dangermouse.net – Page 57 – David Morgan-Mar

Another hot day

Sydney hit 40°C again today in some places, and unlike last Saturday it stayed hot well into the evening – it was still 33°C at 8pm. The evening news said this has been the hottest first fortnight of summer ever recorded for Sydney.

So I sat in the house most of the day with the air conditioning on. I had to take Scully out at lunch time, and I also needed to get some lunch since I’d run down lunch supplies before tomorrow’s grocery shopping. Rather than take her for a walk, I drove over to Naremburn and we sat in the shade while I got a sausage roll and a lamington from the bakery.

Today’s also a busy day for my ethics classes, with two before lunch and three in the evening. In the afternoon I worked on assembling more the Irregular Webcomic! strips from the photos I took on Monday. Both my first two classes this evening were plagued by Zoom issues, with some kids disconnecting or lagging or having other glitches that meant i had to repeat questions multiple times, and ask kids to repeat their answers multiple times. This occasionally happens, but it was especially frustrating tonight.

New content today:

Early morning birding

I forgot to mention yesterday: In the morning I usually take Scully on a walk and yesterday I took her on a longer one to avoid doing a big walk in the heat of the middle of the day. We went by the harbour shore, and for the first time in a while I did a bird count using eBird. Normally when I do this around this area, I can accumulate about 10 species observed. But yesterday I managed to find 18 different species, which is notably high. Sometimes I get 14 or 15, but 18 is close to a record for a single observation near my home. I won’t reproduce the list, because you can see it on eBird here. Looking for birds early in the morning definitely helps, as they are harder to find in the heat of the day. And summer means the Pacific koels are around (they migrate north for the winter). There are also channel-billed cuckoos, which have been around lately, but I didn’t happen to see any yesterday.

Today I dropped Scully at doggie daycare in the morning, and then I went to my dentist for a regular cleaning and dental hygiene appointment. The hygienist was pretty happy with my teeth and there were no concerns, so that’s good. Afterwards I celebrated with a roasted vegetable pie for lunch from the nearby pie shop.

Being out without walking Scully, I took the chance to drop into the brand new library that opened up not long ago in a new development nearby. It’s a branch of another library that I’m a member of, but when I showed them my card they said it had expired. I wasn’t on their system at all! I guess this goes to show what the Internet has done. I used to borrow books frequently, but of course that dropped off some years back. And… this isn’t the first time that my card has expired through lack of use! Some years ago I went into the library and tried to borrow some books only to be told my card had expired. I feel kind of embarrassed that this has happened to me twice now!

I’m also getting ready for the next Dungeons & Dragons game, which I’ll be running for my friends on Friday evening. It should be the climax of the current adventure (which started with rumours of the return of a dragon and continued with the party recovering a legendary dragon-slaying sword…), so hopefully lots of drama and fun!

New content today:

Cyclone Jasper

The main news today in Australia is the approach of Tropical Cyclone Jasper to the north Queensland coast. This is a long way from me so there’s no direct concern. But the forecast track looks like making an almost direct hit on the town of Port Douglas tomorrow around lunch time, with the much bigger city of Cairns also within the zone of destructive winds. Hopefully people in the region will be prepared and nobody will be hurt.

Here it was warm again, but felt a bit less humid. I assembled comics in the morning and then took Scully for a drive over to the Italian bakery for lunch. I had a slice of mushroom pizza, and the special pastry today was a panettone snail. It was a scroll of flaky pastry filled with candied fruit and almonds and was delicious. This bakery is always creative and coming up with new things. I just wish they’d do the banoffee croissant again!

This afternoon I wrote my next ethics lesson for this week, on the topic of Restarting Civilisation. We’re going to start by imagining that some disaster such as an asteroid strike kills a few billion people, and then consider what life would be like for the survivors. How would people get food and water? Would they be likely to cooperate for survival, or become hostile? Do survivors have an ethical responsibility to help other survivors, or to maximise their own chances of survival? Once groups of people have stable food supplies, what aspects of modern civilisation should they prioritise in rebuilding first? (laws, education, electricity, transport, etc.?) Should we take some effort (and expense!) now to provide usable information and resources to future survivors in the event of a global disaster?

Tonight for dinner I tried a new thing. I like fennel whenever I go to a restaurant and have a dish that includes it, but I think I’ve only ever tried cooking with it once, doing it as a roast vegetable with other vegetables. On a whim last grocery day I grabbed a fennel bulb, determined to try something else with it. This afternoon I decided to make caramelised fennel and eggplant calzones with a tomato sauce. I caramelised the finely sliced fennel with some balsamic vinegar, then let it cook slowly with diced eggplant. I made pizza dough, and stuffed it with the fennel and eggplant, plus some mozzarella cheese and baked it. And made a separate sauce with onions, garlic, chopped tomatoes, and oregano, to spoon over the top of the baked calzones. It turned out really good!

New content today:

New comic batching

I had a final five classes today on the current ethics topics. But my main achievement was finishing off scripts and then photographing a new large batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips. I put together the first one for tonight, but I’ll have to start assembling the rest tomorrow.

The weather continues to be warm and humid. We reached 29°C today, and the humidity never dropped below 70%. The next week is looking like being uncomfortably warm, with overnight minimums never dropping below 21°C. In fact we haven’t had any temperature below 20°C since Thursday last week, so it’ll be 10 or 11 days in a row at least. That’s too warm to sleep comfortably, but fortunately we have air conditioning to cool things down a bit further so we can sleep.

I’ve also been organising a Christmas event with my family. My family traditionally does gatherings on Christmas Eve, which is kind of nice because it means everyone can do things with their spousal families on Christmas Day without any clashing. Last year we went to a gathering of extended family, but my mother lives up the coast and doesn’t travel much these days, so she missed out. This year instead my wife and I, and my brother, have made plans to go visit my mother on Christmas Eve. I’ve booked a place where we can go out for a nice lunch, with outdoor seating so we can take Scully as well.

New content today:

Humidity and comic writing

The heading kind of sums up today. It wasn’t nearly as hot as yesterday, only reaching 28°C, but it was very humid, with a cloudy overcast locking in the moisture. I went for a 5k run at 7:30 and it was 20.6°C with 100% humidity. I did manage a faster time than yesterday though, so that was good, but boy was I dripping with sweat by the end of it.

After having a cold shower I spent much of the day writing new Irregular Webcomic! strips. I’m planning to photograph a big batch tomorrow, just in time for the new week of strips. Hopefully.

Another thing I forgot to mention yesterday: I played another game of Root (the board game) with my wife. We’ve only been playing the cats and the birds factions so far as we’re both still learning the game, but this time I tried the Woodland Alliance for the first time. My wife played cats and absolutely destroyed me. Final score was 31-14. I can see the Alliance strategy will take some time to learn.

New content today:

Board game birthday party and super hot day

Friday was board games night. Normally it would be an online night in the fortnightly rotation, but one of my friends wanted to host it in person as it was his birthday. And he wanted to do some traditional party food like you might get at a child’s birthday party. So he got party pies and spring rolls, and other people brought chips and lollies and stuff. I brought party sausage rolls and my wife decided she had to make chocolate crackles. She got the ingredients and made them the night before. I didn’t tell any of the gaming guys and when I brought out the chocolate crackles everyone thought it was awesome.

When I arrived three of them were just finishing off a game of Jump Drive. Two more arrived soon after me, making it six of us. We had a break to sit out on the balcony in the warmth of the evening and eat, before moving indoors to begin a game of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest. I did pretty well, coming second. Then we went on to casual games of No Thanks, followed by Apples to Apples to round out the party evening.

Today was more notable for the weather. It was Sydney’s hottest day since the horrible 2019 Black Summer bushfire season, just before COVID. We reached 40°C in the city and just a fraction shy of 44°C in several suburbs. A cool southerly change is due to come through about 9pm which will hopefully cool it down enough to be tolerable for sleeping. Tomorrow should be cooler, but it’ll build up again to around 40°C by Thursday.

There’s also a dangerous looking tropical cyclone tracking towards the Queensland coast – a long way from me, but it could be serious for the people in northern Queensland. Official warnings haven’t been issued yet as it’s still a few days away, but authorities are starting to say residents should begin preparing.

Despite the heat, I felt I needed to go for a run this morning. I left early, but it was already 25°C at 8:30am, with a “feels like” temperature above 30°C. I took it very easy and managed 5k, in 28:14. Slower than I normally aim for, but fine under the conditions.

For dinner tonight we made a nice hot weather dish: falafel salad with tahini dressing. Lots of chopped salad vegetables – lettuce, cucumber, carrot, tomato – topped with hot falafels, pomegranate arils, and then the dressing, which is tahini, water, lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, a pinch of salt, cumin, and sumac.

New content today:

The Beatles play James Bond

A weird question has been tickling my brain for several days:

What Beatles song (unmodified) would make the best James Bond opening titles theme song?

Having now thought about it a bit, I present my list:

A Hard Day’s Night – That opening guitar chord! The song has an appropriately upbeat tempo and the lyrics are actually a pretty good fit for some Bond action followed by falling into the arms of a Bond girl.
Back in the U.S.S.R. – A sequel to From Russia, With Love, naturally. Jetsetting, dealing with Russkies, a thumping theme song. It’s almost perfect.
Come Together – Surreal lyrics, but you can kind of make them feel like they apply to Bond if you just go with the flow – kind of like some of the real theme songs actually. Interesting instrumentation. I could see this over some old style silhouette credit sequences.
Revolution (Past Masters version, not the White Album) – Bond-esque guitar riffs, thumping drums, and lyrics about destruction and changing the world. Bond fights Red China and Chairman Mao in the 1970s.
I am the Walrus – Weirdness, with harsh Lennon vocals that could really make a punch in those opening credits. Bonus points if you can tie any of the lyrics to the plot of the movie.
Happiness is a Warm Gun – I mean, it’s virtually like this was written for Bond. It has the feel of a modern Daniel Craig era theme song, it’s about warm guns. You just need the film to have a Mother Superior villain bent on world domination.
Tomorrow Never Knows – A bit out of left field, but the different eastern instrumentation could fit a Bond film set in India. Lyrics are a decent match with just a bit of squinting. And the title is only one word different from a real Bond movie.
And Your Bird Can Sing – Mostly I put this here because it’s one of my favourite Beatles songs. I think it could work.

As a bonus, you could think of the song title as the title of the Bond movie.

Today I had 5 ethics classes. Including the first older kids class on Uncertainty. Sample questions:

Have you ever had to make a decision but you didn’t have all the information you needed to decide? How did you decide what to do? Do you think uncertainty is an everyday experience, or something that we have only to deal with rarely? How should we deal with uncertain situations? How can scientists best communicate uncertainty about a result to the public? (e.g. we’re 70% sure this chemical causes cancer, weather/storm forecasts, etc.) How does this uncertainty happen in legal cases, when the laws are written down? Is it inevitable that there will be uncertainty in a system of laws and rules, even though we try to write everything down clearly? Is uncertainty important or useful in some situations? (I was thinking sports, games, movies.)

For lunch after the first two I took Scully out for fish & chips. We sat in a waterside park down by a ferry wharf, where there were some workers on a barge doing something to the wharf. I assume some sort of routine maintenance.

New content today:

Lesson planning concentration

Not much to report today. I spent most of the day writing lesson plans for this week’s ethics classes, with topics “Comics” for the younger kids and “Uncertainty” for the older ones.

Weather was warm and sunny. We’ve entered a heatwave cycle, wth temperatures expected to peak on Saturday, above 40°C in most parts of Sydney, a bit lower on the coast.

New content today:

A mess of a morning

Normally I take Scully (my poodle, if you’re new here) for a quick 10 minute walk around the block just before my wife leaves for work, to prevent Scully crying when my wife leaves. This morning Scully got up a bit late and I needed to take her out for her toilet about 30 minutes before my wife left for work, so I decided I’d take her on a long walk to Naremburn, and sit at the bakery there and get a croissant or something for second breakfast before coming home.

I took Scully downstairs, realised I’d forgotten my phone, but thought, “Oh well, I’m not going back upstairs just to get that, no biggie.” After Scully did her toilet, I walked with her to Naremburn. All the way I was looking forward to sitting down and having that croissant or whatever. But when I got there I realised that since I didn’t have my phone I couldn’t buy anything! (I’ve taken to using Apple Wallet to pay for things, and basically haven’t carried my physical wallet/credit cards/cash since COVID restrictions began in 2020.)

So we turned around and walked home. When I got to the front door, I realised I had also forgotten to take keys! So no phone, no keys… the only thing I could do was walk with Scully all the way to my wife’s work at North Sydney and get keys off her. I didn’t finally get home until nearly 10:00. And since I expected to be home before 8:30, I didn’t put any sunscreen on, and it was a hot sunny morning.

I thought my woes were over, but no! After lunch I went to the post office to pick up a package that was awaiting collection. I got there and because it’s December there was a huge queue. 20 people or so. I joined the end. The queue progressed super slowly because everyone was sending multiple Christmas packages. Eventually I was about halfway down the queue, and I spotted a sign saying “Parcel collection” with an arrow pointing out to the hallway. I figured I’d been standing here for 10 minutes when I could have gone straight to the parcel collection point!

So I left the queue and went out there, around the corner in the hallway and saw the parcel collection window… shuttered up, with a sign saying “After 9am, collect parcels from the main service counter”. So I had to go back in, and of course now the queue had grown even longer, and none of the people who were behind me a few seconds ago showed any inclination to let me back in. So I had to go to the back of the queue again.

15 minutes later, I was the next waiting to be served. An employee appeared out of a side door and said, “Anyone just collecting parcels?” A few people behind me raised their hands, and so did I. As the next to be served, I went first, leaving the others in the queue, and gave her my package delivery card. She took it and disappeared back through the door. Then while I was waiting, the service counter called the next three people, and they all got their packages before the woman reappeared with mine! Aiiieee!

In other news, while heading to the post office I walked past the new underground Metro station that is being built at Crows Nest. It’s been a construction zone for a long time and as the building has gone up above the underground station it’s been shrouded in scaffolding and screens. But now part of it is being peeled away, giving us our first look at the station access building.

Well. It’s not exactly what I’d call pretty.

I assumed the building above the station would be shops at ground level and offices with windows above. But it looks like a big bland wall of bricks, probably hiding a bunch of air conditioning plant or whatever else they need to keep an underground train station habitable.

Lest the day be nothing but negativity, I’m pleased to report that my lingering jet lag symptoms seem to have passed fully away, and I’ve been getting decent sleeps the past couple of nights. Oh, and the package I picked up was an American food care package from a friend, in time for Christmas. It contained a bunch of American sweets that are either impossible to get or super expensive here in Australia, as well as a big bottle of maple syrup, which is definitely super expensive here. So that was good!

New content today:

Storm fronts and Lego

Late last night, after I’d written my blog post, we had a severe storm hit Sydney. It didn’t last very long, but was incredibly intense, with lots of lightning and loud thunder. My friends and I were tracking the storm radar across the city, and reporting when the rain hit at our various home locations. It hit me about 10pm, and the rain was absolutely torrential, and there was also hail. The hail wasn’t too large, only about pea sized.

And tonight there’s another storm tracking across Sydney as I type this. We just had some heavy rain, but overall it looks less intense than last night.

Today I worked on getting some new Irregular Webcomic! strips written, photographed, and assembled, in time for the coming week. Ideally I’d do a large batch, but I only had time for a week’s worth, which will hopefully give me breathing room to write a full batch for next week. I’m actually planing to wind down production of new comics some time in the not too distant future, as I’m finding it difficult to keep up and it’s providing me with a bit less fun than it used to. But I want to finish off the stories in some sort of way and not leave things hanging. It may take another year or so to do that!

Today there were two nearby Christmas markets on, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. My wife wanted to go check out both of them and do some Christmas gift shopping, so I drove her out to each market, and she walked home with Scully from each of them. She says she’s completed her Christmas shopping now, so that’s good.

And tonight I had three more ethics classes, on the topic of Exercise. Some of the questions I’ve been asking the kids:

Can exercise make you feel better mentally as well as physically? How?
Do you think people are less fit today than in the past? (given changes in lifestyle from manual labour societies to modern technology)
Is it ethical to pressure someone to exercise for their own well-being? If they don’t enjoy it?
Is it appropriate for a government to run a campaign to encourage citizens to exercise, as a general benefit to health care?

I’m still a bit exhausted by the end of an evening of teaching, as I still haven’t caught up on my sleep routine after my trip. The past couple of nights I’ve gotten close to sleeping through to a reasonable wake-up time though, so hopefully it won’t take much longer.

New content today: