September 2025 – Page 2 – dangermouse.net

Dealing with a company

My day was disrupted today by having to deal with a company doing something questionable. I don’t want to go into details, but it took a few hours to straighten out. I almost missed my first critical thinking class of the evening because of dealing with it too, but I managed to get home just in time.

This was time I had planned to spend preparing for tomorrow night’s Star Wars roleplaying game, that I’d arranged with some of my friends. The result was I didn’t have enough time to prepare, so I had to postpone the game. Instead we’ll assemble at another friend’s place for board games. I’ll have to run the Star Wars game another week.

That’s about it. It wasn’t a fun day.

Boredom

Today I wrote up my next critical and ethical thinking class, on the topic of Boredom. And this evening ran the first three classes. I think this is a good topic – defined as one where I have plenty of questions and they’re open-ended ones that get the kids talking and discussing reasons rather than just giving short answers. Samples:

Is boredom the same as having nothing to do? Is being busy the same thing as not being bored?
Why do you think some people get bored more easily than others?
Do you think people in the past (before phones, TV, or video games) were more bored or less bored than we are today?
Is boredom the fault of the person being bored? Or is it just something that happens to them?
Can boredom ever be useful?
Do you think animals get bored in the same way as humans?
What if, in the future, robots or AIs get bored?

I also did a science class and an essay writing class with two individual students. And in between I took some time to go for a walk outside, in the warm weather. It’s a nice change from the winter cold, but it feels too early in spring for weather this warm already.

Atomic theory prep

Today I mostly worked on a lesson plan and presentation for tomorrow’s online science class with my ongoing Outschool student. We’re heading towards basic atomic theory, after don some experiments with chemical reactions, and talking about the early experiments of 18th century chemists like Antoine & Marie-Anne Lavoisier. The goal for tomorrow is to get up to John Dalton’s formulation of atomic theory, and then leave some dangling questions that will lead into atomic structure in future weeks.

I did a 5k run after breakfast, before the day warmed up too much. Sydney reached 27°C today, and was 28°C yesterday – very warm for this early in spring. The mean maximum for September is only 20°C, but the forecast this week sees every day above that.

I went to pick up Scully from my wife’s work at lunch time. On the way I stopped to take a photo of this plant fibre snake thingy that is used to delineate the edge of a path through a park. Someone has put eyes on it, which makes it look amusing.

I stopped in at the local hardware store on the way home to look for that wood offcut I want to make a laundry shelf out of. But unfortunately when I asked to go through their offcuts bin, the guy told me that someone had just come in before me and bought everything that was in there! I looked and it was indeed totally empty. oh well, I’ll just have to keep trying until I find what I want.

Tonight I made calzones for dinner, with spinach and ricotta filling and some tomato sauce to pour over the top. I forgot to add some mozzarella to the stuffing, which I normally do, but they still turned out well.

Student image processing projects underway

Today was the usual busy Monday, with 4 ethics classes in the morning, then a bi of a break before heading into the city for the evening’s image processing session. The lectures are now over and we’re into the student project phase for the next few weeks. This is where most of the work for me is, where I spend the whole evening wandering around, checking how student groups are going, and answering their questions about the project in general or whatever specific image processing thing they’ve decided to work on.

For dinner before the session, I tried a place I haven’t been to before, called Yumko Korean Fried Chicken. They had a “lunch special” bento box which you could also have for dinner, with pieces of fried chicken, salad, rice, and a selection of three appetiser dumplings. It was really good, and very filling.

Looking for offcuts

This morning we went to visit my wife’s family for morning tea at a cafe. I don’t drink coffee, but I had a Nutella cookie, which was really good. Very chocolatey.

After that my wife and I went into a big hardware store which was nearby, to check their timber offcuts bin. I’m going to install a shelf in the laundry to store things on, and I only need a relatively small piece of board, much smaller than the large boards they sell for $50+. When other people buy boards, they sometimes get the hardware store to cut them to the size they need, and the offcuts are left there in a bin for people to rummage through, and you can buy an offcut for as little as $1.

Unfortunately today they didn’t have very many, and all the board offcuts were MDF, which is not the material I want. I want either solid pine board or maybe plywood. I’ll keep looking in other hardware stores over the next few weeks until I find what I need.

Back home I made some sourdough bread, and did some comics stuff, and planned another two topics for Critical and Ethical Thinking classes for upcoming weeks. And then taught four classes in the evening. Phew!

Games with the new neighbours

On Friday I did my usual routine: pick up the grocery shopping, a bunch of critical thinking classes. In between I cleaned the house in preparation for the evening, when we had our new neighbours over for dessert and board games.

Although they moved in back in July, we haven’t had a real chance to talk with them much, rather only in passing in the hallway. I’d figured out they were into board games, so we invited them over. It was my friends’ online gaming week this week, so I sat out that to socialise at home.

They brought over freshly baked chocolate brownies, still warm from the oven. We had some fresh strawberries, which went well with the chocolate, and some mixed nuts, and cinnamon coated almonds to snack on. We introduced them to three games they hadn’t played before: Sushi Go Party!, Kingdomino, and Azul: Queen’s Garden. We played two games of Kingdomino and one of each of the others. They enjoyed them all, and it was a really fun night, as we got to get to know each other as well and find out more about them, and the things they’ve discovered in the neighbourhood, and things we could tell them that they hadn’t discovered yet.

Today I went for a 7.5k run. I’m really trying to do at least one that distance each week now. It feels a bit of a slog, especially the last third, but I thin its good to get my distance up. My wife went out to run some errands while I stayed home with Scully and wrote more Darths & Droids comics. I’m trying to get ahead with the buffer again, and am finally making some progress.

This evening we went out for dinner to Garfish, the local seafood place which is a favourite of ours. I decided tonight to try the fish curry, which has been a staple on the menu for as long as I can remember, but which I’ve never tried before. I think they vary it occasionally, but tonight it was a Sri Lankan curry, with fish pieces and a large grilled prawn, served with rice. It was delicious, a creamy sort of curry with a nice kick of spice and heat.

Making colour combo lighting

Overnight, since yesterday’s post, we added almost 50 mm more rain to make yesterday’s total 122 mm. It was really wet. There was flash flooding in many parts of Sydney, including in our basement garage, but not too serious thankfully. Today it continued raining until about lunchtime, but then cleared up, and the afternoon was sunny, but cold and windy.

After my morning critical thinking classes, I went to Wenona School again to help students out with science projects. We’d finished the pinhole cameras last week, and this week we worked on taping coloured filters over LED stage lights to make coloured lighting. We arrayed the lights and tested various combinations. I showed how red, green, and blue lights combine to make white, and then the students had fun putting their hands in front of them to make coloured shadows as they intercepted the lights coming from different angles. I explained what was happening so they understood the science behind it, and the difference between additive colour mixing (like light) and subtractive (like with paint).

I came home and had three more classes this evening. Another busy day!

New window sills and coat racks

The builder came back today to complete work on our new window sills. I took photos yesterday to show some of the work being done. Here’s one of the living room windows after the wooden sill was removed, showing the cracked masonry underneath.

And here’s the same window after the masonry was repaired and the new sill was put in place, but before it was painted. (The perspective is different because I used the wider angle lens on my phone.)

Today the builder filled in some small gaps, then sanded and painted the sills with undercoat. We’re leaving them like that and the final coat will be put on by the painters who will be doing everything in October.

While he was here, I got the builder to drill holes for me to install new coat racks in the bedroom. After he left I screwed them in and they look great. The builder also stuck our apartment number back on the outside of the front door. It had been taken off the old door before it got replaced for fire safety reasons back in March(!) and hadn’t been replaced yet.

Apart from all this I had an online science class and essay writing class to teach, and then this evening three critical thinking classes. In the science class I got the student to dissolve salt, sugar, and epsom salts in three different glasses of water, and we’re going to evaporate them and make crystals. Hopefully by next week’s class we’ll see some good ones.

The other news today is the weather. The forecast yesterday when I looked was for 10-35 mm of rain. But we’ve now had 75 mm in less than 12 hours, with another 12 hours to go before the daily total is recorded at 9am, plus another 7 mm overnight last night. The rain has been truly torrential at times – we had almost 20 mm in one half-hour period. And lots of lightning and very loud thunder. Several times the thunder rattled the windows, it was that close and loud. The forecast for tonight warns of the possibility of damaging winds and heavy hail. And tomorrow we are expecting up to another 35 mm of rain. Some flood warnings have been issued for parts of the state.

It looks like there’ll be a break in the rain for a while, on the rain radar. Hopefully in time for when I take Scully out tonight for her bedtime toilet!

Replacing window sills and cleaning behind furniture

Today was unseasonably warm like yesterday, but unlike yesterday it wasn’t 29°C and dry. Today was 26°C and very humid, which in some ways felt worse. The humidity came with rain blowing up from the south, which will cause temperatures to plummet overnight, back to winter chill for the next few days.

Today builders came in to replace our window sills. We’re having the old water-damaged ones replaced before we repaint the whole place next month. The builders ripped the old wooden sills off, which cracked some of the concrete. One sill in the living room had huge chinks of concrete come loose, revealing the raw bricks below. The builders filled the gaps with new concrete and laid the new wooden sills on top. They’re coming back tomorrow to give them an undercoat of paint, which will then be covered with our chosen colour scheme by the painters in October.

This work involved moving a fair bit of furniture away from the walls, where it’s been for many years. You don’t want to know how much dust and grime was behind them! I vacuumed the areas behind all the moved furniture and filled the cleaner dust container so much that I had to empty it immediately. (Normally it’s good for two whole cleans of the entire house.) I also washed down the walls and skirting boards with sugar soap to get some discolouration and grime off. Although the painters will do a thorough clean and preparation of all the surfaces before painting. I just couldn’t stand the sight of the mess and had to clean it up a bit.

In other renovation news, we got confirmation of a booking date for the electrician to install the new downlights in the kitchen. That will be on the 23rd of this month, the same date as the stone polisher will be in to polish the stone floor in the bathroom. Which is good, they can both do their thing at the same time and I won’t need to stay home twice for two different tradesmen.

I also write my new critical thinking class for the week, on the topic of “Likes”. And a new science class for my science student tomorrow. We’re going to be starting an experiment to grow crystals, and learning about how atoms combine in different ways to make molecules or crystals.

A taste of summer in early spring

Today was all about the weather. We’re just emerging from winter, but today got up to 29°c here in Sydney, and over 30°C in some suburbs. Our warmest day since mid-April. It won’t last though, Wednesday is forecast to be 19°C and Thursday just 17°C. My friends and I have often said that spring in Sydney is not a series of gradually warming days – it’s a series of hot and cold days dithered together.

I did my four online classes this morning, then took Scully to my wife’s work. I ran 5k back home in the heat – it was about 27°C at the time, before the peak heat. It wasn’t too bad actually, since the humidity was low.

Then (after a shower and change) I went into the city for tonight’s university lecture on image processing. Tonight the lecturer discussed deep learning techniques and demonstrated several on various image classification and recognition problems.

When I was getting on the train to go into the city, an old lady with a walker was getting off. So I stepped aside to let her get off first without crowding her, before I got on. When she got off she gave me a death stare and said in an offended/sarcastic voice, “Well thanks for helping me!” 😳 I totally would have helped her if she’d asked for any help. Otherwise I’m staying politely out of the way.

In the city I had Chinese noodles for dinner, at Chinese Noodle House. Not China Noodle House, nor Chinese Noodle Restaurant, which are other establishments within sight of Chinese Noodle House.