Miraz Jordan

Dawn at 5 am on Christmas Day at Waikawa Beach in Aotearoa New Zealand. For those missing bird song.

Our neighbours have a ‘Christmas Tree’. It’s a flax spear with lights and decoration trinkets. Christmas in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Dawn at 5 am on Christmas Day. Waikawa Beach, Aotearoa New Zealand. A sound file of birdsong is coming but taking forever to upload from my phone.

It’ll soon be time to start a 2020 folder on my computer. Random memory: when I was 11 my sister turned 20. I thought I would never be that old — it was too distant to imagine. Now here we are, some 54 years later and it’s [almost] 2020 for heaven’s sake! 🥳

I enjoyed The Case of the Missing Finger. It was a nice, light read with an interesting turn or two. @Cheri

Summer solstice today with 16+ hours of daylight. Now things should actually warm up for a few months. // @jhull

We went to see The Good Liar last night. It’s hard to say anything about it without giving away plot points. The movie is full of twists, and of course Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen are excellent. The movie didn’t grab me though. Ho hum.

Thanks to @shindakun and the clearly written tutorial at Adding Webmentions To micro.blog I believe I’ve now successfully added Webmentions to this blog. 🤞🏼

E rima ngā kuaka. There were 5 Godwits by the sea this morning.

Interesting to see this: Bachcare fined for removing negative comments in online reviews. I worked for them for a while. They have awful employment practices. They make their profits out of the pockets of the workers.

A few years ago I bought a 12-year old car. I had a new console put in for GPS, radio and to use my phone while driving. It’s terrible. Mostly radio doesn’t work. Now it seems the radio might work but my phone won’t. The GPS is 2nd rate too. Sigh. Philips Car Audio - CED1910BT.

Huh, Netflix have some wizardy that prevents either a still screen capture or a screen capture video. Disabling Javascript just stops Netflix from working at all. So much for my attempt to add a screenshot to my previous post.

When I started watching Virgin River a few days ago I found it pleasant enough. Then after a couple of episodes I found myself more or less binge-watching. I like the story and characters, and the scenery (filmed in Canada) is just amazing. Now I’m keen for Season 2!

I deliberately try to follow diverse people on Micro.Blog. Occasionally I unfollow someone if I find their posts just don't really interest me. Unfortunately, on scanning the list of 350+ people I follow I'd estimate half or more aren't actually active. 😒

I aim to find people from other countries, provided I have some kind of hope of understanding what they're writing about — that's just a language issue. The Discover feed is a great source for finding people.

Photos of dogs, cats, landscapes are highly likely to 'hook' me. I also try to follow any women on Micro.Blog.

I currently follow people who are in or seem to be from these countries and who seem to still be active:

1. New Zealand (of course)
2. Australia
3. Austria
4. Brazil (added 27-Nov-20)
5. Canada
6. Denmark
7. England
8. Finland
9. France
10. Germany
11. Iceland
12. India
13. Ireland (added 26-Nov-20)
14. Italy (added 04-Jan-20)
15. Mexico
16. Netherlands
17. Norway
18. Philippines (added 26-Nov-20)
19. Poland (added 26-Nov-20)
20. Portugal (added 26-Nov-20)
21. Puerto Rico
22. Scotland
23. Sweden
24. Switzerland
25. Turkey
26. USA
27. Vietnam (added 27-Nov-20)

This list of countries may not be utterly accurate — sometimes it's my best guess. There may be others I follow where I just don't know where they live. I must say, 19 countries is a pretty pleasing number.

Update 19-Dec-19: added India, so now 20 countries.

Update 26-Nov-20: I checked my list and added several countries. Note: visit [micro.blog](https://micro.blog/)[name]/following to see the list of follows.

Sigh. This seems to be my TV-watching life at the moment. 😣 Maybe it’s just that everyone’s at the beach for the holidays and our miserable ADSL can’t cope. But nearly everyone else can use fibre now. I’d hoped they’d change over and free up some bandwidth for the rest of us.

I think every Kiwi knows there used to be giant birds called Moa in New Zealand. They went extinct about 500 years ago. What I didn’t know was that females were generally considerably larger than males:

females were sometimes nearly 7 times heavier than males. Females of the largest species weighed as much as 240 Kg while their mates were a mere 34 to 85 Kg.

And science, really? ‘Reverse sexual dimorphism’ when females are bigger? That language needs to change.

The other day I posted a Dawn Chorus. Here’s a 6 pm chorus at the end of a busy day.

Odd life experience: I had my documents checked today so I can receive Superannuation from February 2020. I went straight from that office to help neighbours clear out the rest home room of their mother who passed away yesterday. I felt I'm entering a gate to a new stage of life.

Former Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gillard, hosts a very interesting podcast called A Podcast of One’s Own .

In each episode Julia leads a thoughtful but fun discussion with well-known …leaders from the worlds of business, entertainment, media, sport and many more.

We don’t often hear about the Moriori, so this is interesting. Moriori: Still setting the record straight:

the first Moriori ancestors… arrived directly from Eastern Polynesia… Later waka came from mainland Aotearoa me Te Waipounamu… about 500 or 600 years ago.