dangermouse.net – Page 2 – David Morgan-Mar

Planning for cherry blossoms

I slept in a bit this morning, but then got up, had breakfast, and embarked on a 5k run. The weather was far too warm and humid, and it was a real struggle today, with a slow time. But at least I have the virtue of doing some exercise regardless.

Last night while I was watching a movie on Netflix (The Dead Don’t Die), I discovered when I tried to turn the TV off that the batteries in the remote had died, apparently mid-movie. I couldn’t turn the TV off! And AFAIK there are no physical controls on the TV. I could have just pulled the plug out, but I was reluctant since it’s plugged into a power board with a bunch of other stuff and it would have been non-trivial to work out which was the correct cord. So I scavenged batteries from another device, and managed to turn the TV off.

Today I went out to the supermarket specifically to buy new batteries. When I got home I opened the remote to install brand new ones, and discovered that one of the emergency batteries Id installed last night had leaked! Urk! So I removed those batteries and stuck them in my battery recycling pile, and cleaned out the leaked chemicals carefully with cotton tips and isopropyl alcohol. before installing the new batteries.

I also spent time sewing up Scully favourite plush toy. Again. She’s ripped holes and extracted stuffing from it about 20 or 30 times, and I keep repairing it because it’s her oldest and most favourite dog toy.

In travel planning, my wife’s sister sent us this article about cherry blossoms in Japan, saying that we’ll be there around the right time to view the early February-blooming flowers in Kawazu, a day trip from Tokyo. I’m keen to go there and see them, because in all the times I’ve visited Japan I’ve never seen more than the odd single tree with blossoms on it—one time in Yokohama in February I was surprised to spot one blooming that early. But it appears the Kawazu variety always blooms so early. So now I want to try to plan our time to fit in a journey there to see them.

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Losing games and double pizza

Friday morning I did the grocery shopping. The old fashioned way, since I forgot to order online for pickup, so it took about half an hour longer than just going to the supermarket for the pickup. The day was rainy, and I had four ethics classes to teach.

Then it was heading out to a friend’s place for our fortnightly board games night. We went to the place of the guy who recently moved into his newly built house (on the same property as his old house). He has a nice dining table and laid a felt mat on top for gaming on. We started with a game of Notre Dame, which I’ve played before but not for many years.

It’s a worker placement game, and your workers activate various powers, but you are restricted by first having to draft cards related to the placement areas, so you only have a limited choice of zones to place your workers each turn, rather than free choice. I scored a lot of points early on, but got stifled for resources in the late game and everyone else overtook me, so I ended up coming last of five players. A sixth friend arrived about halfway through the game, and we stopped to eat delivered pizzas for dinner. When we resumed we started a six-player game of Ticket to Ride: Asia, which plays as a team game with three teams of two.

In this variant of the classic game, each team has shared racks of tickets and train cards, and also a secret hand which you’re not allowed to share with your teammate. You have separate turns, but are working together to build your routes. It gave an interestingly different dynamic and was a lot of fun. My team leapt to an early lead… but you can guess what happened. We got overtaken and ended up coming last! Oh well, at least we all had fun.

Today was another partly rainy day, with unsettled weather set in here for the next few days. The sky is rapidly changing between sunny and grey clouds that threaten rain.

After a 5k run in the very humid conditions (82% humidity and 24°C) I cleaned the bathroom and then tried to write a Darths & Droids comic strip. I got stuck with writer’s block for a few hours – it was torturously slow going. I managed to finish it off in the afternoon.

For dinner we walked with Scully over the Naremburn, 2 km away, to have a simple meal at the pizzeria there. So I ended up having pizza two nights in a row. Not that I’m complaining.

Tonight we watched the new Wallace and Gromit movie on Netflix: Vengeance Most Fowl. I’ve always liked all the Wallace and Gromit films, and this one was brilliant as always.

New content today:

Finishing this Book

Today was a day busy with ethics classes: two in the morning, and three in the evening. In between I took Scully for a couple of walks and I worked a bit on some comics stuff.

At the moment I’ve started on a couple of books. One is an old one I’ve had for many years, which I’m rereading after a very long time: Comet, by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. I was inspired to reread this by recently realising that Halley’s Comet—whose 1986 appearance was the inspiration for the release of this book in 1985—passed aphelion last year and is now on its way back towards the inner solar system for its reappearance in 2061.

The other book I’m working on (not merely reading) is Finish This Book, by Keri Smith. I’ve had this book on my shelf for some time, after spotting it in the creativity section of a bookshop some years ago. It’s an interactive book, which encourages you to write and draw in its pages as you progress. I decided to finally start it, and am a few pages in. But…. it’s not what I expected at all. I thought it would be a simple thing where you turn the page and it says “Draw a monkey in this blank space”. And other such exercises to simply get you doing something creative. But no… it seems to be some sort of interactive story/puzzle thing that you work through. There’s a lot of extraneous fictional fluff about how the author “found” some weird manuscript in a park somewhere, and now they want you to help them finish it according to some “rules” that will be revealed later on. And it says you need scissors and glue and stuff. Which I suppose might be interesting, but it’s not what I signed up for. Anyway, I’m going to persevere and see what happens. I’m not flipping ahead to see anything before I work my way through page by page.

In other news, I might finally finish off the last of the leftover Christmas pudding tonight…

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That La Niña arrived quickly

I just said yesterday that the Bureau of Meteorology reported the formation of La Niña conditions, heralding the possibility of a cooler/wetter next two months of summer, and today it magically seemed to have come true. Today was really chilly, and very wet. The temperature was a minimum of 19.3°C overnight, and rose to only 20.3°C during the late morning, before plummeting down into the 17s for most of the afternoon and evening. We’ve had nearly 30 mm of rain as well, in windy squalls blowing intermittently across the city, which make it seem even colder. It was actually the coldest day in Sydney since mid-October.

I didn’t go out much, but I did get in a 5k run early in the morning. I started in a brief period of no rain, but it began raining on me halfway through the run

My wife took Scully to work and I had to go pick her up at lunchtime, but I drove rather than walking in the heavy rain at the time.

This evening I was really back into my online ethics classes, with three classes in a row. I had a new girl in the first one, who was very sociable and talkative, and engaged with the class questions really well, giving some very well thought-out answers. And after the class she wrote me a note through the Outschool platform to say how much she loved the class and how it made her think about the topic in new ways. That was really nice to receive. So I think I have a new enthusiastic student, which is great!

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Missed Monday, back to work Tuesday

I just completely forgot to do my blog post yesterday until it was too late. I had a day full of working on comics stuff, and avoiding going outside as much as possible because it was very hot.

However I did have to go out in the morning to drop the car off for an annual service, and then walk home in the heat – it’s about 25 minutes walk away. And then in the afternoon I had to walk back to the service centre to pick the car up again. There was an additional expense as the car needed a new battery installed, but otherwise it’s in good condition.

The heat broke with a cool change overnight, bringing some rain. Today was gloomily overcast all day, much cooler, and threatening rain, although there was barely a sprinkle. The Bureau of Meteorology today issued a report that La Niña conditions had returned, which may indicate increased rainfall for the remainder of the summer. I’d been enjoying the relatively dry conditions for the past few weeks, after the rain-soaked and very humid summers of the past four years.

Today I did some more comics stuff, making the first strip of Episode IX for Darths & Droids. I ran out of things to make lunch with at home, so had to go out and decided to get some pies. But when I got there the pie shop was closed! Probably still on a Christmas break. I ended up getting some Vietnamese rice paper rolls instead. Then I caught the Metro to my wife’s work to pick up Scully and walk home from there with her.

Tonight I restarted my online ethics classes, after two weeks break for Christmas and New Year. The new topic this week is Journalism. With questions such as:

Is it generally more important for news to be reported quickly, or accurately?
What purpose does journalism serve in our society? Why does it exist?
How can we tell if the news we see is really true?
Has the Internet made journalism better or worse?

It should be an interesting week!

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Booking Tokyo

Today was very warm, 31°C in the city, 39°C in some suburbs. I did a 5k run in the morning, reluctantly, as it was already almost 25°C at 9am.

Back home, I had two main tasks for the day. First I photographed a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips, based on the scripts I’ve been writing the past few days. This is really getting near the end. I wound up a few of the story themes and there’s not much left to do with the remaining ones. I expect I might be able to finish completely with one more batch of comics, probably made late January or early February.

The second task was to book several of the things we’d planned out for Tokyo at my sister-in-law’s place yesterday. We booked a tea ceremony, in Ginza. And a day trip tour to Hakone to see Mount Fuji. These things will be done by the others while I am working in ISO Photography standards meetings. I also want to book tickets to the Shibuya Sky observation deck, but they only open for booking four weeks in advance, so that has to wait until the end of January.

While booking those, I also booked a car rental for Auckland for our short trip to New Zealand in March. This is only a 3-day trip over the weekend to visit my wife’s nephew and his partner there for their combined 30th birthdays. My wife’s sister and mother are going too, but they are arriving several days earlier and spending a week there. We’re going to collect the car from the airport on Friday and go pick them up at their hotel to drive up to the Bay of Islands for the weekend, before coming back to Auckland for departure on Monday.

I assembled some of the IWC comics. And then spent a bit of time in the afternoon pondering story details for Episode IX in Darths & Droids, discussing with co-authors, and making notes. It’s quite a shift in mode from normal strip writing in the middle of a movie. I have to switch mental gears and get refamiliarised with the new movie. I’ve spent the past two years viewing scenes from Episode VIII over and over again, and now I have to discard all of that and start on the new movie. I’ve rewatched it twice in the past few weeks, including one time through in slow motion, rewinding and pausing every minute or so to catch details and make notes.

For dinner I made pizza, topped simply with potato and rosemary. I used a couple of tips I saw on a cooking show last week. Because I’m using a domestic oven rather than a pizza oven, the temperature is lower and the pizza cooks more slowly (though still pretty quickly as I use the maximum temperature). So one tip is to add more water to the dough, since it has longer to dry out in the oven. I increased the water from a strict 1:2 ratio with the flour, adding an extra 5 mL to make 130 mL of water to 250 g of flour. And I hand-stretched the dough by first using my fingers to delineate a fatter crust around the rim before flattening and stretching the central area. Overall both changes worked well!

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A nice Italian dinner, planning for Japan

Friday was online games night with my friends, so no blog post. Earlier in the evening, I went with my wife to a new Italian restaurant I’d discovered recently, named Enoteca 128. It’s a short drive from our home and has outdoor tables so we can take Scully. It’s in a relatively quiet alley off the main road, so it was a bit quieter than some of the usual places we go, and Scully could relax rather than bark at everyone walking their dogs past.

The food was delicious. We began with some zucchini flowers stuffed with sweet potato and taleggio cheese, served with a spicy dressing of softened red capsicum and almonds. We both had tagliatelle pasta, with a simple tomato and basil sauce for my wife, while I had the lamb ragu. Then for dessert I had a honey pannacotta with fresh berries and honeycomb. It was all very god and we’ll definitely keep this place in mind for future visits.

Earlier in the day we did a big walk and I worked on some comics stuff. And then after getting home from dinner I played games with friends: Ticket to Ride, Jump Drive, Just One, Azul, Can’t Stop. I won the last game, so finished on a high note, despite not doing so well in the others.

Today, Saturday, I did a 5k run first thing in the morning. The cool weather is heating up again and it was already 25°C when I did my run at 9 am. So I went a bit slowly.

After lunch we went over to my wife’s sister’s place to meet her and their mother and do some itinerary planning for our upcoming trip to Tokyo at the end of February. They want to plan and book some activities, such as a tea ceremony, and a day trip to Mount Fuji. We went through a bunch of options and found some online activities to book. So that’s more organised now. We also discussed our other trip, to Auckland in New Zealand, which is just a few weeks later. For that one we need to book a hire car, as we’ll be doing some driving, up to the Bay of Islands.

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Expedition to Rose Bay

This morning I did my first 5k run for the new year. Normally people are friendly when I run past them, some saying “good morning” or something. And as they see me approaching, they will give me room to run past them.

But this morning I was running along a footpath and two middle-aged women were approaching, walking side by side. The path was wide enough for two people to pass, but not for me to get past two of them walking abreast. I assumed that as I approached they would move slightly and go single file for a few seconds to allow me to run past. I stuck to the far left of the path to make my intended direction clear. But as I approached, they continued walking side by side, and the woman on my side of the path started staring me down, as if she was daring me to run headlong into her. She blocked the path and at the last second I had to divert into the garden on the left side – not even just grass, but an actual garden plot with a flower bed in it and coverage of clivias with their long strap-like leaves. I trampled some of the plants as I twisted sideways to get past them and avoid hitting a tree. And avoid hitting them.

I’ve never seen behaviour like this in five years of running around this neighbourhood. It was really quite shocking. I continued running past them, though I was half tempted to stop and say something.

After showering and changing, my wife and I went on a driving expedition to Rose Bay, a suburb on the south side of the harbour. I went here back in October for a day out by myself, and stumbled across the bakery Li’l Mix. I’d been telling my wife about it and saying we should go check it out together, but they only open Monday to Friday, so we’ve been unable to do it during normal working weeks. But with both of us not working this week, we took the opportunity today to go there.

But when we arrived they didn’t have anything in their shopfront for sale! There were people inside baking stuff, but no completed products at all. We asked, and they said they’d just opened another shop across the street, where all their products were being sold! So we crossed over and went there. This was a significantly bigger premises than the tiny original, and even had a table with seats outside on the footpath for customers. It was occupied, but the people left soon after and we grabbed the table. My wife got a shakshuka which was baked into a bread roll, and I got this beef brisket and mashed potato pie:

Really good! We also got a Jerusalem bagel and three of their delicious cookies to take home. From here we walked over to the main shops at Rose Bay, a couple of blocks away, and browsed around a bit. I found this beautiful little laneway full of shops, reminiscent of somewhere in Italy:

In the afternoon, back at home, we took Scully for a walk down to the Harbour. I spotted this forlorn looking yacht down there (which has never been there before, so it must have happened recently):

On the way back home, we walk past this house which is being rebuilt. It was derelict for two years, and they’re finally rebuilding it, but leaving a lot of the original walls (white) and just adding on to them (new bricks).

A friend of mine said they’re probably doing this so they can class it as a “renovation”, not a new construction, so they can get away with the fact that the house footprint is too close to the property boundaries according to current development laws. If they demolished it and built from scratch they’d have to make the area of the house smaller. Which seems likely, as it’s very close to the neighbouring property.

For dinner tonight I needed to use up some Brussels sprouts. My wife suggested pasta, so I improvised with garlic and chilli and lemon juice.

I also added some shaved Parmigiano Reggiano cheese before serving (not shown in the photo). It was delicious. The bowls seen in the photo are hand-painted ones we got in Italy last year, from Orvieto – which we now use whenever we have pasta.

New content today:

Welcome to 2025

We slept in a bit this morning. I was awake at midnight, but in bed reading, and went to sleep as soon as the noise of the fireworks and helicopters died away.

Because it’s the first day of the new year, my wife suggested we go for an early walk and have breakfast out somewhere – something we almost never do. We went to Organica, thinking it’d likely be open, but it was closed. So we wandered towards the main shops and found a cafe that was open. I had some Turkish eggs, which came with yoghurt, chillis, and sourdough toast and a salad. It was decent.

Back home I worked on a couple of things: I made my lesson plan for the next ethics class that I’ll be starting next week after my time off. It’s on the topic of Journalism.

And then I rewatched Star Wars: Episode IX, making reference notes on all the scenes, in preparation for starting work on the movie for Darth & Droids.

For dinner I made a caramelised fennel quiche, using a whole bulb of fennel which was slowly caramelised with balsamic vinegar. I like fennel as a vegetable, but we don’t get it much.

In the evenings I’m currently watching Season 2 of Squid Game, since it was just released on Netflix after Christmas. Another episode tonight!

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The New Year’s Eve post

It’s the last day of 2024. I just took Scully for a walk around Greenwich (about 7:30 pm) and saw lots of people walking down towards the Harbour for the fireworks. Also lots of traffic going down Greenwich Road, reaching the closed streets at the end, realising there’s no parking anywhere within 2 kilometres, and turning around and coming back out. Even my street is parked out, and it never is. And I’m a good 2.5 km from the nearest good fireworks viewing spot.

We had a low-key day. I got up and went for a 5k run, my last for the year, taking my total distance for 2024 to 505 km. It was also the warmest weather for a run since March, at 25.2°C (and 70% humidity) when I left at 9:30 am. Despite this, I did a reasonable time, under 27:30.

After I had a shower, I set about working on finishing off the Darths & Droids comics for Episode VIII. I managed to make all of the three intermission strips, which leaves the next strip to be made the opening strip of Episode IX. I created an “EpisodeIX” folder on my computer, and was disappointed to find that the operating system sorts it between “EpisodeIV” and “EpisodeV”. All the episodes so far have sorted nicely since the Roman numerals up to VIII increase alphabetically, but now it’s messed up! I did search briefly for if there was any way to make MacOS sort folders by Roman numerals. People have asked this question, but there are no positive answers, alas.

But anyway, it feels good to have completed another movie! Only one more to go. I was keen to try and get it done by the end of the year, although the strips will run into January.

I upgraded my machine to MacOS Sequoia. I didn’t realise there was an upgrade from Sonoma until I went looking for information about an issue with Photoshop being laggy, and discovered that this was actually a general issue with lagginess known to exist in Sonoma. But that Sequoia came out a few months ago, and for some reason my machine didn’t prompt me to install it. So I did the upgrade and… wow… yeah. Everything on my machine is noticeably zippier and less laggy. So that’s good!

We had our usual New Year’s Eve snack of wine and cheese, a coupe of hours before a light dinner of lettuce, cucumber, and tomato salad with falafels, fried haloumi, and pomegranate, with a tahini dressing. The wine tonight is a 2010 Riesling that we bought in 2015 in Clare Valley, South Australia—one of Australia’s prime Riesling growing regions—and have been keeping ever since. I was a bit concerned it might have turned since we just kept it in the garage, not a proper cellar, but it’s really good. Classic fruity Riesling notes, with a long toasty finish. It’s matured very nicely.

We’re staying in for the night. Sydney’s fireworks are great, but it’s a real chore to see them in person, even living this close. We’ve done it a few times when younger, but the crowds and the hassles claiming a spot and getting home afterwards are just too much now. People claim spots first thing in the morning, and then have to sit out in the blazing sun all day, which is the absolute last thing I want to be doing.

Anyway, here’s to hoping 2025 is a good year for all!

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