Winter starts now in the Northern Hemisphere, Summer to the south. 10:03 UTC Dec 21 2020 rendered in Catfood Earth.

(Previously: Winter Solstice 2019)

Autumn starts now (September 22, 13:31 UTC) north of the Equator, Spring to the south. Rendered in Catfood Earth.

(Previously: Autumnal Equinox 2019)

(Previously)

It's the start of Winter (or Summer if you're south of the Equator). Rendered in Catfood Earth, showing December 22 at 04:19 UTC.

Autumn starts now north of the Equator, Spring to the south. Rendered in Catfood Earth.

(Previously)

I’ve just released Catfood Earth for Android 1.10. You can control the center of the screen manually (the most requested new feature) and also tweak the transparency of each layer and the width of the terminator between day and night. It also starts a lot faster and has fewer update glitches. Grab it from Google Play if this looks like your sort of live wallpaper.

Inexplicably .NET 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5 are not installed by default in Windows 8 and can’t be installed using the redistributables that worked with previous versions of Windows. You have to go digging in Windows Features to get anything older than 4.0.

I’ve just released Catfood Earth for Android. It’s my second app created with Xamarin’s excellent toolkit. Being able to develop in C# allowed me to reuse a lot of code from the Windows version of Catfood Earth. The Android version doesn’t include all the same layers (yet) but it’s got the main ones – daytime (twelve different satellite images included, based on NASA’s Blue Marble Next Generation but with some special processing to make them look better), nighttime (city lights, shaded to show nighttime and the terminator between day and night) and a clouds layer that is downloaded every three hours.

My main worry had been that this would suck the phone battery dry, but after a fair amount of optimization it doesn’t even register on the battery consumption list. Grab it now from Google Play ($3.99, Android 2.2 or better).

Links

Windows 8, Users 0? http://t.co/966Cuwjz

Bill Nye declares Todd Akin "fucking idiot"; issues debate challenge http://t.co/AZ3k55Y4 #fb

ITHCWY: Fight Facebook with Email: I was a little saddened to read today that Diaspora is transitioning over to… http://t.co/2G0pDdu0

Diaspora Founders To Move On, Handing Over Decentralized Social Network ‘To The Community’ http://t.co/KQGb2kpv -- sad, but not the future

RT @MargaretAtwood: Just used http://t.co/Nhna2CGO for gruesome printer problem: excellent, done in 10 mins! Tks to S H E F I N. Website ...

Check out Catfood Earth Live Wallpaper on Google Play! https://t.co/NTJQ1sYL

ITHCWY: Twenty-Four Hours with Twilio: I've wanted to play with Twilio's voice and SMS service for a while and… http://t.co/KOK0PG2M

Tuesdays http://t.co/BLNiCP3H

Twitter Cuts Off Tumblr's Ability to Find Friends http://t.co/1g3ZcClf

5 of 5 stars to The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters http://t.co/9NF2nviH

XML: http://t.co/VadVt321 #rofl

Windows 8 Is Now Available For Developers (And For Everybody Else, There’s A 90-Day Free Trial, Too) http://t.co/iu1li6BV

Gotye's YouTube orchestra remix of "Somebody That I Used to Know" http://t.co/OUEXXltQ

ITHCWY: City by the Bay: View from Bernal Hill this afternoon. http://t.co/11cI3ctk

Nice panorama! Curiosity rover: Martian solar day 2 #360pano http://t.co/w1H2ocUm via @360cities

ITHCWY: Share a picture in MonoDroid: Here’s how to share a picture to Facebook, Twitter and so forth from… http://t.co/pByzvjmx

5 of 5 stars to Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez http://t.co/TKgUMNW0

BBC News - Mars rover makes first colour panorama http://t.co/fZ7u8smZ

How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking http://t.co/BDmRAbm3

Via KQED Guides: Guide to Bay Area Tidepools: Where to Explore Amazing Marine Life | http://t.co/TDBRDnTD #todo @myEN

ITHCWY: Catfood: WebCams for Android: I’ve just released a WebCam app for Android. It’s based on WebCamSaver but… http://t.co/azZUwkkz

Pay for a new social network with no ads? https://t.co/2tox3c2y Anyone I know going to be on there? #fb

Curiosity http://t.co/D2cyWE66

BBC News - Photo shows Mars rover descent http://t.co/KfOv1qOF

Catfood WebCams for Android - Catfood Software http://t.co/VzeySq90 via @CatfoodSoftware

Check out Catfood WebCams on Google Play! https://t.co/VTU8YiBd

ITHCWY: Not a Private Key: When jarsigner says "Key Associated with [alias] not a private key" it almost certainly… http://t.co/3sk89ENV

ITHCWY: Sending email via GMail in C#/.NET using SmtpClient: I’ve stubbed my toe on this a couple of times, so here… http://t.co/QJ7YjcjI

Help end patent litigation insanity and tell your congress person to back SHIELD. http://t.co/27anadBt

ITHCWY: Support SHIELD–a small measure of patent sanity: A friend pointed me at the SHIELD (PDF) act today. This… http://t.co/ArXHgZ0e

ITHCWY: Thank you for choosing HSA Bank!: No, thank you HSA Bank for not giving me a choice and then cheekily… http://t.co/9torSXCq

Bill would force patent trolls to pay defendants’ legal bills | Ars Technica http://t.co/poB3zzlX +1, via @sr00t

What a happy coincidence. As well as #IPAday it's also goof off at work day: http://t.co/7AItItWq

Apparently it's #IPADay - luckily there's some @21stAmendment in the fridge. http://t.co/jyYPSePC

I’ve just released a WebCam app for Android. It’s based on WebCamSaver but allows you to control the webcam – you tap the edges of the screen to pan, pinch to zoom in and out. A fun little time waster.

This is the first app I’ve released using Xamarin’s MonoDroid framework. This integrates nicely into Visual Studio and allows you to program an Android app in C#. This is fantastic for productivity and code reuse and I enjoyed the process a lot more than previous work I’ve done in Java / Eclipse. The main drawback is that the framework adds around 5MB (significant for mobile) and the documentation isn’t always the best, especially when you search for something and find out you’ve been dumped into iOS reference material. Digging around the sample code and cross-referencing the official Android documentation helps a lot. I’m going to take a stab at something a little more ambitious next…

No books this month.

Links

RT @drclue: "drclue: #pearlhunt making progress... http://t.co/FAgLQ2UH" --http://www.twitter.com/drclue/status/185829093244280832

We won #pearlhunt and all we won was this... http://t.co/vUBgLWeK

Bald eagle, fox, and cat are porch friends - Boing Boing http://t.co/5WGciNLD via @BoingBoing

ITHCWY: Agua: Little known fact, geologists would tell you that Bernal Hill is made of chert, actually it's mostly… http://t.co/xMRm2J9n

ITHCWY: Mangler: I don't know what the machine attached to our office does but it's giving me nightmares. http://t.co/BSbvoshq

ITHCWY: It was where he left it: Not to bang on about the BBC and their horrible headlines but 'lost' is a bit… http://t.co/bDKjUbl4

ITHCWY: Executive Clubbing: I used to really love British Airways. I even got over their silly new livery and… http://t.co/NC2Bt9bM

ITHCWY: Sand Ladder at Fort Funston http://t.co/5aeQjoti

ITHCWY: SFO http://t.co/sB1QdXCt

BBC News - The Spanish link in cracking the Enigma code http://t.co/Qv6qYqqQ #fb

ITHCWY: Robot Ahead http://t.co/tn7mHTI8

ITHCWY: Goldilocks: Israel just banned models with a BMI under 18.5. That's not severely underweight, it's the… http://t.co/G5HCE5Ey

External impact report for @IDEX at http://t.co/BsMp8ADa

RT @CatfoodSoftware: Blog: Vernal (Spring) #Equinox 2012 in Catfood #Earth: Spring starts right now in the… http://t.co/xxnASTMp

Good weekend to skip Fort Funston: http://t.co/UE8blE4c

ITHCWY: Catfood: PdfScan 1.40: Catfood PdfScan 1.40 is a small bug fix release. PdfScan converts documents to PDFs… http://t.co/YXdMn6ux

RT @CatfoodSoftware: Blog: Catfood #PdfScan 1.40: I’ve just released Catfood PdfScan 1.40. This is a minor update… http://t.co/6bzjCdfi

Shamed... http://t.co/AlSwTzzY

ITHCWY: Three reasons the dream of a robot companion isn't over: David Lee reports from the Innorobo 2012… http://t.co/JndJZahn

ITHCWY: Fixing dropped wireless connection for Linksys E4200: I've been going quietly mad trying to fix a constant… http://t.co/VVZ2dl2m

Why is this firefighting robot familiar: http://t.co/rqXLfCdC vs. http://t.co/wCL3Hu2d US Navy, call Cybernetics #fb

RT @CatfoodSoftware: Blog: To Follow or Not To Follow: The Third Way: Mashable published an article by Christine… http://t.co/MEzWlryS

ITHCWY: Sweeney Ridge: Sweeney Ridge, starting from Skyline College and walking up to the Portola Expedition… http://t.co/g1HIms1F

ITHCWY: Upgrading to http://t.co/0gDd7HHJ 2.5: Today I upgraded this blog to the latest and greatest version of… http://t.co/HHDj7VdM

"not a threat to the penguins, we don't suspect" - http://t.co/oIrzQOEj - it wasn't a dream!

http://t.co/qRCS8Qhb (new #SF data portal) #todo @myEN