climbing sznnnnnnn. i might have heard somebody get very injured the other day. definitely heard the impact of a body hitting the ground in a way it’s not supposed to…and saw a bunch of medics and SAR in the area on our hike out…
thinking about throwing together a post with some recent climbing photos, maybe even some photos from stuff from last year too.
Going on a 3 day 2 night 20ish mile backpacking adventure this weekend. Spending my work day meal prepping and packing and sending the occasional email.
Also if you haven't listened to Mavis Staples' new single you should. Almost 85, still a killer voice, and an absolute killer song:
awesome!! this the trip you messaged me about a couple months back?!
Yeah! Ended up being gifted a Zoleo so we used that, though the InReach looks pretty damn great.
Trip overall was wonderful. 11,000 ft of elevation got to us, as did the unexpected snow. We couldn't find any info on what we were attempting online (Gaylor Lakes to Saddlebag Lakes if anyone is curious) and apparently that's because Gaylor Lakes area only opened a few years back. Turns out, the only reasonable (Not cliff) way down to Saddlebag 1000 feet below is currently covered in snow. It was impossible to find trail conditions before leaving, so we were just winging it a bit, especially since the region we were hiking doesn't have trails and it's all just cross country make your own way. So we called it on our second day due to elevation + snow making our path impossible to cross. The views were absolutely stunning though. We were quite possibly among the first people to camp in that area in a loooooong time and it was gorgeous. Once we left the trail we didn't see or hear a single person. Milky way was crystal clear at night. Only sounds were wind and water and mosquitos. It was a truly wonderful adventure, even if it had to be cut short.
Tis the heart of winter in NZ, and even more wintry in dreary Dunedin. Icy footpaths, fire crackling at night, rugging up everywhere you go and my glasses steam up whenever I enter a cafe.
Went to a 'drone light show' last week, and I swear most of the fuckin' town turned up. The organisers learned a lesson in event infrastructure at least. Four toilets, four, for thousands of people. The food trucks were all arranged next to each other, so every line for one truck became the line for another. They'll know for next time.
The show was cool though. Perfect night for it, and there were exactly 201 drones operating the show. This number was chosen, apparently, because the previous NZ record for such a show was 200 drones. So uhh, suck it, those guys.
They floated in towards us in a swarm, then organised themselves into gently rotating shapes of native birds/animals. Many "oohs" and "aahs". One kid screamed "It's a Kiwi!" when, in fact, it was an eel.
Got tickets to go see Hozier this November. Big fan of him. Not a big fan of concerts, but I'll brave it for my partner.
Hope you're all well.
“ The show was cool though. Perfect night for it, and there were exactly 201 drones operating the show. This number was chosen, apparently, because the previous NZ record for such a show was 200 drones. So uhh, suck it, those guys.”
that’s actually pretty funny. is this positive masculinity in action???
never been to a drone show!
I started a new job in a field I've never worked in before but have been going to school for.
It's exhausting to meet so many new people while learning so many new things in a place with many physical hazards. It's also going to be in the high 90's low 100's this week which makes the job a quite a bit harder.
we've had a car for 2 months and already we've fucked it up - i scratched the side paint on somebody's bike that was locked up next to a parking spot, and today my boyfriend had his foot slip off the brake and dented/scraped the hood on a chain fence in a parking garage. luckily both times there was no damage to anything other than our car, but it just sucks because it's a nice car that's only a couple years old, and it was in perfect shape when we got it. i hate the anxiety of having something that is so expensive and so easy to damage. i've been trying not to worry whenever either of us takes the car somewhere and it's not easy to do when stuff like this happens
Windows 10 is losing support soon, and I won't be able to (easily) upgrade to 11 as appparently my CPU is too old, even though they were selling them until 2019 but whatever. Still haven't decided what I'm going to do, probably leaving it as Windows 10 and just being insecure tbh, since I want to run Photoshop and linux isnt good at that and like hell am I buying another computer for no reason. (two, since my laptop is too old as well)
Anyways, while reading about different OSes to install, I came across Genode (https://genode.org/) and I love it so so much. So many alternative OSes are just so boring. Like cool, you're rewriting everything from scratch, so that it can run normal posix programs worse?? see: gnu/hurd, redox, serinityos. This one's actually doing its own thing and it's incredibly nifty. I can't explain it well concisely yet, but If anyone's interested I'm happy to give the long pitch.
& as part of that, I've been daydreaming about what the perfect OS would be like, no constraints whatsoever. Feel free to suggest any ideas, planning on making a blog post out of it eventually. Right now my favorite is adding undo/redo to everything, including being able to scrub backwards in time and restart from there.
Let's make one thing clear: when it comes to puzzles, you have to take them as at best a rough estimate of the ability... of puzzle solving. In chess, I routinely beat people with puzzle ranks in the grandmaster range -- and the cockier they are about it, the wider my smile -- because it's one thing to solve a problem and another to get to those positions by skill. In that regard, it's like training for a marathon exclusively on an elliptical: even if you develop endurance, you'll probably die of blisters and fresh air overdose around 10k. But damn, does it bring me joy to see some numbers improve. I even won a couple games.
From what I understood so far, the (opening) theory is muuuch less rigorous than chess, but leagues ahead of Go's "to win, you have to green-fish blue-fish, red-fish two-fish" bullshit. So much more my speed! Dunno. Maybe I have some bizarre learning disability, but it's clear that the more the game is front-loaded with rules and lingo, the less likely I am to enjoy it. And no, it's not 'Western bias'; I despise Bridge/Whist - possibly the West-est, most English game - for the same reason.
All 16 potato plants produced berries. Because I planted six different types, maybe some of them are (viable) crossbreeds? No idea, but it'll be cool to see if they grow next year. I'm also planning on leaving some potatoes behind on purpose, to see if they can self-perpetuate in an enclosure I made for less dog-resistant plants.
Because there are many unused fields nearby, two months ago I decided to help the wider butterfly population by dumping a couple cupfuls of radish seeds over the area. If it doesn't sound like much - radish seeds are about a third of the size of poppy seeds and grow best when a couple inches apart, so they've been tossed widely and sparingly. Doesn't seem like anyone but bugs noticed, though it looks like most seedpods I inspected were already eaten from the inside by caterpillars and the like. Dunno if those will have a chance to continue, but that's also something to see next year.