holiday – dangermouse.net

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!

New content today:

Noises in the night…

I was woken by a weird noise just before 3:30 this morning. At first I thought Scully was being sick, so I jumped out of bed. But she was fast asleep still.

The noise sounded like a wet wheezing, like a sort of cross between a small animal and a squeeze bottle half full of water was being squeezed repeatedly to force the air out. It was so loud that I was sure it was in our bedroom and I turned on the light thinking it must be some sort of animal. I thought it was coming from under the bed. I was prepared to have to deal with a mouse or rat or something. But I searched and couldn’t find anything, until I finally realised the noise might have been coming from outside. I confirmed this by opening the window and the sound was much louder and from that direction. And then it died away.

I’m guessing it was the death rattle of a possum or a big bird that maybe a cat had caught. I’m not sure what else it could have been. But the upshot was I was now wide awake and had trouble getting back to sleep, so it wasn’t a very restful night.

This morning I taught two ethics classes, and then prepared to go into the University of Technology Sydney for the last tutorial lesson of the year on image processing. The students have their final assessment projects due tomorrow. So next week I’ll be marking those.

Because it’s Halloween, I thought there might be some students, at least, dressed up for the occasion at the university, being a trendy sort of place where young people do fun things. But of the thousands of students I saw, not a single one had anything. I didn’t seen a single indication anywhere that it’s Halloween. No costumes, no decorations. I know it’s nowhere near as big here as in the USA, but I was honestly a little surprised.

And in other news, I have signed up to Bluesky, which I am hoping will be a better replacement for Twitter for me than Mastodon turned out to be. If you’re interested, you can follow me here: @dmmaus.bsky.social.

The problem I found with Mastodon was that I picked a server that matched one of my interests, namely tabletop roleplaying games, but then the way the system works, my posts get shown to everyone who is also on the same server, and they all expect everyone to talk mainly about games all the time. So I felt stifled in my ability to just post random shower thoughts and wry observations, as I did back on Twitter. I could probably move to a less specialised and more social server, but it looks like Bluesky is much closer to what I hoped a Twitter replacement would be. I’ll stay on Mastodon, but I’m sure to post much more frequently on Bluesky, I think.

New content today:

Scorching hot Australia Day

It’s Australia Day, our national public holiday. But as every year, the debate and controversy over the day intensifies. I feel like it’s reached a point where it’s so uncomfortable for so many people that there’s no way the holiday can be saved. For years we’ve had a significant portion of the population campaigning to change the date away from 26 January. This time there’s now a noticeable shift and people calling for the holiday to be abolished altogether. Perhaps replaced with something else, but no ongoing holiday called “Australia Day”, even if it is moved to a different date.

Honestly, the momentum is so high and growing every year, that I truly think it’s just a matter of time. It’s predominantly older, conservative people who want to keep Australia Day as it is. The growing number of young people who have more progressive views on Australia’s colonial history are going to be the majority before too much longer, and it will be inevitable that the holiday is moved or changed or abolished.

I kind of wish it would happen sooner rather than later because the day has just become an uncomfortable thing that happens every year and people argue about it, or don’t want to talk about it. I think it’s really reached the point where our national day has devolved into almost what would be a parodic joke if it wasn’t for the fact that so many people find it genuinely offensive.

Besides the political heat over the day and what it means, it was physically hot. We reached 38.5°C in Sydney, over 40°C in some suburbs. But the temperature dropped 10 degrees in half an hour in mid-afternoon as a southerly wind came in.

My wife had a day off work for the public holiday, but I did my normal 4 online classes. We’re going to take Scully for a longer walk this evening in the cooler air as the sun goes down, and then maybe play some board games later in the evening.

New content today:

Boxing Day relaxing

The day after Christmas is usually pretty easy-going. It’s best to avoid anywhere near shopping centres because of the hordes of people seeking the post-Christmas sales. And nothing much else is open because of the Boxing Day public holiday. My wife suggested taking Scully on a long walk around lunch time to Maggio’s, the Italian bakery, but checking online revealed it was closed for the day. Then I checked Cornucopia, which also turned out to be closed. So we decided to just walk around the loop that goes along the harbour shore.

Part way around I checked the weather radar on my phone, and decided we’d better hustle as a big thunderstorm was approaching. We made it home without seeing any rain, and then it turned out that the storm kind of dissipated and passed around us anyway. We’ve been hearing loud thunder for much of the day, but the storm hasn’t really broken here.

Food today was pretty much just leftovers from Christmas lunch. We both had pieces of the lentil and nut loaf that my wife cooked, sliced and fried up in a pan to make them crispy on the outside. And there was both turkey and ham for me.

I baked a sourdough loaf. But the bread loaf tin I normally use was still holding half the nut loaf, so I just baked a round cob loaf on a flat baking tray. It turned out looking pretty good!

And apart from that I spent much of the day watching the Australia v Pakistan cricket match from Melbourne and the start of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, while making a couple of new Darths & Droids comics.

New content today:

Christmas lunch and storms

Christmas Day and Scully was up early to see what Santa brought her! She liked her new toy from her buddy Luna.

I had a job: To make the glazed ham. I prepared the ham and then mixed up some orange marmalade with brown sugar and ground cloves. I spread the glaze mix over the ham, and covered it with thin orange slices, held on by toothpicks.

Then baked the lot on a low oven for 45 minutes, basting it a couple of times with the juices.

It turned out really nice, and everyone who had some at lunch liked it. There was also the traditional turkey, roast vegetables, and other stuff. Followed by Christmas pudding and ice cream. It was all delicious, and even though it’s dinner time now I don’t really feel like eating anything.

Normally Christmas Day is hot and sunny, but today it was mild and the clouds came over just after lunch. Storms were on the way. Parts of New South Wales west of Sydney reported tennis-ball sized hail as severe thunderstorms rolled eastward towards the coast. We left earlier than we usually do, to try to beat the storms home. I didn’t fancy having our car out on the street with giant hailstones falling from the sky. We made it home as the rain started, but so far the bad storms have passed either north or south of us. We’ll see how the evening pans out.

New content today:

Christmas Eve lunch with family

It’s Christmas Eve! Scully was super excited when she woke up, because that means it’s only five more sleeps until Christmas!

(counting her various morning and afternoon naps)

Today we had plans for lunch with my mother, brother, and stepfather. We drove up to Gosford, a bit over an hour north of home. The weather forecast was for thunderstorms, and we got some intermittently while driving up on the freeway, and also later during lunch. We met at a pizza place that my mother likes, and sat outside at a table under shelter, so that was fine. The pizzas were pretty good, and we caught up on a lot of things. I don’t see my mother or brother that often, so we had plenty of stories to tell about our trip to Europe.

When we got home we walked up to the supermarket to get some corn chips to make a simple dinner of nachos after the big lunch.

Tomorrow is Christmas Day of course, and we’re heading to my wife’s family for lunch. I need to make the glazed ham in the morning. This year I’m trying an orange marmalade glaze.

The weather is going to be interesting though. The forecast is for severe thunderstorms, with possible hail. I’m really hoping we don’t get hail, because our car will be parked out on the street all day there. I won’t take my traditional after-lunch swim in the harbour, because the water will be murky with the recent rain, which can be dangerous because of bacteria and also increases the risk of sharks.

New content today:

December, summer, Christmas season

It’s the 1st of December, the first day of summer, and Christmas is just around the corner. I took Scully out for her morning toilet and found that overnight this had appeared in the lift:

And this in the ground floor lobby:

Decorations and trees and things are starting to go up all around the neighbourhood too. There’s one house near me that goes completely overboard every year, decorating their front yard like a complete Santa’s workshop, with tons of coloured lights.

This morning I picked up the first big grocery shop since we got home from Italy last week. Quite a big one, as we’d run out of a few things during the week.

And tonight is online board games night. It’s supposed to be in-person, but one of my friends wanted to do a swap with next week because it’s his birthday then and he wants to host a special night at his place. I just spectacularly lost a game of Heat: Pedal to the Metal.

New content today:

Kickstarter loot!

1. When Elon Musk took over Twitter and things started going bananas I initiated migration over to Mastodon (@dmmaus@dice.camp). I posted a few times to Twitter to let followers know, and then signed off, but I didn’t delete my account. I kept the Twitteriffic client open on my desktop and checked it every few days to keep up with any news from people I followed.

I checked it today, and discovered that my feed hadn’t updated in three days. I mentioned this to a friend, and he said that Twitter’s third party API had been turned off, so a lot of clients no longer worked any more. Checking the news myself, I found an announcement from the developers that indeed Twitteriffic could no longer access Twitter’s API, so they were discontinuing the app. So… today I shut it down and deleted Twitteriffic. I also decided I may as well delete Twitter from my phone (I rarely ever used it there – I much prefer desktop). So I’m now completely Twitter-free. Although my account still exists – I just can’t be bothered to delete it. And who knows, perhaps it might come in handy for something at some point.

2. Australia Day is on Thursday this week. I wrote about the ongoing and slowly growing controversy surrounding Australia’s national holiday last year and the year before.

Today there was an article on the ABC News site saying that a growing number of people are seeking to completely ignore the public holiday by going to work, rather than taking the day off. It discusses the complications that arise when people want to work on a public holiday, and mentions that increasing numbers of companies are in fact allowing staff to ignore the public holiday and work if they want. However this is not a standard thing that is allowed for in the holiday legislation, so companies are still allowed to say that the company is taking the day off and employees cannot work on the day, even of they want to.

It seems like quite a weird situation. It’s like imagining an American deciding they don’t agree with the principle of Independence Day and seeking to ignore it by going to work on 4 July. As I said in the past two years, this sort of weirdness is going to continue and escalate until we change the date of our national holiday.

3. I completed the week’s topic on medicine with my main ethics classes. Part of it is discussing the incredibly high cost of insulin in the USA, compared to almost every other country on Earth. Today I had one girl in a class say that if she gets diabetes, she’s going to move to Australia!

4. I received a package in the mail today! It was rewards for a Kickstarter that I backed in 2021, for a fantasy roleplaying adventure from Goodman Games, Crypt of the Devil Lich. Here’s all the loot I got: the hardback adventure book in a hard slipcase, bonus extra level, booklets of pregenerated characters, player handouts, and designer notes, plus a couple of posters and a sheet of stickers.

I chose to get it in rules compatible with D&D 5th edition – the other option was for Dungeon Crawl Classics, which I also own already, but have not actually used to run any games before. Of course I made the choice before the present kerfuffle with D&D and the Open Gaming Licence that everyone is talking about. I might have chosen to get the DCC version today, although really that’s mostly because after running D&D 5th edition several times I’ve actually grown to not like it as much as I did at first.

I find the 5th edition combat system too tactical. I prefer a fast and loose, more abstract style to combat, rather than having players counting map grid squares and calculating ranges down the foot. Thus my decision to use the old 1981-vintage D&D Basic Set rules for the game I’m planning to run with my friends soon. That’s scheduled for Friday 10 February.

New content today: