scully – dangermouse.net

Photo dump

Today was my usual busy Monday, with many online classes to teach. So I thought I’d dump some photos I took over the last few days which I haven’t had a chance to share.

We’ll start with a jacaranda tree. November is the most beautiful month of the year in Sydney, with these large trees in vivid purple flowers all over the city.

Last Friday when I took Scully out for lunch, we walked home via a park, where I let her off the lead to run around. I took my eyes off her for one second to glance at my phone, and she was off to the swing set and the surrounding bark chip mulch that is there to provide a soft surface for kids. She loves rolling in this stuff, and it’s nigh on impossible to get out of her fur. It sticks like velcro and you have to tease every single piece out individually.

It took me maybe an hour of tedious grooming afterwards to get her looking respectable again. Fortunately she had a professional groom and haircut the next day.

On Sunday after my 5k run I spotted this butterfly on the ground and it stayed still long enough for me to get a close photo.

It’s an Australian painted lady, which has the awesome species name of Vanessa kershawi.

Finally, a photo I took today, of four tawny frogmouths. The two adults on each end are protecting the young in the middle.

This family have taken up a spot on a tree branch in the park across the street. It’s in a creek gully, and I took the photo from a bridge above, thus the overhead perspective.

The only other thing to report today is that my wife and I got our latest COVID vaccinations, since it’s been a year since our last ones. We booked in at a local pharmacy for after my wife got home from work, and they did it quickly with no fuss.

New content today:

Sydney ISO meeting: Day 3

This morning I dropped Scully off at doggy daycare again. They were going to deliver her back at home in the evening after my wife got home from work. Then I hopped a train into the city. The weather was lovely today, mild and sunny.

The ISO Photography Standards meeting today went through a bunch of different technical topics, covering: camera readouts and controls for HDR photography, camera memory model, digital camera pixel specifications, ISO DNG file format, low light performance with hand-held camera shake, depth metrology, image flare, and image stabilisation. We also had some additional discussion on the HDR topics covered yesterday, because there had been a failure to reach consensus on some issues. This was a… lively session.

After the meeting I headed home, where Scully still had not been delivered by the doggy daycare place. Then my wife got a message saying that she’d been delivered to her work! They’d messed up the address, and then left her with some of my wife’s co-workers, rather than try to contact us. So she requested they pick her up and bring her back home, but she also left to walk all the way back to work in case they took too long, while I stayed home in case she arrived here. I called up to find out what was going on and they said the delivery driver was a few suburbs away and because of the major crash on the Bridge traffic was banked up everywhere and it would be at least an hour before they could get back to my wife’s work. So lucky she left to go back there.

She arrived and fortunately Scully was safe and sound with her co-workers. But she had no harness or lead, and so couldn’t walk home with Scully! So I had to drive down and pick them both up.

I had a call with the doggy daycare and they were very apologetic, saying they’d already spoken to the delivery driver about leaving a dog with someone who wasn’t the owner. That absolutely never should have happened, no matter what the co-workers said, without contacting and checking directly with us. So it was all a bit stressful because we didn’t know for sure that Scully was safe for half an hour.

To end on a more positive note, some photos I took the past few days while on break from the standards meeting. First, the view from our meeting room window, with a coveted Sydney Harbour water view:

Jacaranda trees beginning to flower at Circular Quay:

Some of Sydney’s old and new architecture:

The Opera House with ferries crossing in front:

And the Art Gallery:

New content today:

Games night and a fast run

Friday I picked up the weekly grocery shopping in the morning. I order online, a habit I began during COVID, and continue because it saves me time wandering up and down all the aisles of the supermarket. When you order online, you can select a checkbox for each item saying whether it’s okay for them to substitute an alternate brand or product if the one you selected is out of stock. After some early experimentation with this, I simply set it to “no substitutions” for everything. Because sometimes I’d get stuff I really didn’t want.

But when I pick up the order at the supermarket, often they have still substituted something. But at least they let me know about and give me the option to reject the substitution and get a refund for the missing item. Yesterday I ordered a particular brand and type of bread. They had the exact one I ordered, and another different type, and asked me which one I would prefer, as if they were substituting something. But one was the actual correct product I’d ordered, so I pointed to that and said, “That’s the one I ordered.” They questioned again, asking if I’d prefer the other one. I had to say, “No, that’s the one I ordered, I want that one.” 🙄

I had a bunch of ethics classes. One had a returning student – I knew he was returning as I’d made a personal note about him in the private teacher’s notes section, just recording the country he lived in. I said, “Welcome back, you’ve done my classes before, right?” And he looked surprised and said, “No…” I said, “I’m sure you have, maybe a while ago.” He said it must have been a couple of years or so ago, which may well have been true. I think maybe he was impressed at my memory!

My wife and I went out to our local pizzeria for dinner. And then when we got home I joined online games night with my friends. It was just three of us this week, as one was away and another was busy moving into his brand new house (where we played last week, but he finally had his furniture moved on Friday). I won two games of Jump Drive quite dramatically – I was very lucky with drawing into strong synergies in each game. Then we played Luxor, which I came second in. One guy went to bed early, and the two of us remaining played Root on Steam. He played cats and I played the Alliance, with AI Eyrie and Vagabond, and I managed to win.

Scully slept better overnight. On Friday I wrote a note and put copies under the doors of all our neighbours in the building, asking if anyone had any new electrical devices running overnight that could be causing some high-pitched noise or other humming or whatever that might be disturbing Scully. Our neighbour directly below us responded and said they’d started using an automatic cat feeder on the weekend, and offered to turn it off to see if Scully would sleep any better. She did, but still wanted to leave the bedroom once soon after we went to bed. After wandering around the house for a bit she came back and then slept through the night, which was a lot better than the past several nights.

I think the experiment is inconclusive. I’m sceptical that a cat feeder would make a constant sound that would disturb Scully, and her behaviour seems more consistent with whatever is bothering her still being present, but maybe she’s getting used to it. Anyway, I reported back to the neighbour and they agreed to keep the cat feeder off for another couple of days to see what happens, and then maybe we can test it by trying it switched on again. If that makes Scully more agitated again then we’ll have some strong evidence.

After breakfast I went for a 5k run. I pushed a bit and recorded 26:38, my best time since back in March. So that was pretty good. It didn’t feel too hard either, like I still could have gone a bit faster.

This afternoon when out walking Scully past the small group of local shops, where the fish & chip shop is, we were lamenting that nothing there was open for dinner on a Saturday evening. But we noticed a new sign at the cafe, saying that it was now open for dinner from Thursday to Saturday! They only started this this week. So maybe in a week or two we might try going up there for dinner.

New content today:

A mysterious restless night

Last night was very restless. In fact, it’s the third night in a row I’ve had little sleep. Something is keeping Scully awake and alert all night. Normally she sleeps like a log from bed time to after we get up. But these past nights she’s been sitting up alert, and wanting to constantly get off the bed and go out to the lounge room, and then she comes back in again, and repeats the cycle, all through the night.

I know she hates the high-pitched buzz of mosquitoes, but we’ve sprayed and sprayed and I’m sure there are none of those because normally they bite me and I really notice it. I suspect that someone in our apartment building might have a new appliance or something that is running through the night and making a high-pitched sound that Scully can hear.

When the sun came up (I’d been awake since about 2am), I emailed someone on the building strata committee to ask if any equipment had been installed or updated in the building that might be responsible. I thought maybe perhaps an ultrasonic pest repellent device or something. But the response came back negative – no electrical work of any kind in the past week.

While lying awake in the night, in the quietest moments I thought I could maybe hear some rhythmic beeping, just at the edge of my hearing. I’m not sure if it was real, or if I was imagining it. But I think I’ve heard it the past couple of nights, and had never heard it before. But I can’t be sure. I’m aware that dogs have much more sensitive ears and can hear higher pitched sounds than humans can, so even if I’m wrong it could still be something like this.

We may have to write a letter and copy it to all our neighbours in the building to try to find out if anyone has recently acquired a new electrical device that could be causing a noise that Scully can hear.

The other alternative is that it might be something wrong with Scully. But otherwise her behaviour seems normal. During the day and when out on walks she seems fine. I took her on a very long walk today to try and tire her out so she’ll sleep through tonight. Hopefully, otherwise tomorrow I’m going to be a right wreck if I don’t get a decent sleep again.

Despite being tired all day, I did a new Darths & Droids strip. I had some time in the afternoon to do other things, but didn’t get much done because of the tiredness.

New content today:

Another day out: Scully’s buddy and Ryde markets

Today after my morning 5k run, we went for a drive over to Meadowbank to visit Scully’s best friend, Luna, the poodle who used to live next door to us. My wife and I met her owners too, and we all walked together over to the Ryde Wharf Markets. This is a small local market; it had a lot of food stalls, but only a dozen or so other types of stalls, selling jewellery, knick-knacks, clothing, etc. I got a couple of jars of fig jam from one stall, one sweet with cinnamon and ginger, and one more savoury, with rosemary and balsamic vinegar. I tried them both but couldn’t choose between them, so got a jar of each. I’m a sucker for fig jam!

I grabbed a hot snack from one of the food stalls, a spinach, cheese, and minced beef boureka. After looking around a bit we retreated to a nearby cafe to have drinks and sit for a bit to catch up. Here’s Scully (left) and Luna (right):

After this we drove back home and I had to finish making some sourdough bread and work on some comics and then get ready for online classes in the evening. For dinner I made omelettes.

New content today:

Late night trip to the vet

After I posted last night’s blog post, I was planning to relax, watch some TV, and go to bed. But Scully was behaving oddly, refusing to eat dinner, and her hind legs were shaking. Normally she starts sleeping soon after dinner, but she was lying down with her head up, alert and awake. And she looked very wobbly on her legs whenever she moved, and struggling to stand or sit.

We were worried enough that we decided to take her to the vet, which has a 24-hour emergency service. We were there until almost midnight while the vet examined her, manipulated her legs and torso, took her temperature, and did a blood test. The vet said that she reacted when he manipulated her lower spine and that maybe she had a muscle strain or sprain. He asked of Scully had done any unusual jumping or other activity that could have caused it, but there was nothing as far as we knew. Scully never jumps up or down on anything – we trained her from a puppy never to jump. The vet also noticed her anal glands were quite full, and he expressed them to relieve pressure. He said it might be possible that the two things combined were causing more pain so that might relieve things. He gave us a painkiller tablet for Scully so she could sleep. But after her glands had been expressed, she was already a lot more sprightly and walking around easier. Her legs had stopped shaking. We took her home and gave her the tablet and she had a good sleep.

Today Scully seems to be almost back to normal. So it seems it wasn’t anything serious. The blood test was all normal. So I think we basically just have to monitor her over the next day or so and make sure she’s back to normal.

This meant I didn’t get a lot of sleep as I had to be up for Zoom classes starting from 8am today. So I’ve been a bit tired today.

After four classes in the morning, I too Scully for a walk to Botanica Cafe for lunch. I tried the last thing on the lunch menu that I hadn’t tried before (except the chicken and avocado sandwich which I’ll never have because of the avocado), the roast beef and onion sandwich. It was pretty good, though there are other things on the menu that I prefer. Starting next time I go there I’m going to work my way through everything on the all-day breakfast menu!

I went there because I had a meeting arranged with someone who wanted to meet up to buy a Magic: the Gathering card from me. It was a valuable card (several hundred dollars), and the guy is in Sydney so decided a meeting would be better than sending it through the post. He arrived after I’d finished eating, inspected the card, and was happy with the condition, so transferred the cash to me electronically and could take the card immediately.

We got back home as grey clouds rolled in and threatened rain, and it became very cold again with the southerly wind. I don’t think it actually rained, but there might still be showers later tonight.

New content today:

The last perfect day of autumn…

Some 5 billion years from now, there will be a last perfect day on Earth… then the sun will begin to die, life will be extinguished, the oceans will boil and evaporate away.

Carl Sagan said this in his TV series “Cosmos”. I’m reminded of it on a day like today, when it’s absolutely gorgeous autumn weather – warm, with a light breeze, and just a pleasure to be outside. Not too hot like summer, and not yet descending into the chill of winter. And with the forecast for tomorrow being rainy and much colder, it will probably feel like the start of winter.

So today felt like the last perfect day of autumn. I had four ethics classes before lunch, but then took the chance to take Scully on a nice long walk in the sunshine, filtered through high cirrus clouds so it wasn’t stinging. We stopped at The Grumpy Baker and I got a spicy vegetable roll for lunch – like a sausage roll but filled with a kind of Moroccan spiced vegetable mix. It’s really good.

Then Scully got to run around and chase a ball on the grass by the harbour for a bit before we walked back home. She rolled in the grass a bit, enjoying the scents, but it was okay because we had planned to give her a bath this evening. We meant to do it on the weekend but time got away from us.

I spent some time making stage 8 of the Lego D&D set. This adds a door and arches around the dungeon level, and adds a roof which looks like a floor of the storey above.

I made pizza for dinner, but didn’t realise until the dough was ready that we’d run out of pizza cheese (a blend of mostly mozzarella with a little cheddar and parmesan for flavour)! So I had to make it with just cheddar and feta cheese. Cheddar’s not the best by itself as it gets oily when it melts, but spreading it sparely on the pizza works okay.

Then two more classes tonight to finish off the week’s topic on “Why don’t we?” questions. Tomorrow I write up the lesson plan for the next week, which will be on “Mysterious Beasts” – like the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and so on. That should be fun!

New content today:

Writing an overdue report

This week is mid-semester break at the university, so I didn’t have to go in for a Data Engineering session. I used the extra time to tackle a task that I should have done a few weeks ago: writing up my report for Standards Australia on the ISO Photography Standards meeting that was held in Tokyo in February. They say I should have the report submitted within a month of the meeting, but I’ve been a bit late in the past and they haven’t said anything. So anyway, today I knuckled down and wrote the report and then submitted it.

That took a good few hours. I finished about the time I finished eating my lunch (I got hungry and made it and ate at my desk as I worked). After that I took Scully for a walk. We went to the post office, because I had another batch of Magic: the Gathering cards that I’d sold which I had to mail.

We got back, and my wife got home soon afterwards. She’d taken the afternoon off to take Scully in to the vet to get a vaccination for leptospirosis. We’d wanted to get her vaccinated for this some time ago, but they had a shortage of the vaccine and it only just became available again. So we had flu shots yesterday and Scully got her own shot today. She seems not to have suffered any strange effects from it, acting normally all evening.

And while they were at the vet I sold another Magic card (yes, one – I sold it for over $400) and went for another walk up to the post office to mail it.

This evening I had the first three classes of the new “Dreams” topic this week. It’s an interesting one. A couple of the kids had obviously read up about dreams and knew all about lucid dreaming and the conjectured biological purposes of dreams and so on, while others were just going off their own experiences and trying to think questions through from that perspective.

New content today:

Gas bill shenanigans and visiting the old dog park gang

We got our quarterly gas bill this morning, and it’s way higher than normal. I checked the itemised details and discovered the anomaly began when we had our new hot water meter installed on 23 January.

The old meter was used for 34 days during the billing period, and recorded usage of 91 megajoules, for an average of 2.7 MJ/day. I checked and this has been roughly consistent for the past couple of years at least – going up a bit in winter when we take warmer/longer showers.

The new meter was used for 57 days during the billing period, and recorded usage of 1164 megajoules, for an average of 20.4 MJ/day. Over 7.5 times as much!

So I spent a half hour on the phone to the gas company to complain and request an investigation. Thankfully the guy I spoke to agreed that it looked fishy. He asked me to go have a look at the meter and tell him the reading on it. I went and looked. Unlike the old meter which had a physical dial showing digits, this one has an LCD screen It was blank. There was a red button and I asked the guy on the phone should I press the button to activate the display? He said no, don’t touch it – the display should be always on and it was very weird that it wasn’t.

Anyway, the upshot is we don’t need to pay our bill for a month while they investigate. He said someone may contact me to come inspect the meter.

After that fun, I took Scully to my wife’s work and headed into the city on the train for today’s Data Engineering lecture at the University of Technology. Today we did model fitting and hypothesis testing – least squares, residual analysis, goodness of fit, t-tests, and ANOVA. During the tutorial breaks I spoke to several of the student teams about their plans for their end-of-subject projects.

One team wants to try testing the idea that beer becomes more bitter the more hops you add. I suspect one of them is a keen home brewer. The plan was not to use actual beer, but to boil hops in water for different amounts of time, and get volunteers to blind taste the resulting solutions and rate them in bitterness, and then do a bunch of statistical tests on the results. It seems like a decent project – we like to see some creativity, and we love it when students do their own experiments rather than just downloading online datasets to trawl through.

Another group wants to test what factors influence educational outcomes in school children. They plan to look at things like socio-economic background, private vs public schools, and so on.

And another group is thinking of testing whether more healthy or less healthy foods cost more. I said this is interesting because it’s not entirely clear how “healthy” a food is – there may be differing opinions. But they could look for correlations of price versus fat content, sugar content, sodium content, fibre content, etc., and then make some conclusions based on those. This got them talking excitedly and planning more, so it was good to see they took that on board and were keen to explore the possibilities.

After the lecture, I picked up Scully on the way back home. We took a detour to the dog park that we used to visit a lot to meet the crowd there at 4pm. We haven’t done this for a long time, maybe a year or so, because I’ve been too busy with my classes. But since I’m currently on a week’s break for Easter I decided to take the opportunity. Most of the same old regulars and their dogs were there. It’s funny… today the other dogs there were: Basti, Bentley, Bertie, Betty, Beau,… and Ruffy.

From there we headed home via the waterfront by the harbour. It’s a nice walk, but made the overall walk home pretty long. I was a bit worn out, and Scully is exhausted for the evening!

New content today:

Scully’s birthday lunch

Today is Scully’s 6th birthday! My wife took the day off work, and we had booked a lunch in a fancy restaurant in the Hunter Valley wine region, north of Sydney. We left home at 9am to drive up there and arrived just after 11 o’clock. This gave us some time to stop off in the Hunter Valley Gardens to look around some of the shops there. I tried some liqueurs and bought a few bottles: butterscotch liqueur, chocolate/hazelnut vodka, and passionfruit vodka.

Then we drove over to our lunch venue in one of the vineyards. Here’s Scully in the vineyard:

We went to Leogate Estate winery and their restaurant, The Gates. Being a Tuesday, it wasn’t very busy and we had the only occupied table outside on the very shady veranda area. There were a few other diners inside, but we were enjoying the warm day and the solitude being outside, with a view of the vineyard and the nearby hills:

The lunch was excellent. My appetiser was seared scallops with textures of spring peas:

Followed by confit duck with pancetta, bok choy, and sticky soy glaze:

And the dessert was something special. Caramel bombe Alaska:

Both of the waitresses recommended this, and they were not wrong. It was amazing and absolutely delicious. Crispy meringue crust, soft meringue inside, encasing chocolate and vanilla ice cream, sitting on top of what was like a slice of sticky date pudding, and surrounded by delicious caramel sauce, all sprinkled with bits of raspberries. It was so good. After we’d finished, one of the waitresses asked how I’d liked it, and said that some people come to this restaurant just for that dessert. It was a really good lunch. And Scully enjoyed a tiny piece of the duck that I gave her for her birthday.

After eating, we went into the wine tasting and sales room to buy some bottles of the wines that we’d had during the lunch. Then we stopped at another winery nearby to get some of the sparkling wines that my wife likes (and I like them too, but they’re her favourites).

We left the Valley via a slower back road to head home, rather than take the freeway all the way back. It’s slower, but more scenic and enjoyable. We arrived home about 5:30pm. The total distance driven just to have lunch today was about 340 kilometres.

New content today: