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Trying paint colours

Today I went to the hardware store to get a couple of things: coat racks, which we’re going to mount on the wall of the bedroom to hang jackets and hats and things, and some small sample pots of paint to test different paint colours on the walls.

Because we’ve planning this repainting of the whole place, we’re also taking the chance to look at other ways of refreshing and reorganising things to improve the living space. We’ve been hanging jackets over the dining chairs, which is a bit annoying when either you want to sit or when guests come over. And we have a few random hat hooks in places, but we realised we can install a rack of hooks in a space in the bedroom and move all of that stuff into one location to make things neater.

When I got home, I cleaned a section of wall to prepare it for painting, and when it was dry I applied coats of two different colours. We’re going for a warm white shade, lighter than what we have on the walls at the moment, which are quite creamy. I also have different lighter shades for the skirting boards, which I’ll add tomorrow to see the full effect. I painted wall patches about a metre high from the floor and 40 centimetres wide, so we can see it over a significant area of the wall. It’ll all get covered up by the full repaint when that gets done in October. So until then we’ll live with odd patches of different colours.

I also worked on Darths & Droids a lot today. There’s forward planning to be done for the next bit, so I wanted to get ahead on it.

On TV I’ve been watching Archive 81 on Netflix, an 8-part series which is described as horror, but it’s really more of a mystery thriller with some vague supernatural elements. I’m six episodes in and it’s been really good.

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.

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.

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.

Awful Australian politics

Maybe not what you’re thinking from the title. My wife has started watching the Netflix series The Residence. It’s set in the White House and there are various political characters, including one who is repeatedly referred to as the “First Lady of Australia”. It’s clear that the writers have no idea about how Australian politics works, because the spouse of the Prime Minister has no such title and no duties anything like the role of First Lady of the United States. Can’t they do even basic research to get these things right and not annoyingly wrong?

As an aside, our current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, isn’t married, being divorced from his first wife before being elected. He has a partner, and proposed marriage last year (while Prime Minister). Their wedding is expected to follow the imminent election, now just 11 days away. If he’s returned as Prime Minister, it will be the first time an Australian Prime Minister gets married while in office.

I suppose I have another story about politics. With the election very soon, the political ads are ramping up in all media. As has become usual, many of them are scare tactic ads aimed at making voters afraid of the other major party. And one of them which I heard again today is making the point that our Opposition leader wants to make Australia “more like America”. This is enough to scare Australian voters. “That guy wants to make Australia more like America” is an effective scare message to get people not to vote for that guy. And it’s working, because the Opposition is falling behind in the polls. That tells you something about our collective opinions on the US right now.

This morning my wife took Scully to work, so I had a morning free to go for a run, and took the chance to do another 5k. The weather was chilly, with intermittent heavy showers all day, but I managed to avoid them while running.

This afternoon I wrote up my lesson plan for this week’s ethics topic, which is Antarctica. There are plenty of questions about why people are interested in Antarctica, who (if anyone) should be allowed to go there, live there, own it, use mineral resources, etc, etc. I did the first class this evening and it went fairly well. It’s always tricky doing the first class of a new topic, and not knowing which questions the kids will find interesting or have strong opinions on.

Tonight we had one kid who was pretty gung-ho in favour of letting people mine Antarctica, and two who were more concerned with protecting its environment, so that was interesting!

Missed Monday and a special seaplane lunch

Wow, Monday was so busy that I didn’t even realise I forgot to post aa blog entry until my wife asked me a short time ago, “Did you post on your blog yesterday?” It wasn’t exciting-busy, it was just a lot of online ethics classes, and walking Scully, and cooking dinner, so not really much to write about. Which is maybe why I forgot it.

Today, however, we had a special day out. My wife had the day off work and we booked a restaurant for lunch. A nice one, on the harbour shore, with a view. Unfortunately the weather turned overnight and it was chilly and cloudy and windy, but not uncomfortably so from our table on the wharf.

The restaurant is the Empire Lounge, at the Sydney Seaplanes terminal in Rose Bay. This is the only seaplane terminal in Sydney Harbour and they do scenic flights over Sydney, as well as shuttle services to some locations just north of Sydney where there are fancy secluded waterside restaurants that have a seaplane wharf for guests. There are no actual destinations that the seaplanes fly to, as they’re just not practical for any destinations within range. But the site was the old terminal for Sydney’s first international airport, receiving the Empire Flying Boat service from Southport in England, which took ten days to reach Sydney.

For lunch we had some of the hummus with focaccia to start:

Then I had the pan-fried snapper (with a side of green vegetables shared with my wife, no shown):

And for dessert a baked cheesecake:

The meal was pretty good, everything tasty and delicious.

Back at home I did some story planning stuff for Darths & Droids. I tried to write a new strip, but needed to work on background material to get the story arc straight in my head first, and also look up some old strips for continuity.

This evening I had the first class in the new week’s ethics topic: Memory. I have some interesting questions about reliability of memories. I used the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm test, showing a set of words related to sleep, but not including the word “sleep”. And then hid the words after about 15 seconds and asked the kids what words they remembered. The very first word “remembered” was “sleep! I wasn’t sure how well the test would work in getting them to remember something they never even saw, but it was very successful.

On TV, I’ve started watching the new season of Black Mirror. I really like this series, but with the first new episode I got a feeling of dread, like it was giving companies ideas, kind of like the infamous Torment Nexus. … Time to watch another one!

Devil’s Diner

A friend of mine got me onto the Netflix series Devil’s Diner. I’d noticed in my recommendations, and it’s normally the sort of horror series thing I might be interested in, but I hadn’t bothered watching it yet because of a mixture of the overt food theme and the fact that I’ve overdosed a bit on Asian horror series, and some of the more recent ones haven’t been as good as I’d hoped.

But my friend recommended it and I started watching it last week. And it’s really good. I finished the sixth and last episode last night, which gave an appropriate way to round out the series and bring it to a conclusion. I enjoyed it, but in hindsight I think the “horror” classification is a little wrong. There’s a bit of gore, but not in particularly horrifying ways, and the theme of the series is really more like Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone than horror. So if you like those sort of series, maybe give it a try.

Not much else to report today. I was busy with classes and trying to get ahead on Darths & Droids ahead of my trip to Japan next week.

Oh, my ant sting is getting better. Still a bit red and rashy, but fading away slowly.

New content today:

Dental rescheduling

Today I was supposed to go to the dentist for a teeth cleaning and check-up, but they contacted me and said the hygienist was sick, so I had to reschedule the appointment. They had nothing for a couple of weeks, so now it won’t be until mid-December.

This morning I wrote my class for this week’s ethics topic: Exercise. Sample question: Is it ethical to pressure someone to exercise for their own well-being? If they don’t enjoy it?

The forecast rain started hitting late morning. Instead of taking Scully for a walk, I decided to drive over a couple of suburbs to the shops and find somewhere to eat under shelter. I ended up at a Spanish tapas place, which also did bocadillo sandwiches for lunch. The one I chose had fried chicken, bacon, cheese, tomato, and lettuce, and it was pretty good.

I didn’t do much else as I’m still feeling very tired by mid-afternoon due to continuing jet lag. I’ve been unable to sleep as late as I’d like in the morning, waking up around 4 or 5 am every day for several days now. So I haven’t had 8 hours sleep for over a week now.

I’ve been watching the new series Squid Game: The Challenge. I enjoyed the original TV show, and this reality TV game version of it seemed interesting. The first three episodes were okay when they were actually playing games, but I didn’t like the next two episodes os much, which have sort of descended into a Big Brother style reality TV snark-fest between the players. I’m hoping when the next batch of episodes is released tomorrow it’ll pick up again.

New content today:

COVID day 3

Again my symptoms eased off overnight and I felt not too bad in the morning, but they’ve gotten worse again this evening. The main thing is alternating feverish chills with goosebumps and hot flushes with lots of sweating. My throat feels clogged with something like really thick phlegm. I’m coughing occasionally, but too badly, but it doesn’t help the clogged feeling much. I’m glad I don’t have a worse cough. Honestly, I’d rather have a fever than a persistent cough – I hate uncontrollable coughing.

Yesterday I’d cancelled all today’s ethics classes, and I’m glad I did. Teaching kids in this state would have been extremely mentally taxing. I took Scully for a walk a few times. I felt well enough to do that, making sure I didn’t go near anyone while outside. And apart from a little bit of comic writing, I’ve been relaxing and watching some TV.

I started watching the Netflix series Marianne, which is a French horror series. I have the English dub and the English subtitles on, since occasionally a train goes past and it becomes difficult to hear the dialogue for a few seconds. I’ve noticed that the English dialogue and the subtitles are wildly different. Not just a different word here and there, but whole different sentences. Sometimes the dub mentions something while the subtitles leave it out, and vice versa. And I noticed one occasion where the subtitles actually said the exact opposite of what the dialogue said. It’s actually somewhat entertaining to watch just to see the differences.

New content today:

Secret Project milestone

That secret project I’ve been talking about recently – I completed a major milestone today. The hardest and most time-consuming part has now been completed, as of this morning. There’s a bit of tidying up around the edges required before it’s ready to unveil, but that’s all very minor and mechanical compared to the major creative parts that are now finished. Yes, it’s a creative project, and yes, you will see it soon. Just not quite yet.

The other thing I achieved today was finishing watching season 4 of Stranger Things. I’ve loved this show since the first episode of season 1. I thought season 3 was a bit weaker than the first two, but this new season was amazing, and my wife and I both were spellbound from start to finish.

The other main thing today was I got my fourth COVID shot. The Australian Government approved them for people aged over 30 on Monday, and I made sure to get in early before demand ramps up and makes bookings difficult to get. I had it about 5 hours ago now, and still feeling fine, so hopefully no fevery side effects like I had for one of my previous shots (I forget exactly which it was, but it was just one of them).

New content today: