2013 — 4 August: Sunday
A pleasantly cool, bright start to the day.1 No more overnight photos of rugby mascots and, of course, the sun comes out within two minutes of my taking this shot:
I have no idea what I'm doing, but my amateur attempts at pruning appear to have paid off. Since the Red Admiral sailed from the almost adjacent Buddleia before I could catch him, I shall have to content myself with a semi-celebratory (of Nature) morning cuppa.
Speaking of Mother N...
... young Brack in upside-down NZ carries his iPhone with him and has just sent along photos of a black swan in a (local) estuary and a typical wintery seascape snapped from a beach near Clive, Hawkes Bay, today. When I mildly suggested the latter was largely attributable to it being, erm, winter down there, he promptly dropped a factoid bomb on me that Big Bro has somehow failed to explode in the 43 years he's been living in that realm:
It reminded us so very much of UK, very much indeed. Usually NZ countryside/weather is distinctively NOT like UK, summer or winter.
Who gnu?
I find it...
... hard to believe that the episode of "Private Passions" featuring Jocelyn Bell Burnell hasn't been broadcast before, but who am I to argue with the BBC website? That said, I also prefer my Stuttgart State Orchestra version of Arvo Pärt's "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten", but who am I to argue with an astrophysicist?
I recall...
... Junior spent a weekend in Iceland a decade or so ago in semi-serious pursuit of a job with the software house that's just hosted a huge (five hour, 4,000 players) online space battle. A spy tells me it made the TV news in the slightly less unreal world that passes for the real world of global infotainment on this planet. (Link.)
And I thought it was a...
... digital compression format! Don't eat the tarballs to be found along the Gulf coast (near New Orleans, I assume). Harry Shearer's "Le Show" has just warned they contain high levels of flesh-eating bacteria...
The evening's video...
... choice started out as "Side Effects" (the Soderbergh) but, 30 minutes in, though it seemed very well-made and well-acted, I didn't really like where it seemed very likely to be heading2 so I chickened out. Hence choice #2: "American Grindhouse". This turned out to be an occasionally ludicrous, and occasionally hilarious, exploration of the sort of weird directors territory that the awful J Woss used to explore. At least it served to remind me that the only copy I have of Tod Browning's "Freaks" is one I cut from a TV transmission.