weather – Page 2 – dangermouse.net

Rain and garden sprinklers

It rained overnight. I took Scully out for her bedtime toilet a bit after 10:30 and I wasn’t expecting it to be raining, but it was. So I hadn’t brought an umbrella and we got a bit wet before she’d finished her business and we came back inside. It got heavier and rained throughout the night.

It had cleared by morning, but there was another spell of heavy showers around midday. Then when I went out with my wife to walk Scully in the early evening, we noticed that the garden sprinklers were on. We hardly ever see them on – in fact I don’t recall seeing them on any time in the past month or so, when we’ve been having nice fine weather. But as soon as we get some heavy rain, they seem to come on. It’s not the first time I’ve notice this either. No garden sprinklers for a few weeks of fine weather, then as soon as it rains they come on.

Today wasn’t too exciting. A bunch of ethics classes in the morning, then I took Scully for a walk after lunch. I bought a bag of “peanut butter and jam” cookies. They’re nice, but I’m not sure about the “jam” part – it appears to just be dried cranberries or something similar. It does give me an idea to try baking something a bit like this, though.

Oh! I also made this week’s worth of Irregular Webcomic! strips. And pizza for dinner.

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Missed shopping, a day out, cold winter, and thouls

Yesterday was board games night online, so I didn’t write up my blog post. The day was pretty ordinary, starting with the usual morning pick-up of the groceries that I’d ordered online. I always grab fruit and vegetables manually before collecting the reminder of the pick-up order. My wife requested a loaf of bread to got into the freezer to replace our backup loaf that gets used when we run out of home made sourdough. I grabbed a loaf and took it to the checkout with the fruit and veg, but not wanting to squash it on the bottom of the shopping bag I set it aside and scanned all the fruit and veg first. And then forgot about the bread! I only realised today that the bread wasn’t here, and remembered that I must have left it at the self-serve checkout in the supermarket. Oh well.

We had an epic online board games night. Because the Olympic Games are currently on in Paris, we had a medal tally board, listing everyone who came first, second, or third in all of the games, and we played a series of short games to get in as many “events” as possible. We also each represented a country, chosen by rolling randomly on a table and following some amusing directions. For example, one of the table entries was “find the top-leftmost item in your fridge, and what country it is most associated with”. If I’d rolled this, the item was cheddar cheese, and my country would have been Great Britain. As it happened, I rolled “What Olympic sport have you played the most? What country has won the most medals in that sport?” it wasn’t entirely clear, but I chose tennis, and it turns out that Great Britain has won the most medals in that, so that was indeed my country for the night. Others got France, Costa Rica, Georgia, Sweden, and Australia. We played a total of eight different games, and won one gold, one silver, and two bronze medals, coming 4th in the tally out of 6 countries.

Today I found an article in the news that began:

The word on the street seems unanimous — it feels like one of the coldest winters in living memory.

It’s true… I’ve been commenting about how cold it’s been this winter, and everyone I know has been saying the same thing. We’re all freezing here in Sydney and saying how unusually cold it is.

Only this news article points out that Australia has experienced a June and July 0.7°C above the long-term average baseline. And Sydney in particular has recorded a June/July 0.9°C above average. However, this is the second coldest winter in the last ten years. The problem is the baseline has shifted and we’ve become used to warm winters. Last year, for example, we had a winter 1.7°C above average. Climate change, huh.

Today my wife and I went to her mother’s place to pick her up and take her to the nursing home where her mother (my wife’s grandmother) has moved into. She’s 101 years old and only moved out of her own home a couple of months ago, after having a fall. We didn’t visit since it required COVID tests and my mother-in-law only wanted to stay an hour or so. So in the meantime we drove a short distance to a new bakery we’d found, called Flour Shop, where we had some lunch. They had truly amazing sausage rolls, with pork, fennel, and apple. And we got a loaf of sourdough fruit loaf to bring home.

And tonight I learnt something fascinating about an old Dungeons & Dragons monster: the thoul. I knew that the thoul is a classic monster from the 1981 (Tom Moldvay) Basic Dungeons & Dragons rules, described as:

A thoul is a magical combination of a ghoul, a hobgoblin, and a troll. Except when very close, thouls look exactly like hobgoblins, and they are sometimes found as part of the bodyguard of a hobgoblin king. The touch of a thoul will paralyze (in the same way as that of a ghoul). If it is damaged, a thoul will regenerate 1 hit point per round as long as it is alive. [like a troll]

But today I learnt that the thoul began life as a typo in a table of monsters in the Original 1974 D&D rules. It was intended to be a Toad, as listed in the first printing, but was listed on the line before “Ghoul” and somehow in a later printing became “Thoul”. In subsequent printings the publishers at TSR decided, instead of correcting the typo, to double down on the typo and invent a creature to fit the name. This is documented on this blog. I always wondered about this wacky monster that made no sense!

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Windy Sunday, prelude to August

Today was cold and very windy. The temperature reached only 14.7°C, and the “feels like” temperature was hovering around 1-2°C for much of the morning. I did brave it to go for a 5k run after lunch, when it had warmed up a little.

We went for a drive earlier, in the late morning, so my wife could have coffee with her family. They sat inside the nice warm cafe while I took Scully a bit further in the car to get pies at Collaroy. I took her to the park nearby to run around a bit while I ate, but it was really cold with the wind near the ocean, so we didn’t stay too long. I saw a greyhound running around, and did laps around the outside of the children’s playground, and it was going really insanely fast.

Back home I worked on some comics and tried to stay warm. I got a very cool message from a student in one of my ethics classes, who had done her first class with me earlier in the week. She’d written a three-page story based on the class and sent it to me! A story about two kids who go fishing for the first time with their grandfather, and wonder about various ethical questions, like what if their grandfather caught too many fish. And at one point one of the kids trips over a tangle of fishing line, and the grandfather complains about some fishers who leave their trash around. It’s a really cute story. And this kid sounds super excited for next week’s class. Which is a good feeling when you’re the teacher.

I’ve also been searching for restaurants in Tokyo, to plan out some of our trip in February. With my wife’s mother and sister coming with us, it will be a bit challenging finding places to eat that fit all the dietary requirements, so I’m starting my research well in advance.

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Games night Friday, rainy Saturday

Friday I had my usual ethics classes morning and afternoon. In between I took Scully for a walk at lunch time. I took her down to Bayview Park near the water and the ferry wharf. There were a couple of little pied cormorants drying their wings on an adjacent wharf, in the beautiful winter sunshine. It was really nice down there by the water. I tossed a tennis ball around for Scully to chase and retrieve. But at one point I dropped her container of treats on the grass, and they all spilt out. I picked up what I could, but she spent the next few minutes snuffling through the grass to find all the other dropped ones. And then after that she wasn’t interested in chasing the ball any more!

In the evening I went to a friend’s place for our fortnightly games night. Our host ordered pizza, and his kids were there to play games with us or do whatever as well. He asked them what pizzas they wanted, and one kid said, “Either vegetarian or meat lovers.” The father said to us, “Well, there you go, nothing in between.” We played a quick game of Jump Drive while waiting for pizza to arrive. I had a miserable game and barely reached around 25 points by the time someone had achieved the winning score of 50.

We got in another quick game of Fantasy Realms, a card game where you have to assemble a synergistic hand of cards that represent various people, items, or landmarks. Each card has rules on it for bonus or penalty points depending on other cards in your hand, and the interactions quickly get complex. I went for a Flood hand, with several Flood cards and one that gave me bonus points for every additional Flood. I ended up coming second with 182 points, behind the winner on 186.

After eating pizza, we turned to a big game. Four of us were keen to play Root, while the other guy played a different game with the kids. One guy hadn’t played Root before and wanted to learn. We gave him the Vagabond, as our host suggested it would be easier to concentrate on what he was doing without having to worry too much about the rest of us. I played the Eyrie, and was doing reasonably well behind the Vagabond, who raced to a lead by exploring and doing quests.

Here’s Scully watching us play. My birds are blue, the cats are orange, the Alliance are green, and the Vagabond is the lone light grey piece on the far left of the board.

The Marquisate (cats) played a Dominance card as soon as he reached 10 points, going for victory by controlling three rabbit clearings, and then moving lots of cats into those clearings. He would win at the start of his next turn unless someone else stopped him! The Alliance player (our host) looked at me and said, “Well, I’m not going to be able to stop him. It’s up to you.” I think this was a fair point. I could stop the cats winning, but doing so would require me to stretch myself thin and partly throw away the comfortable second place I was currently in. I had to think about my options for a few minutes, but eventually came up with a plan, moving and attacking to wrest control of one rabbit clearing, without making myself too vulnerable. It was a really interesting dynamic – if I didn’t want to lose the game for sure and give myself at least some chance of winning, I had to overstretch myself. The whole game played out at a frantic pace, and there was drama almost every turn. I managed to get myself into a position where I could potentially win next turn by crafting a pile of coins for 3 points, then building my final roost and scoring 5 more points at the end of the turn to reach the victory goal of 30. But the Vagabond had a monster turn before me and scored enough to win! So a win for the first time player, who really enjoyed the game and was gushing afterwards about the complexity, the asymmetry, and the depth of the interactions. I think he’s hooked.

After this we switched to playing Junk Art, a fun dexterity game where you have to construct rickety piles of sculptural art using plastic pieces of various unfriendly shapes. There are multiple rounds, all with different rules and scoring. Here’s Scully watching us play this:

And one of my constructions later in the game (with other players’ in the background):

I don’t even remember who won, but it was plenty of fun, especially late in the night.

This morning I slept in, partly because it was so dark outside and I thought it was still early until I looked at the clock and realised it was after 8am! It was raining, for the first time in over two weeks. And very cold. The temperature didn’t climb above 10°C until midday. But I went for a 5k run around then, and managed a good time, under 27 minutes.

Today I listed some Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition adventure books on eBay, hoping to get close to $200 in an auction. But five minutes after I’d completed the listing, I got a notification that someone had bought the books for my starting price of $10! I’d accidentally set it as a “buy it now” price, not an auction!! Someone saw it and realised it was the bargain of a lifetime and pounced on it. Stupid eBay, it makes the default listing a “buy it now” and not an auction, and you have to be aware to toggle a switch to make it an auction.

I contacted the buyer and explained the mistake, saying I would honour the sale, but hoping they’d be reasonable and let me cancel it. Turned out they were reasonable and said they still wanted the books, so how much would I be happy with selling them for. I decided to set a price of $80, and they accepted it and paid the extra. So I was happy to get that, and they were happy to get a decent bargain still. The good news is I will now be absolutely sure not to make this same mistake when listing Magic: the Gathering card lots worth $500 or more in the near future!

The rain cleared around lunch time and the clouds parted to a nice sunny afternoon. My wife and I took Scully on a walk over to Naremburn and the Flat Rock Cafe brew pub there. I tried an English style brown ale and we got a bowl of chips to eat as an afternoon snack. Turns out the serves of chips there are huge, and I was still pretty full by dinner time, so only had a small amount of the lentil dhal and rice that I cooked.

A pretty full two days!

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Ethics of fishing

Today was gloriously warm for a winter’s day, reaching 23°C. After two classes this morning I took Scully for a walk at lunchtime, the long one around Waverton and the harbour shore. It was beautiful being out in the warmth. But the forecast for the weekend is back to cold again, so winter hasn’t quite lost its grip yet.

I’ve been doing the Fishing topic in my ethics classes for two days now. There are some very interesting comments from some of the students about the topic. Most think the idea of going fishing is boring, spending hours doing nothing but waiting for a fish to bite. One kid said it could be fun because you could spend the whole time playing games on your phone!

Another kid in a class last night was a keen fisher, saying he often went on fishing trips and really enjoyed it. So he was super keen on the topic and gave some very interesting answers compared to some of the other kids with no experience.

One interesting question I ask is about subsistence fishing, the tradition in many cultures of people catching fish not for recreation, but as a primary food source. I ask them if this is a cultural tradition that has value and should be preserved, or if it’s okay that the practice might die out as people transition to developed societies with other food sources. The responses have been extremely varied, from kids saying any cultural tradition is important to preserve, while others say that if you’re having to fish to survive it must be a very impoverished lifestyle and should be changed.

I made a few more comics from the recent batch of Lego photos I took, enough to last this week out. I’ll get to completing the rest of the batch over the weekend, hopefully.

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Definitely spring flowers around

Adding to yesterday’s observations, today I noticed some cherry blossom trees in full bloom, with bees lazily collecting nectar. Spring definitely felt in the air as we got up to 21°C today, and tomorrow should be even warmer. It was lovely being out and about.

I took Scully for a drive to Allambie at lunch time, where I got pies for lunch. It’s a bit of a drive, but they’re the best combination of excellent pies and reasonable distance. And it has the advantage of being very close to a playing field where Scully can run around and get some exercise. It’s a soccer/rugby field and often very muddy after rain, but it’s been sunny for the past two weeks and the ground was nice and dry today.

Today marked the 14th day in a row where it hasn’t rained! It’s been so lovely not having any rain. It’s a constant refrain among people I meet on the street while out walking Scully: “Thank goodness for this lovely weather and no rain.” “It’s so nice that it hasn’t been raining.” “It’s good to get some sunny days in a row.” You can really tell we’ve had a ridiculous amount of rain in the first part of the year by how many people are super happy and excited by the fact that it hasn’t rained for several days.

And an amazing thing happened this morning. I was just pottering around and heard an awful raucous screeching outside, which at first I thought was a sulphur-crested cockatoo, and then as it continued in a distressed manner I thought it might have been a cockatoo that had been caught by a cat or something. I raced to the window to see what I could, and realised it was indeed a cockatoo, but not a white sulphur-crested one… it was a yellow-tailed black cockatoo! And not just one, but three of them! Feeding in a banksia tree right outside my living room window.

This is a rare species in this area, so close to the middle of the city. I’ve only ever seen them around here once before, in 2017. I raced to get my SLR camera and take some photos, but when I pulled it out the battery was dead, and the spare battery was dead too! So I quickly put one in a charger and hoped the cockatoos would stay there long enough for the battery charge up a bit.

The cockatoo making all the noise—and it was an almost continuous screeching, over and over and over without interruption—must have been a newly fledged juvenile, begging its parents (the other two) for food. I watched them and waited impatiently for my camera battery. After a few minutes I tried it, and it hard just enough charge for me to grab some photos!

Pretty cool!

Tonight I started the new ethics topic on Fishing. I have plenty of questions, which is good, as I ran out of time before getting to the end in the classes.

And for dinner I made a quiche, trying a mixture of half butter and half margarine in the pastry, to try to cut down on the saturated fats a bit. It worked okay, but was a bit sticky to roll out. I’ll see how the second half goes after it’s been refrigerated for longer.

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Spring already?

Today I did some comics stuff, and worked on my lesson plan for the new week of ethics classes, on the topic of Fishing.

For lunch I took Scully on a big walk to get her some exercise. She didn’t get much yesterday and was a bit restless and cheeky, so today I really wanted to tire her out. We stopped at St Thomas Rest Park where Scully could run around a bit off her lead. I practised some recalls with her, getting her to sit and stay while I walked away, and then calling her to come to me. We also said hello to some other dogs (and their owners).

Then we went to Maggio’s Italian Bakery for lunch. I got a pizza slice and a sour cherry danish, and grabbed a couple of Napoli biscuits for snacks tonight.

Near the bakery is a cafe called The Laneway Cafe. They serve a coffee brand called The Cat’s Pyjamas, and have signs for it on the barriers around their tables. Seen here with Scully:

Now… I’m disturbed by the fact that the cats on the sign are wearing clothes that are not pyjamas.

Yesterday I assembled the Lego Dungeons & Dragons tower with the tavern and the other castle-like bit, and this afternoon I took photos of the whole lot so far.

So this is all stages 1-24 put together. It’s huge! I managed to put it into my display cabinet, where it just fit, thanks to me having moved the shelf a while back specifically to accommodate it. Hopefully it’ll still fit when the dragon is constructed and added.

And finally, I’ve stared noticing signs of spring flowers and foliage already. There are several magnolia trees starting to flower, and even a few azaleas, and I’ve seen new green shoots on some plants too. I’m a bit surprised, as the weather is still really cold. Although we are forecast to get up to a pleasant 23°C on Thursday. So maybe that really is the first sign of spring…

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Frigid cold snap

We’re in the middle of another nasty cold spell for this winter. The temperature is actually not as low as it could be, but it’s extremely windy. We’re having averages around 60-70 km/h with gusts up to 100 km/h. A lot of Saturday activities today—such as markets—have been cancelled because of the high winds. The mountains are expecting blizzard conditions over 1500 metres. It’s bad enough here near sea level.

Yesterday I had my ethics classes and mailed off another package of Magic cards that I’d sold on eBay. The current class topic of Psychic Policing is generating some very interesting discussion among the kids. The older class age group in particular is showing some pretty deep thinking about the consequences of police having psychic abilities.

Last night we went up to the local pizzeria for dinner. It was chilly, but they have a nice cozy “outdoor” area where we can take Scully, which is under shelter and enclosed by fences and a heavy wind-breaking curtain covering the entrance from the outside.

Then after we got home it was online games night with my friends. We played Space Base, and then a new game for me: My City: Roll & Build. This is a roll-and-write type game, where everyone has an identical square grid map with features including a river, trees, and rocks, and you roll random building shapes and have to fit them into your map. You score points for covering empty squares and stones, but lose points for covering trees. At some point it becomes difficult to place more buildings and you can either skip a building and lose points and keep playing, or declare your round over. If you keep going, you may cover more squares and score more points, or you may roll badly shaped buildings and have to skip again and lose more points, so there’s a bit of press-your-luck. After each round, a new rule is introduced, such as scoring bonus points for putting buildings of the same type next to each other, or giving them access to wells, and so on. After a few rounds there are plenty of bonus points on offer, but the criteria are often contradictory and you have to decide the best option to take. It was fun, and also a sort of laid-back relaxing kind of game.

Then we played Just One, and got through the first 13 rounds without anyone making a wrong guess. 15 would have been a perfect score, but it was messed up on round 14 when two of the clues duplicated and were removed, making it too hard for the guesser. The 15th round was guessed correctly, so we scored a record high score of 14.

Today I braved the cold and wind and went for a run. I decided to push myself and go for 7.5k instead of my usual 5k. I took it a bit easy so as not to get too worn out early, and completed the distance in 43:15. I didn’t feel too bad, so maybe I’ll do this distance a bit more often.

Scully had her annual check-up and vaccination today. The vet declared her very fit and healthy, which was good! The vet said her teeth are very good for a poodle of her age.

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Another blast of winter

It was definitely one of the coldest feeling days of winter so far today. The actual temperature barely reached 16°C, but the “feels like” temperature maxed out at 8°C due to a stiff wind that was blowing all day.

My morning was spent inside doing ethics classes, but my hands were frozen. At 1pm I was glad yo take Scully for a walk, even in the cold, simply to get my blood circulating and warm up a bit from the physical movement.

We went up to the shops and I got some sushi for lunch, which I ate at the small park there while Scully sniffed around on the grassy area. On the way back I pondered grabbing some gelato (it’s never too cold for gelato). But when I went into the place I took a good look at some of the baked things they also have there. Iv’e never tried any of them before, but I noticed they had a crème brûlée cronut which looked very attractive with a very brûlée-like glaze on top. So on an impulse I got one of those instead. It turned out to be really delicious, with a custard filling inside the pastry. I might have to try some more of their pastries.

This afternoon I did some more work on new Irregular Webcomic! strips. I didn’t finish writing a whole batch, so I only ended up photographing one strip for tonight. I’ll try to get more done tomorrow, at least to last the rest of this week.

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A weird weather record

Australia set a new weather record today. The highest barometric pressure ever recorded in the country, at 1044.6 hectopascals. Here’s a news story about it. Clearly this is an unusual weather event. The high pressure system is enormous and basically stalled over the country, meaning the cold and rainy weather we’re having isn’t going anywhere for several more days.

Besides the usual ethics classes, I did online grocery shopping for pickup tomorrow morning, and I submitted that standards proposal I mentioned yesterday. I ran out of time to do it yesterday because it needed to be done via an online portal, and I had to ask my contact there where to find that. I got the information this morning, so sent it in.

I also sold another Magic: the Gathering card online, and had to dash up to the post office to send it off. And took Scully for a longish walk, down to the wharf and back. Thankfully the rain seems to be concentrated in the evening and overnight, and the day was actually pleasant around lunchtime.

And I did stage 21 of the Lego Dungeons & Dragons set. This completes the exterior rustic staircase and adds a roof over the first floor, with a cool little balcony at the top.

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