54. Rainy Day in Whangarei

Wednesday, April 3: Some sunshine to begin with, clouding over and showery in the afternoon

The Cell Block

Tried not to get up too early this morning, but not much can stop me waking as the sun starts to rise. I had used my beach towel to block light from the hallway last night & that worked well, and stayed in place, but the outside window had no curtains so nothing stops the light from getting in in the early morning.

After breakfast and checking the internet for whether airbnb were cancelling again I took off down to the Hub to investigate the shops a bit further. Had a look around at some souvenirs, but not much of interest. Decided that today would be the day for a haircut so went along the yacht harbour (marina) to Bank St where I had seen two barbers and took the second one, as there were no other customers. The barber himself inquired whether I had been a redhead in a previous incarnation which I negated but it brought the conversation to his accent – he was originally from Galway, so the family history was trotted out again. Anyway for $29 head hair and beard are now in fine form.

Having come that far I went to Countdown for some beer, lemonade and bread before returning to the lock up. On the way I had checked which bus I could take if I wanted to go to Stumpy’s (121 Riverside Drive, bus #2 @ 5:45) and once back decided on lunch despite the early hour. This finished off the ham, leaving only milk, bread and margarine to be transported tomorrow, as the OJ will also be finished by then.

Time to address the raw image processing question. Tried setting saturation @ 50%, gamma @ 1.5, and this worked quite well, except in the Paihia brackets where the darker pictures were all well adjusted, but very noisy, but the bright pictures were brightened beyond use. The problem was with the autoleveling which just wasn’t working as intended. In any case probably not a good idea as it would seem to contradict the purpose of bracketing. Back to square one.

It was still raining when I had come to that conclusion, so Stumpy’s was out of the question, and Jimmy’s (4 Vine St) had to be tried out instead. They had a special of fish, chips and a drink for $7 and it was excellent value. Was served on a plate. Took a creamy soda for the drink because I think the lemon, lime and bitters must have beetroot in it which is coloring my pee pink.