The Winchester

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb   As with the possums, so also with rabbits.   And deer in South Island I believe, and goats.  (There are deer in North Island but they live on farms surrounded by high fences).   Fortunately for us, nobody thought of cane toads   🙂   And, I noticed that everything had gone quiet too.

Currently Summer is still hanging on – late summer seems to have the most stable weather.  Eventually, some time after Easter, it falls off a cliff.   But today was beautiful, warm, sunny, and calm, the water in the bay was – just warm enough to venture in.   I’ll see how long it lasts.

I do agree that UNIT was far more intriguing when it lived in secret headquarters under the Tower of London, (actually, a bit reminiscent of early  Torchwood) than its high-tech tower which reminds me a bit of Big Brother or some other fascist regime.

@ps1l0v3y0u   I’m not a big fan of John Barrowman, he’s fine in small doses.   However, Torchwood was much more of an ensemble series I think.   Darker than Doctor Who in the first three series, and it went depressingly dark in the last two.   I usually like ‘dark’ (to quote Xena), but it has to be leavened with a good dose of humour – black humour will do fine.   Moff knows this.   Not sure RTD does, and Chibs is officially a humour black hole.   Similarly, I’m not a fan of shallow everything-is-fine wisecracking comedies.   I guess a nice mix of the two is optimum for me.

I’m not sorry I skipped Legend of Ruby Sunday this time round, I seem to remember it as a bit of a shambles.   On to the last season.    Which, incidentally, still doesn’t seem to be out on DVD.   At least, nothing on Ebay.   Only on Blu-Ray.    I bought a Chinese copy (probably a legitimate copy for the Chinese market?), but then my laptop couldn’t play it – it has trouble with the really nasty encryption built into Blu-rays, I think.   I eventually managed to rip the episodes and burn them to a DVD.   This was a lot of hassle but I just want to watch the episodes that I paid for on my laptop.

 

[janetteB @janetteb]

@ps1l0v3y0u and @dentarthurdent Oh damn. Torchwood is now twenty years old. I am part of a podcast that reviews cult tv from 20 years ago and before. I have been bringing an episode of Dr Who to the table every year, one from each Doctor and this year we are doing the film, (yuck) and to make up for it I am going to introduce “Curse of Fatal Death” in November. Which means next year I am going to have to do Torchwood. I never liked Torchwood. I liked the concept, liked the characters, though I agree, Barrowman is best in small doses, but the rest of the team had potential. it did not work out. Maybe in part due to RTD trying to be too “adult” and not getting what that means, and Chibnell.

On the plus side Sarah Jane Adventures hits the 20 year anniversary next year so we can do that the following year.

dentarthurdent I think the idea that people can own their own media is fast disappearing. We are supposed to just consume but not to have any kind of agency over how and what we consume. I am always buying DVDs from opp shops, even if I have a version of the tv series/film because I like to own them, just as I like to own books. I don’t borrow books so guess streaming to me is the same. I appreciate that it exists just as I actively support our local library but I prefer to own my own library.

cheers

Janette

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb   I like to have control of media I have paid for.  If I buy a book, it’s mine.  The publisher can’t break down my door and take it back.   I can sell it again.   Same with DVD’s.   In fact there’s something physically satisfying about a DVD.   (Of course I can’t (legally) copy the DVD and sell it, same with a book, I can’t copy the entire book and sell it, that’s simple copyright).   Most of my DVD’s came from op shops.    (Sometimes I buy one then find I’ve already got it.   For a couple of dollars, that doesn’t hurt, I just consider it a donation).

Same with computers (all my laptops are Thinkpads, because Lenovo publish complete repair manuals as free downloads from their website; and they all run Linux because I control when (or if) it updates).   And all my files are on hard drives on my server, not ‘the cloud’ whatever that is.

I don’t have a Kindle, I’ve read that Amazon can ‘withdraw’ a book from circulation.   It’s paper copies for me, or a PDF that I can keep on my hard drive.   (‘Kindle’ – doesn’t that sound reminiscent of Fahrenheit 451?)

 

[winston @winston]

@janetteb  @dentarthurdent     Hello! Nice to see you.  I am so panicky about my favourite shows and movies that I have them on my computer and on DVDs and then I can watch whenever I want.

I do have a tablet so I can download books from my library and I really like it. If a storm is coming I get extra books and some audio books to entertain me during blackouts. Mind you the last was 8 days long and I ran out of books before it was over.Luckily I also have a big library at home that only requires lantern light to work. Mainly I use the tablet because I need large print and the library has a limited amount of large print books. I think I have read most of them.

Your summer is coming to an end and my spring is just beginning.There were dozens of crocus open in the garden and we have a lot of migrating ducks and swans stopping in our creek for some food and rest before going even further north to nest. I love spring! After such a long,long winter it so nice to go outside without 3 layers of clothing on. Hope you like you fall as much.

stay sane in an insane world

[janetteB @janetteb]

@dentarthurdent, I agree with you, the cloud is giving someone else your stuff to mind or otherwise. I also like to manage my own back ups. I have several, one on a desktop hard-drive, one on a portable that I carry everywhere with me, and a few old back ups in the sideboard.

I also have doubled up on my op shop dvd purchases. I keep thinking I should go through my collection and donate the duplicates back but they are on the top shelf of the bookcase and I require a chair to reach them.

cheers

Janette

 

[janetteB @janetteb]

@winston I loved spring when we were in Sweden. Crocuses were the first sign of life to emerge from the frozen soil. I have photos of them peeking through snow. We were renting and the garden was deeply buried in snow when we moved in and so it was a daily discovery of new flowers and plants all through the spring. Maria, the owner, who had just moved out, clearly had similar taste in plants and colours to me. I felt a little guilty, enjoying the garden that she had clearly put so much work and love into.

Spring here is nice because everything is still green and the weather is kind but it is not magical like Spring in colder climates.

cheers

Janette

[nerys @nerys]

Hello, all! Good to see the updates from everyone. We just got back from a trip to Ontario to visit family. We thought we were sick of winter here in Nova Scotia. Well, there the snowbanks are still heaped so high that the street signs barely peek out over them. And this is the slowly melting version. I can’t imagine what they were at their peak height. Here we finally had a proper winter and got a lot more snow than has been the norm in recent decades, so fingers crossed that the snowmelt will prevent the drought we experienced last summer.

Crazily enough, when we landed in Toronto Friday afternoon, it was sunny and 23 degrees Celsius (73 Fahrenheit)! According to the forecast, their previous day’s high was 23, as well. We were tempted to stay and enjoy the warmth … except it didn’t last. Saturday and today are much more seasonal for this time of year. But what a shock to go from that, to finding our car coated in ice when we got back to our airport hotel. And then there was the fun drive home in freezing rain, then rain and fog. Very tiring for my husband, who did all the driving. My night vision is not good, so I avoid long nighttime drives, if I can help it. Which means I’m not much help to my husband in those situations. But we got home safe and sound, which is the important thing.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb   I actually have all my DVD’s indexed and numbered, so I can find them.   But of course if I see a DVD in an opp shop, and it’s a movie I might like, I can’t remember if I’ve got it already.   So two bucks is a reasonable price to secure it, even if (as often happens) I find I have it already and just end up donating the DVD back.   Though this does lead to the disconcerting conclusion that I may have bought the exact same DVD several times over the years…   🙂    I have about 200 movie DVD’s, not including series like Doctor Who or Sherlock.

In other news, I’ve just booked for us to fly down to Christchurch and see our daughter who we haven’t seen in several years.  She assures me it’s still fairly warm down there, so I can go for walks in Bottle Lake Forest  (pine plantations).  Here in Auckland the tattered remains of summer are still hanging on, went for a swim yesterday and the water seemed to have warmed up very slightly.   Air temp is 20 to 23 C most afternoons.

@nerys   I’m quite unused to snow.   When I lived in the South of England I would be all excited if we got a few days’ snow at Christmas, but that only rarely happened.  Here in North Island NZ, the only place to reliably encounter snow on the road is up Mt Ruapehu in winter.   It does often snow down to lower levels in one place or another, but not predictably.   Anyway, fascinating though snow is, I think one could very quickly get tired of it.    I used to like driving at night, but now my night vision is just adequate, so (like you) I try to avoid long night drives.

@winston  I’m like you in that I like to have my own DVD’s and hard drive files.   I’m not sure I could survive eight days with no power, though I do have about 1500 books so I’d never run out of reading matter.   One huge change from a few decades ago – LED lights are so efficient these days that a carton of AA batteries would get me through 8 days of blackout quite easily.   Also, it makes it worthwhile to carry a little pocket torch when out walking in the bush with the knowledge that it will last for hours in an emergency.   (I haven’t ever needed it for that, but I once drove five miles on a pitch-black night on a winding gravel hill road with a ‘flat’ car battery that could only just power the ignition – no lights – by the light of a little 3-cell LED torch held out of the drivers’ window.   I just followed the edge of the road.  Far enough to reach a main road and cellphone coverage.   The sort of thing which is far more satisfying in retrospect than it was at the time…   in fact most of my fondest memories are of disasters narrowly averted.)

 

[winston @winston]

@nerys  Hello to you!  So you visited my neck of the woods eh?  We did have a lot of snow but last winter was even worse. We actually ran out of room to put it when shoveling the driveway out. We were down to the grass but then it snowed again the other day. Ah winter,we love it.

@janetteb  It snowed on my lovely crocus but they are very hardy, just like us Northerners. Today they opened up and we had an explosion of colours to warm us up.Magical indeed, especially after a long winter. Small miracles bringing great joy. Next will be the snowdrops, scilla , daffodils and then the tulips and  lilacs. I could go on forever about flowers but I won’t.Never feel guilty about enjoying someone else’s gardens, we gardeners love nothing better.

@dentarthurdent   I am glad you are going to visit you daughter and the pine forest. We are going to see ours this summer on Vancouver Island  and I love to walk in the rain forest with trees so big and old and beautiful that they make me cry. I have been known to hug them.

We are in a rural area and we lose our power a few times a year although the last one was the longest outage we have had in many years.Mind you the ice storm was the worst I have ever seen. We try to always be prepared with lighting , food and water because our pump doesn’t work without power. We used to plan for 4 days without power but now I plan for 10 days. The biggest problem was boredom but we did catch up on the current music from our little battery powered radio as well as keeping in touch with the news. This time the old timey phone quit and of course the misters phone needed charging so that was a pain. I only bother with the old timey phone and may soon become the last person in Canada that doesn’t have a cell phone. But that topic is for another day.

stay calm and carry on

[nerys @nerys]

@winston That’s a lot of snow! I would have preferred to visit at a more springlike time, but it reminded me how much I enjoy spring. Yesterday morning, we awoke to a thin layer of snow. As the sun rose, the dripping snow glittered like gems. Eventually the snow melted, turning into a spectacular spring day by mid-afternoon.

[janetteB @janetteb]

@dentarthurdent talking of weather, I just saw that a cyclone is heading your way. Hope you are all ok.

We have been getting a lot of rain here, unusual for April. Our river, which cuts through the centre of town, has started flowing which is always lovely to see.

cheers

Janette

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb  Thanks.   Apparently it’s a very dramatic one.   The last few that came this way caused devastation to the north of us and the south-east of us and managed to miss Auckland.   Hopefully this one will too (miss us, I mean, not cause devastation elsewhere  🙂    We’ll know if we’re OK tomorrow morning.

The last few days have been lovely fine weather, even while the weather man was pointing to dramatic multicoloured patches on his map and forecasting doom.   I had a couple of nice swims in very calm weather down the beach.   Nice to hear about your river, if we didn’t live near the beach I would at least want to live near running water.

@winston   I’m pleased to hear you survived your ice storm.

I just saw in the news that our supermarkets are completely out of bottled water.   We never buy bottled water (we have things known as ‘taps’) but we do buy industrial quantities of cola.   So a quick search and a raid on the recycle bin produced a dozen empty bottles and we now have 20 litres of water.   Should be more than enough.

I particularly like mature pine forests for walking in, the clear space under the pines is always calm, sheltered on windy days, shaded on hot days, with a carpet of pine needles but open views under the high ‘roof’.   Almost no undergrowth.   Ecofanatics grump about lack of ‘biodiversity’ but as a walker, I’d much rather the bio diversifies somewhere else and not wrapped round my ankles.

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@janetteb    Update on our cyclone:   No wind yesterday, rain started falling gently about 6pm, steady rain by midnight, had stopped by 9a.m. this morning, no wind, now we’ve got steady (but not heavy) rain and light gusts of wind.   According to the forecast we should be having a severe southwesterly gale right about now, maybe we live in a sheltered spot.  Fingers crossed.

[winston @winston]

@dentarthurdent     I have my water stored in empty soda, juice and camping jugs. Our water is from a well with a filter system so if the power is off for awhile we have to boil it for a few days so its easier to store it.

My fingers are crossed for you!

stay dry

[winston @winston]

@nerys The snow is lovely ,white and clean.It sparkles like glitter in the sun and hides all. When it melts there are a couple of weeks of brown. Muddy boring brown, yuck! It makes it so much nicer to see the greens and colours that are finally showing up.

We have been making maple syrup for a couple weeks and are finally done. We got a couple quarts of the sticky sweet stuff, enough for us and the kids. We already had pancakes and it is good. Got to have some useful skills.

stay safe

[janetteB @janetteb]

@winston the maple syrup sounds lovely. I always think of you when I buy it in a little bottle from the supermarket. so much nicer to make one’s own. I miss snow. I think that is why I like to watch tv series set in the Arctic or Antarctic.

@dentarthurdent fingers crossed for you here too.

cheers

Janette

 

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@winston   @janetteb   Thanks.   Unless the storm has an unexpected sting in the tail, it looks as if it’s missed us, all we got was a lot of rain (though not in torrential amounts).   Storms seem to keep causing chaos to the north of us, to the east and south-east, but the last one that hit us here was three years ago.   So we’re either well overdue for another, or we’re somehow less susceptible to getting hit.   Not sure which is true, but I favour the latter.   (Optimist!)

It’s just occurred to me that we have 35 gallons in our hot water cylinder.  Now when the mains pressure is off, we can’t get anything out of the hot taps (since it relies on fresh cold water going in the bottom to displace hot water out of the top) but last time the pressure reducing valve failed, I installed a tap on the cylinder drain, which would make it very easy to ‘tap’ it (no pun intended) for water.

Fresh snow looks great.   Such a pity it doesn’t stay that way, at least not in urban areas.   It turns to slush, which is never nice.

[winston @winston]

@dentarthurdent    We call that “snirt”  ,  dirty snow.  Happy you didn’t get a bad storm and I hope the rest of your country does as well. We have had rain for days and our creek is high but not flooding yet. We have trumpeter swans, mallard and golden eye ducks and of course Canada geese swimming around the creek and birds are gathering nesting material so spring is sprung!

stay safe

[winston @winston]

@janetteb  Well nothing could be nicer than to have maple syrup remind you of me. It is yummy and even here it is expensive so making our own saves a bit but is mostly fun and a way to celebrate trees and spring.

stay safe

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@winston   Thank you.   The rest of the country  (well, parts of it) didn’t do as well, major flooding and storm damage in Northland and North Auckland (just to the north of us, duh) and the Coromandel to the southeast.   This has happened several times now.   In fact these things tend to be very ‘regional’ and often quite localised.   Notoriously so around Cook Strait between the North and South Islands, for example in 1968 the 9000-ton ferry Wahine was driven aground at the entrance to Wellington Harbour with much loss of life.   On the same day, people in Paraparaumu, just 30 miles north, were enjoying a sunny day on the beach.

On our local beach at the moment, we get flocks of oystercatchers, which I think look slightly absurd with their long red beaks.   And a couple of pukekos (aka swamp hens, big birds with long legs) have taken to stalking across our garden.  They can fly well enough to get over fences and into low trees but that seems to be their limit.  They have adapted well to ‘civilisation’ and can often be found  in the bushy/swampy strips beside motorways and the like.

In totally different news (and if I may be forgiven for being political for a moment)  I’m raising a glass to the defeat of Viktor Orban, in spite of (or maybe because of) endorsements by those shining beacons of enlightened democracy Donald Trump, J D Vance, Vladimir Putin, Bibi Netenyahu and Elon Musk.   [End politics].   I hope that isn’t too controversial in this forum.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

The Orban news IS good. But… Magyar used to be a supporter of his, and we don’t really KNOW what he’ll do with his huge majority and popular vote. At least any voices claiming a fix seem to be muted.

I’m afraid that’s NOT the end of European Popularism.

[Dentarthurdent @dentarthurdent]

@ps1l0v3y0u   Let’s say it’s the less bad alternative.

Things would have been very gloomy if Orban had stayed in power.

[ps1l0v3y0u @ps1l0v3y0u]

@dentarthurdent

I’m VERY happy Orban’s gone.

I’m afraid… and or realistic… that Magyar got in on the basis of delivering affordability. But there’s war in The Gulf now…

Perhaps some of europe’s would be populists are sniffing the caffeine and thinking errr… I dunno tho. But Putin is 82% democratic. There will be another Russian election in a few years and the odds are he’ll still be 82% democratic. The chaotic west (Xi’s phrase not mine) will have how many elections in that time?

Just got to be lucky/unlucky a few times.

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