Ares and Aphra relax in front of the house. 🐈
Watched: The Poor Man of Nippur - World’s first film in Babylonian
…a c. 3,000 year-old comic folk tale in Babylonian language. …a clay tablet from 701 BC …. tells the story of the three-fold revenge which Gimil-Ninurta wreaks on the local Mayor after the latter wrongs him.
Wonderful to step outside just before dawn to see a crescent Moon partnered up with Jupiter and Venus in the Northeast. Quick iPhone photo for the memories.
Hooray for nuns, and magic water
In 1963 our family moved from London, England to New Zealand. I recall very little about where I was born and lived to the age of 8, but today thought to search out information. It turns out, it's rather cool:
Muswell Hill is a suburban district of north London. … It is between Highgate, Hampstead Garden Village, East Finchley and Crouch End. …
The earliest records of Muswell Hill date from the 12th century. The Bishop of London … owned the area and granted 65 acres (263,000 m²) … to a newly formed order of nuns. The nuns built a chapel on the site and called it Our Lady of Muswell.
The name Muswell is believed to come from a natural spring or well (the "Mossy Well"), said to have miraculous properties. A traditional story tells that Scottish king Malcolm IV was cured of disease after drinking the water. … The River Moselle, which has its source in Muswell Hill and Highgate, derives its name from this district …
Source: Muswell Hill - Wikipedia.
When it feels more like Samoa or something than not too far from Wellington, New Zealand. Screenshot: temperature is 26 but feels like 36. Celsius.
Apparently this little critter I found on the side of the house this evening is a Small field grasshopper.
Conocephalus bilineatus is a small winged member of the conehead katydids of the genus Conocephalus and is found throughout New Zealand. It also occurs in Australia.
Read: What to do when your personal blog becomes a burden: 6 tips :
When your personal blog becomes a burden: make new rules and lose blogger guilt.
This kōtuku ngutupapa, Spoonbill, pair were on the grass today and I was able to be fairly close. Don't they look fine! And look at them showing off their spoon bills. 🐦
These three cheerful Tirairaka sitting on a log were one of two purchases from the recent Ōtaki Pottery Show. Tirairaka are also known as Piwakawaka or Fantails. We have live ones round here too. I haven't managed a photo of a live one yet. 🐦
Today it’s almost 4 weeks since the quail chicks hatched so we integrated the flock again. The trick seems to be to move everyone to fresh ground. The male’s been asserting himself over everyone.
Can you see the 3 stripy and 3 white quail in the straw in the photo? 🐦
Evidence of voyaging Polynesians settling in Aotearoa more than 700 years ago. An excavation at Mangahawea Bay on Moturua Island in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand … Carbon dating puts the first inhabitants in the area around 1300AD… Much more Polynesian, Tahitian, Rarotongan.
Sir Kim Workman on his fight for criminal justice reform When I was about 20, training to be a teacher, we visited a prison for young men. I was shocked to learn many had such terrible lives prison was the only place they had 3 meals a day and someone who noticed where they were.
Looking good, kōtuku ngutupapa, the Spoonbill! 🐦
Clearly the shutter speed was too slow when I took photos of these horses being ridden along the beach this morning. I rather like the blurry leg (and even blurry rider) effect though.
The minute quantities along with the enormous prices are mind-boggling in this 10 minute video: Milking the Thorium Cow - Periodic Table of Videos
A dog walk in the trees across the river got us a view of the shag colony, where there are baby shags. I think this is a juvenile Little Shag. Look at those knuckles gripping the tree branch! 🐦
As time has passed there are 2 things that frustrate me enormously in the Micro.Blog Mac app: I can’t zoom images and when I choose to Reply I can’t see the original post. Just saying… Otherwise, it’s my main way of reading and writing posts.
4 years of daily selfies, and counting…
Somewhere around 01 January 2015 I realised that of the thousands of photos in my albums only a handful had me in them. I decided to take a selfie every day — not for publication, just for reference. And that's what I've done. Sometimes I even take more than one, just for fun.
I've missed only a couple of days through forgetfulness, and a couple where an uncooperative camera app has failed to save without my realising.
Because the photos are only for me I don't pay a lot of attention to quality or composition.
A lot has changed over the years: the iPhone front camera got better, because I recall taking early selfies with the rear camera and just hoping I was in picture. The camera software has got better. My technique has improved heaps. My hair's even shorter now and there are extra wrinkles and sags. I also changed my glasses and now wear either sunglasses or clear glass.
Here are my 01 January photos from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
It's all good fun.
Bad error messages can kill companies:
An Amazon suspension message lists an item along with a tangentially related category of infraction, like “used sold as new.” … Actually it’s usually nothing to do with the item being used, but something like a peeling label on the box.
Susan Bennett was the original voice for Apple’s Siri, the first AI assistant on a cell phone.
It was 4 hours a day, 5 days a week, of reading pages and pages of these nonsensical things … These sentences had to be read very, very consistently.… It was so tedious…