is upon us. Unfortunately that's also magpie swooping season - as I was reminded of today: two substantial attacks by two separate birds in two different areas (one I knew of from last year on Markeri Street, one new bird in the bushes off Bermuda Street). The first of those almost sent me in the ditch: no warning, just a thunk against the side of my helmet.

Damn birds. Neither of the two spots is easy to avoid on my 26km "standard" route, so it looks like I'll have to rethink the route for the next 2-3 months.

Alternatives: none, because the normal folk remedies do not work, riding without helmet is illegal here and I'm certainly not going to cycle with an afro wig over my helmet :-)

I really love Shorpy, a historic photo archive, not just for the often awesome large-format scans but even more so for the flippant titles, sarcastic captions and insightful comments (like the post's title, which captioned this image.

Or photos like the earliest pig photobomb, or the feeding time sign, or the subwoofer photo...the list of goodies is endless. There's also a large amount of great but very bleak photos by people like Lewis Hine or Dorothea Lange.

Browsing shorpy is great but wastes time like nothing else (except maybe wookiepedia).