Miraz Jordan

This year I’m still learning Te Reo Māori, but with much more enjoyment. Instead of a night-class it’s distance learning. Since I habitually wake around 4.30 or 5 am, evenings are my worst brain time. Now I can learn at 6 am! Hooray for Te Wananga o Raukawa ki Ōtaki!

Today’s beach walk netted me several kinds of wildlife. 1] A gang of pukeko who strolled across the road in front of my car. 3 remained by the time I took my iPhone out. 2] A 1.2 metre shark, dead on the beach. 3] A group of 3 horse riders with one horse loose and 3 dogs.

Now, 25 years later, I need two hands to count the number of fictional women who inspire me — the likes of Captain Marvel, Captain Kathryn Janeway, Supergirl, Xena and Gabrielle, Captain Sharon Raydor, President Laura Roslyn, Wonder Woman… Sometime I’ll make a proper list.

In that very first episode of Xena Warrior Princess in 1995 I anxiously held my breath. I was waiting for the inevitable disappointing moment when a man would ‘rescue' her.

But it never came.

And so the modern age of hero women in TV and movies came to be.

As a kid I loved sci-fi and space. I grew up with Star Trek: The Original Series. I followed all the US space missions, including the first landing on the moon. But at some point I watched the movie Logan’s Run and its utter sexism put me off for decades. Now things have changed.

I remain impressed with TV Show Supergirl. S4E14 has real-life politics and personal struggles. Examples: How does Agent Alex do her duty and protect a man whose views she abhors? What do peaceful protestors do when a fringe faction bring violence? Photo source: Autostraddle.

I heard a large plane, looked up and spotted this Royal New Zealand Air Force C130 Hercules aircraft flying very low very nearby. I whipped out my iPhone and asked Siri to take a photo. The plane went behind a tree at that moment. Then it emerged and I grabbed a quick snap.

We live on the south side of where the Waikawa River flows into the sea. We seldom walk on the north side, but today was such a day. The landscape there's a bit different. The map screenshot shows the area north and west of the village where we walked. Dune area. Track to sea.

It was a nice surprise to get a shout-out on Episode 52 of the Micro Monday Podcast.

Quail FTW! Photos: the newest Quail chick, Glee, hatched on 24 February 2019, on Day One and now on Day 16. She’s grown so much! 🐦

From the podcast at around 10 minutes 30 from the start:

I hope we don’t have any really shaky earthquakes between now and mid-winter. I tried a new stacking approach to our 3 cubic metres of firewood. Let’s just say I won’t try that way again.

The Ohakea Air Base is about 60 Km north-ish of us, if you fly a straight line. That would take an NH90 Helicopter about 15 minutes at moderate speed. Also, we’re pretty much on the flight path between Ohakea and Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. Consequently, we see numerous military aircraft coming and going.

Today though a large helicopter arrived and hovered for several minutes over a spot not far away. It was remarkable flying: it didn’t move at all. After a while it backed up a little and then hovered a whole lot more in a couple of positions. I was trying to determine what it could be doing, but without luck. At one point it did seem to pull something perhaps person-sized aboard through the open door.

It did an awful lot of hovering, in a couple of spots and mainly just behind trees, buildings or sand dunes, though at one point it came and did a low altitude circuit directly overhead. Eventually it flew off towards Wellington.

I can only conclude it was some kind of training exercise, though why it picked our village for that, who knows?

This all was definitely unusual behaviour: generally they just fly past.

I took photos, of course. Zoomed in, I think I can make out the Airforce identification mark.

Handy: 14 Siri Tricks You Can Use Right Now. I frequently use some already, but new to me: retrieve passwords, translate, dictionary, find friends, take a panorama, find photos, turn on flashlight. Some great timesavers here.

Yesterday’s late afternoon trip to the beach netted me these 3 iPhone photos:

1. Shining sea with boat in the distance.
2. Driftwood and dark clouds.
3. View East from the beach track: dunes, houses, dark clouds. Our house is behind the closest dunes.

I’m so much enjoying The Orville TV show. I forget I’m not watching Star Trek. In the latest ep I was expecting a last-second beam out, but hey, it’s not Star Trek. Season One was fun. Season Two has matured nicely. Not too heavy, but still thought provoking.

One more on NZ history, at Kindle Loc 2625:

Contact [with] foreigners began with Abel Tasman in 1642, but so briefly, and then with such a long pause, that it really began again with the first voyage of Captain James Cook in 1769.

Source: Tangata Whenua: A History.

I’m reading Tangata Whenua: A History to learn more about the history of Aotearoa New Zealand. 📚 I may cite snippets, such as this one at Kindle Loc 661:

The best estimate for New Zealand … was colonisation in the period 1230–1280 AD.

So people have been here ~800 years.

A very interesting 5 minute video: Why are All Voice Assistants Female?

So why are all voice assistants female then? There’s science behind it, but there is also just a lot of bias behind it too.

It’s still International Women’s Day somewhere, right?

I have too many domain names, too many websites and too many email addresses. That’s bad for the bank balance. I need to figure out how to trim all this down.

The first mistake I made with my Japanese Quail was to buy a rabbit hutch and run to house them. A raised house was reached by a ramp, and a wire run was on either side. Quail won’t go up a ramp. They stay on the ground. I ended up dismantling it and using the parts. 🐦

Today I caught baby Glee ‘in the wild’, ie, in their house, and she posed nicely. Quail have no prey sense and no homing instinct. You have to keep quail fenced or they’ll just be gone.

Mind you, when one escaped recently I found her trying to get back in… 🐦