Something with Foundation

 Something something something. The view out the front door a couple weeks ago. Now some of the water is actually liquid overnight, rather than a mineral.

And one of the results of a long cold snap. Yes, I knocked the ice off after taking the photo.

Or as one of the characters in one of my books like to say in the middle of a complicated run on sentence, "blah, blah, blah" and then she changes the topic.

We finished season 2 of Foundation last night. We got Apple TV+ with a trial period because I bought an Apple device. Don't get excited, I'm still dithering about a computer. This is the TV box, since Amazon Prime was going to stop talking to the old one. 

As a digression, setting it up was easy, except for the sound part. The old box had an optical audio out port that I filled with a cable going to the DVD box, and thence to the 5 speakers. The new box has just an HDMI cable that feeds sound to the TV speakers. I spent some time trying to figure out if there was a audio out from the TV to the DVD box and thence to the speakers, but no. They want people to buy a separate blue tooth speaker system. I don't actually know what the TV speakers sound like, since I've never heard them. I get the audio directly into my ears via my hearing aids.

The remote has a direct connection to Siri, and I was careful to turn that off. Last thing I need in my life is a nosy AI system snooping our home life. The remote has a rechargeable battery that takes the new USB C or a lightning cable. I have such a cable from last car rental so the car could talk to the phone. However I don't have a charger to fit the other end. They are not expensive, but I might buy a new mac computer with such an output by the time the remote battery runs down. I like the new remote much better, but it takes a bit of getting used to. As an aside, I checked the power level, and it's at 75%, so I don't think buying a charger is an urgent task. Then again, I almost certainly have buddies with such a charger, and I'm fairly certain they'd be willing to bring it over and let the remote charge up while chatting over coffee or wine. Ummm, us chatting, not the remote, just in case you were wondering. Blah, blah, blah.

We gave Barnaby a rest and zipped through Foundation. In many ways what I said about season one here, still applies. I'm just as confused as I was then, and the conclusion still stands. There's so much sloppy writing. One of the things that really annoys me is what I think of as Mission Impossible syndrome. I watched the first one, and what with everyone pulling off their fake faces, it was stupid and annoying. It's like the writers figured out that it would be a great twist, and then did it again and again. Not to be a spoiler, but much the same thing happens here as well. 

If you liked the books for what they were, you probably won't like the TV series. If you've never read the books and like science fiction, you might or might not like it. Me? I'm just watching it go past and enjoying it for what it is. It looks great, provided you don't think about it too much, or at all. Neither the plot or story makes much sense. All the questions I have, are put on hold, since it isn't worth thinking about. I don't care about what happens to any of the characters. I already know I'll never watch it again. I'm not even 100 percent convinced I'll watch season 3.

My other blog has some of the results of 2 rolls of film, here, if you missed it and want to check it out. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Yukon

Film (new)

Film (old)

A view of the basement, back in the late 80's when it was essentially empty.

Awaiting sunrise, or something

One of the attractions of retirement is mostly living on your own schedule. Not totally, of course. Things like medical appointments, which typically go hand in hand with retirement, happen during specific hours. (Unless you're desperate and go to the emergency ward at the hospital.) The stores are only open during specific hours. The pool I swim at has lane swimming only during certain, but somewhat erratic hours, which makes planning a bit difficult sometimes.

But overall that still gives lots of space for custom tuned times for going to bed or getting out of it. Except part of the retirement thing, at least for me, is erratic sleep patterns. I'm sure that some of it stems from working shift work way back in the 80's. Before then I was a night owl. During, I was all messed up, never quite knowing if I was asleep or awake. One of the last straws was coming home after night shift and pulling in to watch a balloon being inflated in the LRT parking lot. I never saw it go up. I fell asleep and didn't wake up till about 11am. Poor Linda was (quite justifiably) freaked out. She was expecting the cops to come to the door to tell her I'd been a car collision. 

That, plus the demonstrated failures of memory was when I started planning to change jobs. After I got off shift work it took most of a year to get my sleep patterns settled down again, and then it turned out I was a morning person. Which made getting up to go to work, and even get swim workouts done before work possible.

But there's times now that something will wake me up in the early hours of the morning. Like 2am, just as one example. Sometimes I'll just lie there, thinking about various things, hoping to go back to sleep. Sometimes that happens, much later. Or I'll doze, half asleep, half awake, which probably isn't good. 

Every now and then I've got up, thinking I'm awake I might as well work on a project. Except usually I find out I'm not as awake as I thought I was, and Celina will assume it's time to be fed, encouraging me with her air raid siren level meow. She doesn't like it when I tell her to howl louder because the cats on Mars can't hear her.

Plus, Linda will be asleep, or trying to sleep, so that limits how much noise I can make. She has basically two modes of "sleep". One is right out of it. We could hold a bagpipe marching band competition in the bedroom and she wouldn't notice. The other is the opposite. Me breathing, or Celina walking around, is much too loud.

Today is an example. I was up way before sunrise. Awake. I got up and did the daily puzzles, (Wordle in 4, if you're interested, which is par for me.) before coffee, even. I was thinking the sunrise might be nice, so I was keeping an eye on that during coffee and breakfast. I actually dressed and went out with the camera! It wasn't spectacular, but neither did I freeze anything off. 

It's warmed up even more since then, reaching the magical Mercer +1C! I think I'll dig my way to the barbecue and fire it up for the first time this year. It's been so cold I'm not even sure I'd have been able to light it. Propane is a liquid at -40 C or so.

I still have a few frames in the film camera to finish the roll. I was wary of taking it out in the really cold weather. I'm afraid the film would be so brittle it would crack. I can't find reliable data saying when that would happen. The other problem when it's cold and dry is the potential of static sparks as the film is wound and rewound. 

The sunrise view from our kitchen during the cold weather. 

This morning's sunrise, plus two serendipity images.

This was the view from the porch of my cottage during my first visit to Yukon.

Coming back to the house after stalking the sunrise this morning. This is what it looks like after several weeks of brutally cold minus WTF weather.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Yukon

Film (new)

Film (old)

I missed Flowery Friday, but

I had the idea on Wednesday when I was doing the wintery photos that I should do the few remaining flower photos on Friday. Then Friday turned out to be our normal morning stuff, then a nice swim, then some errands, then coming home to Linda making a new quail on risotto recipe, then eating that, and then it was something in the afternoon, then we watched some Barnaby.

(Optional digression. Linda had got some Midsomer Murders discs out of the library a long time ago, but I hadn't cared for them, or wasn't in the mood. Some of the contortions they go through to make something look or sound eerie, kind of makes me roll my eyes. Then we got Amazon Prime, and discovered Midomer was one of the things we could watch. Linda wanted to start from the beginning, and I was interested enough to give it a try. We got hooked. There's been a few clunkers along the way, and we sometimes figure out who dunnit. I like watching for people we've seen in other shows. The most recent one is the guy that played Giaus Baltar.)

These are throughout the year that for whatever reason didn't get blogged along the way. It's in chron order, early to quite late in the year.

I'm looking to finish off a roll of black and white film today, and with any luck get them into the lab over the weekend.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

And that's all done for last year. It's going to seem like an eternity till the next flowers pop up in our garden. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

And as a serendipity, a Film (new)

Yukon

Film (old)

Me saying goodbye to Nefertitti. She was a very sick kitty at this point, and later that day we took her to the vet for that last favour to a well loved friend. 

A Wintery Wordless Wednesday

 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.