Links for December 2023

By Robert Ellison. 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

(All Etc Posts)

Links for November 2023

Do free will skeptics make their own point by being so dumb?

Free Will

What is it about free will skeptics and their insistence that we completely reorganize society based on their realization that nobody controls their own actions in any way? The Munk Debates just published Be it resolved, humans have free will, and it's a classic of the genre.

There is an interesting nugget at the start, which is how much of what we decide is based on extraneous factors. I'd love to go deep on that debate. I thought I wouldn't have time to write about this podcast as I needed to mop some floors. But my wife decided to steam clean them instead and so this post wouldn't exist without events that are completely beyond my control. But it also wouldn't exist if I wasn't interested and didn't want to write it.

Unfortunately instead of that debate we get the discussion about how with no free will criminals have no choice about commiting crimes and therefore we should not punish them. The first part of that may very well be true, much more on that subject here. The second part though shows such catastrophic misunderstanding that maybe it acts as a kind of proof. Nobody with free will could fail so comprehensively to follow their own argument to its logical conclusion, and so free will cannot exist.

Add your comment...

Related Posts

(All Etc Posts)

(Published to the Fediverse as: Do free will skeptics make their own point by being so dumb? #etc #freewill If criminals have no choice in committing their crimes we also have no choice in how we treat them. )

Animation of US PM2.5 Air Pollution in 2023

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Tuesday, January 2, 2024.

Air pollution on July 4, 2023

The video below shows PM2.5 air pollution in the United States from February to November 2023. The frame above is the impact of fireworks on the 4th of July. It's a blink and you miss it moment in the video but a pretty incredible impact.

I started this project in February expecting it to be more of a long term thing. Unfortunately, Purple Air started charging for their API in November, more than I was willing to pay for this project.

In terms of wildfires this year the big story in the continental US has been Canada belching plumes of smoke down across the East Coast. I didn't include Hawaii or Alaska in the map and so there is nothing for the tragic Lahaina fire on Maui.

To make the video I had a Google Apps Script running that pulled the Purple Air sensor data hourly. I then wrote an app to periodically render the data to frames using my shapefile library to plot the US and then interpolating the air quality for each pixel from the nearest sensors. The frames are stitched together at 60 frames per second using ffmpeg and final production was in DaVinci Resolve with music from Filmstro.

Add your comment...

Related Posts

(All Etc Posts)

(Published to the Fediverse as: Animation of US PM2.5 Air Pollution in 2023 #etc #video #purple Video showing US PM3.5 air pollution in 2023 using Purple Air sensor data. )

ITHCWY Newsletter for September 2023

San Francisco shrouded by fog, Stable Diffusion, scale 0

Catfood WebCamSaver 3.22 released with the latest web cam list. Catfood Earth for Android now supports random locations.

New tool - this page is updated every hour with a video of the last 48 hours of global IR cloud cover. Useful for tracking hurricanes and atmospheric rivers.

Sunset timelapse with a slider. And a video made from the highest resolution version of Blue Marble Next Generation.

Does the US need a third party? Also, sortition.

Some bubbles and a San Francisco Crayfish.

Reviews for August and September.

Previously:

Add your comment...

Related Posts

(All Etc Posts)

Global Cloud Cover 48 Hour Video Updated Hourly

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Saturday, September 23, 2023.

Global IR Cloud Cover

The video below shows the past 48 hours of global cloud cover, 6 frames per second. It's HD so view full screen to get the most detail. The video is updated hourly.

 

The source is the Global IR product from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Space Science and Engineering Center. I process their image to be equirectangular instead of spherical mercator (full details here) and then generate a video.

Add your comment...

Related Posts

(All Etc Posts)

(Published to the Fediverse as: Global Cloud Cover 48 Hour Video Updated Hourly #etc #clouds #satellite #earth #h5v Video showing 48 hours of global infrared cloud cover in HD, updated hourly. )

Blue Marble 2 Animation

One frame showing the Amazon from a Blue Marble 2 Animation

This animation shows twelve sections from the highest resolution version of NASA's Blue Marble Next Generation image for December 2004.

Can you guess all twelve locations? Answers below.

I use a lower resolution version of this image in Catfood Earth. The full version is 86,400 by 43,200, or 3.7 gigapixels. I've always wanted to do something with all this data, and decided to just follow some random paths and animate out the results. It's a little like watching the view from the ISS, if the ISS could randomly change location and direction.

The sequences in order are:

  1. Passing over Madagascar and then across central Africa. 
  2. Along the Aleutian Islands and into Alaska. 
  3. Across South America and the Amazon. 
  4. Up the Eastern seaboard of the US into Canada. 
  5. Following the Nile through North Africa. 
  6. From Siberia to Denmark. 
  7. Up Baja California and then California USA. 
  8. Philippines, Taiwan, China, Mongolia. 
  9. Following the Caribbean to Florida. 
  10. Across Australia. 
  11. South South America, focused on Chile. 
  12. Koreas, Japan.

Add your comment...

Related Posts

(All Etc Posts)

(Published to the Fediverse as: Blue Marble 2 Animation #etc #video #nasa #bluemarble #earth #satellite 4k 60fps video from high resolution satellite imagery, can you guess all twelve locations? )

ITHCWY Newsletter for July 2023

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Tuesday, August 1, 2023.

Snowdonia Milky Way Time Lapse

ITHCWY is now part of the Fediverse (Mastodon etc), follow @[email protected].

Time lapse of the Market Street Laser Rainbow for Pride, and the Shenandoah Valley.

Hikes with Hyperlapses: Presidio of San Francisco, Philosopher's Way.

Reviews for June and July.

A 3D printed kong holder, if you hate kongs falling over while you stuff and freeze them.

Photos of a Black Crested Night Heron and, sadly for the heron, a frog several thousand miles away.

Previously:

Add your comment...

Related Posts

(All Etc Posts)

Federation

By Robert Ellison. Updated on Thursday, August 1, 2024.

Federation

ITHCWY is venturing into the Fediverse. This is the second attempt, I had a brief-lived API implementation to a bot account that didn't go so well. This time I've hooked up Bridgy Fed, which is free and easy and so far seems to work pretty well. I added webmention support last year which helped with the process. You can add me as @[email protected] or use the form on this page. If you reply to a post in the Fediverse it will end up as a comment on this blog (and vice versa).

Add your comment...

Related Posts

(All Etc Posts)

(Published to the Fediverse as: Federation #etc #ithcwy #bridgyfed #fediverse #indieweb #webmention ITHCWY is now part of the Fediverse at @[email protected] )

3D Printing a Kong XL Holder

3D Printing a Kong XL Holder

Problem: filling a Kong without it rolling around and dispersing its contents and then freezing without tipping over and oozing peanut butter. I found a couple of solutions for smaller Kongs, this one fits a Kong XL perfectly.

STL on Thingiverse or OpenSCAD code:

Add your comment...

Related Posts

(All Etc Posts)

(Published to the Fediverse as: 3D Printing a Kong XL Holder #etc #3dprint #openscad #thingiverse STL file and OpenSCAD code for 3D Printing a Kong XL Holder (no more freezer mishaps). )