Rainy days can be the best days

  • June 21, 2017
Categories
The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Child’s copy book lost or abandoned to the elements on the pavement. A gelatinous mass on the rain-pitted sand of our local beach. The leaf in the background can provide a notion of the scale of the thing. A dead fish being surveyed by a green bottle fly and, at right, a cuttlebone.

Rising early has its privileges [photos]

  • June 12, 2017
Categories
The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Here, the Moon is hovering just above a layer of clouds. A short while later and Moon has descended slightly, placing it beneath one tier of cloud cover. Gorgeous, isn’t it? One of the perks of waking at zero dark thirty is getting to see the sun rise.

Sunset snapshots

  • June 11, 2017
Categories
The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Clouds scraping the hilltops. A black cloud hovers over an antenna (?) of some sort.

Double rainbow at dawn

  • June 10, 2017
Categories
Is that the way it is? Personal Firsts The Diary of Lupin Pooter
How long did it take you to spot the rainbow? The rainbow faded from one second to the next and, even at the moment I took the above photo, S. had to point it out to me. The fainter second rainbow, above and to the left of the first, only became apparent when I opened […]

I Put on My Robe and Wizard Hat [photo]

  • June 6, 2017
Categories
HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Is the piece of headgear depicted in these stickers a wizard hat or a sleeping cap? With no way of knowing with any certainty, I’m nevertheless rooting for the former. These stickers featuring Doraemon wearing a star-studded sleeping cap or wizard hat called to me when I saw ’em on Taobao. Related: Does Doraemon really […]

I don’t always rack up 10k steps a day, but when I do…

  • June 6, 2017
Categories
HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter
Yes, the wording of this post is a hat tip to a meme: The Most Interesting Man in the World. I don’t always rack up 10k steps a day, but when I do… I remember that the ten-thousand-step goal is an arbitrary number and a relic of 1964 Tokyo Olympics hoopla.

The dishwasher-safe mug that wasn’t

  • May 8, 2017
Categories
HerpDerp The Diary of Lupin Pooter
For a cup or dish, a trip through the dishwasher probably represents an inanimate household object’s version of medieval trial by ordeal. A couple of years back, we bought a bunch of mugs and all but one have passed the dishwasher test with flying colors. The mug shown above, however, has been found wanting.

Wasp moths in love [Photo]

  • May 6, 2017
Categories
All My Friends Are Insects We'll go much more a roving
Two mating wasp moths. More (and, speaking candidly, better-quality) photos of the beasties, from other nature lovers, in a ten-plus-year-old thread at HKWildlife.Net: Erebidae, Arctiinae, Syntomini – Syntomoides imaon.

Maybe it’s “Democracy dies in the edits”: Does the The Washington Post have memory holes?

  • May 4, 2017
Categories
Is that the way it is?
Tonight, I planned to write something complimentary about The Washington Post. WaPo published a brief but excellent piece of investigative reporting by Peter Whoriskey (@PeterWhoriskey) on the organic dairy industry, specifically scrutinizing a company called Aurora Organic Dairy: Why your ‘organic’ milk may not be organic. Update: As of Monday, May 8th, the image in […]

Behold! The beekeeper’s secret lair! [Photo]

  • May 4, 2017
Categories
All My Friends Are Insects We'll go much more a roving
The hives of our friendly neighborhood beekeeper, whom we’ve never seen or heard tell of until stumbling onto his hives during a brief ramble around our hood.

What it looks like when the wheels fall off; Or, Where’s the good-journalism bot?

  • May 1, 2017
Categories
Is that the way it is?
A defunct Cooper Mini on the edge of a village in Hong Kong’s New Territories. The software tools mentioned in These are the bots powering Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post efforts to build a modern digital newspaper: Feels Bot Asks you to express your feelings about a news topic by selecting from a pre-chosen list of […]

Having a roam

  • April 23, 2017
Categories
The Diary of Lupin Pooter We'll go much more a roving
We went on a brief wander this afternoon, before looping back to do a bit of grocery shopping ahead of lunch.