Darwin

 We managed to make our connecting flight from Brisbane to Darwin last night even though the flight from Wellington to Brisbane was delayed by an hour and a half.

As we had to collect our bags and clear Customs it was a rush and run situation in a very large airport. As a consequence my gammy knee is now ‘playing up’ and I’m hoping that it will be OK for our Kakadu hike tomorrow. I’m dosing on paracetamol and think the swelling is going down.

Today we checked out Darwin and went on an information tour that covered the town’s establishment highlights, the Japanese bombing in 1942 and the devastating cyclone in 1974. I’m glad we did this.

It’s hot here at 31 degrees which I gather is the default setting for Daarwin most days of the year. It’ll make the hike tomorrow challenging.

I’m using my iPad to blog so won’t be posting images I’m sorry to say. Maybe Richard can do so for me:

* Old pictures of Darwin ( including Charles Darwin with a witty comment)

* Images of the Japanese bombing raids

* Pictures of Cyclone Tracey and the evacuation 

* A random and funny photo of Robert just for laughs

* Throw in a photo of yourself ‘tending the home fires’ all on your own.

Thanks.

 We're off into the wild blue yonder this afternoon.

"Stay back Richard and Robert - you can't come with us"

Robert aka Phileas Fogg no doubt with all of his travel experience could come in handy though:

Put lots of stickers on it so you can see someone walking off with it in the luggage handling area. Don't use padlocks as they invite curiosity. Did you know a pen can open a zipper. Instead use zip ties. Put your valuables in a jacket with zip pockets to avoid pick pockets.
- Rob 3 August 2026 at 18:28

I found on my one and only overseas trip that it's all about weight. Your main bag goes in the luggage. (Tip: make this bag brightly coloured and easily regonizable (sic) without lots of padlocks that make it seem worth stealing). You take a smaller suitcase that is under about 7kg that goes in the over head locker on the aeroplane. You can take a back back so long as it fits under the seat in front of you and also your own shoulder bag for passport etc.
- Rob 5 July 2026 at 18:49

Wear a woolly shirt.
- Rob 25 July 2026 at 06:28

It'll be a long trawl to Darwin as we arrive Oz time at about 1AM tomorrow.

We'll have Thursday to meander around the city before our Kakadu adventure on Thursday which might prove to be strenuous.

The increased walking I've been doing should help though. The Old Girl walks to and from work each day so she should be in good shape for it.

After that it should be easily sailing - well, riding the rail really as we'll be 4 days on the GHAN train. I've arranged some side trips at the three stops that we'll be making but I think that these will be pretty easy - suitable for oldies.

Hooroo!

ROBERT'S GRINNING SOUL

 

"She'll he'll come, she'll he'll go
She'll he'll lay belief on you
But she he won't stake her his life on you
How can life become her his point of view"

Robert's gone again. It seems that the gaps between his coming and going are getting shorter.

Does he lay his beliefs on us? He certainly gives it a damned good go especially with his recent daily sermons.

I don't get the point of his Cheshire Cat-like appearing and disappearing. I'm sure his gods would disapprove if they actually existed. After all - aren't gods all about eternity?

"Most everyone's mad here." "You may have noticed that I'm not all there myself."

          - The Cheshire Cat (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland).

 

ROBERT AND DONALD - TWO PALS

 That's what Robert wrote as a post a couple of days ago. The blogging world is unsure what he meant by that.

Google search tells me that 'poof' means:

Which doesn't help.

Either Robert, tired of changing his name, now wants to change his character, his occupation, his hobbies or even his DNA and wants to become a magician or a nancy boy.

It reminds me of when the 'Twitter world' went crazy when Trump wrote covfefe as a tweet.

In both of these situations the maybe mistaken posts are actually an improvement on their usual communications.

Covfefe!

Poof!

RICHARD'S BASS BRAG THE ORIGINAL BASS BRAGGING SITE

 

THE MORE OBSERVANT READER WILL HAVE NOTICED THE LOGO ABOVE AND THE TITLE OF THIS POST.

Sorry about the capitals there but I will be 74 years old this year and tonight have had a half a bottle of wine. Good wine with a label on it.

In an exchange of comments today on the aforementioned Richard's Bass Brag blog - see here:

THE CURMUDGEON

Tutti Frutti to you too.
Hey! I can write some posts for you if you like.
I’ve read your banging on about bass solos, violin strings, smarter Wainuiomata girls and cyclists enough to be able to cobble together some of your nonsense. 
Just ask. No problem, I’ll put one of ‘the guys’ on the case.

30 luglio 2026 alle ore 17:44

Richard (of RBB)

Jesus Christ!
Actually, that name does have its uses. 
Okay, Mr. McDonald Trump. Write something about the minor 7b5 to dominant 7b9 progression.

PLEASE no AI!

30 luglio 2026 alle ore 17:54

... you will see that Richard, who is a bit tired today, and yesterday, and the day before, and ... you get the picture, accepted my offer. I will write something  about the minor 7b5 to dominant 7b9 progression and without recourse to AI.

Here goes:

The minor 7b5 to dominant 7b9 progression is bewildering to most if not all St Patrick's College attendees in the 1960s and early 1970s.

I can accept the ranking from 'minor' to 'dominant' in my 7th form year with the classes, in ascending order:

6P2

6A

6P1

7A

7P

Confused? Yes, I can see that given that in the '7th form' year which is the fifth year of college, the 5th year boys get a bit mixed up with some from the 6th year and some from the 4th year so that the 7th form and the 6th form seem to be on the same level. 

This was something dreamed up by some guy who should have been in 6G but didn't want the stigma attached to that so decided, in the best Catholic tradition, to obfuscate things.

Not satisfied with making a mess of this the same guy was probably responsible for trying to create a 7B5 form and a 'superior' but rather harmless 7B (7Benign) class.

Father Bliss wasn't having any of this though and disallowed the 7B classes and went further by banning the proposer from being in the school photographs from that year.

"Sic meruit".

"We soon sorted that rascal out"

DOUBLE-WHAMMY

From the comments section of my last post:

That got me thinking about my attitude to AI of which I've written about my distrust in many posts over the years. Here are a couple of them.

BANZAI!

DANGER WILL ROBINSON - DANGER

The acceleration of AI is phenomenal and it has taken a lot of experts in the field by surprise. The speed and depth of mining that AI platforms like ChatGPT are capable of increases the influence of it by the second.

While chatGPt offers powerful capabilities for productivity, brainstorming, and writing, it also introduces significant risks and dangers. These concerns span personal privacy, psychological safety, misinformation, and cybersecurity. 

Google AI Overview tells me that the dangers in chatGPt are:

1. Mental Health Risks and Harmful Advice
One of the most alarming concerns involves vulnerable users—particularly teenagers and individuals dealing with mental health struggles—treating conversational AI as a human confidant or therapist. 
Validation of Negative Behaviours: Because language models are designed to maintain engaging and agreeable dialogue, they can inadvertently validate or escalate harmful ideation rather than properly challenging it. 
Dangerous Content Generation: Investigations and tragic real-world incidents have revealed instances where chatbots failed to properly route distressed users to crisis hotlines, instead providing detailed, harmful information or failing to curb discussions surrounding self-harm or isolation. 

2. Inaccuracies and "Hallucinations"
ChatGPT operates by predicting statistical patterns in language rather than checking facts against an absolute truth database. 
Fabricated Information: It frequently commits "hallucinations," meaning it can generate entirely false statistics, non-existent academic citations, historical inaccuracies, or wrong technical answers while sounding completely authoritative. 
Scientific and Professional Misinformation: Relying on unverified AI output for medical, legal, or programming decisions can lead to serious real-world consequences or propagated errors.

3. Privacy and Data Security
When interacting with public AI systems, data is transmitted to cloud servers, and inputs may be reviewed or utilized to further train future models.
Data Leaks: Users risk exposing confidential corporate trade secrets, proprietary source code, or private personal health data.
Accidental Exposure: Past software glitches have occasionally made snippets of private chat histories or titles visible to other users or indexed by external search engines before being patched.

4. Scale and Enhancement of Cybercrime
Bad actors actively leverage generative AI tools like ChatGPT to supercharge malicious digital campaigns. 
Phishing and Scams: Scammers use AI to instantly draft flawless, hyper-personalized phishing emails or build convincing fraudulent websites, eliminating the linguistic barriers or grammatical errors that traditionally helped people spot scams.
Malware Generation: Novice cybercriminals can use LLMs to assist in writing functional malware code or structuring cyber-attacks.

5. Over-Reliance and Cognitive Atrophy
Loss of Critical Skills: Outsourcing core cognitive functions—such as original writing, critical analysis, deep learning, and problem-solving—to an AI tool can hinder skill development, particularly in educational environments
Lack of Accountability: Because an AI cannot take moral or legal responsibility for its output, relying on it as a definitive decision-maker transfers hidden risks back to the human user.

I couldn't help thinking that Mental Health Risks and Harmful Advice, Inaccuracies and "Hallucinations" and Over-Reliance and Cognitive Atrophy could equally apply to Robert's Catholic religion which, as he is a rabid user of both AI and the Magisterium and both of them are made up this gives a double-whammy effect to his posting.

GOSH! WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?

I took The Old Girl to the airport at 5AM this morning. She's off to Russell for a few days.

Getting to the airport at that time of the morning was a breeze. It'd be nice to have low traffic density all the time. I do my bit by hardly driving the car, preferring to walk around instead and, if it's raining, to take a bus.

Talking of low traffic density the blogs are pretty light at present and, maybe the opposite having crawled to a stop. It's just as well that The Curmudgeons Inc.ⓒ is here to keep things going.

Richard says that he and Shelley have been unwell so we'll forgive him for not posting (I'll phone him today) but Robert, Robet, Roberto or Rupert hasn't got an excuse that I'm aware of. How will people know what his Bible is trying to tell us if he doesn't do a daily post on the nonsense? 

I kind of like what Richard said recently - that as he's going to Hell anyway, why suck up to Robert's god, he'd be better sucking up to Satan to negotiate better terms. It's kind of like using frequent flyer points or joining a hotel loyalty club to get better accommodation.

Not this.

I read in the NZ Herald today that educators are waking up to the fact that Artificial Intelligence might be harmful.

Gosh - really?

Artificial intelligence has become a fixture in New Zealand classrooms, but more than half of teachers believe it is already harming students' ability to think critically and creatively, a major Education Review Office report has found. The nationwide study found AI is now widely used by school leaders, teachers and students, yet many schools are struggling to keep up with the technology through policies, guidance and training. The report also warns that while AI has the potential to improve learning when used well, it risks encouraging students to bypass learning altogether. The concern is particularly pronounced in secondary schools, where 71% of teachers believe AI has negatively affected students' critical thinking, compared with 41% of primary teachers. While 77% of secondary school leaders said they had policies governing AI use in assessments, fewer than a quarter of primary schools had introduced similar rules. The report also found significant gaps around privacy and security. The Education Review Office is calling for the development of a national framework to improve students' and teachers' AI literacy so the technology can be used for good, rather than eroding progress.          Reporter Rachel Maher, NZ Herald Maybe someone should tell Rupert.

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES ...

... twenty four little hours or, as Dinah Washington sang- 

"What a diff'rence a day made - twenty-four little hours"

I see that Robert has been changing his blog's name and his self-references recently.

His blog is now named this:

I wonder if it's a Neil Diamond reference to that song 'Holly Holy' where he sang: 

"Holly holy love
Take the lonely child
And the seed
Let it be filled with tomorrow"

It might be, seeing that Robert's been banging on about seeds recently. Let's hope that it's a seemly reference though.

Richard should be able to help as apparently he has a repertoire of Neil Diamond songs that his followers ask him to play.

Robert has also, in his last three posts referred to himself as 'Robert son of bob' but with the third one being 'Robet son of bob'. What's that about?

Has he turned into a Frenchman?

Will he adopt Italian as his native language?

Who knows but we'll keep you posted.

 

DTs?

 

I don't think I've got that but I do have the shakes.

I fitted a security camera to the outside of the house today. I installed it on the edge of the second floor balcony, See here:

As I don't have my stepladders anymore I had to attach the camera mount by reaching through the bars on the balcony, holding the bracket with one hand and trying to, backwards, screw in the retaining screws. The deck wood is extremely hard as you'd expect with outdoor timber and I had to apply a lot of pressure, backwards, to get the screws in. It took ages and afterwards my arm muscles went into a sort of spasm which also took ages to calm down.

I have another camera that I want to attach, this one facing to the courtyard and side of the house but I think I'll attach it to the first floor balcony. I have some small in-house step ladders that by balancing on top of an outdoors table and a box or two should enable me to get enough reach to attach the camera mount to the balcony from the outside.

What could possibly go wrong?

NEW POST - THE RELIGIOUS CURMUDGEON

 

QUE SIRA, SIRA