Weekly Wrap 617: A sausage roll almost as long as the day itself, and then it began to rain

Big Sausage Roll at Springwood

During the week of Monday 21 to Sunday 27 March 2022 I was finally able to start addressing the mould problem. Thanks to La Niña’s reign of terror, mould has started appearing on almost every surface, and especially parts of the ceiling where moisture has seeped through from the adjacent storeroom whose roof has proved inadequate. The fierce brown bubbling of the bleach is most satisfying.

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Weekly Wrap 616: La Niña takes a break but it is a world of mould, fatigue, and history

A7V Mephisto

I saw the Sun several times during the week of Monday 14 to Sunday 20 March 2022, but its effect was to illuminate the layers of mould that now seem to cover so many surfaces. My greatest challenge was finding a shop with stocks of mould killer. My escape continued to be hours and hours of history.

Continue reading “Weekly Wrap 616: La Niña takes a break but it is a world of mould, fatigue, and history”

Weekly Wrap 358: Amanita see you about the mould (sorry)

Amanita muscaria, or similarMy week of Monday 3 to Sunday 9 April 2017 was largely blown away by illness, but there were some good points. Please skip my whining to see the list of achievements below.

Apart from the conference plague, and the “extremely severe” stress and anxiety levels, which I told you about last week, I managed to get a face-full of The Spores.

I was killing some black mould on a ceiling, and I thought I was being clever by using a window-cleaning sponge-and-squeegee to apply The Killing Solution. That worked, yes, but it also meant that I disturbed the mould, and the spores fell straight down on top of me.

I do not recommend this.

Podcasts

  • “The 9pm End of the World, Definitely”, being The 9pm Edict episode 66. This episode is also available on SoundCloud and Spreaker. This was the first episode in two months. I’d you’d like to help make them more frequent, please feel free to contribute.

Articles

None.

Media Appearances

  • On Monday, I spoke about ISPs selling your web browsing data on ABC Adelaide. I may or may not post this audio. Stay tuned, or something.

Corporate Largesse

None, despite what I expected.

The Week Ahead

Monday will be all about communication, planning, and shopping, most of which will be happening in Katoomba.

On Tuesday, it’s the long commute down to Sydney for a couple of meetings and some errands. On the way there and back, and for the rest of the week, it’s all about writing and editing the words.

Friday is, of course, Good Friday and the start of the Easter long weekend, so I’ll be taking the day off. No plans as yet.

Further Ahead

I’m covering the AusCERT Information Security Conference on the Gold Coast from 23 to 26 May; the 5th International Conference on Cybercrime and Computer Forensics (ICCCF) on the Gold Coast from 16 to 18 July, or at least I hope; and the national conference of the Australian Information Security Association (AISA) in Sydney on 10 to 12 October.

[Photo: Amanita muscaria, or similar. A mushroom of one Amanita species or another, photographed near Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains on 22 March 2017.]

Big Scary, Little Scary

Which of these images do you find the most frightening? Which the most beautiful? Which the most relevant to human existence?

Photograph of Epsilon15 Bacteriophage and the mould found growing under a computer monitor

On the left, the highest-resolution image of a virus ever taken. It’s the Epsilon 15 Bacteriophage (i.e. a virus which infects bacteria), and if you count viruses as being alive then it’s one of the most abundant forms of life on Earth.

On the right, a photo of what one guy found growing under his co-worker’s computer monitor. There’s a full image gallery. Hat-tip to Boing Boing.