The sun set after 6pm today. That’s the milestone that usually signals the end of winter for me, or at least the point where I can slow to a jog in my attempts to escape it.

This year’s winter has not had the same effect on me. I’m not entirely sure why, but probably because it just hasn’t been that cold. I didn’t double-jacket/double-pants for a single walk. I didn’t dig out my heavy duty beanie nor my heated gloves. In fact I lost my regular gloves late July and never replaced them. I even slept without socks most nights and I didn’t use my sleeping glove either (right hand for some reason gets a lot colder than my left).

What the heck happened? Is the secret to being warmer in winter simply to just be wealthy enough to have a well insulated house and run the heater without caring about costs (definitely helps)? Is the mattress I bought in January simply warmer than the old one (almost certainly). Is having a fulfilling job, regular catch ups with friends, fun side projects, and a loving family the real secret to feeling warmth in my fingers and toes (Well…) Did I have 9% more fat/muscle on my body compared to last winter? Were the average minimum and maximum temperatures higher in 2026 compared to every other month? (100%)

It’s a mystery. Winter happened, it rained a lot, but it didn’t change me as a person. Scheduling a tropical holiday for the end of July was a super smart move. Even though I got back on August 2nd it has felt like Spring since then. Travelling to Melbourne and Sydney during the subsequent weeks definitely helped the vibes.

I built my own step tracking app, competed in many pub quizzes, and made numerous pumpkin soups. I picked non-rainy mornings for the occasional office commute challenge. I delivered a successful AI governance pilot. I solved a lot of crosswords. I rearranged the microwave and coffee machine in the kitchen. The Knicks won the NBA Championship - and this led to me wearing my Knicks beanie a lot. It had spent many years on my desk as a wrist rest, and because I didn't replace it and kept using my mouse, now I don’t need a wrist rest any more! Thanks, Jalen Brunson.

I listened to ~73 songs per day in winter 2026. In fact, it’s actually a lot higher than that because Spotify scrobbling broke for 15 days in July. I listened to a lot of new albums. This playlist starts with a song I listened to while walking on the sand with a coffee on a grey morning, caffeine being a common trigger for me enjoying a song more than I did on previous listens. A lot of these songs I listened to while in the gym, or while making soup, or walking in the cold.

If that was truly winter, I feel like this summer is going to be a little toasty.

The entire time I've been a Sturt fan has been nothing but losses and despair. Thankfully, that time period has only been about five hours.

I mention this because Tim asked how many SANFL games I'd been to, and I couldn't remember a single one. So I'll record that today I went to the SANFL Grand Final, watched Sturt take control after half time as I bathed glorious spring sunshine, only for Norwood to make a mockery of the premiership quarter and kick some great goals to seal the deal.

Today was, in fact, a very South Australian day. It started with a bike ride along some of Adelaide's most famous coastline, the early morning light glowing off the rocks of West Beach and Henley. I then parked my bike at SAm’s old house and walked to Glenelg and the finish line of Adelaide's most popular running race. It was the fifty-second year of the City to Bay (I was standing by the speaker and I heard this very loudly). I watched Vanessa run across the finish line, completing the half marathon in a few seconds over two hours.

We then had a coffee from Cibo, and hung by the racers, before driving home for lunch.

I then drove to the train station and caught the Adelaide Metro to the iconic Adelaide Oval, crossing the Torrens footbridge to get to the game.

I do regret choosing to not purchase Coopers Pale Ale at the bar, Australia's only remaining locally owned major brewer.

After the game, we went to the pub for dinner and I ate a large rack of ribs.

Like South Australia, this entry does not have a satisfying conclusion.

I feel kind of guilty because six months ago I started this year’s running gag about how birds have nothing to worry about and now there’s bird flu in Australia and they do.

I didn’t think this would stop me taking some photos of birds for my second sequel to Birds of the Equinox. On Sunday I saw four New Holland Honeyeaters perfectly framed in the curve of a branch as the early morning sun slanted in from the side and illuminated a backdrop of flowers. I’ve also spotted white-faced heron and egrets poking around the shores of the lake in the past week, neither of them featuring in the bird jokes so far this year. And on the weekend I watched a rare hooded plover zipping around the wet sand at sunset, weaving between gulls on one of the first shoeless sand strolls of the new summer.

However, when I set off with my camera around 7:30am, I started to get a bad feeling. The bustle of lorikeets and noisy miners I’m used to seeing were not prevalent. When I reached the lake there wasn’t a single bird in sight. No pelicans or cormorants hanging out with the fishermen. No gulls or ducks on the grass.

I kept on walking towards the dunes and the beach, hoping I’d get another glimpse of the hooded plover or by that point even a seagull. I saw a single gull out in the distance. Not much else. The sky was empty.

I continued walking along the sand, pondering as I strolled if I should change my entry’s theme to Beach Dogs of the Equinox instead. The distant seagull swept past and I desperately tried to capture it.

My lack of face mask made him flee quite quickly.

I decided to get a coffee, and while I waited I theorised ways I could take photos with one hand while holding the coffee cup with the other.

Holding the coffee seemed to be the way to bring the birds out from hiding - and I recalled that both the autumn equinox and the winter solstice were both weekend days, whereas today was a work day, so maybe this made sense.

This Singing Honeyeater was having a WFH day so wasn’t up at dawn like usual.

The longer I held my coffee the more that birds appeared. While I was still a bit shocked by the lack of birdlife, at least I saw a few varieties of feathered friends, and doing it with nice music and morning caffeine made it a positive experience.

This Eastern Rosella was panic buying flower bits in case there’s another lockdown.

The Murray Magpie was socially distancing its head from its own body.

This New Holland Honeyeater was not looking forward to being stuck at home watching Netflix for the next three months.

This Starling is checking to see how long the line up is for the PCR test at the local Bird Flu testing site.

This Noisy Miner is wisely eating the seeds from this Banksia flower and not a Pangolin from a wet market.

This cute couple of spotted doves were walking down the same path to the beach that Vanessa and I will take on the upcoming warm evenings this summer!

I was gripping the barbell in the gym today and I noticed that the pinky finger on my left hand had wrapped itself around the bar, aligned nicely with the other digits.

This was notable as for the past few months of winter this behaviour has not happened, and I've been forced to use my right hand to position my left hand's fingers as part of racking the barbell. Maybe that palmaris longus tendon was useful after all. (Chat GPT disagrees). Now that the air is warm and there's literal flowers blowing around the neighbourhood, my hands work properly again.

This is relieving as it means I don't have to move to Thailand but also means that if I do move to Thailand that my wrists will probably work over there. Also thank goodness for Chat GPT, and LLMs in general which mean I don't need to use my hands as much as I used to any more. Although if AI development continues along its current velocity, maybe I won't need to use my hands at all, and I'll be moving to Thailand sooner than expected.

There are lots of things that Chat GPT can't do for me right now, like clean my pool, and - some time in the next few decades - wipe my butt and open my medicine bottle. Today I bought my first real robot. It's an intelligent pool cleaner that WALL-E's around the bottom of the pool and also climbs the walls and brushes down the waterline to remove any build up.

It's pretty cool, and it only cost $600. It's comforting to know that the robots might be useful in my lifetime, but I wouldn't trust it with the toilet paper for now.