Having finished the first draft of my Discovery Grant proposal, time to write something non-professional. September had most of the Auckland-South Island-Auckland travel, and nothing farther than that, so just meetings and work otherwise. Also voted in Wellington council elections (getting candidate info not obvious though better than small towns). More exercise than September.
Health news
We need clean indoor air. Here’s one way to get it in your house:
Nothing’s free, and maybe it might result in more ozone inside, which is also bad. I dunno. That could also be measured, though I don’t think that any of the VisiblAir sensors do. I was at the Tukino Lodge in September, and they actually do have a heat exchanger setup. Nice.
There was a lot of lurgy going around in Wellington in September, and MP had a mystery ailment for 3 days which then went away without further symptoms. Fortunately, the number of sick people seems to have dropped in the 12-Oct FluTracking report.
- STAT: “I inserted myself into a conversation at a bar about Covid and vaccines. Here’s what happened”: well, better at a bar than on Facebook.
- Sterilizing COVID-19 vaccine (in mice) (Spanish): Intranasal vaccine.
- Absolutely Maybe: September update: even more mucosal vaccines in trials, though not much more than a phase 1 and preclinical results for mucosal vaccines. Also a plan for a human challenge trial led by Imperial College London.
- Long COVID prevention tips: some evidence-based tips (metformin), others pretty low risk (zinc, vitamin D, antihistamines).
Professional
Not a huge amount of news this month. Some months are like that. October would be the intensive Discovery Grant month. Did work on Rust verification myself, in addition to Alex’s efforts. Specifically I fixed some code to provide another view of the coverage so far from the Rust verification efforts.
Worked on 17 days. September has 21 work days.
Teaching
I guess it really is going to be time to work on SE465 soon.
Grad students/mentees/collaborators
Meetings on 9 days, including 2 days of conference. Many of those 9 days were synching with Alex, since he’s my only student at this point; also, he had a talk at VSTTE in early October. Hopefully new Mohammad gets his visa and can come to Canada for January.
Collegiality/Service
Read two master’s theses (though I skipped out on one of the seminars; they are actually not mandatory to attend for thesis readers, at least before recent program changes). Wrote a reference letter. Turned down an Elsevier review for Science of Computer Programming. FAUW governance. Looked for class reps for SE26.
Trips
I was away from Wellington (somewhere else in NZ) for 3 of the 4 weekends in September, plus the first week.
Trip: South Island (September 2–7)
The goal was skiing on the Tasman Glacier after the Craigieburn Haute Route trip got cancelled (lack of snow). We did get in 22 hours on the glacier before leaving ahead of the forecast bad weather.
Then back to Wānaka and a day of lift-assisted touring at Treble Cone.
Trip: SCAM @ Auckland (September 8–9)
The ski trip was planned to finish just before SCAM in Auckland, where I could present our SCAM paper from this year. Got a Distinguished Reviewer Award and asked to be Program Committee co-chair for next year.
Non-trip: half of the City to Sea walkway in Wellington (September 13)
I did have one weekend in Wellington. We started walking on the City to Sea walkway but actually MP was double booked so we quit.
Trip: Ski touring at Tukino (September 19–21)
NZAC Auckland/Wellington sections joint ski touring meet at Tukino Lodge. We got the one day of good weather on the North Island on the weekend? Highly scenic and some good skiing on upper Whangaehu glacier. Sunday was highly windy though two of us did go out for a walk. Also did recon for Ringatoto North Buttress, though that trip got cancelled due to weather again.
Trip: Attempted alpinism/lift-served skiing (September 25–28)
Once again to Ruapehu. In the end, we went skiing on Saturday. Friday was a write-off due to bad snow and also poor visibility. Saturday from Turoa there was good visibility but bad avalanche danger; from Whakapapa there was less avalanche danger but poor visibility. Sunday was back to Wellington via the Aston Norwood cherry blossoms (highly recommend, though they are a bit out of the way).
Travel Planning
There was the live travel planning throughout the early September trips caused by weather of various sorts, as well as pre-planned flight changes for CHC-WLG to be executed day-of. Apart from that, I did travel planning for a trip to Whitehorse in October to recert my Wilderness First Responder; annoyingly, NOLS does 2 year recerts, as opposed to the usual 3 year recerts.
Movement statistics
Pretty regular walking, though short distances; no hiking. Way more driving than I’d like; what does it mean when it’s almost as much driving as flying?! Wellington isn’t close to skiing (or climbing), that’s for sure. Also there was one day where I had really mis-planned driving: should have stayed in Waiouru and not Erua, and then should have gone to Whakapapa not Turoa, so there was 173km of driving on that day, and it could have been a tenth of that.
Movement statistics:
- 🚶 Walking: 80km on 23 days
- 🚲 Biking: 54km on 7 days
- 🚗 Driving: 2369km on 12 days (CHC-Mount Cook-Wanaka and back; Wellington-Tukino and back; Wellington-Turoa-Whakapapa and back)
- 🚗 Taxi: 66km (AKL, WLG 2× each; short ride in Wellington)
- 🚆 Train: 88km on 2 days (Auckland and Upper Hutt roundtrip)
- 🚌 Bus: 38km on 3 days (Auckland and once to Wellington Station)
- ✈ Plane: 2515km (AKL-GIS-WLG; WLG-CHC; CHC-WLG; WLG-AKL; AKL-WLG)
- 🚁 Heli: 65km (Mount Cook Airport to Tasman Glacier)
- ⛷ Skiing: 70km on 8 days including 4 touring days (60km)
Only 125km of transit, which was dominated by a round trip to Upper Hutt.
Walks
Just ski touring. No hikes. The most walking was 7km in a day in Wellington.
Although it’s not a named walk, the walk/ski up the Mangatoetoenui glacier and to the Ruapehu summit plateau is highly scenic.
Pictures
September was down again in terms of number of pictures processed, but I was not at a computer for many days in September. (I wonder if I could correlate the number of travel days with the number of pictures processed). There are only 9GB of new pictures from September, so maybe not adding too much to the backlog. Desperately trying to have less than a two-year picture backlog. Looking at the chronological order, there are some big trips in the backlog, like New Caledonia in November 2023 and the Travers Sabine in February 2024. It is challenging when there is a set of 400 pictures from a day.
Picture logs available, and, as always, pictures are clickable to go to the full gallery.
- Sets of pictures processed: September=10, August=12
- Total pictures processed: September=414, August=563
- Total pictures in selection pool: September=1486, August=2123
- Accept rate: 28% (min 14%, max 65%)
- Pictures posted on this page: 81
Miscellaneous
More miscellaneous things to report than last month. Managed to run out of 2degrees data for 2 days, which was pretty annoying.
Posts
Books
I started reading this book in September (August?) but finished in October:
- Nick Fancher. _Studio_Anywhere:A_Photographer’s_Guide_to_Shooting_in_Unconventional_Locations
There is a lot of information here about how to use simple tools to produce creative images, especially portraits and other pictures of people, as well as product shots. Unfortunately, I have very much a novice skill level at portraits, and almost none of the specialized gear. In particular I don’t have any off-camera flashes or gels. (I do have cameras (obviously), lenses, tripods, some filters, and a reflector light disc.) I’m also not very good at interpreting postures.
So this book isn’t really where I’m at, though I got something from it. I need a more basic book on taking portraits.
I do appreciate the philosophy of not being bound to a dedicated studio space. The author explains how to use minimal gear to overcome the challenges of bad light and bad backgrounds.
There is also a lot of Lightroom and some Photoshop. I do use the photo editing features of digikam, gimp, and sometimes Topaz AI. If I knew more about photo editing, I could translate between the software. (Or I could use darktable, which might have the features but still needs translation).
There is a final chapter about knowing what type of photography one wants to specialize in (and how to sell pictures). For me, that would be more landscapes and birds.
Acquisitions
- 2kg of carrots in Ohakune; consumed over about 2 weeks
- Rab Mythic Alpine Down Jacket: I don’t really have an insulating down layer; now I will. Of course it’s ultralight, like a lot of the gear that I bring but try to not use.
- Rab Firewall Alpine: I do have an ultralight rainjacket, but this is a bit burlier. It’s really the second outer shell that I’d own.
Sports
Bouldering at Faultline 5×, plus a day of toproping at Wanaka. Judo 4× including an open mat at Upper Hutt, but was out of town for other practices missed except one.
Food
South Island, Wellington, and Auckland:
- Fairlie Bakehouse: famous pies, well-deserved recognition. More of a white-people pie than Patrick Lam’s pies, if that makes sense. Perhaps easier to imagine gentrified (though it’s not really).
- Thai Tekapo - Ramen Tekapo: we had thought about getting burgers in Tekapo but there was a 25 minute wait and we were trying to get to Ashburton not too late; this was perhaps the only other option; wholly satisfactory ramen, anyway, if a bit salty.
- Wellington: Tra Coffee and Eatery: recently opened, had brunch here fresh off the plane from Christchurch. Good eggs benedict with bacon, poached eggs, and hollandaise, though on top of hash brown is nonstandard (but sure, it works).
- Auckland: Casse-croute: yet another pie, for breakfast; one doesn’t really know what the breakfast situation will be.
- Auckland: The Wharfside Bar & Eatery: yeah, I’d hold a conference banquet here. I do think that buffet-style probably works better for conferences.
- Auckland: Bivacco: way better than lounge food (which was the alternate option) on my way out of Auckland.
En route to Ruapehu (twice):
- Bulls: Mint Cafe: worked well as food to eat in the car when not driving; not a pie! good change from sandwiches.
- Taihape: Le Café Téléphonique: there is indeed a bunch of phone theming; I had been suggesting a hot dog place in Hunterville but didn’t get uptake. Salmon filo was good.
- Levin: ZenArez’s: delicious burger; chatted with the guy (who really cares about his food) about poutine.
- Ohakune: Johnny Nation’s Chocolate Eclair Shop: I suspect I’ve written about them before, but I had two eclairs in a weekend as well as this steak and cheese pie.
- Ohakune: Rice Bar & Food: can’t go wrong with duck bao buns.
- Ohakune: Tiger Palace: exceeded expectations (yes, more duck, but also on the fried rice), despite looking unassuming from the outside.
- Wellington: Aston Norwood Cafe: they were extremely busy during the cherry blossom festival, but the Devonshire tea featured, well, fancy tea, and a couple of filling scones.
Volunteering
More OAC work: corporate submission to the Devil’s Glen climbing management plan; sysadmin; fixing webpages; another read through the Wellington Judo Academy draft constitution. (Also fixing personal webpage, but that’s not volunteering). Condo AGM: also not volunteering, but it is civic engagement.
Did not take the lead, but helped deliver beginning-of-year refereeing seminar for Ontario.
Helped organize the Wellington contingent for the Tukino ski meet. At the meet, trip leadering: scoped out the route for the Ringatoto North Buttress trip.
Conclusion
High-travel month, although it was domestic NZ travel. Apart from that, not too much to report.