vital functions
Apr. 5th, 2020 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettReading. This week I have got very tentatively started with The Story of my Life, Helen Keller, because it was available for immediate loan from the library while I was browsing ebooks and it felt more appealing than any of the other non-fiction I have on the go.
Watching. Planet Earth: ice worlds. Fun stat: 90% "of all ice" is found here.
OH NO WHAT A GOOD ZOOMY PLAPPY PENGUIN HELLO PENGUINS
+ I did not know tha the chinstraps you could take aerial photographs and see the guano buildup!
+ oooh, nunatuks are used for egg laying purposes also because they are bar e rock instead of ice! SNOW PETRELS
++ after laying eggs they go have a snow bath to clean plumage???? are they taking shifts on the egg or are they REMARKABLY resilient to hideous cold weather?
+ skuas hang out waiting for the snow petrels to show up because. they're the most southerly predators???
what a good sploosh spiral!!!! who are you????
+ DRAMATIC HUMPBACK WHALES
+ they do coordinated spirals and release bubbles to herd the krill!!!!!!!!
oh that is NICE timelapse photography of ice advancing 2.5 miles per day during the freeze, hurrah extended ice shelf
+ but! one creature is just arriving!
+ THE EMPEROR PENGUINS
+ oh gosh this is some of the best Penguins Wearing A Suit footage I have ever seen
+ ... AND THE MOST UNDIGNIFIED SEX
+ huh, March of the Pnguins implied that it was Bad for the eggs to touch the ice At All, but this just suggested that brief contact with ice during transfer is not lethal???? do we just... not know
+ ... oh NO TIMelapse photography of males doing the I Have An Egg waddle, which shows the patterns of huddles!!!!
+ they make Good Patterns
+ okay fine I'm actively interested in the crowd dynamics of how movement from middle of huddle to exterior is coordinated
... by the way the ARctic exists...
+ conceptualised as a vast frozen sea surrounded by land, huh
eider ducks!!!!!!
+ oh huh they overwinter in the Arctic, aren't they brave! in flocks of like 40,000
+ all heading to a polynya: An Duck Pond!!!! overnight sanctuary (from bears rather than sharks, presumably -- oh and also foxes), and during the day: Food, because dense mussel beds! ... but only while the tide's at extremes?
+ A is charmingly surprised by how elegant they are at swimming
hello who are YOU
you are a MUSK OXEN
you DIG YOUR OWN HOLES
oh no your heads are SO GOOD
(to eat the vegettion below)
they make Good Noises
... and get followed around by ptarmigans, who eat the holes
... Adam found an arctic hare and it's his new fave
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, says An Fox
OH NO BABY OX
"I did think that was a BIT ambitious" says A re the fox attempting to sneak up on th calves
OH NO THEY ARE SO BAD AT WALKING I LOVE THEM THEY AREM YNEW FAVOURITE CAN I CUDDLE THEM AND IF NOT WHY NOT
oh no they are Implacable in the blizzard
and NOW we get an Arctic Wolves, which are really very difficult to see in the whiteout, but Up They Go To The Higher Ground
oh no are the smols.... going to fall over and get squished!!! oh no
oh no good we are getting a defensive ring around the Babs
oh NO a calf HAS been left behind in the panic and is making a tiny sad bleating :((( nature red in tooth and claw but... also they DIDN'T show us a kill, hmm.
HEMLO bab polar bear
emerge from den doing a YELL
"mother stretches legs after five months buried in the snow" by doing a HUGE INELEGANT SLIDE down the sope
... oh NO the babs aren't heavy enough to achieve momentum a need DRAGGING down the slope... by their BUMS oh no this is great
this script is unsurprisingly almost identical to the previous episode on polar bears we watched but I'm pretty sure it's new footage
oh no distress bear with inadequately supportive ice :( (so of course they CAN swim but I've somehow only just realisd that currents are a problem??? wow Alex)
Little Auks are EXTREMELY good colours ("in some ways, these birds are the penguins of the north" -- lay rocks on bear eggs, Good Colours)
eggs go in scree slopes -- in burrows up to a metre down! EXCELLENT footage of Suspicious and Affronted nesting one
... w h o are YOU you are LONG and POINTY with RED BITS
...... BABY SANDHILL GRANES. BAB. BAB.
sand pipers!!!! sand pipers??? S A ND PIPERS
the foxes look Most Inelegant during the summer but the bouncy bab is V Good
... and disappears squeaking into the borrow very rapidly when a Big Bird comes to Attempt To Eat It
+ lol hi Skuas, you Fight the Reindeer
ooh, back to male polar bear... who does in fact Take To The Sea because HE doesn't have CHILDCARE RESPONSIBILITIES
+ once-rare sight, polar bears now get spotted over 60 miles from shore; ouch
+ ... oh no we are indeed being tld that Bear Will Die :(
... WHAT good clicking and clackings the walruses make, and HOW much more elegant they are in the water than out
... on the one hand I am glad that the polar bear is going to achieve Not Immediate Death, and on the other I am Concerned for the Bab Walruses, which were born on sea ice but are being raised on wee islands... but walruses are hecking enormous and fighty, so, Nature Red In Tooth And Claw
... I had not... quite realised... how much bigger they are... than the polar bears holy shit they are ENORMOUS
... hi aurora australis
timelapse penguims
IMPORTANT EGG HATCHING SEQUENCE
I'm really enjoying the majestic sweeping music accompanying the Family Reunion
oh no the males are reluctant to let go of the Small Bab it has been looking after all winter!!!
oh no the babs are TOO SMALL and require Rapid Transfer
I not WANT go outside, say the bab, it COLD
... Fine I Suppose It Also Warm In Here, say the bab
oh no this is Excellent Baby Penguin footage oh NO
they are so ROUND
and so SHIT
and so YELL
oh no the the Fighting, there are like Six Penguin fighting over an orphaned chick to adopt and... they're so shit they squash them
oh no grup of chicks separated from colony :((( oh no they shiver :(((((
like I understand the principle of non-interference but DO YOU HAVE TO they only SMOL
oh holy shit to get the penguins footage two cameramen spent A YEAR living out with only 20,000 penguins for neighbours
"it's a bit cold and windy" YES THANKS FOR THAT
... the film. jams.
OKAY GOOD THEY HAD A HUT. and are feeling Very Sorry for the penguins.
...... t w o m i l e w a l k to the colony
did they. did they??? have a line??? to take them back to the hut??? what the fuck this is not best practice
OH HURRAH THEY DIDN'T NON-INTERFERENCE because a Small Chick fell into a HOLE and then stuck its head out and made NOISES but it STUCK
... chick parent did a Watch of ?OH YOU FOund IT WHERE DID IT GO
oh no it did so many WHAT THE FUCK yell at it parent and then GOT A FOOD. good. GOOD penguin.
... the polar bears came to visit the Arctic filming crews oh Dear the hut is only made out of wood so uh oh dear out they go with guns -- firing blanks to scare them off, good
"Day one: Bear outside the cabin."
"This is just a bit of a problem, you know, when they get as close as this to the cabin." And it WOULDN'T FUCK OFF.
so now it's time for flares
Planet Earth got special permission to film on remote Norwegian island -- first human visitors in 25 years, motor vehicles forbidden, so they had to haul everything on a heckin sledge
"I'm gonna call mine [bleeping] Awkward Heavy Object"
"Doug's sledge," says David, "seemed determined to live up to its name" (turning turtle)
oh no they were having Difficulty finding Babs
"I thought... I thought I heard something?" POLAR BEAR POKES ITS FUCKING NOSE RIGHT UP TO THE WINDOW DOES IT A SMOOSH
oh dear this is hecking terrifying
they were hiding from the bears and keeping down and uh Had To Get Out The Shotgun
but did not show us what happened In The End. for some reason. which does not exactly bode well for the poor thing, does it.
Listening. WE ARE UP TO DATE ON TMA. I want to launch into a relisten; I think I'll enjoy it much more on the second run-through, and despite having been more than somewhat spoiled there's a lot of detail I am wanting to have another go at.
Synchronous chat is generally the best way to get me to shout about the thing but I'm going to try to go back and yell atrydra_wong some more, too.
I have also, this week, been listening to more music than usual, on the grounds that I had a bunch of tedious data-entry to do and that goes Better with Obnoxiously Upbeat Music.
Cooking. Notably: candied ginger jarred up with its syrup; roast onion & celeriac soup. The latter did not end up quite as I'd envisaged -- it was roast garlic, and the celeriac roasted with onion and nigella seed, plus veg stock -- and while it was very tasty (to my mind) beige, I clearly needed to put Another Flavour in it. (Also: another round of puttanesca; some slightly disappointing sea-spicy aubergine, where I suspect mostly I just didn't cook the aubergine for long enough because we were Hungry; lots more Things With Rice.)
Creating. Vieussieuxia fugax finished! I'm finding the results decidedly dissatisfactory when viewed up close, but oddly enough if I go away for a while and then glance over from the sofa I'm much more favourably disposed.
Technical aspects I'm particularly pleased with: I mixed all of these greens; none of them came as A Green Pencil. I used two sizes of brush, my Series 16 #3 and my rather ratty Series 12 #000 (both acquired at a charity shop), and was beginning to get the hang of the #000 by the time I ran out of flowers, I think. With the #000, I got particularly good use out of wetting both the brush and the tip of the pencil, picking up pigment, brushing off excess on a convenient thumbnail (to pick up later!), and then applying it.
And, of course, I kept going after getting thoroughly disgruntled with myself over the leftmost stems. That counts too.
Most of this was done while listening to TMA.
Growing. Sown today, Sunday: two types of pea (Serpette Guilloteau and Sugar Magnolia); one bean (Greek 'Gigantes'); two types of summer squash (dwarf bush courgette Verde di Milano/Black Beauty and Pattison Blanc). I'm working up to some brassica (purple sprouting and calabrese both).
And apparently the tray of leeks was only put together earlier this week as well, gosh (Bleu de Solaise).
I've moved the lemon (still has two leaves!), the walnut (growing away enthusiastically) and the oak (... affected by... something) outside. I've unwrapped the fig. The tomato seedlingsare spending some of their time outside in the sun, and putting forth some proper grown-up leaves.
I have, also laid out for imminent sowing, several types of lettuce; carrot, parsnip, root parsley, and beetroot; two types of cucumber; some more brassica (cabbages and sprouts various). I need to (1) work out where to put them in an immediate sense, (2) fetch in some more coco coir from the garage, and (3) have some more of a go at working out where I'm going to actually put them at the plot, which is a problem all of its own.
Observing. A heron! I think. I was attempting to do some Pilates on the living room floor, ergo lying on my back staring at the sky, when... Something flapped by overhead. "That's a bloody big seagull," I thought, "with bloody long legs. It's an awfully... pointy seagull." I don't think I'd ever previously seen a heron in Enfield, so this is very exciting!
Playing. Some excellent PoGo luck: incense has netted me a 100% IV Trubbish and a (kinda terrible IVs but) shiny Sudowoodo. Also feat.: bonus shiny Beldum.
A round of Splendor with A on Sunday lunchtime.
Still adjusting to A being home all the time in terms of horn practice; I want to spend some concerted time retuning the thing, but I'd started to get into a workable habit of "bit of practice in the morning, bit of practice in the afternoon" that... isn't really terribly sociable when there's someone trying to, you know, do their Salaried Job in the same room. (I'm pretty sure the noise-cancelling headphones don't cut it. :-p)
Watching. Planet Earth: ice worlds. Fun stat: 90% "of all ice" is found here.
OH NO WHAT A GOOD ZOOMY PLAPPY PENGUIN HELLO PENGUINS
+ I did not know tha the chinstraps you could take aerial photographs and see the guano buildup!
+ oooh, nunatuks are used for egg laying purposes also because they are bar e rock instead of ice! SNOW PETRELS
++ after laying eggs they go have a snow bath to clean plumage???? are they taking shifts on the egg or are they REMARKABLY resilient to hideous cold weather?
+ skuas hang out waiting for the snow petrels to show up because. they're the most southerly predators???
what a good sploosh spiral!!!! who are you????
+ DRAMATIC HUMPBACK WHALES
+ they do coordinated spirals and release bubbles to herd the krill!!!!!!!!
oh that is NICE timelapse photography of ice advancing 2.5 miles per day during the freeze, hurrah extended ice shelf
+ but! one creature is just arriving!
+ THE EMPEROR PENGUINS
+ oh gosh this is some of the best Penguins Wearing A Suit footage I have ever seen
+ ... AND THE MOST UNDIGNIFIED SEX
+ huh, March of the Pnguins implied that it was Bad for the eggs to touch the ice At All, but this just suggested that brief contact with ice during transfer is not lethal???? do we just... not know
+ ... oh NO TIMelapse photography of males doing the I Have An Egg waddle, which shows the patterns of huddles!!!!
+ they make Good Patterns
+ okay fine I'm actively interested in the crowd dynamics of how movement from middle of huddle to exterior is coordinated
... by the way the ARctic exists...
+ conceptualised as a vast frozen sea surrounded by land, huh
eider ducks!!!!!!
+ oh huh they overwinter in the Arctic, aren't they brave! in flocks of like 40,000
+ all heading to a polynya: An Duck Pond!!!! overnight sanctuary (from bears rather than sharks, presumably -- oh and also foxes), and during the day: Food, because dense mussel beds! ... but only while the tide's at extremes?
+ A is charmingly surprised by how elegant they are at swimming
hello who are YOU
you are a MUSK OXEN
you DIG YOUR OWN HOLES
oh no your heads are SO GOOD
(to eat the vegettion below)
they make Good Noises
... and get followed around by ptarmigans, who eat the holes
... Adam found an arctic hare and it's his new fave
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, says An Fox
OH NO BABY OX
"I did think that was a BIT ambitious" says A re the fox attempting to sneak up on th calves
OH NO THEY ARE SO BAD AT WALKING I LOVE THEM THEY AREM YNEW FAVOURITE CAN I CUDDLE THEM AND IF NOT WHY NOT
oh no they are Implacable in the blizzard
and NOW we get an Arctic Wolves, which are really very difficult to see in the whiteout, but Up They Go To The Higher Ground
oh no are the smols.... going to fall over and get squished!!! oh no
oh no good we are getting a defensive ring around the Babs
oh NO a calf HAS been left behind in the panic and is making a tiny sad bleating :((( nature red in tooth and claw but... also they DIDN'T show us a kill, hmm.
HEMLO bab polar bear
emerge from den doing a YELL
"mother stretches legs after five months buried in the snow" by doing a HUGE INELEGANT SLIDE down the sope
... oh NO the babs aren't heavy enough to achieve momentum a need DRAGGING down the slope... by their BUMS oh no this is great
this script is unsurprisingly almost identical to the previous episode on polar bears we watched but I'm pretty sure it's new footage
oh no distress bear with inadequately supportive ice :( (so of course they CAN swim but I've somehow only just realisd that currents are a problem??? wow Alex)
Little Auks are EXTREMELY good colours ("in some ways, these birds are the penguins of the north" -- lay rocks on bear eggs, Good Colours)
eggs go in scree slopes -- in burrows up to a metre down! EXCELLENT footage of Suspicious and Affronted nesting one
... w h o are YOU you are LONG and POINTY with RED BITS
...... BABY SANDHILL GRANES. BAB. BAB.
sand pipers!!!! sand pipers??? S A ND PIPERS
the foxes look Most Inelegant during the summer but the bouncy bab is V Good
... and disappears squeaking into the borrow very rapidly when a Big Bird comes to Attempt To Eat It
+ lol hi Skuas, you Fight the Reindeer
ooh, back to male polar bear... who does in fact Take To The Sea because HE doesn't have CHILDCARE RESPONSIBILITIES
+ once-rare sight, polar bears now get spotted over 60 miles from shore; ouch
+ ... oh no we are indeed being tld that Bear Will Die :(
... WHAT good clicking and clackings the walruses make, and HOW much more elegant they are in the water than out
... on the one hand I am glad that the polar bear is going to achieve Not Immediate Death, and on the other I am Concerned for the Bab Walruses, which were born on sea ice but are being raised on wee islands... but walruses are hecking enormous and fighty, so, Nature Red In Tooth And Claw
... I had not... quite realised... how much bigger they are... than the polar bears holy shit they are ENORMOUS
... hi aurora australis
timelapse penguims
IMPORTANT EGG HATCHING SEQUENCE
I'm really enjoying the majestic sweeping music accompanying the Family Reunion
oh no the males are reluctant to let go of the Small Bab it has been looking after all winter!!!
oh no the babs are TOO SMALL and require Rapid Transfer
I not WANT go outside, say the bab, it COLD
... Fine I Suppose It Also Warm In Here, say the bab
oh no this is Excellent Baby Penguin footage oh NO
they are so ROUND
and so SHIT
and so YELL
oh no the the Fighting, there are like Six Penguin fighting over an orphaned chick to adopt and... they're so shit they squash them
oh no grup of chicks separated from colony :((( oh no they shiver :(((((
like I understand the principle of non-interference but DO YOU HAVE TO they only SMOL
oh holy shit to get the penguins footage two cameramen spent A YEAR living out with only 20,000 penguins for neighbours
"it's a bit cold and windy" YES THANKS FOR THAT
... the film. jams.
OKAY GOOD THEY HAD A HUT. and are feeling Very Sorry for the penguins.
...... t w o m i l e w a l k to the colony
did they. did they??? have a line??? to take them back to the hut??? what the fuck this is not best practice
OH HURRAH THEY DIDN'T NON-INTERFERENCE because a Small Chick fell into a HOLE and then stuck its head out and made NOISES but it STUCK
... chick parent did a Watch of ?OH YOU FOund IT WHERE DID IT GO
oh no it did so many WHAT THE FUCK yell at it parent and then GOT A FOOD. good. GOOD penguin.
... the polar bears came to visit the Arctic filming crews oh Dear the hut is only made out of wood so uh oh dear out they go with guns -- firing blanks to scare them off, good
"Day one: Bear outside the cabin."
"This is just a bit of a problem, you know, when they get as close as this to the cabin." And it WOULDN'T FUCK OFF.
so now it's time for flares
Planet Earth got special permission to film on remote Norwegian island -- first human visitors in 25 years, motor vehicles forbidden, so they had to haul everything on a heckin sledge
"I'm gonna call mine [bleeping] Awkward Heavy Object"
"Doug's sledge," says David, "seemed determined to live up to its name" (turning turtle)
oh no they were having Difficulty finding Babs
"I thought... I thought I heard something?" POLAR BEAR POKES ITS FUCKING NOSE RIGHT UP TO THE WINDOW DOES IT A SMOOSH
oh dear this is hecking terrifying
they were hiding from the bears and keeping down and uh Had To Get Out The Shotgun
but did not show us what happened In The End. for some reason. which does not exactly bode well for the poor thing, does it.
Listening. WE ARE UP TO DATE ON TMA. I want to launch into a relisten; I think I'll enjoy it much more on the second run-through, and despite having been more than somewhat spoiled there's a lot of detail I am wanting to have another go at.
Synchronous chat is generally the best way to get me to shout about the thing but I'm going to try to go back and yell at
rydra_wong some more, too.I have also, this week, been listening to more music than usual, on the grounds that I had a bunch of tedious data-entry to do and that goes Better with Obnoxiously Upbeat Music.
Cooking. Notably: candied ginger jarred up with its syrup; roast onion & celeriac soup. The latter did not end up quite as I'd envisaged -- it was roast garlic, and the celeriac roasted with onion and nigella seed, plus veg stock -- and while it was very tasty (to my mind) beige, I clearly needed to put Another Flavour in it. (Also: another round of puttanesca; some slightly disappointing sea-spicy aubergine, where I suspect mostly I just didn't cook the aubergine for long enough because we were Hungry; lots more Things With Rice.)
Creating. Vieussieuxia fugax finished! I'm finding the results decidedly dissatisfactory when viewed up close, but oddly enough if I go away for a while and then glance over from the sofa I'm much more favourably disposed.
Technical aspects I'm particularly pleased with: I mixed all of these greens; none of them came as A Green Pencil. I used two sizes of brush, my Series 16 #3 and my rather ratty Series 12 #000 (both acquired at a charity shop), and was beginning to get the hang of the #000 by the time I ran out of flowers, I think. With the #000, I got particularly good use out of wetting both the brush and the tip of the pencil, picking up pigment, brushing off excess on a convenient thumbnail (to pick up later!), and then applying it.
And, of course, I kept going after getting thoroughly disgruntled with myself over the leftmost stems. That counts too.
Most of this was done while listening to TMA.
Growing. Sown today, Sunday: two types of pea (Serpette Guilloteau and Sugar Magnolia); one bean (Greek 'Gigantes'); two types of summer squash (dwarf bush courgette Verde di Milano/Black Beauty and Pattison Blanc). I'm working up to some brassica (purple sprouting and calabrese both).
And apparently the tray of leeks was only put together earlier this week as well, gosh (Bleu de Solaise).
I've moved the lemon (still has two leaves!), the walnut (growing away enthusiastically) and the oak (... affected by... something) outside. I've unwrapped the fig. The tomato seedlingsare spending some of their time outside in the sun, and putting forth some proper grown-up leaves.
I have, also laid out for imminent sowing, several types of lettuce; carrot, parsnip, root parsley, and beetroot; two types of cucumber; some more brassica (cabbages and sprouts various). I need to (1) work out where to put them in an immediate sense, (2) fetch in some more coco coir from the garage, and (3) have some more of a go at working out where I'm going to actually put them at the plot, which is a problem all of its own.
Observing. A heron! I think. I was attempting to do some Pilates on the living room floor, ergo lying on my back staring at the sky, when... Something flapped by overhead. "That's a bloody big seagull," I thought, "with bloody long legs. It's an awfully... pointy seagull." I don't think I'd ever previously seen a heron in Enfield, so this is very exciting!
Playing. Some excellent PoGo luck: incense has netted me a 100% IV Trubbish and a (kinda terrible IVs but) shiny Sudowoodo. Also feat.: bonus shiny Beldum.
A round of Splendor with A on Sunday lunchtime.
Still adjusting to A being home all the time in terms of horn practice; I want to spend some concerted time retuning the thing, but I'd started to get into a workable habit of "bit of practice in the morning, bit of practice in the afternoon" that... isn't really terribly sociable when there's someone trying to, you know, do their Salaried Job in the same room. (I'm pretty sure the noise-cancelling headphones don't cut it. :-p)
(no subject)
Date: 2020-04-05 10:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2020-04-06 07:12 am (UTC)