a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
Reporter Matt Kaplan writes in the New York Times that a wildlife camera recorded a bobcat repeatedly eating eggs from a Burmese python’s nest.
It is not yet known if this is commonly done by bobcats.
It would be a boon if it were: the Burmese python is an invasive species and is decimating the mammal and bird populations there.
That’s a gargantuan piece of cake.
My coffeemaker was kaput, and the new one I had ordered, landed on the porch today.
There is tennis in Miami this week: the annual Miami Open, a tournament that I attended in person in 1990, during my maiden visit to the United States.
Up-and-coming superstar from Spain, Carlos Alcaraz (18), ousted Stefanos Tsitsipas (23) in spectacular fashion on Tuesday. Alcaraz will face Miomir Kecmanović (22) from Serbia for a place in the semi-final.
The blossoms on the magnolia trees are out, along with the cherry tree blossoms and those on the camellias.
I did not watch the Oscars, and so I missed the storm in the teacup.
Clips of it was all over Twitter, of course.
I don’t think Will Smith is looking good, and I don’t know if his apology of today will help his damaged image.
He was obnoxious as he sat in his seat after the slap, yelling f-words at Chris Rock.
blatjang
/ˈblatjaŋ/, /ˈblatʃaŋ/
noun
A tangy sauce made of dried fruit (usually apricots) and chillies cooked in vinegar; chutney.
Archaic forms: blaatgham, blatcham
Origin: Afrikaans, Malay
It is probable that in late 19th century Afrikaans this word still had two meanings:
1. A. Pannevis’s Afskrif van Lys van Afrikaanse Woorde en Uitdrukkings (1880) defines ‘Bladjang’ as being made of dried chillies and stewed dried apricots in vinegar;
2. H.C.V. Leibbrandt’s Het Kaapsch Hollandsch (1882) lists ‘Balachan’ and ‘Blatchong’, both with the same meaning as the Malay belachan; and the Woordelijst van het Transvaalsch Taaleigen (1890) includes ‘Blatjang’, defined as ‘een zeker gerecht’ (a certain dish).
When you say ‘blatjang’ or ‘chutney’ in South Africa, you really mean ‘Mrs. Ball’s Original Recipe Chutney. It is nonpareil.
The Woodstock, Cape Town factory that first made Mrs. Balls’s chutney, opened in 1917.
I am using Adobe Premiere Elements*, to cut up and make .mp4 files of the enormous .VOB files of digitized film & analog video footage that I have, of old family trips. The recordings were shot on film and analog camcorder in the ’70s to early ’90s. My dad had done the digitization many years ago.
I keep the clip lengths to 2-3 minutes.
*Video editing software; the bare-bones basic version of Adobe Premiere Pro.
ON THE PLUS SIDE:
I have three layers of still picture/video and five layers of audio available to work with. That’s a lot.
I have a digital scalpel that I can use to look at, and slice in, between two video frames or a split-second of sound (down to 1/30 of a second).
I can add in titles, and fix the worst quality defects of the video (such as enlarging the projected image slightly, to erase its black border; or adjusting overall lighting & color hue).
IN THE MINUS COLUMN:
The dreaded Adobe .PREL (for ‘preliminary’, I think) files take a long time to load and render, even with my brand-new PC with 16Gb of memory and unlimited hard disk space (6 Tb).
The automatic save every 10 mins stopped me dead in my tracks for 2 mins at a time. I changed it to 20 mins. (Cancel it, and you risk losing a lot of work).
DO NOT mess around with moving files or renaming them. Adobe does not like that, and will give you a ‘Media Pending’ message or black screen, the next time you pull up your .PREL file.
Here are a few stills from a 3 minute clip of scenes at Victoria Falls, 1975 in then-Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
I ran out to Walmart in Factoria to go look for All Bran Buds today, but no luck. (All the stores here in the city seem to be out of it. Amazon has none, unless you want to pay $10 or $15 per box, from sellers in Canada!).
I almost bought a LEGO set at Walmart, but they lock them up in a display case, and the store assistant was swamped with four other shoppers.
I noticed tonight that the dozen or so tents that had been in Seven Hills Park on 16th Ave and Howell, are gone. (Probably have been for a while).
I hope our new mayor (Mayor Bruce Harrell) is making headway with his plans to get homeless people out of the parks and green spaces and into shelters or homes.
It is an intractable problem. (In computer science, these are problems for which there exist no efficient algorithms to solve them).
A count from 2020 showed that our city of 750,000 people have some 11,700 homeless among us (half of which are in shelters or in emergency housing, and the other half unsheltered on the street or in tents and such).
The Dick’s Drive-in burger joint on Broadway is not open yet.
It was a proper spring day here in the city with 63 °F (17 °C), and I had to take off my jacket and drape it over my arm, as I walked back up the hill from Broadway today.
I bought some Red Anjou pears at Amazon Fresh. They are not nearly as red as ones I see in pictures online, but that’s OK. They taste fine.
My favorite pear is still the famous bell-shaped Bartlett pears, though.
(Also called Williams’ bon chrétien pear. The origins of this pear is uncertain).
My mom served up for canned Bartlett pears with custard, as a quick dessert.
We had rainy weather and only 46 °F (8 °C) today, but the blossoms that have arrived with spring, are beautiful.
There is a Pallas’ cat in this picture.
From Wikipedia: The Pallas’s cat (Otocolobus manul), also known as the manul, is a small wild cat with long and dense light grey fur.
Its rounded ears are set low on the sides of the head.
The men’s semifinals of the Indian Wells Masters tomorrow will be very interesting.
Semifinal 1: 🇪🇸 vs. 🇪🇸
Semifinal 2: 🇺🇸 vs. [the country that shall not be named]
Specifically,
19* 🇪🇸 Carlos Alcaraz (age 18) vs. 4 🇪🇸 Rafael Nadal (age 35)
20 🇺🇸 Taylor Fritz (age 24) vs. 7 Andrey Rublev (age 24)
*This is the seed number for the player for the tournament.
On paper, the player with the lower seed number is favored to win.
May the best man win as far as the Spaniards go, and go USA!
We don’t want a Russian to win. Not this year, anyway.
Sat 3/19: Fritz won 7-5, 6-4, and Nadal won 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.
Sun 3/20: Taylor Fritz beat Nadal 6-3, 7-6 (7-5), the first American to win there since 2001.
Last night we had little chocolate cones after our beers and dinner.
The chocolate comes from Ukraine.
(Thanks to Ken & Steve for finding the intriguing chocolates!).
Inflation rose to 7.9% in February, the highest rate since 1982. It is still well below the peak of 14.6% in 1980. The Federal Reserve Board raised its benchmark interest rate by 0.25%, and will almost certainly raise it several more times this year, to bring inflation under control.
Jeanna Smialek writes in the New York Times of what happened in the early ’80s:
Mr. Volcker’s Fed rolled out policies that pushed a key short-term interest rate to nearly 20 percent and sent unemployment soaring to nearly 11 percent in 1981. Car dealers mailed the Fed keys from unsold vehicles, builders sent two-by-fours from unbuilt houses and farmers drove tractors around the Fed building in Washington in protest. But the approach worked, killing off the rapid price inflation that had festered throughout the 1970s.
So on Tuesday, with almost no warning and no debate, the Senate unanimously passed legislation to do away with the biannual springing forward and falling back that most Americans have come to despise, in favor of making daylight saving time permanent. The bill’s fate in the House was not immediately clear, but if the legislation were to pass there and be signed by President Biden, it would take effect in November 2023.
– From the New York Times
