L Taraval Track Replacement, The Movie

Track Construction on 15th Avenue, San Francisco

My poor street has had the works over the past few years. PG&E upgraded the gas lines. Then everything got ripped up for new water mains. We got two new poles. And then new sewers. I'm a little surprised the houses are still standing.

Over the last couple of months the train tracks for the L Taraval have been replaced. They're only two years younger than me, but I'm happy to report that they looked in much worse shape. Here's a time lapse of the whole process:

You'll see that they opened a chasm right in front of my garage early in the project and the plan called for it to be almost the last hole to fill in at the end. I'd be more excited if the L Taraval went anywhere useful. When I moved into my house it stopped right in front and then whisked you quickly downtown. Since then that stop was removed, and then the L terminated at West Portal to make room for M and N people and has been replaced by a bus for the duration of the pandemic and track replacement service.

With perfect comedic timing we also just got a letter from PG&E saying that they now need to dig everything up all over again. Probably we need medium rather than high pressure?

Add your comment...

Related Posts

You Might Also Like

(More Timelapses)

(Published to the Fediverse as: L Taraval Track Replacement, The Movie #timelapse #video #muni #sfmta #taraval #sanfrancisco Time lapse of the SFMTA MUNI L Taraval track replacement project on 15th Avenue in San Francisco. )

Embarcadero

People walk along the Embarcadero in San Francisco

I have a tradition of making a time lapse of San Francisco on New Year's Eve. This year I focused on the Embarcadero:

The time lapse opens with a view of the Bay Bridge from Cupid's Span in Rincon Park. Then behind the Ferry Building for two departures and one arrival. Next is a view of downtown from the middle of Pier 7. From there some Embarcadero proper from the perspective of the glass tiles looking towards the Exploratorium and then looking across the street at Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid from Pier 35. After that we have the Richmond Bridge visible behind Alcatraz and Angel Island and the SkyStar Wheel in its new home, both shot from the end of Fisherman's Wharf. Finally the Golden Gate Bridge with some brave swimmers in the foreground at Aquatic Park. This is just past the Embarcadero but I broke the theme a little to get all three bridges.

Add your comment...

Related Posts

You Might Also Like

(More Timelapses)

(Published to the Fediverse as: Embarcadero #timelapse #video #sanfrancisco Time lapse of the Embarcadero in San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2023, from Cupid's Span to Fisherman's Wharf. )

ITHCWY Newsletter for December 2023

Stable Diffusion Global Stereotypes

Happy New Year!

Catfood Earth 4.40 includes the latest time zone database and also some fixes for the locations, volcanoes and weather radar layers. If you use any of that please update.

I'm slowly replacing myself with an LLM. Currently I'm on Rob 2.1 which features a fine tuned version of GPT 3.5, retrieval augmented generation (RAG) and some prompt tuning. You can chat with it in the comments. Don't worry, it's not blogging yet, the aim is to start sending it to some meetings.

Just how different are nanoplastics and microplastics? More on free will. It is time we actually tried some tyranny of the majority for a bit.

An animation of PM2.5 pollution across the US in 2023.

Time lapse of the full Hunter's moon and Jupiter (and some Galilean moons).

Reviews for OctoberNovember, and December.

Previously:

Links for December 2023

Add your comment...

Related Posts

You Might Also Like

(All Etc Posts)

3D Printing a discreet wall mount shelf for the Aura Carver Mat

OpenSCAD Design for Aura Carver Mat wall mount

I got the Aura Carver Mat for Christmas. It's a nice 10 inch digital photo frame with great Google Photos integration - hook it up to an album, invite people to the album, add photos. You can also use the Aura app for sharing but a Google Photos album is way easier. I got this to replace an Echo show because I had started spending too much time switching off all the ads. Even after you've toggled off every bit of marketing fluff the thing still shows you ads. It's one thing if it was sold as ad supported but quite another to continually sneak them in via software updates. I like Alexa and so I replaced it with the Echo Studio (so much sound) and this frame which so far just works.

One minor detail is that this frame is designed to sit on a desk or shelf and does not contemplate living on a wall. I designed this discrete shelf for wall mounting. It's pretty small which is good, I'd recommend some double sided tape or similar to stop the frame from sliding sideways in case you're as bad at using a spirit level as me (or live in an earthquake zone, also like me).

OpenSCAD code below, or grab the STL from Thingiverse.

Add your comment...

Related Posts

You Might Also Like

(All Etc Posts)

(Published to the Fediverse as: 3D Printing a discreet wall mount shelf for the Aura Carver Mat #etc #3dprint #openscad #thingiverse #alexa #amazon STL and OpenSCAD for a wall mounting bracket for the Aura Carver Mat 10 inch Digital Photo Frame )

Winter Solstice 2023

Winter Solstice 2023 in Catfood Earth

Winter starts right now for those of us at the top of the planet. It's summer time down under. Winter Solstice 2023 rendered in Catfood Earth (03:28 on December 22, 2023 UTC).

Add your comment...

Related Posts

You Might Also Like

(All Code Posts)

(Published to the Fediverse as: Winter Solstice 2023 #code #winter #solstice #catfood #earth The exact moment of Winter Solstice 2023 (03:28 UTC on December 22) rendered in Catfood Earth. )

Catfood Earth 4.40

Updated on Saturday, January 20, 2024

Most of the layers enabled in Catfood Earth 4.40.

Catfood Earth 4.40 is now available to download.

With this release Catfood Earth is 20 years old! This update includes version 2023c of the Time Zone Database and the following bug fixes.

The National Weather Service changed one letter in the URL of their one hour precipitation weather radar product. It needs to be BOHA instead of BOHP. Presumably just checking that data consumers are paying attention? Weather radar is working again.

Not to be left out the Smithsonian Institution Global Vulcanism Program has decided to drop the www from their web site. The convention here is to redirect but they're content with just being unavailable at the former address. Recent volcanoes are working again as well.

The final fix is to the locations layer. Editing a location was crashing. This was due to a new format in the zoneinfo database that was not contemplated by the library that I use. As far as I can tell this isn't maintained any more since the death of CodePlex. While working on this update I started using GitHub Copilot, their AI assistant based on GPT 3.5. I was amazed at how helpful it was figuring out and then fixing this rather fiddly bug. The locations layer is back to normal, and I have regenerated all the time zone mapping as well.

Add your comment...

Related Posts

You Might Also Like

(All Code Posts)

Nanoplastics, Microplastics, Basketballs, Rice and Whales

Nanoplastics, Microplastics, Basketballs, Rice and Whales

Vice has a horrifying article on nanoplastics. I'll have to worry about them later though because Mirjam Guesgen trots out this amazing comparison:

"Microplastics are on the scale of micrometers, while nanoplastics are mere nanometers. To get a sense of just how small that is, imagine the difference between the size of a WNBA basketball (which is slightly smaller than the NBA equivalent) and a grain of rice."

If we're getting a rough sense of the difference from rice and basketballs what on earth could be the motivation to make it a WNBA basketball? How slightly smaller is it? Stack says:

"A standard NBA basketball has a diameter between 9.43 and 9.51 inches. In the WNBA, the basketball has a diameter of between 9.07 and 9.23 inches. Basketballs used in the NCAA are between 9.39 and 9.55 inches for men and 9.07 and 9.23 inches for women."

Around 5% smaller by diameter at most.

Also, is the WNBA / NBA distinction meaningful when we're not defining the type of rice? Basmati is 6-8 mm, so way more variability than basketballs. I don't even need to bust out the short grained varieties. This is so crazy I had to check out the plastics as well.

Guesgen says microplastics are on the scale of micrometers which is kind of what I had assumed too. But then I'm not a science journalist. Some light googling reveals that microplastics are fragments under 5mm. Some rice would be a microplastic, if it was plastic rice. I guess everything can be measured in micrometers but 5mm is 5000 micrometers. So what are nanoplastics? Maybe 5 micrometers and smaller?

"For particles smaller than 1 μm, they are defined as nanoplastics"

And:

"The term “nano” in nanoplastics tends to be contentious as many researchers follow the convention for nanoparticles that are defined as particles having a size approximately between 1 and 100nm."

Both from ScienceDirect.

So at the extremes that's five million times smaller, or to get a sense of just how much smaller imagine the difference between a grain of rice and around 1,300 blue whales, nose to tail. For the largest plausible nanoparticles, still about a whale. I'm not going to get into the gender.

Add your comment...

Related Posts

You Might Also Like

(All Etc Posts)

(Published to the Fediverse as: Nanoplastics, Microplastics, Basketballs, Rice and Whales #etc #nanoplastic #microplastic #rice #whales #basketballs How much smaller is a nanoplastic than a microplastic? A lot more than I expected, and a lot more than claimed in a recent Vice article. )

Reviews for December 2023

Updated on Tuesday, December 26, 2023

Spoilers!

Movies

The Killer

The Killer

The Killer on Netflix looks like a lazy retread of any recent Liam Neeson movie or John Wick with an editor. But it's more than that for two reasons. The soundtrack is incredible, and the writing and tight editing do not allow the tension to slip for a minute. Although the plot is an assassin taking revenge on his employers it could have been an average Tuesday for a loss adjuster with nearly as much impact. Watch it.

Podcast

Death of a Codebreaker

Death of a Codebreaker

This was a really strange story - a spy, dead in a bag. Putin? Sex Game? Who knew? This podcast does a deep dive and doesn't come up with much. It's worth it for the guy who spent months trying to lock himself in a bag and the person that pointed out you could pull the zip apart.

Podcasts

Marianna in Conspiracyland

Marianna in Conspiracyland

Examining the conspiracy minded in the UK. Worth a terrifying listen.

TV

Lessons In Chemistry

Lessons In Chemistry

I haven't read the book yet, which is supposed to be pretty good, but I found the Apple TV adaptation to be a bit of a slog. Rainn Wilson is great as the cynical TV station manager and the TV series segments are the highlight. Apple's general model seems to be to buy up the rights to beloved books and then committee them into a slow painful death. Foundation was very much this way too. Slow Horses seems to be the brilliant exception.

(All images included with ITHCWY reviews are the property of their respective owners and are used to illustrate reviews only.)

Add your comment...

Related Posts

You Might Also Like

(All Reviews)

(Published to the Fediverse as: Reviews for December 2023 #reviews Reviews for December 2023 )

Links for December 2023

Updated on Tuesday, December 5, 2023
The Washington Post: “Do I Know You?” examines what it's like to have face blindness - The Washington Post

I'm on the who the hell are you end of this spectrum. #prosopagnosia

--

Tom's Guide: By the way, did you know Alexa's annoying suggestions can be turned off? Here's how

Alexa, stop by the way apparently. Saving for future use. #alexa #shutup

--

Bridgy Fed

The docs suggest just passing a fragment will post part of a page but this doesn't seem to work, so testing again with a parameter as well... #ithcwy

--

San Francisco Examiner: How to download new Muni app on Apple App Store, Google Play | Transit

A new app and a new account... Is this just to escape the 2.8 rating? #muni #sfmta #sanfrancisco

Add your comment...

Related Posts

You Might Also Like

(All Etc Posts)

Links for November 2023