hey @Daveography I was looking over some pictures and found this azure-winged magpie that I photographed in Shanghai earlier this year; picture came out surprisingly well. #birds

Good news for transgender people at MIT. Unlike some prestigious universities, MIT has defied the Trump administration and refused its attempt to pressure the university into banning transgender people from bathrooms. The latest from reporter S. Baum. Subscribe to support our journalism.

I posted this last weekend but didn't get around to a Mastodon thread about it. Here we go. I definitely processed fewer pictures in September than previous months, but here are pictures from Athens, Lima, Estonia, and Canada. There will be some Aotearoa content […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

Sitting at my computer reading research papers and this bumble bee comes along and hangs out for a bit. #insects

Spotted today in the Wellington Botanic Garden ki Paekākā before the rain: 1. mama paradise shelduck / pūtangitangi with a bunch of chicks (papa was nearby of course) #birdsnz 2. Chris Hipkins #nzpol No points for guessing which of these is depicted in the picture.

Blossom Valley at Aston Norwood is impressive with many cherry blossoms right now. #birdsnz

Back at the start of September I was flying into Gisborne. This boat plume looks... bad?

Here's me not being productive (by the making-more-money "definition") at Tukino last weekend.

I'm reading this quote by an economist (via Spinoff Daily Bulletin from the Sunday Star-Times) and I'm like, this is exactly what's wrong with the world. > The prime minister’s “I'm wealthy and I’m sorted” remark, MacCulloch says, hints at a laid-back streak in the NZ character that could […]

I was thinking about how the Te Pāti Māori co-leader is only responding to media questions in te reo Māori this week to mark Māori Language Week. Yet, in Canada, no one would complain about only responding to media questions in French. #nzpol

OH in the Wellington Botanic Garden: "are birds your favorite type of animal?"

Things I'd rather not be doing right now: figuring out why the toggler menu on https://patricklam.ca doesn't work on mobile (or narrow displays in general).

August photos post: https://patricklam.ca/post/20250911-august-photos/ (Website seems to be working except the navbar on mobile...)

Website is still not 100% but I managed to get it working well enough for this post on additional flight shenanigans. https://patricklam.ca/post/20250910-more-flight-shenanigans/

In today's edition of "I hate computers", my hugo installation went from "no images displayed on laptop but OK on desktop" to "no images on either laptop or desktop", for no apparent reason. Obviously the solution is to upgrade bootstrap from 3.x to 5.x. I hear some people write papers about […]

It is wonderful to turn down reviewing requests for Elsevier.

Right next to my hotel in Auckland...

Ski touring near Treble Cone.

Rainy day in Mission Bay. Also seen at the cafe: man with dog. "You're a good boy. I know you're a good boy."

What are you doing here near Maungakiekie/One Tree Hill? #birdsnz

It's 11pm here, why does it sound like someone is running power tools somewhere in the neighbourhood?!

I hate computers, part 39: I can compile my LaTeX paper on my desktop computer but not on my laptop. Same files.

I was looking at this picture that I took in July 2025 coming in to Toronto and getting pretty confused by how the thing that is obviously there isn't there on Google Maps until I figured it out.

My aunt posted video with a bunch of baby #birds including a baby green heron, all pretty cute. @BeazLouise https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRnZ5oCZwDY

Seen in Vancouver on a 5 hour transit back to Aotearoa: * kid (6ish) sees someone getting off the SkyTrain and liberating one of the seats in the front where one can pretend to be driving the train. Sits there happy for a few stops before reaching his destination. * man (30s) walking around […]

"Mom! He touched me first!" #birds It looks like my instance will accept .MOV files; this one was produced by varying @wilbowma's instructions.

I have a cute bird video! It is currently a 268MB MP4 file recorded from my a6600, which is not ideal for posting on Mastodon. I also have a kind of ugly 17MB avi from running ffmpeg and not giving it any settings. Dear #lazyweb: what settings do I give ffmpeg to get something decent? #birds

Wellington, though I'm not sure whether it is a good day (looking right) or not (left).

Kia ora Tamaki Makarau! Next stop Pōneke.

Here is Rudy the African Grey at the Bloedel Conservatory. #birds

Anyone I know around Vancouver this afternoon? Landing at 3pm.

Here I am sitting on a plane in airplane mode when my phone rings (?!). I guess it's the wifi calling at work. (Of course it was spam).

Here is a list of itineraries which have all been ticketed for me, none of which have been flown yet. August 18: YYZ-YVR-SYD-WLG (+2) August 23: YYZ-YVR-SYD-WLG (+2) August 20: YTZ-YUL; August 21: YUL-LGA, JFK-AKL-WLG (+3) (yikes) August 20: YYZ-YVR-AKL-WLG (+2)

Seen biking on the streets and bike paths of Kitchener/Waterloo, Ontario, on a warm but not excessive day (28C). Would be blazing hot in Aotearoa. Inspired by @georgepenney: 1. From the back, I see someone walking down the multi-use trail with a large grey package. Oh, they are carefully […]

Whew, fixed my Hugo installation. I use the hugo-theme-cleanwhite by zhaohuabing, but somehow I had a custom layouts/partials/head.html that was trying to pull in hux.min.css, which happened to be hanging around in my public directory. Everything worked fine when it did and not when it didn't […]

A pair of green herons! Sadly, I'd left my mirrorless camera on and it had no more battery, but the point and shoot did something. #birds #birdsqc @BeazLouise

Time to write yet another submission to a government. In a refreshing change, this one is wholly in support of a regulation change in Ontario permitting rock climbing in Devil's Glen Provincial Park. If you support rock climbing, please submit too! https://ero.ontario.ca/notice/019-8238 We […]

It's not just an app, it's a bird! Seen on the in-laws' roof and heard quite often around here. #merlin #birds #birdsqc

We need some more #olympus landscapes.

Pictures processed in July, with the core pictures from Olympus as well as some from Estonia and Shanghai (en route to Seoul). https://patricklam.ca/post/20250804-july-photos/

I missed this (perhaps because I was in France at the time) but Ontario's anti bike lane law struck down for now: https://ospe.on.ca/advocacy/policy-win-ontario-court-upholds-bike-lanes-and-validates-evidence-based-transportation-planning/ #bicycles

Somehow this kākā in Grenoble doesn't look quite right, perhaps because it's taxidermied. Also here is an actual living kākā in Zealandia from my archives. #birdsnz

It is somewhat confusing that there is both a Muséum de Grenoble (natural history) and a Musée de Grenoble (paintings, sculptures).

Even more entirely spot on! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/aug/02/billionaire-big-tech-frugal-elon-musk-innovation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Let me share with you what 30+ years writing software have taught me about estimates: they're bad and wrong and you should never do them. A thread! 1/

Backing up photos from the Tour du Mont Blanc. Not bad for hotel wifi in Grenoble: ``` sent 41,728,061,393 bytes received 863,497 bytes 1,647,638.83 bytes/sec total size is 43,619,192,300 speedup is 1.05 ```

@MonniauxD Bonjour!

There were previously three Northern Nutcrackers outside the Refuge les Grands but one of them flew away. #alps #birds

Today's encounters on the trail from Rifugio Bonatti back to Courmayeur: a couple from Gaspé where the guy was from the same village as someone I know from judo (who says NZ is small); a couple from Magog (we were there last week); and a woman from Saskatchewan. #TMB

Now on a rest day in Courmayeur on the Tour du Mont Blanc. Here are some pictures from the Grande Écaille and other places on the way. #alps #alpes