Welcome to this week’s casual kōrero thread!
This post will be pinned in this community so you can always find it, and will stay for about a week until replaced by the next one.
It’s for talking about anything that might not justify a full post. For example:
- Something interesting that happened to you
- Something humourous that happened to you
- Something frustrating that happened to you
- A quick question
- A request for recommendations
- Pictures of your pet
- A picture of a cloud that kind of looks like an elephant
- Anything else, there are no rules (except the rule)
So how’s it going?
Hi everyone, hope you’re all well.
Have been enjoying the lack of heat in the North Island this summer. For those of us who can’t thermoregulate properly, it’s very relaxing!
In backyard news, the swan plants are huge but not seeing much action, and the lemon tree has somehow survived having 2/3 of its limbs cut off.
Great to hear you’re well! When do the caterpillars come for the swan plants?
Thanks! Been a bit of a weird year but starting to feel improvements, fingers crossed. Was glad to come here and see you guys!
I should be starting to see caterpillars by now. January is the peak laying month and eggs hatch in 1 or 2 weeks. I’m not sure why there are fewer butterflies; something might have affected the overwintering ones. Will have to have a better look though.
On the plus side last spring there were cinerarias here and some lovely magpie moths.
Do you normally cover some of the swan plants to limit the caterpillars so there’s enough food to go around? Maybe that isn’t necessary if there are less butterflies?
I think people do that if their plants are small? Usually where I live there are a couple of big plants on the go (over 2 m high) from year to year, so if I see any caterpillars trying to eat seedlings I ferry them over to those.
I’m not actually the owner of the garden, and the plants are self-sown, so it’s all a bit random. If I ever win lotto the butterflies, birds, and bees can have a whole garden of stuff though.
Haha OK I guess it would be a bit tricky to keep the butterflies off a 2m high plant. Seems like your caterpillars are living in a post-scarcity society 🙂
Its sort of post apocalyptic, there aren’t nearly as many plants as I would like but the ones we do have are huge and there’s hardly anyone on them yet!
Well lucky for the ones that do get a go at the feast! You’ll probably have some very fat caterpillars
Currently working on my PhD thesis which is due at the end of the month. I’m cutting it quite close but if everything goes according to plan I should have it all done on time.
Awesome, you’re on the final stretch! Remember to hydrate!
Thanks, will do 🫡
That’s great! Is it too personal to ask what your PhD is in? I see you have some info on your website, I assume your PhD is not “writing a new programming language” but rather something that your new language pushes the boundries on?
Thanks. The type system of the language has some interesting novelty but my key research area is automatic parallelisation of code written in that language.
Ooh interesting, is that something that exists in some form in other languages or is it an entirely new concept?
There’s a spectrum of how automatic things get in different languages but there’s the issue of making it an unobservable optimisation, and also making it not over parallelise. There are lots of interesting approaches in academia but nothing really in mainstream languages and nothing that definitively solves the problem. That being said, I also do not solve the problem lol, I just offer a potential direction that could.
That sounds really cool but I don’t know enough to ask more questions haha. Good luck getting it done!
Thanks!
So there I was, in The Warehouse, and there was a big rack of Oreo flavoured coke with a deep discount, down to 50c a can.
I looked at it and thought “that sounds terrible!”. And since they had to sell it for 50c when the original price was $1.50/can this discount to get rid of it backed up my assumption that it would be terrible.
With evidence to back up my hypothesis, I had to devise an experiment to confirm it.
So I bought one, and it was terrible. I’m not even sure how it was supposed to taste like Oreos. It reminded me of something but I’m not sure what.
Anyway, the end. That’s the whole story, sorry i didn’t have anything more exciting to say 😅
I tried some at a party, to me it tastes like someone dropped a whole oreo sleeve into a coke and then filtered the oreo chunks out: so basically coke + the soluble parts of an oreo, which is mostly sugar.
I honestly didn’t get Oreo vibes from it (I was drinking it room temp, not sure if that matters). But as someone else pointed out, it’s reminiscent of vanilla coke that I don’t like, so probably not a good tester.
Maybe there’s some ingredient that only some people can taste thats in vanilla and oreo coke that’s overwhelming any other flavours.
I think it’s in my head. I was introduced to spiced rum recently. Drinking a couple with coke, yum yum, then my wife mentioned “it’s a bit like vanilla coke”. Suddenly I realise she’s right, and now I don’t like it anymore 😅. All in my head.
I kind of like Oreo coke. Kind of like a coke vanilla but a bit sweeter?
Oh shit is that it? I never liked vanilla coke, maybe that’s what I didn’t like about it.
