Category: learning curve

Not now, mystery outbreak of respiratory illness in China

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Lol. It only seems like 4 years ago, we were talking about a mystery outbreak of respiratory illness in China that was alarming the World Health Organisation. And now look at this:

Yep. And if you look back at November 2019, we all thought that we were living in a pretty hectic, messed up world. And we were right.

But wow. Little did we know about what was to come. Suddenly, November 2019 looks a very attractive option destination for my time machine settings. Well, at least compared with November 2023.

But now is not the time to be adding issues to our already overworked, overstressed and overtired lives. So please, China: take your mystery outbreak of respiratory illness and sort it out quickly and efficiently (no! god no! not like that!) so that we can get on with prepping for economic disaster, pre-election violence and the seemingly inevitable outbreak of World War 3.

Happy days!

787 lands at Troll

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In other aircraft news, a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner has become the first 787 and the largest plane ever to land at the Troll Research Station in Antarctica.

This flight came from Cape Town and was carrying supplies and scientific equipment for the Norwegian Polar Institute Base there. And as I write, the aircraft above has just left SA airspace on its way back up to Oslo.

Cape Town is the easiest airport to use for trips to Troll, it being “just” 4350km straight down across the Southern Ocean to the ice runway there, and at this time of year, there are regular flights heading out there from a plethora of different nations. Russia and Iceland being two of the more recent ones I have spotted.

There’s a really good article on FlightRadar24 about how Troll operates here.

And a reminder that you shouldn’t visit Antarctica.
And a further reminder that you can’t afford to anyway.

Trains – now on Uber

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I love a bit of clever advertising. And this is clever advertising. Simple stuff, taking a brand that we all know about and informing us that the range of services it offers is expanding, but keeping it all very familiar as it does so.

You can now book train tickets on Uber in the UK, and Ad Wizards Mother have given us some lovely work to tell us about it:

More on that link above, but I think it’s just very clever the way they have extended the messages we’re used to reading about drivers and cars and simply extended them into trains. It seems both completely normal and a bit alien. And because of that, it feels both comfortable and amusing.

And it’s definitely made a splash, which is surely what they were after.

5 points

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I’m enjoying Series 19 of Only Connect in the few minutes of my spare time at the moment.

Thanks to my daughter’s drawing of a certain bird to get one of her Cubs’ badges, I was able to guess this one after the very first clue:

That’s 5 points to me, while the combined efforts of Jezz, John and Jane didn’t even manage to get the link at all. Can you see it?

I’ll share the answer below.

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That’s a silver-eye, a pink-eye, a black-eye and a red-eye.
I don’t blame you for not getting the bird: I wouldn’t have done if it wasn’t for the drawing, (and shouldn’t that be in italics as a Linnaean name?) but it seems to get fairly simple after that.

Of course, Z.lateralis is the Australasian equivalent of our own Zosterops virens, the Cape White-Eye.
Which would still fit the question.

I tried so hard

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And got so far.

But in the end it doesn’t even matter.

I’ve failed to get my tasks done today. All was going “ok” until about 3pm, when this thing suddenly hit me, like an Eben tackle.

Is it a virus? Is it too much sun? Is it as a result of utilising bipolar, wax-based methods of illumination over the last week?

(Because I have.)

Possibly.

But everything hurts and my temperature homeostasis has fallen completely apart: flinging itself wildly between shaking because I’m too cold and… er… shaking because I’m too hot.

Please contact your chosen Deity soonest, and get Him/Her/Them/It to sort this out.

Thanks in advance.