2025 – Page 2 – dangermouse.net

A lesson on post-scarcity economies

Because I was busy with other things yesterday, I put off preparing my new critical thinking topic for the week to today. I had to do it in time for classes this evening, so I worked up a lesson plan on the topic of post-scarcity economy. I set it up by talking about how the prices of technology like TVs and computers has fallen enormously since their introduction. Televisions in particular I was a bit surprised to discover have fallen to about just 1% of their value when they were first invented in the 1930s, taking into account inflation. I ask the kids what if this trend continues and in the future TVs and computers become so cheap you could buy them for less than a dollar? Or even that they might be given away for free.

Then I follow up with getting them to imagine this applies to all products. Anything a person might need or conceivably want is super cheap, either free or effectively free. We discuss what a world like this would be like to live in. What people would do, if they didn’t need jobs to make money? Would there be more or less arts and science? Would it be a better or worse world than we have now?

I ran the first three classes tonight and it was really fascinating. Opinions of the kids ranged from “this will never be possible” to “this could happen within 30 years”. And from “it would be a utopia, everyone happy, doing the things they enjoy” to “it would be a nightmare, everyone lazy and nobody doing anything intellectual”. It’s hard to recall a more polarising topic that I’ve done. So it’s a good one!

It was warmish again today, but we had a heavy black sky roll in over lunch time, and I got caught in some light rain with Scully while out for a walk. It didn’t rain much though, and the sun came out again later in the afternoon.

On the problems I mentioned yesterday: I tried PayPal again today and this time I tried transferring an amount below what I discovered to be a single-transaction limit, and it worked. I only found this limit with a Google search – I couldn’t find any mention of it on PayPal’s user help pages. It’s definitely lower than amounts I’ve transferred successfully in the past, so it seems PayPal has introduced this limit without telling anyone (or me at least). Anyway, one problem solved.

The other one, backing up my wife’s new MacBook, I haven’t solved yet, but I did find this StackExchange post about what sounds like the same problem, with two different possible solutions. I’ll try them later when I have some time.

For relaxation I’ve started watching Project UFO on Netflix. It’s a four-part series which is sort of a Polish X-Files/Chernobyl mash-up set in the 1980s. Very Cold War Soviet-style vibe, with dry humour and UFO hunting. I’m very interested to see where it’s going and how it ends.

A touch of spring?

After last week’s cold and relentless rain, this week is turning out beautifully. It’s sunny and even a little warm. It feels like spring is arriving. Many flowers have been appearing already. Magnolias are in full bloom in many places, and some of the trees are even losing their flowers and showing new green foliage already. Cherry blossoms are out, and azaleas are appearing too.

However the Bureau of Meteorology tells us it’s all an illusion. They say next week will see four cold fronts in rapid succession, bringing possibly the coldest weather of the entire year and more rain. They’re even saying it might snow in places like Canberra, where it rarely happens. Also there will be gale force winds with possible destructive effects. But I’m enjoying this week’s warmth while it lasts.

I spent today working on a science lesson for an online class tomorrow. We’re going to do states of matter and a precipitation reaction, with epsom salts and washing soda.

I’m also struggling with two technical issues. For the past two days I’ve been trying to withdraw funds from PayPal into my bank account. I’ve done this many times in the past and never had any issues. But every time I try to do it since yesterday, PayPal has displayed an error message telling me I’m over my daily withdrawal limit. I didn’t even know they had a daily withdrawal limit. But no matter how low I make the amount, it still says I’m over the limit. So I can’t get any money out of PayPal at all.

Secondly, my wife recently got a new laptop, a MacBook Air. I’m trying to set it up to use my network backup drive as the Time Machine backup drive. I’ve followed all the instructions on apple.com to set up the drive as a shared network drive, with a user with read/write access, and I can connect to the drive from the new MacBook. But when I try to configure it as the Time Machine backup drive, it says it doesn’t have read/write permission to the drive, despite me connecting with my username and password (my username that does have read/write permission to that drive). I can’t figure out what’s wrong.

More pleasantly, here’s a photo of that waffle I had for lunch the other day:

Nice looking, isn’t it?

And here’s a photo I took today which I’ve annotated with all the new high-rise apartment construction going on in the neighbourhood.

This doesn’t show all the construction either. There’s more hidden behind the palm tree on the left. I’ll try to take another photo from a different location and show some of that too.

Image processing lecture done

Today was a full-on teaching day. Four critical thinking classes filled the morning, up to 1pm.

Then I had lunch, and went for a 5k run. Had a shower, and went over my notes for tonight’s lecture at the University of Technology Sydney. I mentioned last week that the lecturer is away this week and asked me to give the lecture tonight. It was an introduction to machine learning and AI for image processing, and it went really well. Several of the students thanked me as they left afterwards.

Before the lecture I had Thai pad kee mao for dinner at a good place I know near the university. Next week I might try somewhere new, but this week I decided to stick to somewhere I knew had quick service, so I wouldn’t be late for the lecture.

Now time to relax before bed…

Internet outages and restarting sourdough

On Friday night when I hosted Dungeons & Dragons, one of my friends returned the sourdough starter that I had him mind while I was in Europe. It’s taken us several weeks since my trip to actually see each other, so this was the first chance we had. I also gave him the Hungarian Rubik’s Cube that I bought in Budapest as a gift for him. When he opened the box he was astounded that the colour ordering on the faces of the cube were non-standard, and in a way he had never seen before. Also the faces were coloured with stickers, which modern cubes haven’t used for many years. So it was definitely a unique and memorable gift, which I’m glad about.

Anyway, yesterday and today I fed the sourdough starter and today I used it to make a new loaf of bread. It’s still rising, but I’ll bake it later tonight.

Also today I’ve been dealing with intermittent Internet outages. It went out yesterday for a while too, but today it went out three or four times. Unfortunately one was right before a Zoom class I was supposed to teach, so I had to cancel it, and send messages to the students using my phone. I had to refund all their class fees too. Fortunately the connection returned a bit later and I managed to do the next class okay.

Not much else to talk about. It’s been a fairly lazy day. I think I’m recovering from yesterday’s long run effort.

D&D: Back to Thistlebrook, meeting Reynard Thorn

Friday I did my regular grocery pickup, then five critical thinking classes, and cleaned the house in preparation for hosting Dungeons & Dragons at my place. We had six players, plus me as the DM, which is a full house. Usually one or two can’t make it, but we play anyway and their characters just sit out. But it’s good with everyone.

They’d finished the dungeon exploration where they found the wizard flowers (see recap of the last session). Now they still had to get back to the town of Thistlebrook, but it was late, so they had to stop to make camp partway there. They chose a hidden location on a hill with a good view. The next morning they continued, but Fingers the thief scouting ahead came back to warn them of an approaching party of snake people. They hid and watched, and as the snake people passed, the minotaur Korm (who they’d tricked back in the dungeon) raced up to meet them. There was an animated discussion, and then one snake person in a cloak with a serpent lower half raised a finger and zapped Korm with a spell, blasting him away completely. The snake wizard lowered his hood and the party saw that it was Xiximanter!!! The undead snake wizard they’d met back in the Tomb of the Serpent Kings, way back in session 3 of this campaign, two years ago!

They knew better than to take on this guy, and let him pass by, heading towards the wizard flower dungeon. Korm said he’d been working for the snake people, so presumably Xiximanter was upset at what the party had done.

They headed back to Thistlebrook, where they had a few things to do. Settle up with the sage Thaddeus Vindle, who had hired them to retrieve wizard flowers. They decided to sell him three of the four they recovered and keep one for themselves. Then there was the matter of dealing with the curse of Spathio, the God of Swords. The High Priestess of Orendial, God of Peace had promised to remove the curse if they destroyed Orlugg Broadstaff, the giant-mage in the wizard flower dungeon. They had done so, so the Priestess removed the curse for them. But now the party are worried that maybe Spathio will be upset that they got out of completing his curse…

They did a couple of weeks of training to go up levels. Then Vindle contacted them for a dinner meeting, and told them what he’d discovered about the wizard flowers. And that he’d found information about another old wizard research location, in an ancient abandoned abbey a couple of days ride south of the town. Here they were doing research into extra-planar travel. He suggested they could mount another expedition.

But as dinner ended, a rowdy mob formed in the streets, booing members of the town guard who were dragging six captives through the streets. It was Reynard Thorn (a Robin Hood figure beloved by the poor of the town but wanted by the Reeve) and members of his “bandit” gang. Thaddeus suggested they were unlikely to execute them tonight, but rather wait for daybreak tomorrow to make it a public spectacle.

The party quickly decided they should try to rescue Thorn and his followers, tonight. They ran ahead to the town Watch House via back streets and arrived before the guardsmen with the prisoners. They observed them being led inside the only gate.

Fingers the thief drank a potion of invisibility that they’d found in the wizard flower dungeon, and then sneaked in to scout the watch house. He returned and said the gate led to a courtyard and the cells were underground, down a set of stairs open to the courtyard. As they discussed tactics, a mob of townsfolk arrived with flaming torches and most of the guardsmen ran out to defend the gate from them. This gave the party the opportunity to sneak around the back of the watch house, where Fingers (still invisible), climbed a wall and lowered a rope for the others to follow.

They left Mezza the wizard to guard outside, and Nogge the fighter on the battlement wall as a lookout, with Notgandalf’s magic eye so he could see if there was any trouble as he accompanied the remainder of the party into the cells. They passed a guard room and found the cells, but had to smash the locks open which made noise and alerted the guards. They made a stand at the door and managed to grab three guards and toss them into a cell. The fourth guard put up more resistance, and Reynard Thorn stabbed him with a dagger that the rescuers had given him.

They left the groaning guard all ran outside and manage to get back up the wall and over to the outside without being spotted. Reynard thanked them and suggested the city wouldn’t be safe for them this night after the guard reported the breakout and the other identified them, and they should accompany him to his forest hideout. They decided to do so, but left Mezza and Nogge to go back to their inn and collect their stuff, since they were outside and no guards saw them.

And there we left the game for the night, to be picked up next time!

Today was fairly lazy, except for going for a 7.5k run. I took advantage of the fact that it’s finally stopped raining, for the first time in six days. It was actually a very nice day, warmer and much drier than the past week. I also went for a walk with my wife and Scully and did some sketching. Not much else.

Scully in recovery mode

Scully is still getting over her tooth surgery yesterday. She was a bit out of all evening last night and today. She’s on some painkillers and is probably feeling it a bit in her jaw. But she ate a reasonable amount of food today, so hopefully she’s on the road to recovery.

The weather continued to be awful today, more heavy rain and very cold. We ended up with over 80 mm of rain yesterday, and the forecast was up to another 80 mm today, but so far it hasn’t been quite so bad. Its tended to be heavier overnight though, so it could possibly still get up there. The prediction is for the rain to begin easing off tomorrow, and some sunshine on the weekend, but it looks like more rain from the middle of next week again.

Besides stay inside today and try to keep warm and look after Scully, I worked a bit on prep for tomorrow’s D&D game. A bunch of PCs have reached the experience required to level up, but that’s been delayed by the urgency of dealing with the curse of the God of Swords, which required them to kill 9 people in 9 dies with 9 different sword, or die. So they didn’t have time to spend the few weeks of training required to level up. But they’ve now dealt with the curse (more or less) and so will have the chance to level up before the next adventure. So I’m updating and printing out new character sheets for them. I also did a bit of adventure planning, making notes on what loose threads there are for them to investigate and planning some new locations to visit.

Hopefully it will be a great session tomorrow night!

Even rainier and colder, and Scully’s teeth

Today was really cold and even rainier than yesterday. Sydney only reached a maximum of 13.8°C. Given how badly insulated Australian homes are, I was sitting inside all day, dressed in multiple layers, drinking hot tea, and freezing. I had to stop working several times just to try to warm my hands up.

And I just realised I completely forgot to do an update yesterday! Not that there was much to say other than that it was cold and rainy, though as it turned out not nearly as cold and rainy as today. Yesterday I spent time outlining my new critical thinking class for this week, on the topic of Mistakes. Then I developed a new class on the chemistry of acids and bases for that kid whose mother requested a science course for him. IN the evening I had a class and had a new student who brought my tally of countries that students are in to 60. The 60th country was Bahrain.

Oh, I also typed up a full recap of our last Dungeons & Dragons session, for the players to check over before our next session on Friday evening.

Today I just stayed inside and tried to stay warm. I did venture out in the car to Maggio’s Italian bakery to get some lunch. I did some prep work for Friday’s D&D game, looking thorugh some adventure material and thinking about where the PCs might go and what they might do. I also did some Darths & Droids comic writing.

But today Scully had to go to the vet for a teeth cleaning. She had one two years ago, and the vet at her annual checkup said she could use another one. My wife took her in in the morning and Scully was there the whole day until this evening. The vet x-rayed her teeth and found that one was cracked, so they had to remove it. So poor Scully is now woozy from the anaesthetic and some painkiller, a bit lethargic. But she ate a decent amount of dinner, so that’s a good sign. Very soft food instead of her usual crunchy kibbles. Hopefully she’ll be back to her perky self tomorrow.

Rainy Monday and very cold

I’d planned to do a run today, but conditions conspired against me. It was very cold overnight. When I got up and took Scully out for her morning toilet, I checked my weather app an it was about 7°C, but the “fells like” temperature was -0.4°C! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that “feels like” as a negative number before. It certainly did feel very cold.

The morning was clear while I was teaching my set of online classes. But by the time I finished at 1pm, the rain had moved in, and it was solid and at times heavy. I don’t mind running in the rain, or when it’s chilly, but combined it’s a bit too much. It would just be too freezing.

Instead I used the time to go over the lecture notes for next week’s Image Processing lecture at the university, which I’ll be giving while the lecturer is away. Today’s lecture was on pattern recognition and image features, leading into next week’s introduction to machine learning for image processing. I know the subject fairly well and it shouldn’t be difficult to give that lecture, but I wanted to check in case I had any questions about particular slides or topics that I wanted to ask the lecturer before next week.

I had to brave the rain to go into the city for tonight’s lecture. And it was very cold again. But I survived to tell the tale!

Finally getting ahead on comic production

I put in a few hours today in writing and making new Darths & Droids comics, trying to build up the buffer a bit. I’ve been doing them close to the last minute ever since I got back from Europe a few weeks ago, and wanted to get ahead again. I’m a couple of strips ahead now, which is good.

I realised I forgot to mention another thing I did yesterday, which was to file our tax returns for the last financial year. I’m still impressed by how fast it is these days, with the new automatic recording of everything relevant. It used to take hours to do it but now it’s just click a few buttons, enter a deduction or two, and you’re done in 10 minutes.

Today we went for a walk with Scully, about 11:00. We went to a cafe so my wife could get coffee, but I decided to get an early lunch, or brunch or whatever you want to call it. I don’t normally eat sweet things for breakfast, so this was a rare chance to get something like that, and I decided to order waffles. which came with banana, strawberries, and melted chocolate drizzled all over. They were really good, but loaded with sugar! I think it’s a good thing I don’t eat stuff like this much. (I think I can probably count the number of times I’ve eaten waffles in my life on my fingers.)

While sitting there we both did some sketching. I started drawing a car on the street, intending to make it a scene including the cafe tables, but I made the car a bit big and couldn’t fit any tables into the drawing! It went kind of wonky with the perspective too, so I’m not keen to show this one off.

For dinner tonight I made okonomiyaki, which I’ve been kind of craving for a while, but had to buy the sauce last week. Healthier than waffles!

Games night and sketching day

Friday was online board games night. We played some Jump Drive, then Space Base, and Just One.

We finished early and then I watched KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix. Some of the kids in my critical thinking classes have been talking about it and said it’s good, so I decided I should give it a go. It was pretty good, an interesting blend of modern K-pop songs and traditional Korean demon folklore. I describe it as the sort of thing you’d like if you liked Frozen but thought it could use more K-pop and demons.

Today I did a 5k run. I started thinking I could do another 7.5k, but decided to cut it short towards the end as I’d had enough. I cleaned the bathroom and shower thoroughly. Worked on some Darths & Droids comics.

After lunch my wife and I took Scully for a drive over to Balmoral Beach and we sat and did some sketching. Here’s the rotunda:

I kind of ran out of room at the top of the page so I couldn’t fit in the top of the roof! And here’s a view towards the water.

While we were there we popped into the Bather’s Pavilion to make a dinner booking for our wedding anniversary later in the year, to make sure we can get a table. This is our favourite fancy restaurant and we’ve had several other anniversary dinners here.

Back at home, my wife took Scully out for a toilet before dinner… and got stuck in the lift! In all the time we’ve lived here, we’ve never got stuck int the lift before. She used the emergency phone inside the lift, but they said it would take about an hour for someone to come. She called me on her mobile phone and I found a member of the complex’s executive committee, and fortunately she had a key to get into the lift motor room in the garage and knew how to put it into an emergency mode that made it descend to the basement and open.

She was stuck in there with one of our new neighbours, and a new new neighbour, living in the same apartment. She was moving in today as a flatmate in the other bedroom. So they got a good introduction while stuck in the lift together.

For dinner I made a chick pea korma. I adapted this recipe for chicken korma, replacing the chicken with chick peas, and I served it with some broccoli on the side for greenness. It turned out pretty well, but next time I think I’ll blitz the cashews and onions with the Bamix stick blender instead of the food processor, because as soon as I turned it on the whole sauce smeared onto the sides of the processor and the blades didn’t have much chance to turn it into a smooth paste. So it was a little lumpy, but still tasted good.