dangermouse.net – Page 12 – David Morgan-Mar

Spooky happenings

Our clock radio in the bedroom started blaring out radio at 6:07 this morning. Since I haven’t used the alarm (or radio) function for probably over 10 years now, I had no memory of where the controls were, so I had to turn the light on to see. Despite switching the radio off several times, it wouldn’t turn off! And then the digital clock readout started switching erratically between the correct time and 0:57. Eventually I had to switch it off at the wall plug to get it to shut up.

I’d intended to sleep for another hour, but this woke me up early and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I’ve been wandering around in a bit of a tired daze today.

I searched online for a replacement digital clock for the bedroom. I need one with a red display, since that’s the least disruptive at night when trying to sleep. But most of the ones I could find have white or green displays, which are just too bright and bad for night vision, or unlit LCD displays. I did find some with red displays, but they were all giant displays for people with bad eyesight. I don’t need a 40cm display for my bedside clock! And they’re all battery powered, rather than mains powered. I don’t want to deal with batteries.

It seems like a simple red digital bedside clock is something that nobody makes any more. I might have to trawl second-hand stores looking for one. Or maybe tomorrow I’ll try opening the current one and seeing if I can disconnect the radio and maybe with luck the display will keep working.

Other than dealing with that, I had 5 ethics classes online, plus three hours in at the university doing Data Engineering tutoring for the students on their assessment project.

Tomorrow… hopefully I can sleep in…

More D&D and more election results

Today I continued writing up a log of the action from Friday night’s Dungeons & Dragons game. I finished it off, which is a nice achievement so soon after the game. Usually in the past I’ve neglected writing up the adventure until just before the next session, by which time I’ve forgotten a lot of the details and have to reconstruct events by questioning my players and trying to weave a coherent narrative out of their disparate recollections.

And this morning we had a much better picture of yesterday’s election results. The incumbent Labor Party have been returned with a greatly increased majority, in what several news outlets have called a “landslide” result. The conservative opposition has been decimated, losing several seats in the major cities, resulting in them having virtually no presence anywhere except rural seats. It was an unexpectedly strong repudiation of conservative Australian politics by the voters, and a welcome result for those fearing any potential Trump-like policies in this country.

This morning I did another 5k run, taking it a bit easier than yesterday. The weather has improved this weekend, with the week-long run of heavy showers finally giving way to sunny skies, but cool autumn temperatures.

My wife and I took advantage this afternoon by driving over tho Balmoral Beach to walk Scully along the beach front in the pleasant weather. In the way back we stopped off at a good-looking deli that my wife found online and checked out their products. It had a lot of European things. I ended up buying a chunk of Austrian cheese and a slice of apple strudel for dessert tonight.

The weather has definitely taken a turn away from summer and towards winter in the past couple of weeks. Leaves on some of the trees are changing colour and it definitely feels like autumn now. Although the previously forecast 26°C for mid-week has been increased to 27°C now!

D&D and Election Day!

Friday I had my usual ethics classes, and prepared for a night of Dungeons & Dragons with my friends. I had five of them over to my place and we played from 6pm to about 10:30.

In the last session they’d started to deal with the curse placed on them by the God of Swords: kill 9 people in 9 days with 9 different swords, or die! Now they had a lead from an old sage who wanted them to recover some magical artefacts from an ancient vault hidden in the hills a half day’s ride from the town they were in. He said there were rumours that the place was now overrun with snake people – suitable targets for despatching with swords if they got the chance.

They reached the hidden vault and found their way in via a ruined lookout tower, and discovered a large chamber almost filled with what looked like a black rectangular block of absolute darkness. They figured out it was solid and highly magical… and there was a giant horned skull resting on top of it. Needless to say there were plenty of shenanigans and some fighting against snake people and some cool magical things, and we all had a great time!

This morning I got up and collected the groceries from the supermarket. Normally I do this on Friday but for the third week in a row something was happening so I had to postpone to Saturday. I went for a 5k run, and I pushed myself and recorded a time of 27:02, which I’m very pleased with. I ran past a polling place, because…

Today is the federal election. We’d already voted back on Wednesday, so didn’t have to head out to a polling place today, which was nice. I read a story that for this election 47% of the electorate had already voted prior to today’s official election day. This is a record number of pre-poll votes. It’s good that we make it so easy for people to vote.

It’s now 2 and a bit hours after the close of polls in eastern Australia and in early counting it looks like our left-leaning Labor government is going to win with an increased majority. There’s a big swing away from the conservative Liberal Party, and it seems certain that their leader Peter Dutton will lose his own seat in Parliament. This is a big change from before Trump was sworn in as US President in January, when the conservatives were leading all the polls. Our swing back away from the conservatives hasn’t been as stark as in Canada at their election last week, but Trump definitely had an effect, causing Australians to react by also rejecting our own conservative party.

We shall see the full results in the coming days.

Feels like winter!

Last week everyone here was complaining how it seemed like summer just wouldn’t quit, and gee wouldn’t it be nice to have a night where the minimum temperature falls below 20°C for once, and why is it still so hot most of the way through autumn. And then yesterday and today the cold hit like a brick wall. The week of rain we’e had has slammed temperatures down and where last week we were going around in shorts and T-shirts, now we’re pulling out the winter gear and rugging up in long pants, jackets, and wearing slippers inside to keep our feet warm.

However apparently it won’t last, because the rain is forecast to clear up over this weekend and next week we’ll be back up to 26°C days again.

Today while huddling inside and trying to stay warm, I taught some ethics classes, and in between did some comics stuff and processed some photos from my Japan trip back in February. While doing this I normally would put the radio on, but lately it’s been full of election campaign ads, so I decided to play some music from my collection, and I threw on the Howard Shore soundtracks from the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies. And while listening to them I realised just how utterly depressing I find everything to do with Lord of the Rings.

I mean the fact that Frodo is so scarred by the experience and seems to have PTSD, and can’t talk to his friends any more, and decides to go off and exile with the elves in their overseas Land of Perpetual Lamentation. It’s not a standard happy ending, and I respect that, it’s just that it makes me depressed and not want to reread the books/rewatch the movies. As much as I like the story, the ending makes it kind of sour for me.

Anyway. On a happier note, here’s a photo of some sakura (cherry blossoms) I took in Japan in February.

Did I miss yesterday?

I’ve realised with some shock that I totally forgot to write up a blog post yesterday. I don’t know what happened – I must have got distracted around my usual evening routine and it slipped my mind and I went into autopilot mode and never got back to it. Oh well.

Yesterday wasn’t especially interesting anyway. The most noteworthy thing was that it rained most of the day. We’re in a very wet spell, which is supposed to last another week or so. I did venture out in the car to a kitchen shop to buy an induction plate for our stove top. My wife bought a small Italian coffee maker, the sort that you put on a stove top to boil the water and it percolates up through the coffee grounds. We had an old aluminium one, but since it didn’t work on induction we got rid of it when we switched from gas to induction. My wife found one with a steel base that claimed to work on induction cookers, but it turned out to be too small to be detected by our cooktop, and didn’t work. You can buy these steel plates with a handle that you stick on the induction zone and it gets hot, and you can put the coffee pot on top, and it works! So she tested that and it works a treat.

For dinner I cooked spaetzle, and decided to make a cheese sauce to go with it, kind of like macaroni and cheese. I’ve never cooked mac and cheese in my life before, so I had to look it up. But when I found a recipe that said it was basically just a roux-based cheese sauce, I knew what to do without any further help. It turned out pretty good, although I made too much sauce!

Overnight I had an interesting dream: I was a scholar studying appearances of mysterious chefs throughout history, as documented by contemporary accounts. A chef who would suddenly appear out of nowhere with an assistant, cook amazing and revolutionary recipes for the poor and then vanish without a trace. I concluded they were all the same chef time travelling through history. Then one day as I was studying this, the assistant appeared and said he had come to take me back through time, because I was the mysterious chef, since I’d studied and learnt all of the original recipes that I’d introduced to the world.

Today my wife had the day off, so this morning we walked up to the nearest pre-polling centre for Saturday’s election.

Unfortunately I misread the rain radar and it was absolutely pouring for the 20-minute walk to the polling place. By the time we got there, my trousers were soaking wet from the thighs down, my socks and shoes were soaking wet – despite using an umbrella. But we voted, and won’t have to do it on Saturday, when it might possibly be pouring just as much and when everyone else will be voting. Fortunately the rain stopped while we were voting, and the walk home was dry.

For lunch we drove over to Two Chaps at Marrickville. This is a fantastic vegetarian cafe we’ve been to a few times. I tried the hash browns with poached eggs and mixed greens:

My wife had the sourdough crumpets with baked cauliflower, almonds, and capsicum sauce:

Yeah, they both taste as amazing as they look!

Last night I had the first class for this week’s new ethics topic, Flight, and tonight three more. It’s an interesting one, as we talk about the history of light and possible futures where we consider if people will have to fly less to help reduce climate change, and the challenges that might pose.

Election countdown: 5 days

Five days until the Australian election. But also our friends in Canada vote today. It’s a similar story in both countries, with both incumbents being left-leaning and before Trump returned to power in the USA polling behind their respective right-leaning oppositions. But Trump has turned around the fortunes in both countries, with voters in Canada and Australia shifting away from right-wing favour, and polls in both now predicting incumbent victories. But we shall see.

Today was busy, with three online ethics classes in the morning, followed by having a quick lunch at home before racing to the train to head into the university for my teaching stint there for Data Engineering. The students are into their four weeks of working on their assessment projects (after having the last two weeks off). So I need to patrol the room seeing what students are working on, answering questions, giving advice, and so on. I was surprised that some of the student groups hadn’t yet decided on the topic of their investigation, whereas some had almost finished writing their first report!

The weather was very rainy, and I got wet walking to the station to catch the train, despite using an umbrella, because of how heavy the rain was. This rainy weather is set to continue for at least the next week as well! When I got home this afternoon we had four umbrellas drying in the bathroom – even though I live with just my wife.

I made pizza for dinner. And then had two more evening ethics classes, to round off a very busy day.

A baking accident

Last night I baked a rye sourdough loaf, but when I turned the oven temperature down and removed the bowl of hot water (to generate steam for the first part of baking), I forgot to reset the oven timer. I only noticed about 30-40 minutes later, and jumped up suddenly, thinking it would be a block of charcoal.

But it looked salvageable, and as it cooled I tried cutting a slice and had it with orange marmalade, and it was crunchy but fine. Today I used it for sandwiches at lunch.

And wow, it was good! The rye sourdough I’ve been making has been fine, but nothing like the German rye bread I remember from my childhood. But this was much more like it! The crust was thick and chewy and tasted great. So I think this is a happy accident, and in future I might just bake my bread longer.

In other photos, I took this one of a white-faced heron the other day:

And a mushroom, sprouting in the wet weather:

Today I did my 5k run and we dodged rain showers again when heading out after lunch with Scully. We dropped in at the library and borrowed some books for reading. I found a new Asterix title which I haven’t read before, so that should be fun!

Games night, games day

Friday I had my usual four ethics classes, continuing the Antarctica discussion. I found this topic a bit tricky to keep the kids engaged, so I rejigged some of the questions to prompt more detailed logical thinking and get their brains working more. Like thinking about what possibilities might happen when the Antarctic Treaty comes up for renegotiation in 2048, which I point out is within their lifetimes so they will get to see what actually happens in real life.

Friday was also Anzac Day, so my wife was home for the public holiday, and all the shops were closed. This pushed my usual Friday morning grocery pickup to today (Saturday). After doing that I did my 5k run.

Last night was online board games night, though a few people were away, so we only had four people. We played a new game, Easy Peasy, which is a fairly simple card game. After one game we characterised it as Uno with more complexity and more luck. It felt like a very random shoot-out. There was an extremely obvious strategy (get rid of your high cards as fast as possible), tempered by random chance deciding if you could manage to do that or not. Needless to say we didn’t bother playing it again. I can’t even recommend it for a kids’ game, as it’s significantly more difficult to learn and understand the scoring than Uno, for no more fun.

After this we played some of the usual suspects: A couple of games of Jump Drive, Just One, It’s a Wonderful World (which I won!).

Today I played a game of Root with my wife. She played the Marquise de Cat, I played the Eyrie, and we used a clockwork bot Alliance, with no Vagabond. We also tried the winter map for the first time ever. It was a super close game. I won, but my wife could have won on her turn before mine if she’d only had a bird card in and, and if I hadn’t won, the bot Alliance would have won next turn.

For dinner I made okonomiyaki, which we haven’t had for a while. Yum!

Ethics of automated AI summaries of ethics lessons

The weather here has been showery for the past several days. Intermittent sunshine, with occasional heavy showers passing across and vanishing within half an hour or so. But it looks like the showers will get more frequent and intense as we head into the weekend, with up to 100 mm of rain forecast. So that should be interesting.

It’s another long weekend, with tomorrow (Friday) being Anzac Day, another public holiday where the supermarkets are closed, so I can’t do my regular Friday morning weekly shopping for the second week in a row.

And in other news, I discovered today that Outschool is producing automated AI summaries of each of my lessons and sending them to enrolled parents after each class. I don’t recall being informed of this new feature (but it’s possible I missed it in one of the teacher newsletters that Outschool sends out periodically). Importantly, I can’t find any teacher settings to control this feature—there’s no way to disable it. I was a little puzzled as to how it was generating the summary, because when I clicked out of curiosity on the link that I’d never noticed before that said “View the AI class summary”, it showed me the following:

The teacher led a discussion about Antarctica, exploring reasons why people might want to visit or explore the continent, as well as potential challenges and risks they would face. The class considered the benefits and drawbacks of allowing countries to claim or mine parts of Antarctica, and whether it would be acceptable for people to live there in the future if global warming made the continent more habitable. The teacher provided context about Antarctica’s unique environment, the history of exploration, and the current Antarctic Treaty that regulates activities there. The class also discussed the role of science and research in Antarctica, and the potential impacts of tourism. Overall, the session focused on critical thinking about the complex issues surrounding the use and preservation of this remote and harsh continent.

This is more and more detailed information than I include in the class description text for this week’s topic. So I went back to the class that I taught an hour earlier, and it listed the following summary:

The teacher introduced the topic of Antarctica, discussing its geography, climate, and wildlife. The class explored why people might want to visit or explore Antarctica, considering both the benefits and risks, such as the extreme cold, lack of food and resources, and hazardous terrain. The teacher presented information about the history of Antarctic exploration and the current system of claims and treaties governing the continent. The class also considered the potential environmental impact of activities like mining and tourism in Antarctica. Throughout the discussion, the teacher facilitated dialogue with the students, asking questions to elicit their thoughts and perspectives on the various issues surrounding Antarctica.

Similar in content, but very different in wording. After discussing with some friends in our Discord chat, we’ve concluded it must be an automated transcript of the voice from the Zoom meeting, then fed through an AI summariser. I’m sceptical of the value of AI for many things, but in this specific application I think it’s done a reasonable job of accurately describing the class content. So I don’t actually mind it so much, as it does help to keep the parents informed of what their kids are learning. But I would like the opportunity to configure or disable it in settings if I wanted to.

On the bright side, I suppose if parents are getting these AI summaries for every single class their kids are enrolled in, hopefully they won’t be reading them all super carefully and critically.

I wonder how likely it is that one of these summaries might include some of the small-talk chat that I engage in with the kids while we wait for later arrivals to join the Zoom call. It’d be bad if the summary included something like: “The teacher asked about the pet puppy of one student and how its toilet training was going.” 🤭

Star Trek rewatch

Another thing I’m doing at the moment is rewatching all of the original Star Trek. And the Animated Series. I’m interspersing them because sometimes I have an hour in the evening to watch something, while sometimes I finish working late and only want to watch a 25-minute show before bed time, which suits the animated episodes.

Yesterday I watched “The Deadly Years“, which marks the halfway point of the original 79 episodes. Unfortunately most of the better episodes are in the first half of the run, and most of the bad ones are to come.

I’m also using this is an opportunity to reread through my own comic parody of the series: Planet of Hats. I drew these comics about ten years ago now, and haven’t looked at them much in the meantime, so I’m reading each episode after watching the TV episode, and pleasantly surprising myself with what I did for them.

Today I mostly worked on Darths & Droids comics, writing and producing two whole strips. I’m building up my buffer adequately to have enough completed before my June trip. In between I took Scully for a walk, managing to avoid the intermittent showers. These are forecast to last for the next week or so, and we might get some heavy rain on the weekend.

Tonight I made lentil dhal with potato and pumpkin for dinner – something I could keep warm on the stove for my wife to eat later after I began my three classes in a row from 5-8pm. On Wednesdays I’m eating half my dinner before 5, and half after 8pm. Which is not ideal, but it works.