Thursday, February 28: A sprinkle of rain in the morning, becoming fine & sunny, wind a little cooler
Howard & Catherine’s (airbnb, $40.6)
The place was pretty full last night with the German couple (Timo & Chris) in the one room, and a woman in the other. My breakfast was the usual two helpings of cereal followed by eggs & cheese on toast, then the question of packing had to be addressed. There were also two painters present today who were sanding and painting the right side entrance so to collect my washing I went through the front door. Everything was moderately dry.
One or two problems right from the start. One was that I had no .pp3 file at all to check against (all I knew was that hot/dead pixels were removed, some wavelet denoising had to be done, but what more?). Secondly the version that I had installed was no longer compatible with the latest version of the Purple Picture Processor. After playing around for a bit I thought it might be good to have different levels of denoising depending on the ISO as well, so that will really have to wait until I get home.
Another curious titbit that surfaced during this is that the JPGs are not only smaller in terms of absolute pixel size, but are also resampled from an even smaller selection of the raw data field. Will perhaps have to experiment with paperjs to see what this factor actually is.
With those problems now formulated I took off to New World to get some lunch (roast pork sandwiches, acceptable, for $3.8) and some beer for this evening. Computer had been packed away and Brennagh had made an appearance, and then left with the instruction to have Crystal open her room and drag my case in there when the time had come. While chomping away on my sandwich some woman came in asking for Crystal but she could not be found and so she left.
I had everything I thought I needed and so it was just a matter of finding her about a quarter of an hour later, when Kerry came downstairs with some luggage labels, and later something to write on them with, as well as his own stuff for the bus ride. He knew where Crystal was and got hold of her for me, and this diminutive person then schlepped my case into Brennagh’s room and I put my stuff on the deck and waited out front for our driver.
I had seen this gent before but didn’t know his name so I introduced myself and he gave his name as Matt. A short time later we were at the bus stop, where the long wait began (bus was delayed by thirty minutes). Six of us were joining here and a number were getting off, and the bus was fairly full.
Bus ride was a bit drowsying, with two brief stops at Waverley and Patea. My bus stop was immediately in front of my digs so no long walk in the rain today. Met by hostess Catherine and had a chat, undeniable christian accents around the place and instead of church the talk was of the “fellowship” in Stratford, as well as much on the keto diet and the evils of sugar. After about an hour of this I took off for a walk towards the beach (didn’t quite make it) to fill out the time until dinner, when Howard would also arrive.
Which he eventually did. Catherine was eager to take off to New Plymouth to see her ill father and so left us with something of an Irish Stew (meat – beef? mashed potatoes, parsnips, very thick gravy), salad with a bread roll and butter, and a warm dessert of rhubarb and something like oats. Oh, and grace was said before chowing down.
The place here is a former hotel (“Lodge” has been stuck over “Hotel”) and this is quite obvious from the arrangement of rooms and what is left from the inventory. Quiet a rabbit warren out the back, and the function of the rooms on the ground floor has completely changed – the public bar at the front is now a working/sewing room where they make quilts. The private bar at the back of this is the breakfast room, and the rooms on the opposite side of the corridor have mutated to Howard and Catherine’s private kitchen/dining room and a living room. Out the back there are beer garden style, covered outdoor areas and a small camping ground with a couple of chooks on it. Upstairs the rooms are mainly guest bedrooms with 50s style running h+c, separate baths, showers and toilets, but nothing much more.
