Birding, March 7, 2024: Eagles in trees, bunnies at my knees

Where: Boundary Bay Dyke Trail, Centennial Beach (Delta)
Weather: Mixed sun and cloud, 5-7°C

The Outing

We were once again out for a weekday bird adventure because the weather looks bad for the weekend. I’d feel even worse about it if I was still in school.

We headed out to Boundary Bay first, which we haven’t been to in a while, starting out at Beach Grove. After seeing a few errant robins (don’t ask about my pictures of them), I suggested we move into the dog area, which has a few trails meandering among the trees. Our detour was rewarded with not one, but two rare sights: a red-breasted nuthatch (which I heard tap-tap-tapping on the side of a tree before seeing it) and a varied thrush. Neat! We also saw a lot more robins.

We then headed to the dyke trail, and saw plenty of eagles in the trees and occasionally soaring above them. Even better, we saw multiple Northern harriers, including one that didn’t seem to be hunting, but was just kind of hopping and flying around in short bursts, landing for a bit, then taking off again. It did this conveniently close to the trail, so we had plenty of chances for good shots. As we continued up the trail, we saw a few songbirds, several Anna’s hummingbirds and at the private ponds a platoon or three of wigeons, including a rarely-seen Eurasian wigeon. Also, coot interlopers among the wigeons.

A guy reported seeing an owl flying over the marsh, but we did not see anything that resembled an owl. We did see the marsh, though. Content that we’d gotten enough steps, we turned back, saw some more harriers, and a few herons, and then headed off to our second destination, Centennial Beach.

The tide was out so we went out on the beach where we saw a fair number of cute little sanderlings. The conditions were just right for them, so we got a lot of opportunity for shots of them feeding, flapping and occasionally preening. We ended up walking down the beach because the sanderlings never ran out. It was sanderlings all the way down, with occasional gulls, ducks and a few crows mixed in. We finally started closing in on the pump station, but from the beach side, and realized there was no good way to cross without getting very muddy and/or wet, so we ended up backtracking a lot of the way back and then getting onto the trail proper. The tidal flats near the pump station were replete with gulls. There were yellowlegs and some dunlins, too. It was a shorebirdpalooza.

As we moved away from the water, we saw some towhees, golden crown, flickers and more, but some were not very close or cooperative. Birds gonna bird. We also saw a bunny near the Raptor Trail, which seems an unwise place for a bunny to be. Then we saw more bunnies, And more still. I can only imagine how many were hiding in the brush, wrinkling their cute little bunny noses.

We rounded out the day by getting a few more shots of the sanderlings before heading out.

Upon getting home, I discovered my robin shots were not good (boo, but not unexpected), but all of my other shots were also not good. I was sad, then discovered the tablet I was using was loading lower-res versions of the photos, making them all look fuzzy. The actual shots were fine, for the most part. I took roughly one million shots of sanderlings (they are adorable) and about 500,000 shots of gulls flying overhead (they are not adorable, but I wanted to nab at least one good shot of them in flight–and I did!)

With the weather being a mix of sun and some cloud and the wind low, it was reasonably comfortable at both locations. In all, a good day for birding, especially with so many rarely-seen birds.

The Shots

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • American robin
  • Black-capped chickadee
  • Dark-eyed junco
  • European starling
  • Golden-crowned sparrow
  • House finch
  • Northern flicker
  • Red-breasted nuthatch
  • Red-winged blackbird
  • Song sparrow
  • Spotted towhee
  • Varied thrush

Waterfowl:

  • American coot
  • American wigeon
  • Dunlin
  • Eurasian wigeon
  • Great blue heron
  • Greater yellowlegs
  • Green-winged teal
  • Mallard
  • Northern pintail
  • Sanderling

Common:

  • American crow
  • Seagull

Raptors:

  • Bald eagle
  • Northern harrier

Non-birds:

  • Bunnies!

Run 854: Whoopsie again

Brunette River, pre-run.

I kind of missed three runs in a row. I am a bad runner.

I made amends today!

I waited till early afternoon to hit the river trail, where it was still only 5C, as winter is determined to go out with a big ol’ hissy fit. At least it wasn’t raining (or snowing).

My expectations were to just get in and out without any complications. Success! I started with what would be my average pace of 5:51/km, then dropped to a lowly 6:03/km. This incentivized me to pick up the pace enough that my last lap was a brisk 5:37/km.

Everything remained in working order and despite the nine days between runs, I felt pretty decent throughout. I am pleased.

Friday is calling for a high of 6C with rain, so I am not overly enthused about that, but we’ll see. Maybe the forecast will completely change to something delightful in the next two days.

The river, post-run, dressed for the last few weeks of winter.

Stats:

Run 854
Average pace: 5:51/km
Training status: Maintaining
Location: Brunette River Trail
Start: 1:32 p.m.
Distance: 5:03 km
Time: 29:25
Weather: Mixed cloud and sun
Temp: 5ºC
Humidity: 62%
Wind: light to moderate
BPM: 152
Weight: 170.7
Total distance to date: 6160 km
Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation)
Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 5 (295/542/837 km)

Cleaning the gnome fountain

…is not a blog post title I would have expected to write a few years ago, but here we are.

Specifically, the Gnome Fountain is a level in the game PowerWash Simulator (PWS). Yes, not only does this game exist, it’s my go-to for when I need to relax and de-stress. It’s so relaxing that my Garmin watch will sometimes think I am napping while playing it.

Tonight I finished cleaning the gnome fountain and did it in a particularly methodical manner, working from top to bottom. When you complete a level in PWS, you get a replay from some fixed perspective to showcase your amazing ability to wield a power washer. I found the replay so strangely mesmerizing I recorded a video of it. And here it is!

A few tips for a better Mastodon experience

I do most of my social networking on Mastodon these days and I’ve talked a bit before about why I like it. Here are a few tips on making it a better experience and a recap on why I like it.

Why I like Mastodon

  • It’s smaller. Sometimes smaller is better. I can comfortably work through my feed and leave Mastodon for a while and not feel that weird and unhealthy FOMO. It’s easy to dip in and out of, not a central part of my life.
  • The decentralized nature of it means it’s not subject to the whims of a giant corporation or a giant corporation headed by a narcissistic racist piece of work, or, as is sometimes the case, both! It is subject to the whims of the server you choose, but (with a certain degree of bumpiness) you can move to another server if things get really bad.
  • Due to its non-corporate nature, it has no ads. It runs off of donations, like it’s the web from 2003 or something. No ads is a benefit I cannot overstate enough.
  • There is no algorithm. For some people who just want an endless slurry of things to look at, this is a downside. To me, it means you can choose exactly what type of content you want to see, which is far more preferable.

Tips for a better Mastodon experience

  • The official phone app and web client are fine, and you have to use them to adjust certain settings, but there are a lot of third party clients that make the experience better:
    • The Mac has a ton of options covering paid, subscription-based and free. Some popular choices include Mona, Ivory and Ice Cubes (all can be found on the App Store). There are many others.
    • Windows has fewer to choose from. A decent one is Whalebird.
    • Any OS (including Linux and phone browsers) can use one of several fine web clients. Two popular ones are Elk, which has a Twitter-like look and feel, and Phanpy, which goes for a minimalist look and has some interesting twists, like boost carousels.
  • Use filters! You’ll need to set these up in the official client. Go to Preferences and Filters. You can use this to filter out content you’re not interested in. For example, if you don’t want to see something associated with a particular tag, just add the tag here. If you hate all manner of dogs, add dogs and anything tagged #dogs will not be shown in your feed. You can also specify how granular you want the tag to be filtered out (you can still allow it in conversations, for example).
  • Use hashtags! This one is simple–follow hashtags that appeal to you. I follow #sketch, as an example.
  • Use hashtags (yes, again)! If you post, use an appropriate hashtag, so others can find your post if they’re interested in the topic.
  • Avoid or reduce exposure to politics. Political debates exist on Mastodon, and you’ll generally not come out of them feeling better. Why do that to yourself? On the other hand, if this is what you groove on, go nuts! #uspolitics exists for you.
  • It may be obvious, but follow people you know (or whose posts you enjoy).
  • Boost stuff you like! Boosts will show up in the feed of anyone following you. It’s an easy way to share. Just don’t, you know, boost literally everything you see.
  • If you don’t want to choose a server, go with the default mastodon.social. It’s big and well-managed.
  • Be nice! Don’t deny people their experience or be an over-explaining jerk.
  • Approach Trending/Explore/For You (depending on the client you use) with caution. You might find stuff you like, you might not. It’s probably better to spend a little time tweaking your feed using hashtags and following people you know.
  • Remember to go outside, hug kittens and do other offline stuff. Mastodon, like any social media, should not be the thing your life revolves around.

Moving off of WordPress, Part 2

In Part 2, I offer some takes on platforms I skipped, summarize my experiences with ones I’ve tested, and offer some alternatives to blogging altogether.

Not for me, but still good

Here are a few sites I skipped because they focus on text over images, though some do support images.

  • Scribbles. This one is still in early access, but the editor is very nice. There are no real themes to speak of, but the whole thing is well-designed and fast. If you just want text, this is a very good choice.
  • Bear (not to be confused with the note-taking app). Comes with some themes, supports markdown and images (as a paid option), but is extremely minimalist. It’s free for basic features and $5 per month/$48 per year for paid (paid covers things that are server-intensive).
  • omg.lol. This is a weird grab bag of stuff for a mere $20 per year. They now include a blog option which is currently in beta, uses markdown, and is the most “to the metal” of the three listed here.

Sites I’ve tried so far

  • Scribbles: If the image support was a little more refined, I might stick with it. I don’t knock it for this, though, it’s not their focus.
  • Bear: Fast and light, but again, image support is not quite there for my needs.
  • Pika: This was on my short list from Part 1 and…it’s so close. Images are constrained to the theme, so you have to right-click and “open image in new tab” to see them full-size. I can understand why it’s set up this way, but it’s just not right for me.

Alternate solutions to blogging platforms

Some of these may seem pretty obvious, I include them, anyway.

  • A journaling or diary app.
    • Pros: Completely offline, entries could be entire books if you are very silly and wordy
    • Cons: It’s for you and you alone, unless you publish your collected writings at a later date. This is also a pro to some people.
  • A paper journal. The pros and cons are the same as the electronic version, with the bonus of never needing electricity or battery power to write, just enough natural light and your favourite pen/pencil/crayon.
  • A note-taking app like Obsidian, Bear or one of the other billion options.
    • Pros: Lightweight, local, fast.
    • Cons: That sharing thing again. But wait! See the next bullet item…
  • A writing app that also lets you publish to the web. Some of these include Ulysses, Mars Edit and iA Writer (the Mac in particular has a lot of options).
    • Pros: An excellent writing environment, and they allow you to share your posts relatively easily.
    • Cons: You still need a site to share to. Also, while the writing experience is often quite nice, once you move beyond that with photos and heavier formatting, the process tends to start breaking down a bit.
  • Dictating into a voice-recording app or voice recorder device.
    • Pro: It’s as easy as just opening your mouth and talking.
    • Cons: Cleaning up the dictation later could prove clunky or messy. You have to decide where to put the transcripts, unless you just want an audio version of your life (which might be interesting!)

For Part 3, I will be doing more research and narrowing down my choices a bit more.

Here is another cat GIF. The cat is industriously working away on its blog, All the Mews Fit to Print.

Words that rhyme with “snow”

Photo by Pixabay

I can think of one:

NO!

We got snow last night, and it had the temerity to start sticking. There’s still some left this morning. Who decided it would be funny to flip January and March around? Why is Mother Nature being such a jerk?

The 10-day forecast claims that it will be 14C on March 13th. WE’LL SEE.

In the meantime, I’ll be here, huddled next to the heater.

Moving off of WordPress, Part 1

Back in January I wrote that I was contemplating moving off of WordPress for various reasons.

Back then, I posted four possible options:

  • Keep using WordPress and just shut up about it. It works, right?
  • Actually switch to a WordPress alternative.
  • Stop blogging altogether.
  • Post my cat pictures on Facebook for free (after getting a cat).

I have narrowed down these options to one (and a half):

  • Actually switch to a WordPress alternative.
    • Move some of my bloggy stuff to an offline journal (probably the running/exercise posts)

The next question is: Which WordPress alternative? Because it turns out there are a lot of options. Like, a lot. Oodles. Too many.

But since my needs are specific and known, I can winnow down the list. If your needs are like mine, this might be useful for you, too. If not, there is an animated GIF of a cat at the end of this post.

What I want

My needs (also in the linked post above, but paraphrased here):

  • Blog posts, both long and short.
  • Photos, along with galleries to keep them organized.
  • A general means of blog organization, like categories or tags.
  • An easy-to-use editor that makes me feel warm and fuzzy and want to share with the world.

Pretty basic stuff, really. If I eliminated photos (I will not do this, but let’s pretend), my choices would be nigh-infinite. I could go for one of many super-minimalist blogging sites. But having no photos would also mean no drawings, which are like photos I put together with my hands and brain instead of a camera. This is a dealbreaker. I don’t want to revive my old Flickr account.

That clears out the wide array of minimalist, text-only sites. What’s left? Still oodles!

What I’ve found

Important note: I am omitting blogs that lean into more technical, nerdy skills to set up or maintain, so there's nothing here that installs from a command line or runs from a folder or requires scripting, etc. These follow the flow of:

Write a post  Click a button  Your thoughts are on the internet

Here’s an incomplete list:

And a quick summary of them, with some emphasis on what I’m looking for:

Ghost

This is probably the most WordPress-like, and it takes the most direct aim at WordPress and its features, claiming to be better/faster and, in some cases, cheaper.

The biggest con is that it’s $9 U.S. per month minimum1All prices listed here are in U.S. dollars. This is a lot of money to record my inane thoughts that could just as easily be typed into Notepad for free. You can also self-host Ghost, which is cheaper, but not exactly a simple process.

Ghost does have another notable pro, though–it can import from WordPress, so the nearly 4,000 inane posts I’ve made here could be carried over.

Micro.blog

This is reasonably priced at $5 a month, but has an emphasis on community (not a bad thing if you’re looking for that) and while longer pieces are possible, the focus is more on short, quick posts.

write.as

There’s a free plan, with some reasonable limits, so you can try before you buy (note: as of this post, the free plan is listed as “Closed for now”), and it’s $6 per month after if you pay annually. It supports not just photos, but albums. It has a blog community and supports newsletters, which suggests it has started moving away from its personal blog roots.

Pika

Pika has a free plan that is essentially a trial–you can make 50 posts, and then you’re done. So if you only ever have 50 things to say, you don’t have to pay! It’s otherwise $6 a month. It emphasizes a great writing experience, has some simple themes, and supports images. It’s also really new, as it just launched at the end of January 2024.

Blogtastic

With a name like Blogtastic, you would expect this to be a good blogging platform. It has multiple plans, including Starter for $20 and Expert for $50. Prices are going up on April 1st, though (no foolin’), with new names like Hobby for $50 and Startup for $100. I don’t think the old $20 and new $50 plans match up, though their chart doesn’t make it especially clear.

Anyway, this platform seems to offer everything and has been running for about three years, so it’s still relatively new. It feels like a Ghost competitor and, indeed, they compare themselves directly to Ghost, stating that they are more focused on writing and less on “secondary” things. They claim their gallery management is “robust”!

Posthaven

There’s a $5 per month Founder Plan (good for 10 blogs) and–that’s it! No other options. It keeps things simple. Posthaven bills itself, somewhat weirdly, as “the blogging platform designed to outlive us.” I mean, OK, but I’m not sure if I care much about my blog a hundred years after I’ve departed the Earth for parts unknown.

A major caveat for me is image sizes seem to be limited due to their theming. They mention 800 pixels max, which is tiny and probably a dealbreaker.

Having gone through these, the ones I feel can be eliminated are:

  • Ghost (too expensive)
  • Micro.blog (cheap, but a different emphasis than what I’m looking for)
  • Posthaven (great, until you get to the tiny images)

This leaves Pika, write.as and Blogtastic. Currently, only one offers a free trial of sorts, so I’ll give Pika a test-run and do more research on write.as and Blogtastic.

Coming up in Part 2:

  • Some alternatives I rejected, but are still pretty good
  • Alternate solutions through non-blogging software
  • Probably another cat GIF

Here is the promised cat GIF for this post:

Birding, March 3, 2024: Winter! *shakes fist at sky*

Where: Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake (Burnaby)
Weather: Cloudy, light showers, 4°C (felt like 1C)

The Outing

Good news: After cleaning my camera (again) it behaved, even in cold temperatures and light rain. It probably behaved better than I did!

Bad news: The weather was frigid and windy and wet and generally awful (spring in 16 days!) but we made the best of the abbreviated window we had for birding. Ironically, we passed on yesterday because of the forecast, and it turned out to be the better day. You win this time, Mother Nature!

I got to Burnaby Lake a bit early and shot one of two buffleheads near the turtle nesting area. I think I spotted a hooded merganser, which we rarely (ever?) see at the lake, but wasn’t able to get any shots before it disappeared.

Near the pier, a few people had left seed, attracting oodles of towhees, juncos, song sparrows and chickadees–including a rarely-seen chestnut-backed chickadee. Alas, I did not get more than a couple quick chances for shots, and they are Not Good™. Maybe next time!

We did see several chonky squirrels. I swear they get bigger every time I see them. I’m not judging, I’m just saying they might start waddling soon.

Up to this point the weather had been mediocre but tolerable. We moved onto the pier and it was like stepping through a portal into OH YEAH IT’S STILL WINTER, as the wind picked up, the rain started and it was not fun. But we persevered and eventually the wind settled, the sun even poked out for a few minutes, and the showers eased (somewhat). But it was still icy cold. Do not like. I am ready for summer.

The water was lower than last visit–quite low, in fact–which meant the shorebirds were closer, allowing us to better capture their preening, bathing, flapping and head-bobbing. Geese and gulls were in abundance, but drama was minimal. Too cold, maybe. Even two coots started something, then just kind of gave up after a few seconds.

In all, not bad for a quick trip, given the conditions, but I will not object to temperatures with two numbers in the near future.

The Shots
Soon™.

The Birds (and other critters)

Sparrows and sparrow-adjacent:

  • Chestnut-backed chickadee
  • Black-capped chickadee
  • Dark-eyed junco
  • Red-winged blackbird
  • Song sparrow
  • Spotted towhee

Waterfowl:

  • American coot
  • Bufflehead duck
  • Canada goose
  • Dowitcher
  • Green-winged teal
  • Hooded merganser (maybe!)
  • Mallard
  • Northern pintail
  • Scaup (Lesser and Greater)
  • Wood duck

Common:

  • American crow
  • Seagull

Raptors:

  • None!

Non-birds:

  • Black and gray squirrels

Mini-birding, March 2, 2024: A rare robin

Rare because it was in focus! Also, the outing was mini, not the birds. They were full-sized.

I gave my camera a thorough cleaning and took it to Lower Hume Park this afternoon to test it out and see if it would behave or go berserk.

It behaved!

I saw a Northern flicker, a pair of mallards, a bunch of robins and a song sparrow. I got pictures of all of them, but the song sparrow refused to stand still, so every shot is either an action shot, or it has its head down or facing away.

Here are three of the flicker, a robin and the male mallard.

Northern flicker searching for bugs and things.
A robin alert for worms.
A mallard gliding in a small pond that only exists after a heavy rain.

Jetpack? More like nopack! (Yeah, it needs work)

Today, I deactivated (and will later remove) the Jetpack plugin from my site. This is a plugin that does all kinds of things–it dances, it sings, it pushes SEO hard and wants you to sign up to a lot of bonus services for a low, low monthly price, so you can become rich off your blog content-rich site. It’s made by the company that owns WordPress, Automattic (the two t’s are intentional) and let’s just say they have been making the news recently for all the wrong reasons.

And it’s all because of our good friend, AI (we really need a better term, because there’s no real intelligence behind all this LLM1Large Language Model, another abbreviation I learned in the past year junk out there. Maybe we should call it Al, instead, like the person’s name. Blame everything on Al!) There are a lot of sources I could cite, so let’s choose 404 Media for now (and apologies, they require an email address/account to view their stories to prevent–oh so appropriately–AI firms from slurping up all their content):

A WordPress ‘Firehose’ Allows AI Companies to Buy Access to a Million Posts a Day

Now, the story above has been updated to include a statement from Automattic, but like almost all statements from the company over the past week, it sounds kind of weaselly:

Automattic edited its original “protecting user choice” statement this week to say it will exclude Jetpack from its deals with “select AI companies.”

From the 404 Media story

This could mean Jetpack is not affected, or it could mean that Jetpack is only being excluded for some, but not all companies. I would not be surprised if Automattic crafted the phrasing to be deliberately ambiguous.

Remember when the web was all animated GIFs and cheesy midi files? I’m not saying I’m hankering again for that experience precisely, but I do miss the days before the web was all about control, commerce and “engagement.” Sometimes it feels like the best thing to do would be to take my blog and all of its 4,933 (!) posts offline and just keep it in a journal I could revisit on my own, in private. I don’t mean a paper journal, of course. I’m not crazy. But something fully offline, where I don’t have to think about security patches or a host changing the rules on me, or escalating costs, or why is it such a chore to post images in a gallery, anyway?

Hmm. Hmm, I say.

March 2024: The Possibilities

March is a fun month, but also weird and sometimes horrible. Behold my list (with semi-random bold highlights):

  • We switch back to Daylight Saving Time, aka Proper Time, and gain back an extra hour of light in the evening (as of March 10). This is good for birding and just not being in the dark as much.
  • Spring officially begins (on March 19). I saw buds on trees back in January, so spring is really already underway, despite a few attempts at snow since then (Mother Nature is acting more like Mother from the terrible Police song of the same name right now).
  • Even without DST, daylight is stretching out longer into the evening.
  • Temperatures start getting milder. T-shirt weather soon! (More seriously, t-shirts become feasible outdoors as soon as next month, barring climate change hijinks that could genuinely push this into March).
  • A downside: Starting with February, the amount of precipitation goes down every month until September, when it starts going back up–except for March. March is an anomaly, where it is wetter than February. The downward trend resumes in April.
  • Speaking of, it is 3°C and raining as I type this, with a high of 7 forecast (two degrees off the average). Winter is reminding us it’s still official for 17 more days.
  • But also speaking of, March is where the last chance for real snow that sticks to the ground and needs to be shovelled, comes to an end. Looking at the 10-day forecast, it seems we are safe from any more snow accumulations for Winter 2023-24, though a few flakes may fall over the next few days here and there, just to annoy everyone.

Here’s the historic average for rainfall. It’s for New Westminster, but I checked, and it’s accurate for the whole Lower Mainland1Or Metro Vancouver, if you prefer to be all official about it.

March: We heard you like rain.

And with all that said, here is my haiku for March.

Haiku for March

Warmer and brighter
But still the rain won't let up
Take what you can get