May, moving down the levels
3 Jun 2020
It’s astonishing how quickly things have returned to almost-normal in this country. Since May 14 (3 weeks ago already!), we’ve been in Alert Level 2, where most things are open. Physical distancing, capacity controls and mandatory contact tracing remain for now, although there will be another decision next Monday, June 8. The number of known active cases is 1 and the last positive reported case was on May 22.
Haircuts
I had been planning to wait a few more days, but I was walking down the street and noticed a barber open with no line, so I’ve had reasonable hair since May 17. The Onward deadline was with too much hair, but the OOPSLA deadline had the right amount of hair. Very important when spending hours at the computer. Looking through the records, it looks like I feel like I need a haircut after 6 weeks and then wait another 2 weeks to actually get one: Sept 5, Nov 5, Jan 7, Mar 3, May 17. The 10-week interval was excessive.
A Locked-down April
1 May 2020
I’m writing this on April 30, a day after we were originally scheduled to leave Wellington. But that was no surprise to month-ago me.
Most of April has been under NZ Alert Level 4, although we’ve been in Alert Level 3 for a couple of days now. We’ve been in Wellington since March 20 and not in a car between March 25 and April 29, which is some sort of record for me. Usually I can go a week without a car ride, but 4.5 weeks is something. Also my last haircut was March 3, which is also a record. It looks like The Warehouse has a 2 week shipping time for clippers, so I’ll be going a bit longer still.
Leverage deadlines for action
28 Apr 2020
This week’s tip is kind of a meta-tip. When you want someone (possibly yourself) to do something, set a deadline for it. Marketing experts know this. This is why there are “limited time offers”. People have intentions of doing something. But if they can do it anytime, sometimes they never do the thing.
The deadline for the survey is Wednesday, though I guess I could have been more explicit about that.
Moderate multi-pitch in New Zealand, March 11, 2020
21 Apr 2020
On our previous trip to the South Island we stayed around Wanaka cragging and hiking. Although the Darrens were still washed out during our visit, The Remarkables feature some multipitch climbing. In particular, our borrowed Queenstown guidebook listed a dozen climbs above Lake Alta (aka Dimrill Dale). We’d go to Lake Alta and then up to Double Cone and find a moderate climb. To Lake Alta Alpine starts are well advised but difficult, especially after riverboarding the previous day, having dinner in Queenstown with Waterloo students on exchange, and getting back to our Frankton airbnb at 9pm.
An Exciting Trip to Mount Taranaki, March 17-18, 2020
14 Apr 2020
Almost as if anticipating a lockdown, we had planned back-to-back-to-back trips for the middle of March. We’d just barely gotten back from Queenstown on Thursday, March 12 (but that’s another story), and had scheduled 4 days to climb Mount Taranaki, which I’d seen from the plane on the way in to Wellington back on January 1, 3 months and so long ago. Events would catch up to us and prevent our subsequent trip to Melbourne. At least we didn’t have to do a visa run anymore.
Be aware of boundary conditions
14 Apr 2020
This week’s observation is about boundary conditions. As programmers you have surely run into off-by-one errors. They’re hard to avoid! Somehow New Zealand systemically seems to fudge the issue, as you can see on this sign on Kapiti Island restricting access to the tower. Perhaps one can parse this as being “if you put eight plus one people on the tower it will fall down”, but that’s not consistent with the top display. (As an engineering exercise, you can also think about the safety factors built into the tower’s design).
Munging NZ COVID stats
8 Apr 2020
I wanted to know two things about the NZ COVID counts, which are released by the government at
Here’s the result of my data analysis as of April 9.
- How many cases had a big delay between return-to-NZ date and report date? (about 5%; up to three weeks)
To calculate this, I just added a calculation to the Google sheet:
A2-MAX(I2, H2)
and did standard analyses on the numbers. I manually fixed cases where the date reported was before the date arrived; in those cases it looks like the month was incorrectly entered.
Be an expert tool user
7 Apr 2020
This week’s tip is about tools. I’ve attached a picture of a replica of the ice axe that Sir Edmund Hillary used on his first ascent of Mount Everest. This was at the North Egmont Visitor Centre at the base of Mount Taranaki, a prominent cone-shaped ex-volcano in New Zealand. Sir Edmund’s original ice axe is in a museum in Auckland, and one can buy replicas of it on the Internet. [1]
The Longest Month
1 Apr 2020
My notes say that I bought tickets to Athens on March 1. As if things would be normal in two months. The first nine days of March, which I wrote about last time, did seem completely normal. Then we went to Queenstown/Wanaka and Taranaki. As we were at Taranaki, things quickly became not normal. The last 11 days have been a whirlwind, and only in the past few days have I been able to get some research done.
Explore local
30 Mar 2020
Since I last wrote, New Zealand moved to alert level 4 on a 4-point scale. Only essential workers may go to work, and “essential workers” is narrowly defined here: mostly supermarkets, pharmacies, and gas stations. Since I’m not going anywhere, I thought I’d send a picture from the archives. I took this picture close to home, in Waterloo Park, September 2019. I have to admit that I prefer being farther afield, but that’s not always an option, for various reasons. But, one can always explore one’s backyard. (Please do so safely!)
