Weekly Wrap 693: More magpies and memories of a distant cat

My week of Monday 4 to Sunday 10 September 2023 seems to have heralded my emergence from a winter flatness. Even though it’s been sunny and warmer that average, I’ve been tired and unmotivated. That seems to be changing. And here’s what the week held.

Articles

  • Digital developments from Canberra 52. There’s more from the eSafety Commissioner this week. Also, a draft of our science and research priorities, cardboard drones, Big Things stamps and coins, and a cryptocurrency bill that looks set to be dumped.

You can read my previous writing at Authory, where you can also subscribe to an email compilation of any new stories each Sunday morning.

Videos

  • 010 More Magpie Army. My local clan of Australian magpies (Gymnorhina tibicen) has been visiting me most mornings for the past few weeks. People owned by cats have been requesting more videos for their feline amusement value, so here’s Friday morning’s feeding session.

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Media Appearances

Podcasts, Photos, Corporate Largesse

None of these.

Recommendations

A new biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson will be released on Tuesday, and the publishers have made sure there’s plenty of snippets appearing in the news mastheads.

And there’s a lot more this week. These are just a few “highlights”.

In other news:

The Week Ahead

On Monday I’ll be setting up some client bits and pieces. In the background I’ll try to catch some of the live-streamed sessions of Groundhog Day – A series of roundtables by IERLab.

There’s two other conferences of interest for me this week. There’s APNIC 56 online from Kyoto on Tuesday–Thursday, and from Sydney there’s CyberOZ 2023: Engineering The Future of Cybersecurity, IPv6 and AI on Friday, but I doubt I’ll get time to pay attention to either of them.

On Wednesday I’m heading to Sydney for a social day, and we’ll be going for a walk. Yes, this plan is being recycled from last week.

You see, back in 2010, Snarky Platypus and I would go wandering in Sydney suburbs we were unfamiliar with. Some of these walks were quite long, as this map shows.

If the map doesn’t show up, try here.

This week we’ll be meeting at Merrylands and walking to Bankstown, which is around 13 km. We’ll probably diverge from the most direct route, and take breaks at suitable watering holes along the way.

Update 14 September 2023: The weekend will be a semi-work zone, since Wednesday and Thursday will have been distinctly non-work days.

Further Ahead

  • NEW: Housesitting in Sydney, 7–31 October 2023. If you’re wanting to catch up with me, this would be a good time in which to extend invitations. Except for…
  • The 9pm Hobart Expedition, 22–25 October 2023. Snarky Platypus and I have planned a voyage. I may well be recording a podcast there. We’re definitely going to MONA on the Monday, though, and I’m amused by this review in The Irish Times back in 2014: Mona, the world’s most expensive joke?.

[Photo: Three years ago in the Beforetimes, a street cat photographed while I was having breakfast in Phra Khanong, Bangkok, on 7 September 2019.]