Holidays: Canada vs NZ
15 May 2021
I know what’s when in Canada, but things are completely different here. Let’s try to figure it out.
Review: Ice Walker: A Polar Bear's Journey through the Fragile Arctic by James Raffan
9 May 2021
Canadian content! This short work of creative nonfiction follows a bear, Nanu, as she raises her cubs near Churchill Falls (Manitoba) in contemporary times.
That Antipodal Life
5 May 2021
We’ve been in Wellington for the past year and a half (!). It’s never really cold or hot here. How does that compare to Canada?
April: end-of-term slog
3 May 2021
April has overall been a real grind, with an attempted paper submission and now grading. We had one trip to Christchurch, where our planned objective got rained out, but we still did a bunch of elevation gain (though not much distance, which means steep ascents).
Queenstown, Makarora, Wanaka, and not Gillespie
2 Apr 2021
The planned logistics for the Gillespie trip were simple: rent a car, stay at the Wonderland Lodge in Makarora the night before, take a jetboat across the river, walk, and take a jetboat back from Kerin Forks. The jetboat avoids the biggest river crossings. Ironically, the day before we were to go, we got a call saying that there wasn’t enough water to run the jetboat. That’s fine, it should be easy to cross the river in that case.
March: finishing the Tongariro Circuit, climbing trip to Pohara, and hiking Wanaka
1 Apr 2021
Usually by this point we’d be getting close to the end of Winter term (was April 3 in Winter 2020), but we’ve stretched lectures out because of the pandemic (later start, additional scheduled pause, shorter exam period), so we still have 1.5 weeks of class left. I feel like the wheels are starting to fall off at this point, with all sorts of random life things happening to the students in my graduate course. Three trips: back from Tongariro; climbing at Pohara; and hiking around Wanaka.
Book review: The Ethical Algorithm by Kearns and Roth
19 Mar 2021
Again wandering through a Wellington City Library branch, this time I picked up The Ethical Algorithm by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth, from January 2020. It was an easy read for someone with a PhD in Computer Science and a BSc in Math/CS, and I finished it in about two hours. I didn’t pick up that much that was new to me, but I follow developments in this domain as an interested but technically-educated reader.
WLG-NSN
12 Mar 2021
An excellent opportunity to add to the walked-to-airports list! I’d meant to walk to NSN last July, but we actually only flew into that airport after the Heaphy; our flight to the start of the track was replaced by a van ride. Here’s my chance!
February: mostly work, plus Tongariro Northern Circuit
4 Mar 2021
Remote teaching has definitely been grinding along and keeping me busy this past month. The workload has been different for the fourth-year undergraduate course versus the graduate seminar. Aside from teaching and research, there was also returning from the Tuatapere Hump Ridge Track at the very start of the month, the Tongariro Northern Circuit at the end of the month, and the Jumbo Circuit in the middle. No new areas of NZ visited, but did re-visit old locations.
2020 (not travel)
10 Feb 2021
My non-travel retrospective for 2020: work, life goals, and hobbies.
