Finding a place for a special lunch

On Tuesday next week my wife is taking a day off and we’re planning to have a nice lunch somewhere. Unfortunately the place we sometimes go to for such things, Otto in Woolloomooloo, isn’t open on Tuesdays. So I had to find a new place, with the constraints that it has to be open for lunch on Tuesdays, and has seating which allows dogs so that we can take Scully.

There’s a bit of a poor overlap between fancy dining places and restaurants that allow dogs. But after some searching I found the Empire Lounge, which is on a wharf in Rose Bay, a suburb on Sydney Harbour. It looks pretty nice and after confirming they’d be okay with Scully I booked us in for lunch next week.

In other food news, I took Scully for a walk this morning and decided to visit Moon Phase for a pastry. They had an Easter special: a carrot cake pastry!

Carrot cake pastry

It was delicious. A warm and spicy carrot cake centre, surrounded by crisp flaky pastry, topped with cream cheese icing, crunchy glazed pecans, and… some dill! I’m not sure why dill, but yeah, it worked.

Today I mostly worked on writing new Darths & Droids strips. I’m trying to build up a three-week (or more) buffer as quickly as I can, to cover my trip in June. So a day dedicated to it was sensible at this stage.

Tonight I made lentil dhal with potatoes for dinner, and had a little before my first online class started at 5pm. I’m busy teaching from 5-8pm, so I can’t eat at a normal dinner time. I had a little before to tide me over and then had another bowl afterwards.

But the good part is finishing an hour earlier than during daylight saving time!

Completely forgot about yesterday’s post

Ooops! I intended to write a blog post yesterday, but I just completely forgot. It was a busy day. I had two ethics classes starting early at 8:00 am – an hour earlier than last week because of the daylight saving change on the weekend. This also meant that my 12:00 class—that I’d temporarily shunted to Tuesdays because it didn’t give me enough time to get into university for the Data Engineering lecture—could now be moved back to 11:00 on Monday. So I had that class too. Then I had one hour to take Scully to my wife’s work and hop on a train into the city and pick up some lunch on the way before the lecture.

This was the last lecture with new material, talking about complex systems and agent-based modelling. We have two weeks off now for the mid-semester vacation and then the Easter Monday public holiday, followed by four weeks of student project work tutorials.

When I got home, I made pizza for dinner and then had two more ethics classes in the evening, which chewed up the rest of the day.

Today we had some rain and cooler weather, which was nice. I wrote my new ethics class topic, on “Brands and Trademarks”. With some interesting questions like:

Should I be able to start a business called McDonald’s:
• that does shoe repair?
• that sells pizza?
• that sells burgers?
• if my surname is McDonald?
If I do start a shoe repair shop called McDonald’s, should I be allowed to advertise it with a red and yellow sign saying “McDonald’s”?

I also made some slides to show the kids with illustrative photos of businesses with modified names, and this took a while. So it took me longer to write this class than usual, and I didn’t get around to doing much else during the day.

Scully is finished her medication for her bloody poops last week, and seems to be fully recovered, so that’s good news. There was some other test the vet did which also came back negative. So we don’t really know what the problem was – probably some sort of gastro-intestinal infection I guess.

In other news, the Australian election campaign is progressing. Prime Minster Albanese is firming up in the opinion polls, while opposition leader Dutton is falling behind. At least part of this is the “Trump factor”, with Australian voters recoiling from conservative politics due to the destructive antics of Donald Trump in the USA. Dutton was initially a few weeks ago expressing a need for some Trump-like policies, such as reducing the size of the federal government, but this has backfired badly and he’s had to backpedal and change his tune. So if anything good can come from Trump, I’m hopeful that it makes Australian voters head for a more progressive choice, n the same way it appears to be doing in Canada.

Ticking over into the winter half of the year

Daylight saving time ended here overnight, our clocks going back an hour as we move from summer time into standard time. This is the good change, where we get an extra hour of sleep, which we took advantage of. It also makes all my online classes an hour earlier (by the clock) for me. Since most of my students live in countries without DST or that change at different times of year, I keep the class times the same for them, rather than myself.

I did another 5k run today, but decided I could let myself take it easy after yesterday’s effort, and ran a bit slower. It was a warm day today and will be hot again tomorrow, but Tuesday’s forecast is significantly cooler.

Other than that it was a bit of a lazy day. I spent some time struggling with Darths & Droids writing, as we’re in a tricky bit of story planning stuff. My wife and I took Scully for a walk – she’s doing much better but still has a day of doggy antibiotics to go.

That’s about it really. Not much happened today.

Board games night and a nice autumn Saturday

Friday was board games night at a friend’s place. I did the usual grocery pickup in the morning, followed by four ethics classes. I’m having fun with the current topic of “An Ethical Society”. One of the interesting questions for the variety of responses is as follows:

Imagine that we could somehow make a society where everyone behaves ethically. Would such a society still need laws?

About half the kids have been saying that yes, you should have laws just in case someone does something wrong, because if you don’t have them, then there’s no way to enforce any way of stopping them. A few said you need them just to remind people, to set the boundaries of what behaviour is okay and what is not—even if nobody is stepping over the line, you still need the line to be drawn there. And a third group said no, you don’t actually need laws, because everyone is (according to the premise) behaving ethically, so nothing can go wrong.

After classes I drove over to the friend’s place for games. We played three different games, all new to me: [one I can’t remember the name of, where everyone drafts 8 cards from a central pool, and they combo in various ways to score points – the description is so generic I can’t search for it successfully, and the theme was so non-evident that I have no idea what it was; but it was actually fun and we played it twice], Forest Shuffle, and Kingdomino Origins (which I’d been wanting to thy for several weeks, always arriving at games night after the others, just when they’re packing it up).

Edit: As identified in the comments, the mystery game was Faraway.

This morning I did my 5k run, and for the first time since January recorded a time below 27:30, which is what I like to aim for as I can manage it about 50% of the time. The past few weeks have been messed up by high temperatures and humidity, travel, and being out of practice due to the time spent travelling. The cooler autumn weather is definitely making things feel nicer at the moment.

Scully is doing a lot better. Her poops are blood-free, but still a little soft, perhaps due to the antibiotics. So presumably it was some sort of gastro infection, which the antibiotics are fixing up.

A big task accomplished today was booking accommodation for our trip to Europe in June/July. We’re moving around and staying in five different cities, so had a lot of options to browse through and choose and then book. But we managed to book them all. The next step will be thinking about the train trips between cities and working out the best ways to get tickets for those. Some will be Deutsche Bahn, which I’ve used before and have an account with, but some will be with other rail companies as they’ll be traversing countries like Austria and Hungary.

For dinner tonight I made vegetable fajitas. And I’m baking more sourdough rye bread.

Scully improving, economy not

Scully is doing better today, not having to poop five times like the past couple of days. Although she did wake me up before 6am for the first one of the day. Her blood test results came back negative for anything nasty, which is good. And she seems to be responding to the antibiotics and probiotic paste.

The other thing I want to comment on today is the insanity of the global tariffs that Donald Trump announced today that the US will impose on almost all other countries. The highlights (or lowlights), for posterity:

  1. The weird magic numbers that they came up with on that chart for “Tariffs charged to the USA” are not actually tariffs in any sense of the word whatsoever. Many people have worked out where the numbers came from: They are the country’s trade deficit with the USA for 2024 divided by the value of US imports from that country.
  2. Countries with a trade surplus with the US (such as Australia, whose calculation as above came out to a whopping -107%) are still getting slapped with a 10% tariff. For no apparent reason, even given Trump’s bizarre (and incorrect) notion that a trade deficit is a “bad thing”.
  3. The list includes some sub-national entities, such as Norfolk Island, a part of Australia, which mysteriously got a contradictory 29% tariff despite Australia getting 10%.
  4. Another part of Australia, the territory of Heard Island and McDonald Islands, got listed separately, with a tariff of 10%, despite it being uninhabited and having no imports or exports.
  5. They also announced a tariff on the British Indian Ocean Territory, whose only population is a joint US/UK military base. So effectively the US has announced a tariff on its own military forces.

There’s only so much bewildered headshaking one can do in response to this madness. And not only is it uneducated and random, it’s going to actively destroy the US economy, as well as having negative effects on everyone else. As one of my friends put it in a group chat today:

It’s a bit like when a bunch of countries [implemented] sanctions to punish Russia so other countries can’t trade with them without penalties, except the US is doing it to itself.

I just have no more words I can add to that.

Scully at the vet again

Scully slept well through the night, but her morning poop had more blood in it. My wife decided to take the day off work and take her into the vet again. They took a blood sample (they tried to do this last night but Scully was too wriggly for them) and did some simple tests right there, and sent the remainder of the sample off for more detailed testing at a pathology lab. They’ve already ruled out giardia infection, or any liver or kidney issues.

They said Scully was a bit dehydrated from blood loss, so they kept her at the vet all afternoon with a drip for rehydration. Now she’s home again for the night, but we have an antibiotic to give her, and also some probiotic paste to restore her gut flora with all the good bacteria. They’ve also given us some special tinned dog food that will be super gentle on her digestive system for the next few days. We’re to give her the medication and monitor her condition and if there’s no improvement in a couple of days they might want to do an ultrasound scan.

Despite all of this, Scully is chipper and shows no signs of discomfort or lethargy or loss of appetite, so that’s good.

Otherwise I spent some time writing up brief outlines for new ethics class topics for the next few weeks. And some comics writing. And I took the opportunity with my wife home and Scully at the vet to go for a 5k run in the afternoon. It was warmer than the mornings, but the humidity was much lower today, so I managed a decent time.

For dinner I made the satay broccolini and tofu with rice that I’d planned for last night, but was interrupted by taking Scully to the vet. It turned out pretty good!

Internet and Scully off

I had an interrupted sleep because Scully woke up about 3am and wanted to go out for a toilet. I had to get dressed and take her out. This is very unusual – normally she sleeps right through the night. She did a poop, and then multiple more throughout today, again unusual. The last couple looked like they had blood in them, so we contacted the vet and took her in for an examination. Apart from that, she’s been energetic and lively as usual, no change in behaviour. So the vet was not terribly concerned and took some blood for a test, but suggested it might resolve without treatment. So hopefully it’s nothing serious.

Also today my Internet service went out just before 9am, and didn’t come back until 4pm. I had two ethics classes in the middle of the day. I cancelled one and then tried the second one using my iPad and a 4G connection. It worked okay, but was considerably more fiddly, and not something I’d want to do again unless I really have to.

So my day has been pretty disrupted, and I still can’t relax because Scully is still at the vet getting the blood test done, and we are waiting to be notified to go pick her up.

I’d planned to cook a special dinner tonight of satay vegetables and tofu with rice, and even specially bought tofu today to go into it. But we had to just quickly make some toast and eat quickly in between getting back from the vet and my evening ethics class starting. So overall not a great day.

Introing to machine learning

Today I was back at the University of Technology Sydney for the ongoing Data Engineering course which I’m helping to teach. Today’s lecture was an introduction to machine learning, which is a fairly advanced topic for an introductory first year course. But there are tools which let people code up machine learning examples and projects without too much difficulty and we want to make sure the students understand the basic principles behind them. Some will probably elect to use this in their assessment project, which they should start working on after next week’s final lecture.

Then we have a two-week mid-semester break. It’s normally one week, but Easter Monday eats up the next week’s lecture slot as well. Then four weeks of tutorial time to help the students as they work on their projects.

On the way home I stoped at my wife’s work and we had a pleasant walk home together with Scully. We were a bit concerned about the weather, as heavy rain was heading our way on the radar, but luckily it never arrived and we made it home dry.

I made pizza for dinner, topping it with very thin slices of one of those gourmet potatoes we bought at the farmer’s market on Saturday.

And we did some planning for our next trip, which is to Europe in June for the ISO Photography Standards meeting in Berlin. It’s a five-day meeting, so we’ll be there for that long, and then we’re planning to visit some of the central European countries and cities we haven’t been to before. A couple of days in Prague, then we plan to spend a week in Vienna, renting an apartment for the week instead of using a hotel. We’ll do side trips from there to Bratislava and Budapest, before heading to Salzburg to finish up before flying home. We have the itinerary sorted now after deciding on various options this evening. Now to book some accommodation!

A split birthday lunch

Sunday morning, I got I another 5k run. 🏃🏻‍♂️ The weather was a bit showery, but not as wet as yesterday. 🌧️

After showering and changing into dry clothes, we headed off to meet with my wife’s family for a birthday lunch for her sister, at a cafe near her place. They booked an indoor table. But because we couldn’t take Scully inside we also grabbed an outdoor table and my wife and I took it in turns to mind Scully or head inside to chat with the family. We ordered some lunch and it was pretty good. 🍝 The rain held off. We were under shelter anyway so that wouldn’t have been a big problem, but unfortunately it was pretty windy, which made things a bit uncomfortable outside. 💨

Back home in the afternoon I did some Darths & Droids writing while my wife worked on her watercolour artwork. She’s only been doing it for less than a year, but has decided to enter an amateur art show which will be selling paintings anonymously to raise money for… I forget what exactly. 👩‍🎨

For dinner I used the leftover roasted vegetables from last night to make a sort of bubble & squeak pasta topper, adding some fried onions and cherry tomatoes and feta. It turned out pretty delicious! 😋

I added emojis to the paragraphs here because we’ve been discussing in my online ethics classes this evening about whether emojis count as a form of writing or not, and in which circumstances they are acceptable or not. I’ve been using the following “sentence” to discuss how well they convey meaning: 😋🍕😋🍍😲🤮

Finding a new Path, and Working Carriages

Friday was online games night, and one of my friends was again running a Pathfinder roleplaying game for us. The previous session was a one-shot to test out the virtual tabletop and playing online, but last night was the beginning of an ongoing campaign. I had a fresh first level character, a halfling druid named Osric “Stormy” Mossfoot.

The general setup was that the PCs all came from separate areas around a village and were there for their own purposes. I was investigating a vague feeling that something wasn’t right with the forest. We met our fellow PCs by taking a common interest in assisting a distraught young woman who was lamenting breaking up with her boyfriend, after a night-time tryst in the forest, where they witnessed some mysterious motes of light rising from the forest floor. This seemed to have affected the young man, changing his personality and causing him to ignore the woman.

We investigated his house, which turned out to be the home of his parents, wealthy jewellers, who were almost alarmingly welcoming. They said he’d got up that morning and headed off east. The only building to the east was an abandoned church, which we poked around in enough to determine that the ground floor and cellar were both so dust choked that clearly nobody had been in either for years.

We convinced the young woman to accompany us into the forest and show us their trysting spot, ominously named “Nana’s Grave”. As we approached, we had to fight a few shambling zombie-like creatures, overgrown with vines. And as I used one of my druid spells, we witnessed motes of light rising from the ground! With the zombies defeated we approached nana’s grave itself, only to find a six-foot deep hole in front of the headstone. There were also a couple of other similar combats. The woman mentioned there was an abandoned cottage that belonged to Nana nearby, and we took a look there. There was nothing on the ground floor, but we found a trap door leading down to a dark cellar… And there we paused play for the evening until next session!

Early on Friday I picked up the groceries from the supermarket. Fresh figs were cheap, so I got a pack of those, and when I had some later they were really delicious. And I had four ethics classes during the day before the gaming.

Today the weather forecast was dismal, up to 90 mm of rain, with very heavy falls. I went for a 5k run anyway, in the steady rain around 9am, since I hadn’t done a run for two weeks because we were in New Zealand last weekend. It was cooler than other recent runs, so actually not that bad. Just very wet.

After a shower and changing into dry clothes, my wife and I drove over to Carriageworks Farmers Market, braving the rain with Scully. This market is fairly fancy, with a lot of stalls selling “gourmet” produce and foods. I got a trout and horseradish pie to eat for lunch, and a strawberry cheesecake babka as a sweet treat afterwards. We also bought some vegetables, including some special “Queen May” potatoes for roasting up for dinner tonight.

Along with the potatoes we roasted sweet potato, pumpkin, and some spiced chick peas. And just steamed some broccolini to go with it and provide some greens.

The rain eased off after lunch too, rather than intensifying as we expected. So we managed to take Scully for an evening walk without getting too wet – it was a very light sprinkle by then.

And in other news, the Prime Minister called the next Australian federal election yesterday. We go to the polling stations on 3 May.