weather – Page 14 – dangermouse.net

Hot winter day

The most notable thing today was the weather. It was warm. The temperature reached 25.2°C in central Sydney, and up to 26.4°C in some suburbs. That’s pretty warm for the middle of winter. It could have qualified as a summer day. It was nice, but a bit worrying.

This morning I went to the supermarket to do a manual grocery shopping. I missed the window for my usual order to pick up on Friday morning, and didn’t manage to organise anything yesterday so today I just decided to go in and do the old fashioned thing of walking down the aisles myself to grab stuff. I didn’t get a lot, because I wanted to be quick. Just the few things on the shopping list, some staples like milk, and some fresh fruit. I didn’t get any vegetables because with my wife’s haul fro the community garden yesterday we have plenty to last the week.

I did a 2.5k run, in the balmy warmth. A week ago I was running in 11°C, today it was 22°C. Made a comic, did 3 ethics classes this evening, and that was pretty much a day.

New content today:

Early nesting lorikeets

According to my iPhone Health app I walked almost 13,000 steps today – the highest daily amount since I got back from Japan 3 weeks ago. It began with a 5k run this morning, when I decided to double my more usual distance. I took it easy so I wouldn’t get too worn out in the second half, and it wasn’t too bad.

Then at lunchtime I took Scully on a longish walk, doing a circuit around through a park, past cafes, down to the harbour shore, then back up through a bushwalk. It’s a circuit we do often, but it’s been made longer in the past few months by some work to upgrade a series of old sandstone steps that lead down from a street into a deep gully. There are steps up the other side leading to the park, but the steps down have been closed for a while due to the construction work.

While the work was in progress we had to take a detour of about 300 metres up the street to another set of steps and then back along the bottom of the gully. But today for the first time the new steps were open!

We stopped at a bakery-cafe for lunch. Normally at this place I just buy a pie or a sausage roll. But today I actually looked at the menu and selected the chicken schnitzel burger. It was okay, but not great. I think the pies are better.

While eating, I was sitting at a table outside on the footpath, facing an elderly lady who was also sitting alone at the next table over. Feral pigeons lurk around this place, looking for crumbs, and they’re bold in attempting to steal food. Twice one jumped onto the old lady’s table, surprising her so much that each time she actually screamed in shock. The first time she shooed the birds away and commented to me how much she hated pigeons, even though she was a bird lover. The second time she gave up and moved inside the cafe to finish her meal. I didn’t have that option since I was sitting outside with Scully, so I waved the pigeons off with my hat a few times. I too love birds, but pigeons really don’t fall under the umbrella, and I’d happily see them all eliminated from Australia if it were possible.

After eating we continued to the harbour shore where I threw a ball for Scully to chase a few times. She was a bit distracted by another dog she could see on the grass in the distance though.

On the way home through the bushwalk section, I spotted a rainbow lorikeet sitting on a tree. It didn’t move as I approached, so I began to suspect it might be guarding a nest. And as I got closer, it moved and a second lorikeet emerged from the tree hollow!

This is definitely a mated pair, either choosing a nesting site, or perhaps already guarding eggs. I managed to get even closer for another photo.

Now this is quite weird, because normally lorikeets don’t start nesting until spring, or perhaps August at the earliest. It really has been a strangely warm winter this year. Many flowers are already appearing: magnolias (which are normally early), camellias, azaleas, lavender, cherry blossoms – I’ve seen all of these the past few weeks. We’re supposed to get 23°C for the next few days (which I noted today was the same maximum temperature as London).

Then this afternoon I went for another walk with my wife and Scully, before my ethics classes for the evening. Phew, I feel like I’ve had plenty of running/walking today!

New content today:

Coldest day of the year

Sydney recorded 5.2°C overnight, making it the coldest day of the winter, and the year, so far. It warmed up a bit and the middle of the day wasn’t as cold as yesterday though.

I taught my first class on The Singularity this morning, with some of the older students, and it went well, with plenty of smart discussion by the students.

For lunch I walked Scully up to the shops near my wife’s work and had a Japanese lunch set at one of the restaurants there. They have a lunch special where you get miso soup, rice, salad, and a hot food item, like karaage chicken or pork katsu or teriyaki salmon or whatever. I’ve tried several of the options and was looking to try something new. One of the options was listed on the menu as “jumbo kaki”, and the photo showed what looked like Panko-crumbed croquettes.

I looked up “kaki” on my phone and found it meant “persimmon” in Japanese… but I didn’t think it would be persimmon croquettes. While pondering this, the waitress arrived to take my order, and I asked her what was in this dish. She looked, thought for a second, and declared the croquettes contained “beef and pork”.

Readers who know Japanese at this point: 🤔🤨

Anyway, I ordered the “kaki”. It came with a small bowl with a thick sauce. I tried one, dipping it in the sauce. Sure enough, the sauce tasted a bit like persimmon I thought, so maybe that explained the name in the menu. But the croquette filling definitely wasn’t beef or pork. It was something vaguely animal proteiny, but resembled more like a mushy mass of giblets or something than a cut of meat or a minced meat. It didn’t taste bad, so I just kind of tried to ignore whatever it might be and finished my meal.

When I went to pay, another waitress was at the pay station, and she said, “You had the oysters, right?”

Internally I was thinking, “Oh, that’s what it was!” As well as, “The other waitress really should have known better and not told me it was beef/pork.” Fortunately I don’t mind oysters, although they’re not a food of choice, and honestly if I’d known what the dish was I would have ordered something else. But I just thought now what if I’d had a seafood allergy or something? Anyway, I paid and didn’t say anything. (Also, fortunately I’m not allergic to seafood, although if I was I’d be a lot more careful confirming ingredients in restaurants than I am.)

Looking it up again now, I see that the Japanese “kaki” has several meanings. To quote Wiktionary:

柿: persimmon
垣: fence
牡蠣: oyster (edible)
夏期: summer period
花卉: flowers
火器: firearm
夏季: summer
火気: fire
下記: following
花期: flowering season
花器: vase
和気: harmonious atmosphere

Now I’m pondering a serve of harmonious atmosphere croquettes.

In sports news, the FIFA Women’s World Cup has just begun, with a surprise win by New Zealand against Norway in the opening game in Auckland, and Australia now taking on Ireland here in Sydney. I might go watch the game, and then switch over to the 4th Ashes cricket match in England.

New content today:

Caramel slice photos

Here are some photos of that caramel slice I made last night.

First, the base has been baked in the left, and I’m making the caramel filling.

I think the base is meant to be a bit more uniform in colour. I could have mixed the flour, coconut, brown sugar, and butter more thoroughly. But it didn’t affect the texture. Second, here’s the caramel filling after baking:

And then here are the final cut pieces of the slice, with the chocolate top layer:

And it tastes delicious! Overall I’m really happy with how it went.

Today I spent much of the day writing up my report on the ISO Photography Standards meeting that I attended in Japan, for Standards Australia. I have a meeting next week to fill in the Australian experts committee on all of the events from that Japan meeting.

And finally today, I know that much of the northern hemisphere is currently in the middle of record-breaking heatwaves. The stories have been shown here about heat in southern Europe, east Asia, and North America. But here in the south it’s winter at the moment, so we’re not especially hot, but we are also experiencing highly unusual warmth for this time of the year. It actually really feels like spring already, and it’s confusing many of the plants, with potentially devastating consequences for our crops. There was a story about it in the news today.

New content today:

Rain and wattle

It rained today. Not much, but a few passing showers, occasionally mildly heavy for a little. I managed to avoid it on my morning 2.5k run, and taking Scully out for a walk after lunch.

A noticeable thing in the area is that the wattle trees are now in full flower.

Australia’s colours are green and gold, and now in midwinter is when we see why.

Not too much else to report today. It was mostly routine, keeping up with Outschool class planning, teaching, cooking, baking some sourdough, and other usual activities.

New content today:

New comic, new ethics

I was busy today, finishing off my lesson plan for tonight’s ethics classes on Heroes and Villains. Followed by writing, photographing, assembling, and uploading four new Irregular Webcomic! strips – enough to last for the rest of this week. I’d only buffered up to yesterday before I went overseas to Japan, and I wanted to fill the rest of the week with new comics if I could.

And then I worked on some Darths & Droids as well, as the buffer is close to zero. And I started work on the ethics plan for the older (13-15) kids, on the topic or Privacy. I’ll have to finish that one tomorrow.

In between, I took Scully for a walk up to the shops. Today was cold and rainy, so she had her padded raincoat on, and I had an umbrella. I’d had lunch at home, but was considering buying a special limited edition spiced apple scone from the bakery. They look great, but I realised the only place to tie up Scully while I went in was a wet bench where the lead would get wet and Scully would be in the rain, so I decided to ditch that for today and maybe try it another day soon.

I didn’t have time for much else. I’m scrambling a bit to fit everything in that I need to do to get back up to normal weekly speed after my trip.

New content today:

A pleasant last day of autumn

The morning news greeted me with weather records – over 100 weather stations across Australia recorded their coldest ever May day yesterday. Sydney wasn’t one of them, though, as we had a nice late autumn day. And today was even nicer, pleasantly warm in the middle of the day, when I went for a walk with my wife and Scully and sat outside having a snack at a bakery.

I’m starting to feel mostly better from my illness, except for the lingering cough, which is still hanging on. My wife seems to have avoided the bacterial throat infection I had. She had a PCR test done, which came back negative for both COVID and influenza, so who knows what on Earth this thing is that we managed to catch.

I wrote my lesson plan for tomorrow’s first older kids’ class on Cybercrime. It was a little tricky coming up with enough questions, so I expanded the scope a little to include things like hacktivism, which has some obvious questions associated with it.

Oh and I spent a half hour or so making a new static web page to replace the old mezzacotta home page WordPress site. At some point I should revisit the CSS and make the page style a bit more legible. That font is just way too small.

New content today:

Ongoing flu and windy weather

I did a RAT for COVID and it was negative. So I’m fairly sure what I have is a flu. Despite getting the latest flu vaccination just two weeks ago. Well, hopefully that is taking some of the edge off it, since I don’t feel as bad as some flus I’ve had in the past.

I got up this morning and cancelled my Outschool classes for tomorrow morning. Tomorrow I’ll make the call whether I feel up to teaching again by Tuesday evening.

Today was cold and very windy. My wife and I took Scully for a walk in the early afternoon and it was just awful being out there, with autumn leaves and street dust swirling around everywhere. I had to stop a couple of times to rub grit out of my eyes, and that was while wearing tightly fitting sunglasses.

Apart from trying to hammer out some more Darths & Droids scripts, I didn’t do much today. My wife even cooked dinner! Pasta alla norma, with roasted eggplant. Really good!

New content today:

Winter blast

Today was the first real hit of the impending winter. Yesterday we had a pleasant 22.3°C in Sydney. Overnight a cold change came through from the south, bringing chilly air and cold rain. We only reached 15.8°C, and much of the day was hovering closer to 12°C.

This morning I did lesson 4 in the current game design course, and all three students showed up today. We developed the idea we had last time for a game based around a ninja grandma. I presented an idea I had for a worker placement mechanic to train your ninjas in Grandma’s ninja academy castle, perhaps followed by a battle for supremacy. They all liked that, so that’s the basic mechanic we’re going to start with. I need to put a draft game together in the next few days and post it for them to playtest before next Sunday.

After the lesson, I tried to go for a run. I looked outside and it was sunny, so I opened the windows for some fresh air and went out. I got about 100 metres down the road and saw the speed and dark grey shade of the clouds coming in, and decided to abort and run straight home. It was a good decision, because within 5 minutes the rain was coming down, and I’d shut the windows to prevent it coming in. I did manage to go for a run later in the afternoon, when the rain had passed.

Another thing I need to do in the next few days is marking of the university Data Engineering reports for the first assignment – the planning report for the student team experimental projects. I need to get this done quickly so they can use feedback for the follow-up experimental report, due in two weeks. So I’m going to be busy for the next few days!

New content today:

Intro to Intro to Machine Learning

Today I worked on a presentation for the university Data Engineering course I’ve been tutoring this semester. I felt there was a bit of a gap in the course material. The first few lectures talk about types of data, experimental collection of data, basic statistics (such as mean, standard deviation, etc), plotting and presenting data, and fitting data (linear regression), and hypothesis testing.

And then the next lecture is a guest lecturer from MathWorks who comes in and talks about using MATLAB to do machine learning. It’s a large jump in complexity and depth of material, and I feel like many of the students are left a bit floundering like they’ve suddenly been thrown in the deep end. There’s no set up of the context or motivation for machine learning, or what it’s actually trying to do with the data.

Last lecture I spoke with the professor about this and he agreed with my idea of adding a bit of introductory context material to set up the machine learning content. We actually have an opportunity to deliver this because for the next three weeks we just have project sessions where the students show up to work in their teams and ask us questions if they need any guidance. We do the same thing in the Image Processing course in semester two, and there we’ve had a “bonus material” lecture at the start of one of those session. (Last year I did this, talking about the science and engineering of photography.)

So today I made a short presentation (just 9 slides), that we can give to the students on Monday. I set up the problem that we want to solve – classifying things by examining measurements—data—about them. I give examples to show how general this problem is and the wide range of important applications. Then explain why it can be difficult and how we can approach it in a data analytical way. And then how we can apply automated algorithms to do it in various different ways. Which leads into the machine learning examples that they did in the aforementioned previous lecture.

I tested it on my wife and it only took about 15 minutes. (And she now has a better understanding of the context of machine learning than most people!)

Also today I started work on writing a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips. I hope to get that done in time to photograph Lego on Tuesday morning.

The forecast rain hit today – it was much cooler than yesterday. But still we managed to set a new record for number of consecutive days in Sydney with maximum temperature 20°C or more. Looking at the Bureau of Meteorology records, it looks like 193 consecutive days – the last day we had a maximum below 20°C was 17 October, 2022. The forecast for every day in the coming week is at least 22°C, so the streak will probably extend past 200 days.

New content today: