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March
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January
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Twit out
On March 24, 2009, I wrote my first tweet. Over 13 thousand tweets followed. I’ve been on this page a lot and met many friends on Twitter. Today, I deactivated my account.
After the takeover, many people I’ve followed for a long time stopped tweeting or disappeared. He is spreading hate and is embracing the far-right, there isn’t even a discussion about it anymore. He is now sending his troll army to attack former employees. I don’t want to support any of this anymore. My voice doesn’t matter, but I can stop giving my attention and advertising views.
I’ve taken breaks from Twitter before, but this time I hope it will be final. I will have to delete this post if I get back on it.
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Is this still on?
Knock knock. Hello? Is this still on? It’s dusty and dark in here.
Kirkibost is a little uninhabited island behind our house. I’ve never been over until yesterday, but when our neighbours Conor and Katy asked, if we’re up for a walk, we said yes. When low tide is at it’s lowest, it’s fairly easy to walk over and cross the stream. It didn’t exactly work out unfortunately, but Conor and I made it over, we just had to swim a few meters.
Usually undisturbed from humans, Kirkibost has lot’s of nesting birds. We were very careful not to step on eggs or even chicks. These common gull chicks were very cute.
We are still in full lockdown mode (because the UK is truly terrible at dealing with this thing), but at least now we are allowed to meet people from other households outside.
Yesterday, we met our friends with their two dogs for a walk on the beach.
I wish the autofocus on my camera was faster and better. One day, I will upgrade to a newer model with animal eye autofocus. In the mean time, I’m taking slightly out of focus photos of dogs.
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Always watching
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May
Fitness wise, May was not too bad for me. The Apple activity app says I spent 23.5 hours working out, burning 9500 active calories. That’s better than April and March, but not as good as January and February. I found a good balance between work and working out – without going to the gym, of course.
Compared to pre-lockdown, the active calories are quite a bit down. I think that’s mostly because I’m not able to use a cross-trainer, and I don’t really like running outside at the moment.
In the field behind the house some arctic terns are nesting. When we go for a walk in the bay, they show up flying overhead, checking if we are potentially dangerous. I tried to take a couple of photos, but these birds are fast. But I got this one.
Alternative titles: An interesting tern of events, u-tern, tern up for the books, Tina Terner, thanks for terning up.
Sorry for two bird-related posts in a row, I’ll make sure that it will take a tern for the better.
This morning, I opened the front door just to find a very young bird sitting right in front of it. I stared at it, it stared back at me. The starlings living in our roof and around our house have finally hatched. And not only starlings, I also saw other kinds of birds. In general, it feels like there are more different birds in the garden this year. My camera is locked and loaded to shoot some birds.
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Two years
Happy anniversary to us. I can’t believe it’s been two years already. I love you.
We had very clear skies earlier this month (or in April? I honestly can’t remember) and I’ve witnessed a couple of Starlink train passes, which got me thinking.
In case you don’t know, Starlink satellites are small, fridge-sized, satellites, launched by Space X. A couple of 🚀 launches happened in April, with each a few dozen satellites on board. After deployment, they travel quite close together in a low path to their final orbit. During that, they are visible by naked eye which it can be quite fascinating. Although I find it interesting, the consequences could be very bad once all 42.000 (!!) satellites are flying around the earth. This video from Alyn explains the situation very well:
I understand that Space X is trying to solve this problem with sunshades, that theoretically make them less visible. But we won’t know if that works until the next launch some time soon.
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Energy level during a slow day
On some days, I just don‘t really wake up. It‘s grey, windy and rainy outside and I spend most of the day working on my desk. But when I finally manage to work out, my energy level spikes. Here is an illustration:
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The deer photo
I posted this photo on my Instagram today, and I really like it. But truth be told – I took it out of my car window with very little effort. So many deer photos from Scotland on Instagram are taken in Glencoe, more specific in Glen Etive, a beautiful valley near Fort William. Because of the many visitors, the deer are used to humans, staring at them – or worse, feeding them, which is obviously bad.
On our little island, I haven’t managed to take a photo like this. The deer here are very shy and run away as soon as they spot you. Although they do regularly come to our garden at night.
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#ReleaseTheSnyderCut
This is fascinating to me but probably quite boring for most people. To bring you up to speed: The movie Justice League came out in 2017, and it was bad. Like really, really bad. What happened was, Zack Snyder, who directed Man of Steel and Batman v Superman started filming Justice League and had to leave the movie due to a family drama. Joss Wheadon (who directed some of the Avengers movies and many other things) came in to finish the movie. But for whatever reason, a lot got changed. The script got partly rewritten and many scenes got reshot, which is often quite visible in the final film. The complete tone of the film was changed, too. While Man of Steel and Batman v Superman took themselves very serious, JL had many Avenger-esque one liner jokes. The colour palette changed very noticeable from dark to bright and vibrant. The final battle in the trailers was dark and blue-ish, in the final film everything was bright red. There are great videos on YouTube with lots of in-depts comparisons.
Ok, so. Over the last couple of years, now and then, rumours came up that there is indeed a cut of the movie from the time Zack Snyder left, and fans wanted to see it. Zack Snyder himself kept posting hints and photos on his Vero profile (is he the only person left using Vero?).
In the last few months, the voices got louder and louder. Some of the actors itself posted the Hashtag #ReleaseTheSnyderCut, and it trended every now and then on Twitter.
In my opinion Man of Steel was an only-okay movie. Batman v Superman wasn’t very good either, but the directors cut actually was a bit better and explained a few plot holes. So why are people going crazy about Justice League? Will it be better than what we got in 2017? We will see! It’s now officially confirmed that it will be released in 2021, possibly as a mini series and not as a four hour long movie.
Yes, I want to see Justice League as Zack Snyder wanted to make it, but I don’t think it will be THE BEST MOVIE IN THE WORLD. So why am I so fascinated with it? Outcries happen all the time, but this time, the internet won. Crazy fandom won, and Warner Bros will spend $20m more on a movie that wasn’t financially successful.
We live in a world of polarities, and this ruckus* is no exception. There is no room for nuance. You can love Zack Snyder or you are a Marvel fanboy. You either love Tesla and Elon Musk or you hate electric vehicles. One wrong turn on twitter and you are in the middle of a fandom war.
* it took me 20 minutes on thesaurus.com to find the right word
To prove my fandom, here is a 25 year old photo of me as Batman.
Today, we had a good weather window and the tide was very low, too. Perfect conditions for a quick dip in this beautiful, natural pool.
Enjoy this little photo set.
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Weather apps
Weather in the Hebrides is a big part of life out here, especially the wind. It’s basically always windy. When the wind drops, it’s such a relief. The insulation in our little house is not great and you can feel a draft coming in a lot of the time. Sounds worse than it actually is, really.
Anyways, I’m always looking out for good weather apps, and I’m not happy with what we’ve got.
XCWeather
I can’t even download the actual app – it’s only available in the UK AppStore, but my account is linked to the German store. That doesn’t really matter, the app is just a wrapper for the web version. It’s apparently the best weather information source for our region.
What I like is that the wind and gust informations are very prominent. Unfortunately, website and app are very barebones. It looks just ugly. And of course no iOS or watchOS features like notifications or widgets.
Windfinder
My favourite app to see the wind direction and speed, including gusts. The map view is nicely animated and can show various information, including two different wind forecast models.
Really helpful are the customisable wind alerts. I have an alert for all winds above 50mp from south-east to south-west as that the direction with the most powerful storms, and our house is very exposed from this direction.
I’m only missing an Apple Watch complication.
Tide Pro
When going out for a swim in the sea or a walk in the bay, it’s good to know detailed information about the tide. Tide Pro is the best app I found for that, unfortunately the Apple Watch complication isn’t very pretty.