Nimavenl - Nicole's Random Ramblings

Just now, I read an email about an earthquake in New Zealand - I get an email every time an earthquake happens, through GeoNet (the official source of geological hazard information for New Zealand). At exactly the same time as I read the email, the ceiling lamp swayed. Not from an earthquake on the other side of the world several minutes ago, of course. It's just the wind coming in through the open window. Still - it's one of those strange coincidences that keeps life interesting. I like those! Screen Capture from GeoNet - Quakes with details of the 'quake I received an email about

The bird photos have been posted. Here are the duck photos... There's something about these first two photos that makes me want to quote a song. Oh you know what, I will - It's a great song that always makes me smile! It's just a jump to the left And then a step to the right With your hands on your hips  You bring your knees in tight Okay, after the second line the lyrics no longer match the photos, so I'll stop quoting Time Warp lyrics from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Although, now that I'm quoting lyrics I might as well keep going... It's just a jump to the left And then a step to the right With your hands on your hips You bring your knees in tight So, lyrics. Unless Dakota Moon want to sing "I want to be a duck" instead of "I want to be an eagle," quoting Another Day Goes By doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Although, neither did quoting Time Warp with regards to ducks. So, what if we just p...

This week's Photo Challenge theme is Birds and Ducks. And other bird-like / duck-like animals, if I spot any this weekend. Yesterday I posted several Blurry Birdwatching Photos . Today I figured the non-blurry birdwatching photos might as well be the next photos for the Challenge. So: Enjoy the first photo! Yummm... Bread! And after the first photo come more photos... One black bird came to say "hey, you." Just sat there for a while, then picked a piece and left. Hey, You Then came the gulls. Lots of them too, or perhaps the same three just kept on coming back. It's hard to tell, sometimes. Incoming... Thinking... Got a piece... Got two pieces... I played around with the individual photos a bit. The birds were in the shade, however the tree behind them was in the sunshine. The two photos below show that sunshine very clearly. Posing... Caught you! And then the ducks...Of course the ducks didn't come to my balcony (no...

As social media seems to explode about the Supreme Court of the United States of America's (SCOTUS) decision to legalise gay marriage in the US and Twitter can't seem to stop talking about how great the world is, I have to admit that there's this voice in the back of my mind that wants to tell Americans "Welcome to the club! Glad that you finally made it..." For a country that prides itself on its inclusiveness and democratic values, why did it have to take so long to legalise marriage for all people? The U.S. is now among nearly two dozen countries that allow same-sex marriage nationwide: http://t.co/GDlydLBCWW pic.twitter.com/awVwTfyHXi — PewResearch Religion (@PewReligion) June 26, 2015 As the above map shows, there are many other countries where marriage is legal for all couples, regardless of their gender. In fact, both of my countries - The Netherlands and New Zealand - have already legalised gay marriage. According to the data on the website, The...

Today, the news is full of violence, death and destruction. At a Shiite mosque in Kuwait, at a factory in France , a coastal resort in Tunisia. In Israel, in Kobani in Kurdistan. People are dead or dying, people are wounded, people are crying, people are hurting. And why? Because some believe that they are more right than others? Because some believe that their truths are more valid than others? Because some believe their interpretation of religion or God's laws are more correct than another's? Because some believe that it is up to them to terrorise, kill and destroy? At least 27 28 are dead and 36 wounded in Tunisia . In Kobani in Kurdistan , 150 or more dead and many wounded. In Kuwait , last death toll I read mentioned 5 24 dead and 15 wounded. In Israel too, people have been attacked, people die. Not by the dozens usually, so the news doesn't speak about it. Or perhaps the news simply doesn't care as much about innocent Israelis as about innocent British or F...

When you can't go outside, invite nature in, instead... ... And go birdwatching on your own balcony! My ankle still hurts, which makes going outside and enjoying nature a bit of a challenge... One that hurts. Especially seeing how lovely today was! So if I can't go out and enjoy nature, then nature can come visit me instead! Put a few pieces of bread out on the balcony hoping to attract a few of the birds that live and play around here. They visit occasionally, however tend to fly off again as soon as they see movement. Which meant that today I sat very still, hoping they'd stay long enough for me to take a few photos. Many of the images turned out blurry or unclear, either because the birds were too fast or I was too slow. A bit of both, if you ask me. The blurry photos look something like this...   There's something about those blurry images that makes me smile... Birds being birds, perhaps. I'll show some of the non-blurry images in the ...

This is awesome! And almost made me squeal! And has me writing sentences that end with exclamation marks! Who knew that one of my favourite artists is into science-fiction and likes so many of the same shows I do ... Van Gogh continues to show love for all things geeky with the Firefly Starry Night T-Shirt. I always suspected he had a ... Posted by It's a Browncoat thing, you wouldn't understand on Wednesday, 17 June 2015 You can buy the "Starry Flight" t-shirt at Neatoshop by following the link :) For more Vincent-related awesomeness and Starry Night in modern science fiction and fantasy, check out some of the links below. I went a 'little' (ahum...) geek-happy while visiting Shirtoid and several other websites! Starry Night / Star Wars -themed t-shirt Amazing Game of Thrones / Night's Watch Starry Night Very cool Exploding Tardis   A Doctor Who / Vincent Tardis BBC Christmas card  A Vulcan salute / Enterprise / Vincent tribute ...

For this week's Photo Challenge I will be focusing on Trees. I like taking photos of nature and the natural world, flowers and trees , however (with regards to trees,) I tend to focus on branches as I still struggle a little when it comes to taking photos of entire trees that I actually like and want to share. After taking two (very similar!) photos of a tree that I actually liked (gasp!) and wanted to share with others, I decided that Trees would make a good Photo Challenge topic! When I started thinking about doing weekly Photo Challenges, one of the reasons was that I wanted to become a better photographer by challenging myself. As 'trees' is certainly a topic I want to work on, Trees it is! Here are the first two photos (of the same tree) - the ones I actually liked enough to want to share! More to follow soon! Trees #1a Trees #1b Update: I have no idea how, but I managed to hurt my ankle this weekend which made walking all over town to take photos...

No, this is not a review of The Power of One , a Bryce Courtenay book. Although I expect I'll be writing that review within a few years. Stay tuned while I write about music, Apple and Taylor Swift instead? Taylor Swift wrote an open letter to Apple on her website's blog - To Apple, Love Taylor - explaining why she doesn't like something they've chosen to do. Apple's new music streaming service will not be charging for music for three months (yay for users / customers), nor pay artists for the use of their music (not so yay for the artists). Swift explains why this is unfair to artists, writers and producers. "We don’t ask you for free iPhones. Please don’t ask us to provide you with our music for no compensation." I like your thinking, Taylor Swift. The world responds by writing about Swift's letter / blog post. Apple is rich and has the money to pay artists , the world says. So let Apple pay the artists . In a world built on (and from, I think...

Beautiful! Zaanse schans A photo posted by @ms.foto.cologne on Jun 12, 2015 at 1:49am PDT

In America, nine people were brutally murdered yesterday in a church in Charleston, North Carolina. Horrible, unbelievable. My Twitter feed hasn't stopped telling me about it, newspapers are writing about it, people are blogging about it. Nine people who were not fighting or making war or killing or maiming or hurting others. Nine people, present in a house of worship. Non-combatants. Just people. Like you and me. Now dead because one man wanted to kill them. Perhaps he believed he should, perhaps he thought it was his right, perhaps he was mentally unstable, perhaps he was a very disturbed SOB. I don't know. I do know that nine innocent people are dead because someone chose to kill them. Nine black people are dead, because one white man chose to kill them. It makes me so sad yet so angry to live in a world where people do this to each other. We are all human, all one huge and extremely diverse family, all one people. And yesterday one human being chose to kill nine of his fami...

This photo by Will Gater reminds me of a Vincent van Gogh painting. How cool and amazing and stunning and beautiful is the universe we live in?! Down below on earth, we fight and argue, we kill and destroy, we rape and pillage. Yet far above, far away from our little lives, there is the sun. Older than any of us, older than our earliest ancestors, even older than the planet we call home. Right now, I'm taking a moment to appreciate that big light in the sky, to look at this image and remind myself that compared to the sun, big and vast and old yet so immensely powerful, we are but babies. Here's a white-light solar filter pic of the sunspot causing all the excitement today (AR2371) http://t.co/4n3KJpbFmS pic.twitter.com/wFBX4JL0M9 — Will Gater (@willgater) June 19, 2015

A sea of green, leaves, sunshine, water and a bit of a blurry background. Not sure which of these two photos I prefer, which is why I'm sharing them both! I like adding quotes to my posts, quotes that mean something to me, that speak to me. Today, I looked for a quote about nature or about water, about green leaves and plants and the beauty of nature. I found many quotes I loved, however the one that stayed with me is the one I'm sharing. Somehow, it fits with my mood today. I found it at the Sustainable Baby Steps website. "For 200 years we've been conquering Nature. Now we're beating it to death."  - Tom McMillan Beauty of Nature #01 Beauty of Nature #02

The Struggle Within by Christopher L. Bennett My rating: 5 of 5 stars Very much enjoyed this story. My only complaint is that it was not nearly long enough! Found the Kinshaya story fascinating, the Talarian story a little less so, although equally interesting. View all my reviews

  If you've not read this book yet, you may want to read a spoiler-free review first! You have been warned! Paths of Disharmony by Dayton Ward My rating: 4 of 5 stars I enjoyed reading this book, however have a few things I would have liked to change, if I could. While I understand that making me 'happy' with the book would require it to be changed into something it's not (a novel that's a lot longer and a whole lot more detailed than this book is), I'm still going to write some of those thoughts dow. I felt it was a pity that we didn't learn more details about the Andorian reproductive crisis itself. Learning about an alien race that has four genders instead of two is fascinating however being me, I would have liked to read more about the way they reproduce - which gender does / contributes what and why / how. The sentence "And that, my friends, is where baby Andorians come from" would have been perfect at the end of a looooot of detail...

The sun shines The water flows The flowers sing I dream of yellow Of blue and green And amazing things Just for a moment There is no war No hate no strife Only beauty exists Nature is perfect I feel so alive

Today, the 15th of June, is World Meat Free Day. Only learnt about the existence of World Meat Free Day yesterday through Twitter. Incidentally after writing this post a few hours earlier, a bit of a random ramble about the meat industry, why I don't eat eat a lot of meat and the way people treat animals. Check out the World Meat Free Day website for a lot of interesting facts about meat. For instance, did you know that (according to the website) if just for one day, ten million people committed to swapping meat in one of their meals for a plant based protein, it would "Reduce enough CO2 emissions to drive around the world 2,438 times" and "Reduce water usage by 13 million tonnes – equivalent to 5,000 Olympic swimming pools." Just imagine what a different world we could be living in if more people chose to eat less meat or chose not to eat meat on a regular basis. Personally, I'm all for eating less meat, treating (human and non-human) living beings wi...

This Week's Photo Challenge theme is: YELLOW !!!!!!!!! With a lot of exclamation marks. Because yellow and exclamation marks go together like sunshine and smiles. Or like yours truly and books. Or peanut-butter and jelly or... Well, you get my point! As I like the colour yellow and have had the idea of doing a yellow-themed Photo Challenge in my head for some time, the photos span several weeks. Some song lyrics and a few words by yours truly tie this blog post together. Enjoy the craziness, fun and excitement of yellow! Yellow Duck out Exploring It's raining as I write this. Yes, really. The little yellow duck above isn't hanging out in a bathtub, however s/he's having a ball playing on my wet balcony today. Or just posing... The lyrics to Fools Garden's Yellow Lemon Tree sound and feel quite appropriate today! I'm sitting here in the boring room It's just another rainy Sunday afternoon I'm wasting my time I got nothing to do I'm h...