dangermouse.net – David Morgan-Mar

The last Irregular Webcomic!

Today was a landmark. I assembled the last Irregular Webcomic! strip that I currently plan on making. It’ll be published on Friday this week, and then I’ll go into just doing rerun strips daily.

I have no plans to ever revive the strip again, but I’m not entirely ruling it out. If I get inspired and itching to do more then I might make a few more, or I might do some one-offs for some reason. But I’m treating this as the end for now.

I suppose I could write a bunch of stuff reminiscing or saying how weird it feels to end such a large phase of my life, but honestly I don’t feel like not making new IWC strips will make a huge difference to my life right now. Yes, I’ll have a bit more free time, but it’ll quickly get gobbled up by other things, and I’ll wonder how I ever fit it in at all.

As life goes on, I wrote my new week’s ethics class today, on the topic of “Danger!” And this evening had the first class with the new topic. I have plenty of questions and we didn’t get to several near the end, but the class has four kids, so more of the material will get used in smaller classes.

My Japan trip is rapidly approaching. Tomorrow I’ll use some time to start packing, and going through checklists to make sure I have everything we’ll need. We fly out on Saturday, and will be dropping Scully off at a friend’s place for dogsitting on Friday night.

We’re also tapering off our perishables, making sure we use up all the fresh fruit and vegetables before we leave. Today I used a potato and half the remaining onion to make a lentil dhal. There’s a chunk of pumpkin to be used tomorrow in a quiche to use up eggs. And then Thursday and Friday will be getting creative with whatever we have left.

New content today:

Starting up data engineering again

Today was the first lecture session for the University of Technology Sydney first year course on Data Engineering. As in the past few years, I’m doing tutoring work on this course again. Unfortunately the scheduled lecture time clashed with two of my online ethics classes, so I’ve had to move them from Monday to Tuesday. I don’t think all of the kids can make the new day, so some will probably have to drop the class.

Straight after my two morning classes, I had to dash off and take Scully to my wife’s work and drop her off there, then dash to the Metro station and catch a train into the city. I stopped quickly at a supermarket to get some sushi for lunch, since I hadn’t had time to eat anything while travelling, and just made it to the lecture on time. I had to eat my sushi in the class as the lecturer began teaching! It’ll be like this in two weeks as well (next week I’ll be away in Tokyo so will miss the lecture), but after that the US goes on to daylight saving time, and I move all my day classes an hour earlier to adjust (since most of the students in them are in the US), so I’ll have an extra hour to get into the university and have lunch.

The lecture went pretty well. I expected more people in the class, but I suspect some stayed home today because there was a sort of shadow strike action on the Sydney trains today, with hundreds of train drivers calling in sick in what the government calls an unauthorised strike action, but which the rail workers union claims was genuine sickness. Being a Monday, and the first lecture of a first year course, it may well have been the first time these students had attended a university lecture.

I made it back homeward in time to meet my wife at work and we walked home together with Scully. I made pizza for dinner tonight, and am finishing off some final Irregular Webcomic! strips for this week, before heading into two more ethics classes from 8pm. Quite a busy day!!

New content today:

Urban wildlife surprise

This morning when I went for my 5k run, my wife took Scully out for a walk. I got back home and had just had my shower and changed, when she phoned me. She said that she’d just seen a “kangaroo”, in the park right across the street from our place. It had emerged from the bushland around the creek there and come right up to her and Scully, to within a couple of metres, and then took off back into the brush. I said it probably wasn’t a kangaroo, but most likely a swamp wallaby.

There are a few populations of these guys in bushland a bit further out towards the outskirts of the city, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of them being this close to the city centre. I searched online, and the only reference I could find to wallabies being in this area was in this document from North Sydney Council, which says (Section 2.1.8, page 22):

Other notable wildlife returns to North Sydney over the past decade include the Swamp Wallably [sic], Superb Lyre-bird and the Long-nosed Bandicoot.

The report was written in 2021, so presumably the wallabies have been in the area since some time in the 2010s. I don’t know how they would have got here, because although there are pockets of bushland that could sustain a small population, they’re well separated from any other bushland by large tracts of heavily populated suburban development, that I doubt wallabies could or would travel through.

I spent some more time today preparing for our japan trip. I printed out a bunch of bookings and also maps for my wife to navigate around Tokyo to various places, while I’m working.

I also had three ethics classes. I got a message from one parent about one of the students in one of tonight’s classes. He enjoys the class but wants to free up time for other classes, so will be leaving. This was a bit sad because this kid was my longest running student, having been enrolled continuously since January 2022, over three years! I don’t know who the next longest running student is, but I have records and will work it out another day.

New content today:

Board games and Japan prep

Friday was online board games night with my friends. We played Can’t Stop, Ticket to Ride, Just One, 7 Wonders, and then a game of Castles of Burgundy. I didn’t won any, but came second in Castles of Burgundy behind the guy in our group who usually wins everything, so that felt like a victory.

Before that we went up to the fish & chips shop for dinner, eating casually while we walked home with Scully. I didn’t do much else on Friday, except pick up the groceries that I’d ordered online. But I got a surprise message from the supermarket, telling they were sorry my order had been cancelled because of an error in their online system, and saying they’d refund the full amount and give me a $20 gift voucher. A bit later I did indeed get sent a $20 voucher. I’m now waiting to see if they will also refund the total order which they tell me was cancelled, but which I actually picked up.

While walking Scully at lunchtime I spotted a grey butcherbird sitting on the overhead train wires near the station. We were walking on an overpass over the rail line, so I got the photo from a higher elevation, which is unusual for most birds. Its plumage looks a bit dishevelled for some reason.

This species is moderately common around here, but usually seen high in trees where it’s difficult to get a good photo—or more often heard with their distinctive call but not seen at all—so I was excited to get such a good view of one for a change.

Today, Saturday, I went on my usual 5k run in the morning. My times have not been great lately, because of the warm weather and high humidity. I’m looking forward to autumn and cooler weather.

For lunch we went to a Thai restaurant with my wife’s family for her mother’s birthday. Not a large group, just seven of us. We shared some delicious dishes. We used to eat Thai quite a lot as there had always been very good Thai places near us, but the best one closed down some years ago, and there isn’t one we like much nearby any more. So it was good to have some today.

The other thing we’ve been doing is organising for our trip to Tokyo next weekend. I booked another couple of restaurants. Normally we don’t bother booking any eating places in advance of a trip, but Japan is tricky for vegetarians and places that offer vegetarian food are often extremely busy with tourists, because visiting vegetarians all end up going to the same few places.

I’ve also got some things to print out, like our travel insurance details, hotel booking receipt, and other miscellaneous stuff. And I have to double check I have a usable Tokyo train map on my phone. Although I suppose Google Maps will do for route planning.

New content today:

Devil’s Diner

A friend of mine got me onto the Netflix series Devil’s Diner. I’d noticed in my recommendations, and it’s normally the sort of horror series thing I might be interested in, but I hadn’t bothered watching it yet because of a mixture of the overt food theme and the fact that I’ve overdosed a bit on Asian horror series, and some of the more recent ones haven’t been as good as I’d hoped.

But my friend recommended it and I started watching it last week. And it’s really good. I finished the sixth and last episode last night, which gave an appropriate way to round out the series and bring it to a conclusion. I enjoyed it, but in hindsight I think the “horror” classification is a little wrong. There’s a bit of gore, but not in particularly horrifying ways, and the theme of the series is really more like Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone than horror. So if you like those sort of series, maybe give it a try.

Not much else to report today. I was busy with classes and trying to get ahead on Darths & Droids ahead of my trip to Japan next week.

Oh, my ant sting is getting better. Still a bit red and rashy, but fading away slowly.

New content today:

A couple of local building projects

Yesterday while walking Scully up to the main shops nearby, I took this photo:

This row of buildings has been somewhat derelict for several years, some businesses shutting down and nothing new opening, although there were still some hangers-on up until very recently. One of them, the green one, was a place called “Stuffed Beaver”, which purported to be a Canadian restaurant. I’ve never ever seen any other Canadian restaurant in my life (except in Canada I guess) and have no idea what would distinguish it as such, other than perhaps having poutine on the menu. But now they’re all empty and demolition has begun with the removal of the metal awnings that hung over each shop front. You can also see a guy surveying the area. So I expect that demolition will begin pretty soon, followed by redevelopment into new businesses and almost certainly a tower of apartments above.

Today I did some more comics stuff in the morning. I’m needing to build up a buffer to cover my trip to Tokyo in a week and a half, so I’m concentrating on that in my spare time.

At lunch I walked up to y wife’s work to pick up Scully and bring her home. I decided to take a roundabout route home, via a cafe where we stopped for lunch. I had a chicken burger, which was pretty good. It came with hot chips and they were sprinkled with super fancy sea salt crystals, which were large pyramid shapes. But the crystals were so large that they all fell off the chips and the salt ended up on the plate and there was none on the chips. I had to manually pick up the salt crystals and delicately place them on the chips before putting them in my mouth to get any salt at all. Despite this, the meal was good – the chips were nicely crispy with a fluffy centre.

On the walk home from there, I passed another piece of construction.

This is a bushwalk track that I take up from the harbour shore, through a forested reserve area to the road to walk home. The sandstone steps on the left are brand new, still under construction. Previously the path up the hill involved an awkward large step up that tree root on the right, where you can see the old wooden steps above and below. It was tricky, and also very high for Scully to jump – one time she didn’t land properly and fell off the tree root. So the new steps will be much appreciated once they’re finished.

Tonight I made pumpkin quiche for dinner, and then had three more classes on the Fantasy logic topic. I’m really enjoying this one, and it’s getting the kids to apply their critical thinking to some interesting new hypothetical situations. Although some of the kids are having some difficulty understanding the distinction between coming up with reasons why magic can’t do X from the point of view of the author, versus in-story reasons.

e.g. “What are some reasons within the story for why heroes go on a difficult quest instead of just using magic?” And a kid answers, “Because if they used magic it’d make the story boring.” I need to explain very carefully that “Yes, that’s the reason the writer writes the story that way, but what could be a reason that the writer comes up with that the hero would tell someone else in the story why they can’t just use magic?” The wording gets a bit convoluted when trying to clarify this for a kid who is having difficulty with the distinction. But I did get there in the end!

New content today:

Fantasy logic and a little Japanese

This morning I took Scully for a walk first thing, before the day got hot or rainy, both of which were forecast. As it happened, neither turned out to be true. I took Scully for another walk at lunch time and it was a bit cloudy and breezy, and not too hot. It felt like the beginning of the end of summer. Then when my wife got home from work we took Scully for a third walk, passing by the local mini supermarket and picking up some eggs and a cucumber.

This morning I worked on my lesson plan for this week’s ethics topic: Fantasy Logic. It’s about applying logic and realistic consequences to fantasy story ideas, to see what would happen, and strengthen the kids’ skills at applying critical thinking to crafting a story. Some questions I ask:

What would happen if dragons existed in real life? How might people deal with them?
In Harry Potter, the wizarding world hides magic from Muggles. Do you think that makes sense?
In fairy tales, why does a magical wish often have unintended consequences?
You want magical items in your story, but you don’t want magical shops where people can just go to buy them. How do you explain why nobody is selling magic items?
You want your hero to have a powerful magic sword that makes them unbeatable, but you don’t want every fight to be boring because they always win. How could you make the sword more interesting?

After lunch I worked on some comics stuff, both Irregular Webcomic! and Darths & Droids.

And I did some preparation for our upcoming trip to Tokyo. I checked out eSIMs for our phones, so we can stay connected while over there, since I’ll be working at the ISO standards meeting while my wife and her mother and sister are off exploring Tokyo on their own, so we need some way to communicate. Up to now, my wife and I have relied on WiFi spots to stay in touch while travelling, but I figured this time we’d need connection at all times. I explored a few companies and found a good looking one, which I have now purchased.

I also had an interesting discovery in Duolingo Japanese tonight. I came across the new word ちょっと. If you know Japanese, you’re probably already nodding sagely. If not, then I’ll point you at an article I had to read to understand what the heck this word is about. I feel like I levelled up in Japanese ability just from learning about this one word!

New content today:

An ant sting

I forgot to mention yesterday that I got stung by an ant. It was after my 5k run, and I was doing some warm down stretches, and then some sit-ups on the grass area near my home. I was in the middle of the sit-ups and I felt a pain like a needle prick on the back of my upper arm. I finished the exercises before looking, and then realised it must have been an ant sting.

It was nowhere, I mean nowhere near as bad as the jack jumper ant sting I got some years back (around 2017, I think). This time I didn’t see the ant, but I’m guessing it must have been a bull ant. I’ve been stung by those a few times before. I seem to remember them being more painful than this time, but maybe my memory is unreliable.

Today I noticed the sting wound had grown larger.

This is about 33 hours after the sting. The red area is lumpy and the skin scaly. This is a pretty normal reaction; I don’t believe I’m allergic to ant stings at all. Hopefully it’ll go down over the next few days.

Today I had the usual bunch of ethics classes, leaving not much time for other things. There was also a huge thunderstorm which hit just after midday. Parts of Sydney got over 70 mm of rain in 30 minutes, causing flash flooding. Here it was like someone was throwing buckets of water at the windows – very windy, torrential rain, and lots of thunder and lightning. It lasted maybe an hour. I haven’t been out since, but I expect there’ll be branches and maybe trees down all over the place.

New content today:

A close call, and exploring St Peters

After my 5k run and a shower this morning, I suggested to my wife that we could go out for a bit of a drive. She suggested exploring another inner west suburb, and decided on St Peters.

As I drove out of our driveway, I was inching carefully forwards, preparing to turn left into our street (remember that we drive on the left here in Australia, so I wasn’t crossing any traffic). Our street is fairly quiet, but the approach from the right hand side of our driveway comes around a blind corner, so we have to be careful and come out slowly, in cases someone is coming around the corner from the right. So naturally I had my eyes glued to the right as I pulled out…

And another car came racing down our street from the left. You might think this is not a problem, since it would naturally be on the other side of the street, nowhere near me. But not so. It had swerved onto the wrong side of the street at high speed to avoid a speed bump, and so was coming at me from the left. Where (in Australia) you would NEVER expect an oncoming car to be coming from. See the diagram below:

I’m the blue car, edging out of my driveway, peering right in case a car comes around that blind corner on the left side of the map. And the red car came hurtling down the street, swerving onto the wrong side to avoid the speed bump, around the wrong side of the pedestrian safety island, and came within centimetres of hitting me. Fortunately it missed. But sheesh.

Anyway, following this we drove over to St Peters and explored the area. We stopped to get my wife a coffee at a cafe named Copper, which she’d looked up before and was keen to try. Just as we arrived a horde of about 20 seven-year-old-ish boys arrived, with mothers trying to herd them in to the only table inside. This caused chaos in the cafe for about 10 minutes and was incredibly loud, as you might imagine. Eventually we managed to order a coffee and she had it on an outside table, while the kids inside sang “Happy Birthday” and a guy ran out with plates of cake for all the mothers standing outside (since there was no room inside the tiny cafe).

Then we went next door to Fuel Bakery, where I had a sausage roll and a lamb pie, which were both excellent. Then we walked around and explored the neighbourhood.

We found a crafts workshop, which did lessons for people. the woman inside was very friendly and chatted with us for several minutes. The place was in an old factory that used to press vinyl records! My wife took a business card and is planning to go back for a resin jewellery workshop one day.

Further on was a community garden, full of fruit and vegetable plots.

And back near where we had parked the car, there are these old brick kilns.

We also stopped at Miss Lilly’s cake shop in Newtown, just across the suburb boundary of St Peters, where I had a very excellent orange almond cake slice. Like really good – I’ve had a lot of orange almond cake and this may well have been the very best I’ve ever had.

Back at home, this afternoon I wrote what might be the last Irregular Webcomic! strips. I finished off the Stranger Things theme story, which is the last one to be completed. I took the photos, and will start assembling them tomorrow.

Enchiladas for dinner, three ethics classes, and relaxing for the evening…. a busy day!

New content today:

D&D session: dealing with the curse

Friday was Dungeons & Dragons night at my place. One of our players had to miss out due to COVID, and another had a daughter’s birthday, but we had 4 players (plus me as the GM), so went ahead. Firstly, here’s a map of the campaign locations so far:

Neensford is their home village. The first adventure took place in an old tomb not far away. Then they travelled north to Brandonstead to deal with rumours of a “dragon” terrorising the area. Then back to Neensford before striking east to Benton, the nearest base village to Titardinal’s Tower. After dealing with that they travelled to Sable Ridge to investigate a Spider Temple, and then to Edgewater, near the location of the Temple of Swords, where we last left our intrepid band. They’d just met Spathio, the God of Swords, and ended up getting cursed by him. Now they need to kill 9 people with 9 different swords, in 9 days, or die!

The first thing they did however was loot valuables from the temple that they’d spied on their way in and hadn’t yet carried out. At one point they triggered a trap that they hadn’t triggered before: a huge stone block lowered from the ceiling, blocking the only exit door. This produced the following exchange:

Player: Can I tell with my Dwarven Stonecunning if we can fit our fingers underneath and lift the block?
Me: You can tell with your Dwarven Stonecunning that the block weighs roughly 40 tons.

After dealing with this setback and exiting the temple, they had to decide how to find 9 people they felt morally comfortable with killing. They asked around Edgewater for any leads on “maybe bandits in the area”? Edgewater is a small village, and the residents advised them to head west to the town of Thistlebrook, which sometimes had bandits attack merchant caravans.

When they got to Thistlebrook, I presented them with the town noticeboard:

I made this using some very nice free art assets I found on this Patreon page. As you might be able to see, several of these notices are potential leads to situations where the PCs would have a chance to kill people, more or less justifiably. And some others are just fun flavour. I left it up to them to decide what avenues to investigate.

The result was they spent the rent of the session chasing leads all over Thistlebrook. They thought hunting down the bandit gang was a good likely solution, but decided first to check out the executioner job. The magistrate had three of the bandits in custody and needed an executioner, since he said nobody in town wanted blood on their hands. They at first thought this was a good start on their curse, but then they talked to the innkeeper at the place where they were lodging, who revealed that the bandits were actually heroes to the poor of the the town, standing up against persecution and taxation by the nobles (i.e. they were Robin Hood and his Merry Men). This threw the players for a moral loop and they had to reevaluate their plans. At one point they made a plan to contact the bandit leader and get him to agree to have some of his men pretend to be captured, so the PCs could turn them in for the rewards, and then they’d break them all out of prison!

They checked various other leads and eventually stumbled across an old sage who was looking to hire some adventurers for an expedition to a nearby ancient vault where ancient wizards had done magical research. He said it had recently been found by snake people. Now this was something that they could investigate and hopefully kill some snake people, who they’ve tangled with twice before. But by now it was late and we ended the session before any further adventuring.

We had essentially zero combats (although they did kill a few “sword fish”—fish literally made of swords—by standing on the edge of a pool and stabbing them while in no danger of the fish hitting them), and there were only about three dice rolls in the whole evening. 95% of it was pure roleplay and discussing decisions, and it was great fun!

Today I got up and went for a 5k run. It was warm and very humid and so I again went fairly slowly. It’ll be nice when autumn hits and the weather cools down a bit. I spent most of the day working on Darths & Droids comic writing and planning.

For dinner, my wife and I walked up to a new restaurant we haven’t tried before: Dozo, a Japanese place. It was pretty good, and for what we had (mostly vegetarian) not very expensive.

New content today: