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.
(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.)
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.
By Robert Ellison. Updated on Sunday, February 23, 2025.
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.
(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.)
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:
Passing over Madagascar and then across central Africa.
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).
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.
(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).)
"An antimeme is an idea with self-censoring properties; an idea which, by its intrinsic nature, discourages or prevents people from spreading it."
Important antimemes in my life are other parent's names and all of the fucking single use apps I'm plagued with. My kids in particular have at least one app for every aspect of their lives.
Let's say I need to know where a soccer game is. The location is hidden in an app, and for the life of me I can't remember which one.
Eventually I remember it's LeagueApps, because TeamSnap is the other kid due to some San Francisco soccer schism on a par with what material to put on the pitch (I had to vote on TWO ballot measures on this subject).
Feeling inordinately proud of myself and like I have a few years left before 24-hour nursing care I search my phone for LeagueApps and it's NOT FUCKING THERE. Because they called the app 'Play'. Not LeagueApps Play, just Play.
App developers, if you're not Gmail how about including a little more context? Like 'LeagueApps Play - where is the soccer game?' or 'Toddle - your kids homework' or 'Procare - did you remember to sign your kid in'.
They won't, but next time I'm looking I'll at least be able to Google this post.
(Published to the Fediverse as:
Give your stupid niche kids app a useful name please! #etc#apps If I'm not using it every day, I need help ever finding it again. Please don't get too cute with the name.)
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