This is on the YouTube app on our Apple TV at the moment. Severe weather in New Zealand shows up under “Television comedy and more”.

???

Stay safe out there (and don’t forget to laugh at the awful weather).

#YouTube #weather #nz

I bused into the city and learned about the nationwide ban in NZ on bikes on bus bike racks. I'm reading about it now. The NZ Transport Agency surprised everyone by declaring this unsafe in November.

It's great to know that when the NZTA identifies a safety concern on our roads, it acts swiftly to shut it down regardless of inconvenience to commuters.

I assume that giant SUVs will be next, and NZTA's plans to increase speed limits will now be shelved.

https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/03-12-2024/why-cant-bikes-go-on-buses-in-new-zealand

#bikes #buses #nz

Since June 2021 I've had an #AudioMoth constantly recording bird song in our garden from 2 hours before sunrise to 2 hours after sunset. Over the past months I've been using #BirdNet to identify all the bird species.

Today I've managed to spit out my first graphs. I'm excited to finally see results so wanted to share them. There's all sorts of things happening.

Next I'll be comparing these automated patterns with all the counts I make manually.

#birds #EcologicalMonitoring #nz #garden

nostr:npub1x66kkxv0au04p28l3ch40jrz3g6s0jlre255rpt7yu3sglf0ewfqfz342y What amazing looking birds these are! https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/117070-Prionops-plumatus

nostr:npub1trdnqrfstufc45awha43p6xy2n0v6czuhapzh4r09hap08dg0c6s9gussx nostr:npub1xes9xt8aw0lzfy0efa6eq30k9sjx5yac50fgfuu6l6ryl80vfdyqjxsfk6

b) reforestation gets some carbon back where we want it (in biomass, soils etc), and reduces emissions from degraded areas. So even where it's viable, we don't have the luxury of time to wait for natural regeneration.

For the same amount of a money, you can regenerate *much* more land into native forest than plant it, in landscapes that still have some native forest to act as seed sources. Still, yes, it’s all very case and context dependent.

nostr:npub1tdjprtq7kape7xtc383q945y3qmt9cjcqvunxzx68pakup8w5x3qv4cvf4 yes, there’s quite a bit of LIDAR data from across Canterbury: https://koordinates.com/data/?q=Lidar+Canterbury.

If you’re interested in having a go at this in R, perhaps we can get together and share code, I’ve got quite a bit of ground-based biodiversity data form across wider Christchurch, that I expect could be explained by the cover and height of vegetation that could be extracted from LIDAR data. I haven’t got around to trying that yet but it’s on my to-do list.

nostr:npub1254h9q2q3ulf2y2lqa5jfq8nc8s6aafm660l7lw0kxayd2kn5l7qdjte0y amazing!

nostr:npub1wxlqxzv3jncx490jf97k5zl2c8w4705xmannzg25wdst3jygznqspl7l0n “Probably the most important thing is to have a messy yard,” Grames counsels.

#BiodiverseGarden

nostr:npub1amh2kw0pkdkj7nzgm0p9jveymsdas58angcjuf06cagmak06e43sxdcs86 😀 Well, at least the vampire dimension plays a small side role in this story. I enjoy how well thought out and connected the Robo stories are across volumes (eg the surprise reappearance of Rex Cannon).

nostr:npub147m8ln06x5przpjyq3jvxr7ydhhf9lq6zeqff6qq73qsyg6p4l6q6q7rue The first half looks like a nuclear bomb exploding over the horizon. Cue ominous music.

nostr:npub1amh2kw0pkdkj7nzgm0p9jveymsdas58angcjuf06cagmak06e43sxdcs86 While it doesn't include Dracula, I do recommend Nikola Tesla and his atomic robot battling Thomas Edison in "Atomic Robo and the Deadly Art of Science".

It may not be exactly historically accurate.

Also, vampires make a cameo.

https://www.atomic-robo.com/atomicrobo/v5ch1-cover

#AtomicRobo #comics #science

nostr:npub1ykt9wc4rm4cvk44xptk8kk0lykxp0xlcecpuzalqcs4agc8fqcdsaleq5u nostr:npub1c0tlqxv5uqjj6fq9hd4n38qrgz0wxxagnzfjwnzsle0zrx0u2kvqldv7hu Fair enough. I know many people still have a high opinion of Excel. If everything you do is all inside one version of Excel, you can get by.

The Excel equivalent of Word's shifting images is dates. I don't trust Excel to store dates, or data that looks remotely like dates.

I was tidying up my office last week and came across a note that I had on my university office wall. I still encounter postgrad student spreadsheets with corrupted date cells in Excel.

Peter Bellingham from #ManaakiWhenua, NZ's environmental research institute, is working with Dept. of Conservation & Ministry for the Environment on #BiodiversityMonitoring in #NZ, to meet our global commitments to reduce #biodiversity loss.

In a seminar, Peter noted we need national environmental monitoring standards and funding. "Long-term monitoring is not well supported in this country." "We've been in the business of opportunistic cobbling together of data for some time."

nostr:npub1fhawqey7c9jrs48d27dggwm0kvg9ufxl07227ue5dfx9mhy7mdgs993ru0 Absolutely. If a weed is new to and area and rare, take the time to pull it out there and then.

nostr:npub1xrrt2jpk5j7c0k5hfjd54tte823qh823gmzjfh99qkhrr0kdy5asm9nftg My sister had something similar happen on her new iPhone. Songs that said they'd been downloaded from Apple Music wouldn't play offline. In the end all she needed to do was download one new song and it all started working. Weird.

Apple Music wrecked my library once too and I don't trust it. My ears spend most of their time listing to ripped/purchased music loaded onto the VLC app on my iPhone (the way iTunes used to work), or streaming new mixes with the SoundCloud app.

nostr:npub12nm5cjxe4t7ldf0fflvujmawt0p83yjzl6v09ynw7v79dvlf6s2qmwwh2s I know. Incredible!

nostr:npub1pu5j6hplxd7q389w0phrr8ngyz5wyyugj9fay3vhfafdx5fsu53q02nue8 That's a new one. Surprisingly, it doesn't actually sounds too bad. I might give it a try next time we have bananas.

nostr:npub1e355ckyvm0h0nhga6dxyve8wg4e8ydf9mycyj7u2nuyfdj5wa03q82tjl6 That reminds me of this article I read about John Lubbock’s pet wasp. Sir John Lubbock (1834-1913), the first Lord Avebury, was a banker, politician, naturalist and Trustee of the Natural History Museum, and from 1872 to 1873, he kept a pet wasp.

"Gradually she became quite used to me, and when I took her on my hand, apparently expected to be fed. She even allowed me to stroke her without any appearance of fear, and for some months I never saw her sting.”

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus/blogs/behind-the-scenes/2014/11/27/specimen-of-the-month-13-a-wasp-of-some-renown.html

This is the weeping mapou, Myrsine divaricata, a tall shrub that has downwards curved branches that make it look kinda' like a frozen waterfall.

https://inaturalist.nz/observations/176568590

#flowers #nz

nostr:npub1xes9xt8aw0lzfy0efa6eq30k9sjx5yac50fgfuu6l6ryl80vfdyqjxsfk6 “No other pets are allowed free access to other people’s property.”

That’s a good article on what must be an unpopular topic in NZ. Pet cats have long had free rein to go wherever they want. It would certainly be good for birds and lizards in NZ cities if there was a gradual shift away from that. Plenty of other countries do it to some degree so we know it’s possible. There just needs to be national leadership and a fair transition.