Month: September 2023

I’m not always polite and mild (or witty)

When you get a spam message on an iPhone, you can report is as junk and have it block the sender and delete the message. If you also have a Mac, it will not mirror this, so you will still see the message there, until you delete it.

This morning, I was reminded that I broke one of my rules yesterday morning when I replied to a scammer. I haven’t done this in years. I don’t enjoy “the game” and appreciate having a single button I can tap to make them go away (it would be better if these messages never got through at all, of course). But yesterday morning I was apparently a bit cranky from being up extra early due to Mouse Incident™ and I did reply, before blocking. Behold my early morning sass:

Today, I asked my AI pal ChatGPT to come up with some sassy replies written in the style of Shakespeare that I could use instead. They’re actually not that bad!

Oh, treacherous fiend, whose wicked scheme is laid,
In the realm of cyberspace, a villainous charade,
Thy words, like honeyed poison, doth beguile,
Yet beneath thy deceit, a serpent's guile.

And:

Thy message o'er Apple's channel of delight,
Doth seek to rob me blind, in broad daylight,
A plea for gold, a promise to repay,
Yet, in truth, thou art but a wolf at bay.

But I will probably just Delete and Report Junk like I normally do.

Bliss-ish

Perhaps the most famous desktop wallpaper ever, if only through ubiquity (and it’s also pretty!), is Bliss, the image of a green hill against a pleasant blue sky that was the default background on the Windows XP desktop.

This:

I asked DiffusionBee to make an image reminiscent of Bliss, and it came up with this:

It’s all right, and you can definitely see the family resemblance, but it’s a little too candyland for my taste. I could rework the prompt, but my curiosity has been sated. In the sage words of Homer Simpson, “Eh, close enough.”

EDIT: Ok, I tried once more, using the Image to Image option, and it came up with something a lot closer, yet slightly different, mainly in that it removes the road and the background mountains tucked in the corner. It also seems to think no one would ever cut the grass.

Then I did the exact same thing, but added “detailed” to the prompt and it did indeed add some of the detail back, while making the shadows more dramatic:

OK, now that’s close enough.

Run 805: Gentle river knees

Brunette River, pre-run

Due to a Mouse Incident™ I was up much earlier than normal and had previously thought about skipping the run today to do other things, but in the end I headed out and was running on the river trail before 10 a.m. Conditions were pleasant–the showers forecast did not materialize, save for a few drops pre- and post-run.

At first, my legs felt a bit cranky, just stiff and sore (mostly from stretching). Things settled down, but then about one km in, the left hip started up, as per usual these days. It subsided for a bit, then later made its presence VERY WELL-KNOWN before subsiding again. The left knee also started acting up for a bit, too, but it also settled and was better toward the end of the run. I shall monitor these things closely.

In terms of pace, it was fast. Compared to the last river run, I came in at 5:45/km, was comfortably under the six-minute mark the entire way and my BPM stayed at a very nice 148. So from that end, it went well.

Plus, no dogs off leash. Or mice.

Dam on the river, with heron attending. Photo quality is not great due to being digitally zoomed in on iPhone 12.

Stats:

Run 805
Average pace: 5:45/km
Training status: Maintaining
Location: Brunette River Trail
Start: 9:49 a.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 28:56
Weather: Cloudy
Temp: 16ºC
Humidity: 72-70%
Wind: light
BPM: 148
Weight: 167.5
Total distance to date: 5905 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 5 (40/69/109 km)

In 18 days, Summer 2023 will be over

And I will be sad. The transition from summer to fall is the only seasonal change that makes me feel a bit glum. Days get shorter and colder. Trees lose their leaves, vegetation withers. It rains more. It rains on top of the rain. Sometimes it floods. Yes, you get a few weeks of nice weather and fall colours right at the start, but that’s it.

By the time fall changes to winter, it’s already effectively been winter for weeks, so it doesn’t hit me the same way.

Here’s to Summer 2024! Only, uh, a lot of days to go. I could look it up, but I’d rather not know the precise number just now.

Summer comes to an end once more…

Three years after I mocked it, Microsoft announces it’s killing WordPad

See my original post here (now updated): WordPad: The little program time (or at least I) forgot

Ars Technica has the story confirming Microsoft’s plan to eventually deprecate WordPad and I have to admit, much like in September 2020, I still never used it, so its absence won’t be felt by me. Some people in the reader comments of that article do raise some legit concerns about its removal, so I’m wondering how MS will address those (if at all). The main thing WordPad had was RTF1Rich Text Format support, which is used by probably five people across the planet today. Still, it would be nice to have some built-in support in Windows, even if WordPad itself goes away. One suggestion was to add a rich text mode to Notepad that could be toggled on/off. Plus, MS has been tinkering with Notepad a lot lately and a lot of nerds are already upset over changes to it, so strike while the nerd rage is hot!

Run 804: Never run on a stat holiday (part of a continuing series)

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run

It’s Labour Day and running counts as labour, so I’m good.

I ended up having a not-great sleep last night, so slept in a bit to try to salvage what I could. This meant that I’d be running later than desired–and on a stat holiday, to boot.

On the plus side (except for people hoping to tan or have picnics in the sun before school resumes), it was cloudy and cooler today, never getting above 17C and with the sun only briefly threatening for a few minutes. This made for much nicer running conditions.

What didn’t make for nicer running conditions were the huge crowds clogging up the trail as people go on their once-a-year trek for fitness or something before winter sets in. Generally this is not a problem, as most will either see or hear me approach and make room. The worst, somewhat ironically, are those walking toward me, because many of them seem to think I will somehow make room for them.

Somewhere between the 2 and 3K mark (this becomes significant later) a large, sprawling group approached, spread out into about three groups. The largest blob of people approached, with a young and apparently very happy young woman on the edge. As I neared, she seemed to remain oblivious, somehow, to my presence, giggling and carrying on with the others. There was a tree right on the edge of the trail as I got nearer. This meant that even if I wanted to, I would not be able to duck off the trail if she failed to give me room to pass. She gave me enough room to pass if I weighed half as much and was twice as tall. I put up my left hand to act as a kind of cow catcher (I’m not casting judgment, it’s what they were called!) As it turned out, I made contact with her shoulder and gently pushed her slightly away as I ran past. I’m pretty sure she was still unaware of me.

By this time, I was annoyed with two things:

  1. My pace. The first km, where I admittedly have been taking it easy lately (somewhat paranoid) was a slow 5:59/km. The second km was worse–6:07/km. The dream of getting a pace under six minutes seemed unattainable.
  2. All the damn people getting in the way. In reality, most were fine, but that one young happy woman irked me enough to make up for all the others.

These two things made me just want to get the run over with as quickly as possible and get out. This meant that, opposite to what usually happens, I got faster as the run progressed. My fourth km was 5:45, my last was 5:34–the fastest since hurting my knees a thousand years ago.

This meant my overall pace was below six minutes, at 5:52/km. Woo!

Better, my knees and legs survived. The left hip was being its dumb self again, but a little more muted, and the knees seem no worse for the extra speediness. No doubt the conditions helped, too, because despite the time, my BPM was back to a nice, round 150.

Overall, I am pleased with the run, and annoyed with the people.

View of the lake looking northeast, post-run
Run 804
Average pace: 5:52/km
Training status: Maintaining
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 12:12 p.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 29:35
Weather: Mostly cloudy
Temp: 17ºC
Humidity: 75-70%
Wind: light
BPM: 150
Weight: 166.8
Total distance to date: 5900 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 5 (35/65/100 km)

Yes, I installed Linux Mint again

Why? I can’t say, precisely. I feel I didn’t fully test it out last time. This time I want to try to meet some of the challenges I encountered and find ways to work around them. Or something like that.

Also, I may be a bit of an idiot.

But this time it’s installed on its own separate drive., so reverting to Windows-only in the future should be easier, if I decide to do so.

Minor redemption on lazy updates to photo galleries

I have uploaded the full set of photos I deem acceptable from the August 26th birbing extravaganza. The link to the gallery is below. I’ll work on the other photo-less galleries soon™.

This gallery has a bit of everything: bugs, birds, boats. I also indulged and converted three photos to black and white, but kept the originals, so people can argue over which is better.

Birding, September 2, 2023: Return of the coot

Where: Reifel Bird Sanctuary (Delta), Piper Spit (Burnaby), Tlahutum Regional Park (Coquitlam)
Weather: Sunny, 18-28C

The Outing

It was actually kind of hot, which was somewhat unexpected, even though it is technically summer for a few more weeks. It was warm at Reifel even mid-morning, but it never got uncomfortably hot. The heat may have affected how many birds we saw, though, as some were no doubt seeking to keep cool in the shade.

At Reifel, we got some early shots of yellowlegs as they were parked up front right in the main pond. There were also swallows still buzzing about, but we declined to try shooting them this time. We next moved on to the London Slough, which had some herons on the periphery and the logs replete with geese and gulls–and two western painted turtles hanging out at one end. There were also several wood ducks who were in their full breeding colours, and were strutting their stuff on the runway fence railing.

We saw a plenitude of chickadees, the usual ducks (wood and mallard), along with a few less seen but technically not migrant waterfowl: mergansers and a pair of Northern pintails.

We saw more numbered geese (wearing collars around their necks bearing numbers like C29) and, of course, goose drama, though perhaps the heat kept any of them from going truly berserk.

The highlight may have been right at the end, when we saw the young eagle that sometimes hangs out at the main pond, trying to catch prey. Apparently it’s not very good at flying or hunting yet, and the staff have dubbed him Doofus. Ouch. He looks appropriately menacing in that raptor way, sitting on the rooftop of the viewing area, though.

Next up was Piper Spit, where most of the landmass is now again submerged following the recent showers. The water is still quite shallow, so that meant more yellowlegs, yay.

There were also a lot of pigeons, who alternated between flying in a group around in circles and landing in a long line near the end of the pier. More importantly, we saw a winter migrant! Two, in fact, and it was our buddy the original weird bird, the American coot. Now we know for sure the season is changing.

We rounded out with an abbreviated trip to Tlahutum Regional Park, where we saw a heron hunting (we don’t see them often here) and, thanks to a couple on the lookout, a rare sighting of a Lewis’s woodpecker. They appear in BC, but very seldomly make it this far west. Unfortunately, it was atop a telephone pole quite far away. I got some shots, but they’re of the “Yes, there is a bird” variety.

Still, a nice lifer. And we also saw some of Nic’s favourites in the community garden, white-crowned sparrows, so we left on a chirpy note.

Also, did I mention it was hot?

The Shots

Full gallery soon (for real, I swear), but here’s a shot to get started.

Greater yellowlegs about to disturb the slumber of a fellow shorebird

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • American blackbird
  • Black-capped chickadee
  • Cedar waxwing
  • House sparrow
  • Lewis’s woodpecker (lifer–seen at Tlahutum)
  • Northern flicker
  • Purple martin
  • Song sparrow
  • Spotted Towhee
  • White-crowned sparrow

Waterfowl:

  • American coot (first sighting of the season)
  • Canada goose
  • Gadwall (?)
  • Great blue heron
  • Greater yellowlegs
  • Hooded merganser
  • Northern pintail
  • Mallard
  • Short-billed dowitcher
  • Wood duck

Common:

  • Crow
  • Rock pigeon
  • Seagull

Raptors:

  • Bald eagle

Non-birds:

  • Douglas squirrel
  • Western painted turtle
  • Bees ‘n dragonflies

When your apple cider ad goes subliminally Nazi

Maybe it’s me (it’s probably me), but when I saw this ad in an unnamed email flyer, I thought:

a) That annoying art style I so fervently dislike
b) The person done in that art style, with the spaghetti limbs, is shaped…sort of like a swastika?

So I looked up an actual swastika to compare. According to Wikipedia, the left-facing swastika is “a sacred symbol in the Bon and Mah?y?na Buddhist traditions.”

It looks like this:

And if you tilt it 45 degrees, the legs work, but the arms are bent the wrong way, because that would be a very odd way for someone to hold their arms while running.

Still, it made me think of a swastika, and I can’t be the only one. I mean, yes, I totally can, but I’d like to think I’m not (fake edit: apparently this has been discussed on social media of some sort and the consensus is totes a swastika).

Dear advertising wizards: Don’t make your stuff look like swastikas. And pay more attention in history class!

Run 803: Still somewhat sloggy

View from Cariboo Dam, pre-run

I opted for a “full deal” (5K) run today, going counter-clockwise around the lake. The daily weather forecast curiously mentioned humidity, which it almost never does:

And it was indeed humid, though since I ran later in the morning, not overly so. It meant a little more sweating, but was actually kind of nice. Goldilocks humidity, if you will.

I pondered what sort of run to do as I walked toward the lake along the river trail, when three young women (probably early 20s) went zipping past me in the opposite direction, all merrily conversing because they have endless youthful energy. I hate them.

I decided to go CCW because after drinking at the fountain by the dam, I was in the ideal position to start, so I did. I was somewhat shocked when my first km came in at 6:03/km. I mean, I was trying to ease into things, but not quite that much. I pressed a little harder and managed to keep every km after under the six-minute mark, with the last again being my fastest at 5:47. My final pace of 5:55/km was only a second faster than my previous, but that was on the river trail, so this one was a harder run, but also going the easier route on the lake, so…basically, it was OK, but I’ve been a bit sluggish all week. Maybe my times will improve as my knees heal more and temperatures start to come down.

The trail was dry, so no puddle jumping, but was surprisingly busy for a weekday. For a time I was trailing behind a putt-putt car on an especially windy part of the trail. It would keep appearing and disappearing ahead of me. I wondered what would happen if I actually caught up with it. That ended up not happening, though. At some point, it either reached its destination or disappeared into the alternate dimension where all the putt-putt cars live.

Speaking of passing, though, that trio of young women passed me on the lake trail. Yes, they apparently ran to the end of the river trail, back to the lake, up the trail, caught up to me, then continued past, zipping by like a bunch of hummingbirds, except if they were hummingbirds, they would be chasing each other and trying to stab each other to death. They were still having a lovely, full conversation. I consoled myself by noting they were probably less than half my age. I wonder what sort of times I’d have put in if I had run in my 20s? Something to ponder should I ever wake up and suddenly find myself a 20-year-old again, all Twilight Zone style.

Anyway, the run was fine, but not great. I did all three without anything falling apart or off, so that’s a plus. We’ll see how next week goes!

Still Creek, post-run

Stats:

Run 803
Average pace: 5:55/km
Training status: Productive
Location: Burnaby Lake (CCW)
Start: 11:04 a.m.
Distance: 5.03 km
Time: 29:45
Weather: Sunny
Temp: 21-22ºC
Humidity: 63-61%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 153
Weight: 167.1
Total distance to date: 5895 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 5 (30/52/82 km)