This is pleasing. Not only do we sometimes get 4 or 6 hours of free electricity with Genesis, but we get an annual refund too.
Electra is pleased to advise that your Electricity Sales Discount of $170.93 … will be credited to your next electricity account.
That’s a free month!
I’ve only just downloaded, but am keen to read Take Control of the Mac Command Line with Terminal. If you’ve never used the command line to do stuff on your Mac, take a look. It’s really cool what you can do, and a fun thing to learn about.
Downloaded Tot notes app to try it out. The website doesn’t want to work in Safari on my Mac so I had to use Firefox. The Help file gave me eyestrain: small pale grey text on white. In a Note the Format menu allows larger text, thank goodness! Tiny text is a bane of my life now!
These two have been together (and with us) for a little over 13 years now. Sasha and Oshi. 🐶
For some this is their weekend escape. For me it’s pretty much daily enjoyment. Beach, sea, Kāpiti Island.
This little cutie stunned herself flying into our window. I believe she’s a juvenile European Goldfinch. Now she’s sitting on the grass, recovering.
This is amazing! Russian Multiplication: A Different Way to Multiply. Video, 7 minutes.
In Russian multiplication you can multiply any two numbers together through simple addition and doubling & halving numbers.
This speedbump doesn’t seem much of a hurdle, but I have to bike over / round 3 of them each way to the village and back, and another to leave the village. They are a huge pain for a cyclist, and the grass either side has loose rutted sand and shingle. Ugh.
Messing about with my camera at the beach at sunrise with ground mist.
Yesterday, while savouring my bike ride, I noticed this lovely tree by the footbridge, rustling in the breeze. Perhaps someone who knows their trees can tell me what it is.
Katherine Johnson, key black female mathematician for NASA’s Apollo flights died 24 February 2020 at 101 years. RIP.
calculated precise trajectories that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong’s history-making moonwalk, let it return to Earth.
I wasn’t seeing double today. The single skinny ginger cat that’s been hanging around is now two skinny gingers. Probably strays, or feral, one had caught something today — perhaps a small rabbit. It’s OK if they catch pests, but I’m worried about the birds.
Hmmm, that moment when you think your partner’s at work but Find her in Wellington Harbour on the Interislander Ferry route. Something I should know? 🤣
I was experimenting with camera settings. In the foreground are a juvenile and an adult black-backed gull. In the distance is a dredge keeping station just outside (I hope) the Kāpiti Marine Reserve.
Not my photo: Nicolas Janberg. When I lived in Dūsseldorf it was a real spectacle in April 1976 to see the new Oberkassel Bridge move 50 metres:
… was erected next to an existing bridge. The old structure was … demolished and the new bridge moved … (April 6-7, 1976).
Progress just doesn’t go in straight lines.
I was watering, when a grey ‘leaf’ on a flax stalk moved. On closer inspection I found a moth, about 5 cm long. Maybe it’s a Dasypodia cymatodes. Maybe not.
Update 21-Feb–22: an expert on the NZ Bug Identification Facebook group tells me this is a Convolvulus hawk moth: Agrius convolvuli or hīhue.
The bark on this driftwood (now in our garden) looks like scales.
The dogs and I love having plenty of space for our walks.
Interesting times ahead
One of the delights of Waikawa Beach is that there are no commercial services: no cafe or coffee cart, no vege shops or dairies to bring visitors, traffic, and paper cups blowing along the beach in the wind.
On the other hand, if you’ve run out of milk or potatoes then it’s 7+ Km each way to State Highway 1 to pick some up at Manakau. To reach Ōtaki or Levin it’s a full 15 Km each way.
Only the fit would cycle that far; only the foolish would cycle along the section of SH1 that ranks in the top 100 in Aotearoa New Zealand for road accidents and deaths.
That leaves us to take the car for most errands. For most of us that means burdening the air with noxious gases and leaving traces of rubber and oil on the roadway to wash into the paddocks and drains.
News of an additional 4-lane road with shared path then is very welcome. Within a decade we may be able to take a low-traffic route to the shops. An electric bike could ease the journey if the goal is to enjoy coffee and cake out, or to pick up the forgotten broccoli.
It could also make it feasible, with a planned improved train service, to cycle to a train station, take the bike on a train to a destination, and then return, all without getting the car out of the garage. And just imagine how convenient it would be if the train were to stop at Manakau!
The population in Horowhenua is increasing dramatically. By the time the road building begins in 2025 we’re likely to see even more jammed up traffic on SH1, followed by several years of not only increasing general traffic but also roadworks and a huge number of additional vehicles to service the road construction.
Waikawa Beach is a quiet little backwater, and most residents like it like that. We don’t want shops and cafes, but we do need ways to reach those things that don’t require us to pull out the petrol guzzler. We’re in for some interesting times.
Published in Ōtaki Today, February 2020.
Photo by Miraz Jordan: traffic jam at the intersection of SH1 and Waikawa Beach Road.