dangermouse.net – Page 2 – David Morgan-Mar

Fog and cheesecake

This morning dawned cold and foggy – the first significant fog of the year. My wife suggested I take a photo to put in this blog, but I neglected to and now I’m kind of regretting it. But we have more forecast for tomorrow, so if there is I’ll try and get a photo then.

In other non-weather atmospheric phenomena we had two interesting astronomical things happen overnight, visible from Sydney: a significant meteor sighting, and also a brilliant pink aurora australis which was visible as far north as Sydney. Unfortunately I was asleep for both. But I’ve been enjoying the views of Scorpius directly overhead late at night when I take Scully out for her pre-bedtime toilet.

Monday is always my busy day with lots of online ethics classes to wrap up the week’s topic. It’s been an interesting one on names, with plenty of interesting questions that I rotate from class to class to keep it fresh for myself.

In between I marked another university Data Engineering assessment report. A student team studied potential predictors of the length of stay in hospital for cardiac patients, from among variables such as: vital signs during initial triage; levels of haemoglobin, blood oxygen, and electrolytes in an initial blood test; demographic data such as age, sex, ethnicity; and also insurance status. They used publicly available data from over 265,000 United States patient admissions, collated by the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre, Boston—the MIMIC-IV dataset, downloadable from physionet.org. Note especially that this is data from the United States.

After doing various regression analyses, they discovered that the strongest indicator of a longer stay in hospital was… being non-white. The second strongest indicator was a low blood haemoglobin level at admission. Although the actual correlations were quite weak in all cases.

AT lunch I walked Scully up to my wife’s work to drop her off for the afternoon. On the way home I decided to pop in at the cake shop nearby and grab something. I got there about 1:40pm, and was surprised to see the cake displays completely empty. They’d packed them all away already, in preparation for closing! My wife and I always comment how silly it is that cafes in Sydney all seem to close at 2pm. It’s really weird… it’s virtually impossible to find a cafe anywhere in Sydney that is open later than 2pm. They seem to think all the business is for the morning rush and lunchtime, and nobody is interested in coffee or cakes after that.

Anyway, I expressed surprise and told the woman in the cake shop that I had wanted to get a slice of cake. She said she could go get one for me and asked what I wanted. So I decided on a slice of cheesecake. She dashed out the back and returned with a slice for me. And then probably proceeded to close up shop as soon as I left.

I took the slice home on the train and ate it at my desk while I marked the above student report. I needed the sugar to get through the day!

Starting on marking assignments

This morning I did another 5k run. But after yesterday’s fast effort I took it easier and also my muscles hadn’t fully recovered, so I ended up being quite a lot slower. Never mind, the important thing is to do the exercise, not to be great at it.

I started work on marking the student assessment reports for Data Engineering. I need to get written reports and video presentations marked this week, so used my Sunday to get started. I only got one marked before my ethics classes in the afternoon, but at least I’ve started.

Not much else to talk about today – I didn’t go anywhere.

Incognito Art

Friday I had my regular ethics classes, and in the evening board games night with my friends. We assembled at one guy’s place, and the five attendees played games such as Knarr, Faraway, Landmarks. Knarr was new to me, and really enjoyable. But we only played once as it’s only up to four players and our fifth arrived partway through the first game. We played Landmarks I think four times, since we were all keen to give a go at being the clue giver in the game. It’s a frustrating role, but in a socially fun way.

Today I did my 5k run and I managed to record my third best time! 26:26. My second best is 26:24, just two seconds faster. The best is a strangely anomalous 25:59, which I set on a much flatter route that I’ve only ever tried once. And to be honest I’m wondering if the tracker GPS got the distance right. Perhaps I should try that route again some time.

This afternoon my wife and I took Scully for a ride on the ferry.

We headed into the city. The day was cool and cloudy.

From the ferry terminal at Circular Quay we walked up past the State Library, through The Domain (a park) to the Art Gallery. Nearby is a gate into the Royal Botanic Gardens, where there was an art exhibition on at the Garden Gallery: the Incognito Art Show (which I mentioned previously). My wife had submitted three pieces for the show and wanted to see what else was available, and if any of hers might be on display at the moment. They weren’t, but they probably will be at some point over the next month or so that the artworks are on sale.

We stopped afterwards at the nearby restaurant in the Domain to have a drink and a snack before heading home. We walked back and had a quick look around The Rocks while waiting for our ferry. Then we hopped on the ferry and headed home.

The sun had come out and was just setting as we travelled back.

A nice day out, but after that run in the morning and all the walking, I’m pretty exhausted!

Eclipse, by Moon Phase

Today was really chilly. Overcast, but no rain, a bit windy, and it really felt like winter is here.

After my morning ethics classes I took Scully for a walk and we went up to Moon Phase, the Korean patisserie. I’d had a sandwich at home and was on the prowl for something sweet, and they had a new special pastry today. I give you, Eclipse:

It’s a crisp flaky pastry shell, filled with yuzu curd (a little bit visible below the meringue), small cubes of yuzu jelly, on top of a very crunchy almond layer which was kind of halfway between a cookie and almond brittle. The whole thing topped with soft meringue and various garnishing bits. It was really nice. I like lemon meringue tarts as a matter of course, and this was just elevated to a whole new level. The bakers there really are something special.

One of my friends is currently in Vilnius in Lithuania. He’s flown there with two friends to follow the tour of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, a band from Melbourne who are touring eastern Europe. He arrived yesterday and today was the only day of their ten-day trip on which they will not be attending a concert by the band – and he said he and his friends ran into the band while walking around Vilnius, and had a chat with them!

And in minor website news, I cleaned up the sidebar on the left ⬅️, removing some out of date links and adding my Bluesky account, and updated the full index page as well.

Discovering a new beach

This morning my wife took Scully to work, which meant I had an entire morning to do whatever I wanted. I dithered a bit, trying to thin of something interesting, and ended up deciding I should probably take the chance to do a 5k run for my fitness.

I completed that by 10:30, with warm-up and warm-down stretches, and having a shower and so on. Then I looked again at the problem of finding something interesting and fun to do. I browsed around on Google Maps and discovered a tiny beach hidden in a corner of the harbour that I’d never noticed before. It’s called Hayes Street Beach (here on Google Maps), on a small bay in Sydney Harbour. It’s accessed through a tunnel between buildings, and is completely surrounded by nearby houses and shops.

Here’s a panorama of the entire beach:

And a shot of one end, which makes it easier to see the Harbour Bridge in the distance over the peninsula towards the right side.

The green building at the right houses a few shops, most of which were closed, but there was one open cafe named Thelma & Louise (after the movie) where I had lunch:

It was very expensive and the food was only average, so overall it was on the disappointing side. I also walked around the streets in this area a little, admiring some of the old houses and their architecture. Here’s a good example of the Federation Queen Anne style.

I picked up Scully from my wife’s work after lunch and spent the afternoon doing comics stuff, before three ethics classes this evening. The Names topic seems to be a good one, with plenty of spirited discussion and differences of opinion among the kids about what sort of names are appropriate or not for parents to give to children.

A new type of roasted cauliflower

Tuesday is my relatively easy weekday, where I mostly work on my new ethics class for the week. This weeks new topic is “Names”, and I have plenty of questions about the importance of people’s names, meanings of them, how people choose names for children, and what sort of names are appropriate or inappropriate.

At lunch time I took Scully for a long walk down the Greenwich peninsula. There are a few decent views of the city along the way.

The day was cold and very windy. The maximum temperature was 18.5°C, but for most of the day the wind pushed the “feels like” temperature below 10°C. It’s certainly the coldest feeling day so far this year. But blissfully the humidity dropped below 50%, for the first time in ages. Despite the cold, I had all the windows wide open to get some of that lovely dry air inside.

For dinner tonight I had a cauliflower and wanted to do something new with it. I searched for roasted cauliflower recipes with nuts, since I wanted to add some nuts for crunchy texture. I found this recipe for za’atar roasted cauliflower with dates and pine nuts. Glancing through the ingredients, the only thing I was missing (after checking the linked recipe for home made za’atar) was fresh thyme!

So I took Scully out for another walk about 4:30, just before the sun went down, to get some thyme from the neighbourhood grocery store. I can’t remember ever having cooked with thyme before—it’s a herb mostly used with meats, which I don’t cook. I told my friends in our Discord chat that I was cooking with thyme for possibly the first time in my life, and one said, “You could have said that you’ve never bought a potato before and I’d be similarly surprised.” Interestingly, I smelled the thyme, to get a sensory impression of it, and the smell reminded me of… za’atar! I’ve eaten a lot of za’atar with bread and oil—it’s a common accompaniment to bread at restaurants here. And it has this distinctive aroma, which I now know is from the thyme that is a primary ingredient in za’atar.

I altered the recipe slightly, substituting crunchy roasted almonds for the pine nuts (though I had pine nuts) because I wanted more crunch in the final dish. And I made a lemon tahini dressing to drizzle over the top.

It turned out really delicious! Another one to add to the repertoire.

Free trains into the city for book buying

Today I went back to my four online ethics classes in the morning (well, one starting at midday directly after an 11am). This had been interrupted for the past several weeks by my university teaching on Monday afternoon, which meant I had to move one or two classes to Tuesday instead. But now the semester has ended I’ve got them all back on Monday. Which meant some students could return; ones who couldn’t make the replacement Tuesday classes.

After those I walked Scully up to my wife’s work to drop her off for the afternoon. I would have just caught the train back home, but today was a fare-free day on the trains. The New South Wales State Government announced it as a compensation for multiple train service interruptions last week caused by the bad weather. So I took advantage of this and caught a train into the city instead, to check out some book and game shops.

I planned to visit several of my favourite shops, but unfortunately a rain front was approaching and I realised I could be caught in the rain on the way home, without an umbrella, and carrying books, if I didn’t hurry. So I restricted myself to one book shop and game shop, and raced abck home. I bought one book: Raina Telgemeier’s Guts, the third of her graphic novels, and the only one so far I hadn’t bought. I realised this after I recently got her most recent work—The Cartoonist’s Club—a few weeks ago.

I had a very quick browse of the game shop, and dithered over buying a copy of the Pendragon roleplaying game book, but decided not to. Then I raced home. It was just starting to rain as I got off the train and sprinted home with my book (in a non-waterproof paper bag!). I made it without getting too wet, and the book didn’t get wet, so that was good.

Now I have another book in my to-read queue! 😃

Images of autumn

It’s late autumn here in Sydney. In fact it’s almost winter. But the deciduous trees are only just starting to change colour and lose their leaves. Most of the trees here are evergreen, so it’s only in tiny pockets that we see any colour or leaves falling. But I took some photos to show them off.

London plane trees, which just go a kind of dull brown:

Liquidambars, which are one of my favourites because of the bright red colour:

I don’t know what sort of tree this one is:

Today was also dry, but cloudy unlike yesterday’s sunshine. I did a 5k run, and cleaned the house, and baked some sourdough bread. Nothing really out of the ordinary.

Drying out; phone birding

Friday was wet again, but the rain stopped early in the afternoon and by nightfall the sky was clear. I actually saw stars when taking Scully out before bedtime.

I had my usual ethics classes, and in the evening was online board games night. We played games of Mountain Goats, Jump Drive, Settlers of Catan, Just One. We played five games of Jump Drive, and I did miserably in the first four. And then I thought I was going to win the fifth game, as I was ahead by several points and could reach the winning score of 50 points in my next turn… but one of my friends managed to score much more than I did on the last turn and beat me by one point!

Today was sunny! No rain! I think we were up to something like the past 5 weeks having only 4 non-rainy days. Everyone was well and truly sick of the rain. But today was beautiful – blue skies, a little warmer, and humidity down around 50% instead of 80-100% like it has been for weeks on end.

My wife and I took Scully for a walk down to the harbour side park near our place. Scully ran around and chased a tennis ball, and then I spent some time photographing birds. I only had my phone, but it was good enough to get the following photos.

Laughing kookaburra:

Masked lapwings:

Australian wood ducks:

White-faced heron:

And an Australian magpie spotted on the walk back home:

This evening we went out for dinner to Garfish, a nice seafood restaurant. We really like this place, but don’t go too often as it’s a bit pricey. The salt and pepper squid appetiser is really good, but this time I tried a new menu item: battered zucchini flowers stuffed with snapper and prawn.

And for the main dish I had grilled mirror dory with mash, spinach, and kaffir lime beurre blanc.

All really nice.

Yet more rain; flooding disaster

I mentioned the rain and the flooding north of Sydney yesterday. Since then it’s gotten worse. Three people are confirmed to have died because of the flooding, and one person is missing, feared dead. Several weather stations recorded over 300 mm of rain in 24 hours yesterday, and it’s continued today. Almost 600 flood rescue operations have taken place, and around 50,000 people are under evacuation orders or expected to be soon. There’s a news story here with photos and video.

The rain is moving slowly south and Sydney got hit today, with 35 mm in the city, and over 50 mm in some suburbs, with similar or more predicted for tomorrow. It’s been raining heavily here for most of the day.

There was a brief respite at lunch time, when I managed to take Scully on a decent walk. I basically kept an eye on the rain, and as soon as it stopped around midday, we went out. We did a walk for about 40 minutes, and managed to get home before the rain started up again, about 10 minutes after we came inside. And it’s been pretty much non-stop since.

While staying home I did my ethics classes, on the new week’s topic of “Perfection”. And worked on some Darths & Droids comics. And stayed glued to the rain radar.