As you can see when you zoom in, most of the duckweed is white and dead.
I’ve been keeping fish and frog ponds for about fifteen years and I’ve never had such a wholesale dieback that even the duckweed carked it.
The feathery green plant seems okay so far. Fingers crossed that they make it. And, I hope that both the Azolla waterfern and the duckweed have left spores and seeds behind, that hopefully will sprout when we leave winter behind.
While you are zoomed in you may be able to spot the two remaing fish. Though they look like leprosy warmed up in the photo, in their analogue state they‘re stockier than they were, but at least still alive.
I moved their habitat back under the outdoor light, in the hope that that gives the plants enough light to survive until I get my grow lights. An added bonus is that I can sometimes see the fish flitting about from inside my living room.
Having a good night’s sleep often helps me to ‘think’ things through, with that kind of thinking being done in the unconscious. So while sitting down for breakfast this morning and checking the weather and my mail, I also checked how my latest blog post appears to people reading it on the their mobiles/cell phones or tablets.
First there are the four lines below: Title, Author, Categories and Date & Reading Time
Then the BLOG CONTENT, arguably the meat of the meal. My stats page tells me 8/10ths of people read just the email and they have the opportunity to Comment and or Like. Eight tenths of the time I do the same. Most mornings I have time to read things, but not comment.
People who click through and read on the Reader interestingly get the Tags in a header at the top. Nobody else does. Clicking through and reading on the Blog gets you the following list of additional bits and pieces.
Share this and Likes, another important bit. Then, Related posts. Then Tags, I was surprised to see. Then, the Published by … and About Me paragraph, followed by Leave a Comment. Finally, one after the other, the three new widgets. First the Search Box, followed by the mashed up Categories list and, finally, Recent Posts.
A lot of superfluous stuff in that list that I doubt anyone will read. One thing I dislike about the internet in the last 3 or 5 years … the amount of bloat and padding a reader needs to negotiate their way through!
It’s as if since no one is accountable for the amount of web-space being used … like we have vast distances of free geography to fill up and never mind the amount of electricity needed for cooling towers … and 3000 words looks far more impressive then 1500 words … repetition and padding are the new normal.
I grew up when paper newspapers and magazines were the go, when every inch of print had to be paid for, and flab, repetition and padding were cut ruthlessly. It seems to me we need to renew that contract. To save on cooling towers and save readers.
So. This is what’s going to happen. Starting at the end of my list, Recent posts is gone, as they are more or less taken care of in the Related Posts item. The list of Categories is gone, as the categories pertaining to that post are covered in the third line of the title block, and they are more useful to me in their nested format in settings.
While the Search Box is useful, I don’t know how useful it’ll be where it is. Wait and see is the go with that item. Then there’s Leave a Comment. I’m leaving that where it is.
Then, Published by … and About Me is starting to look rather jaded. It’s up for a make-over. Tags are said to be important but I often suspect the post’s title and categories are doing the grunt work. I might be able streamline Tags … they are a work in progress. Related Posts, ShareThis and Likes are all to stay.
Blog appearance has changed and hopefully, as a result, usability has improved.
Not like these Lego stairs. This is Tim working on them, he needs to transform the treads from three-tiles-high to two-tiles-high to improve usability.
After studying all the themes available and making notes on just one possible, had another look at my present theme … Independent Publisher 2 by Raam Dev … and discovered that it allowed me to insert the three widgets I wanted. I thanked Raam Dev and my lucky stars.
Over the years and on the various different blogs I’ve been involved in, I have tried quite a few themes. This one is my favorite and so I was glad I could hang on to it.
I’ve tried to do things a little like Tim is doing to his staircase, in the example above, to make this blog more user-friendly. For instance, by adding a search box to help find installments of the novels, and for me being able to find quickly if I have already posted up such-and-such story. I looked for Amble and did not find him other than a mention in another story. But that’s all right, he’ll keep.
I’ve cleaned up Categories. And oh boy, the list was endless. It needed me seeing the list in total to realize how unwieldy it had become. But what I’ve just noticed is that the new list of categories has mixed and matched subcategories as though they all have the same value. I’ll rejig that sometime, maybe tomorrow. I’ll also need to clean up the list of tags. I have 34!pages of tags. Tomorrow is a better day for that job, too.
Last is the widget for the five last posts. I don’t know how useful that is. Let me what you think? maybe I’ll replace it with a tag cloud.
Walter Taylor Bridge, one of the many bridges across the Brisbane River. This one joining Chelmer on the southwest side to Indooroopilly on the northwest side.
I travelled 18 kilometres to Indooroopilly to finally have my hearing aid fixed. Eighteen kilometres that costs $55 and about forty minutes in a cab.
18 kilometres back again for an unknown amount on my senior’s Go-Card, but not more than about ten dollars, and two and a half to three hours by train, shank’s pony and bus.
I paid the cab fare on the way out there because I wanted to see how far along the roadworks had got. These the works relating to the new underground railway station and new railway tunnel under the river. It’s astounding how much of that work has to be done top-side. Made up for the cab fare by not spending anything on lunch.
On the way home, walked to the railway station—saw that nice piece of vintage infrastructure above—and waited at the station. Twenty minutes gone.
Roma Street Station still—by now it’s probably been five years of mess—at sixes and sevens due to the changes being made. But managed to find a human ticketing dispenser and was able to exchange my blue Go-Card for a brown seniors’ card. Forty five minutes at Roma Street.
Roma Street so frustrating in the end, I thought I might as well shank’s pony again (ie walk) to King George Bus Station and catch my ride home from there.
Sat down for a lunch snack and drink at 12 noon, just in time for this …
Post Office tower and how tiny it now looks! A short carrilion in keeping with the hour.
The bus 222 home to Carindale, a total of 4005 steps as well as all the other mileages. Left home at 10.00 am, got back at 1.30ish pm. Worth it?
Oh yeah! I can hear again. Missed listening to music, hearing phonecalls properly, not being surprised by squealing laughter, and birds … I can hear birds again!
You’d think there would be nothing new left to discover, but you would be wrong. Yesterday, while checking the height of the powerpoint above the fridge, I found a tap!
Tap? (Faucet I think you say in the US) But a tap up there? This is in the kitchen, in the place/gap left for a refrigerator?
No, wait. Some fridges come with ice-machines, I suppose they need a water supply.
And I suppose by giving residents these little luxuries, the designers and owners thought they could pull the wool over their residents’ eyes where ventilation is concerned.
Ventilation is a problem. In this apartment, the laundry is in a cupboard along the middle of the corridor. At one end of the corridor is the master bedroom and adjacent bathroom, and at the other end is the multi purpose room and so-called powder room. All three wet areas are provided with a ceiling fan.
The impending trouble is mold. Already there is often a smell of it in the laundry. I’m probably meant to run the laundry fan 24/7 but it’s noisy and uses a lot of electricity.
There is a Dry cycle on the aircon that I’ve used once, which is something to test out further. I’d like to know, though, whether and how the air in the apartment circulates? (I might wend to renew.com.au later to find out more about that.)
There are aircon vents and overhead vaned fans in the main room, the bedroom and the MPR. There’s no aircon vent in the corridor and it’s only possible to isolate the main room. The obvious solution is to run the aircon in the whole house to ventilate the corridor.
Without being sure that that will send air into the laundry. Because the laundry doors are bifold. Leave them closed for style and beauty? Leave them open for utility and inconvenience as they protrude into the corridor? Still can’t be sure. Air flow around obstacles is a mystery.
I’m seriously thinking about hiring a shed in the shed room, taking the laundry doors off and storing them in the shed.
A thing I’ve been experimenting with is turning remaindered practice paintings into little books … seeing if judicious ‘analogue’ cutting and pasting can transform random images.
There was a left to right movement in this scrap … the two pages bound by ribbon had to stay loose from one another (ie not glued) or the whole booklet would’ve buckled.
Where are we? Help! I’m sliding … Uh oh where are we? Some kind of underworld?
is that a golden gate I see in the distance?. Maybe we can get there crawling …Turn the corner, quick …
In and out of the trees, I don’t feel safe in amongst all the vegetation. What’s all that gold doing to us?
Told you we changed. Let’s go already, it’s the wide blue yonder.
Rita de Heer 