…walk into a bar. Actually, they’d probably fly in.
I went to Sapperton Landing this afternoon and shot some scenery and birds and scenery with birds. It’s getting late as I type this, so full gallery soon (for real, I swear), but here’s one each of the above-mentioned birds.
A few shots from around the neighbourhood today.
My hands are still numb as I type this.
After skipping Friday’s run (my bad), I went out this morning, under threat of rain. It stayed dry on the walk to the lake, and initially on the run, but soon the rain started, a light shower that continued for the rest of the run.
It wasn’t too bad, thanks mainly to little wind. After the run, the rain continued, got heavier, and the wind picked up. And I had a 9 km walk home. I almost wished I’d had gloves with me.
But as mentioned, the run went fine, and I actually improved my pace over last Wednesday. I originally was going to do a short loop, clockwise, but around the 2K mark I passed a couple with a largish dog that was off-leash. The woman grabbed its collar as I ran by, but I thought about how I’d be approaching them by behind a short time later and how I could get tangled up with that off-leash dog. This prompted me to keep going, adding a bonus 5 km of walking to my workout. And that was fine, except for the poopy weather.
The run itself was again blessedly free of incidents. I started and ended strong and while I faded a bit at the 4K mark, I was able to improve my pace without feeling like I was overdoing it.
The environs around the lake are also looking increasingly spring-like. Now we just need that spring-like weather. Soon™.
Run 855 Average pace: 5:48/km Training status: Productive Location: Burnaby Lake (CW) Start: 11:28 a.m. Distance: 5:03 km Time: 29:12 Weather: Light, steady rain Temp: 6-7ºC Humidity: 85% Wind: light to moderate BPM: 157 Weight: 170.5 Total distance to date: 6165 km Devices: Garmin Forerunner 255 Music, iPhone 12, AirPods (3rd generation) Shoes: HOKA Speedgoat 5 (300/551/851 km)
Wordle 995 4/6
?????
?????
?????
?????
I mean, it seems kind of silly to post my Wordle scores, but it’s #2 on this list!
Edit: Hilariously, my blog will not display the block characters due to an ancient database.
Here’s an image, which it can still handle:
P.S. I will not be doing this again.
Yes, I actually made a full gallery of bird shots, and only a few days after taking the photos. What wonders! Includes bonus bunnies and planes.
It’s my annual post celebrating the arrival of Daylight Saving Time, which should totally be permanent but isn’t because politicians are dum-dums.
I will cherish that extra hour of light this evening by going out and revelling in the lightness of it all. Unless it’s raining, in which case I’ll be inside and hiding.
This is from the 10-day weather forecast. As I post this, it is March 9, 2024.
The normal high on these days, the last of which is the final day of Winter 2023/24, is 11C. As you can see, they are predicting a high up to 20C, which is almost double that and is legitimate t-shirt weather.
Even better: Only the first two days would establish new records, as we hit 20C on March 18 five years ago, in 2019.
Anyway, it will make for nice running weather if it happens. Unnerving, weird and unsettling, but nice.
I am in a quandary. I thought that researching the supposed finalists would clarify things, but I feel I am no closer now to making a decision.
I looked at what I felt were the two best choices–write.as and blogtastic. They have many broad similarities, not the least of which is an apparent fear of capitalization (or love for e.e. cummings). blogtastic has an advantage in price–at least until April 1, 2024, when their pricing increases.
I was leaning toward blogtastic, partly due to that price advantage, but then I checked its showcase page. And…it’s not good. It’s filled with blogs that have clearly been abandoned, or only ever had a few posts. Only one has a post from 2024. All of them have slow-loading images that draw onto the screen like a JPEG on a Pentium in 1998. blogtastic also features testimonials elsewhere on their site. One writer spoke highly of blogtastic. I click on the link to his site–and it’s very fast! Images load instantly. It’s also running on Ghost. Hmm.
Meanwhile, write.as doesn’t show many examples at all. One is in Japanese, and it looks…OK? It’s hard to get a handle on how sites typically look. To be fair, Matt Baer, who created write.as, does have a link to his own personal blog, and it looks perfectly fine. write.as also lets you have three blogs for its price, which is a nice bonus. The editor is clean, but also very spartan. Maybe a little too spartan. blogtastic leans a little more heavily on what I’d call extra features, like footnotes and things. I love that kind of stuff.
After looking over both, I came away completely unsure on whether either would meet my needs.
Here’s a look at pricing, with Ghost thrown into the mix, as it and blogtastic will be pretty close after blogtastic’s price increase. All prices are per year.
All three let you do a limited-time trial, so you can test drive each. Since I have no idea how any of these will actually feel in practice, I’m going to do that next.
Part 4 will be my test run on write.as.
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:
Waterfowl:
Common:
Raptors:
Non-birds:
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.
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)
…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!
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.