cut. Someone nearby lost a shed roof and an empty 25,000 litre water tank to a mini tornado. 💦
I'm going out soon to get my flu and Covid jabs. I hope there isn't another surge of wild weather.
LOL — Mystery of the missing minutes: Why are TV shows shorter in New Zealand? | The Spinoff:
White Lotus S3E01 is one hour and one minute long on HBO Max. Here on Neon, it’s just 58 minutes. Severance also appears slightly severed: S2E01 is 50 minutes in the US, but a positively fleeting 48 minutes on AppleTV+ in Aotearoa.
… "The duration difference is due to the differing frame rates between the US and the rest of the world,” they wrote. “It’s an accepted industry practice to slightly speed up playback to match local standards, which can result in shorter runtimes without losing any content."
… HBO shows like The White Lotus, Succession and Game of Thrones are typically mastered at 23.98 frames per second – or fps – whereas the standard in New Zealand is 25 frames per second.
Another good read in the series by Kate Wells: A Body by the Henhouse (The Malvern Mysteries Book 3). 📚
When a hen party arrives for a weekend away, [farmer and glamping site owner Jude Gray] does her best to cater for their celebrations. … When one of the hens goes missing, it becomes clear there are more sinister forces at play, and someone is targeting her farm.
