Whoever says to the guilty, “You are innocent,” will be cursed by peoples and denounced by nations.
Proverbs 24:24, New International Version
A proverb for today
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Rodent-based rainfall metric
I encounter all sorts of weather when cycling to work. For some reason, when it comes to wet weather, I describe the level of wetness on a three part scale based on the liquid effect on rodents – the three levels being ‘damp rat’, ‘soggy rat’, and ‘drowned rat’. (I suspect Mark Maclean and his interest in things found in the drain may have been the inspiration for my metric.)
Both yesterday and today was a ‘soggy rat’ ride.
Hotels of Lambton
Miners’ Arms Hotel, Lambton.
As a follow up from my January 2021 article on the Reservoir Hotel, I have now finished compiling a comprehensive list of Lambton hotels
The aim was to research and document the names, locations, years of operation, and licensees for each of the 22 hotels that operated (or still operates) in the area covered by the Lambton Municipal Council.
Early on in my research, I came across a 1936 newspaper article looking back at Lambton’s history, which closed with the reminiscence of …
“… the flourishing times when the suburb had no fewer than 16 hotels”
Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate, 15 February 1936
Normally I am pretty wary about these kind of summary statements made decades after the fact, but to my surprise, when I had finished my research I found it to be dead accurate – in 1881 Lambton reached a peak of 16 hotels!
A better place
The world feels like a better place now.
Tower tale
The bell tower at All Saints Anew Anglican Church at New Lambton is gone. Major structural defects in the tower posed a significant public safety risk, and it had to be removed.
Day of the bridge
As a follow up to Night of the Bridge, I went across the new shared path bridge over Newcastle Road at Jesmond today, and recorded a time-lapse video.
A new level of survey stupid
I’m not a fan of surveys. As a rule I ignore invitations to participate in a survey, particularly from commercial entities. I have two main objections.
- The asymmetry of work vs reward. If I complete a survey, I’m doing the work, but the business is getting the reward. I lose my time, they gain details to help them make more money.
- Most surveys ask stupid questions.
Like this one, after I recently purchased a Ryobi power tool and registered the product on their website to get an extended warranty period …
Really? On the basis of my experience of using their website, they want to know if I’d recommend their product? The two have the most tenuous of connections. It’s like me asking you …
“Thinking of your recent experience of reading this blog post, how likely are you to recommend me to perform brain surgery on your family and friends?”
| Unlikely | Very likely | |||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
P.S. I was very satisfied with the power tool. Totally unimpressed by the follow up customer survey.
The Covid Cycling Plateau
Here’s a graph of the number of kilometres I’ve ridden my bike while commuting to work over the last 12 years. Can you spot where Covid hit?
I’m posting this because today I reached 20,000km of cycling to work.
