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.

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 @ithoughthecamewithyou.com@ithoughthecamewithyou.com 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.

STL on Thingiverse or OpenSCAD code:

I don't know what to do: Please, Do Not Pour Liquids Down Waterless Urinal.

I loved Qntm's There Is No Antimemetics Division:

"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.

Crossed a small thing off the bucket list today.

I've used a reMarkable paper tablet for a few years. It's a distraction free eInk writing device with a long battery life and no app store. At least half of productivity is getting stuff out of your head. The reMarkable excels at this without the risk of losing anything.

My dream was always to blog from written notes but the handwriting recognition isn't good enough. Or maybe my handwriting is just too bad. I probably could have got into medical school on that basis alone.

reMarkable recently released a keyboard case and I just got my preorder. With a few small changes to handle its HTML email format I'm up and running. There is still no app support, but you can send email and happily that's been how I post to my blog for over a decade.

It won't work for everything but it's great to have a new option.

So far the only thing I'm missing is a spell checker. Not my strong point so any typos are reMarkable's fault. Hopefully this will be added in a future update.

Having sworn off Google Nest I just ended up with two more cameras. I didn't pay for them. Google has announced that the original DropCam units are no longer supported. Rather than just knife me in the kidneys like the rest of the smart home industry they provided free replacements.

I stick these in a window looking out. I learned this the hard way after a Nest Outdoor was immediately cut from its secure wiring and stolen. And then a second one. The police thought this was hilarious and whoever stole them is/are now enjoying worthless lumps of plastic. The DropCam was nicely designed to clip out of its mount and into whatever accessory grabbed your fancy. The Google Nest Cam Indoor Wired Gen 2 (snappy name) has a heavy and barely articulated base that makes it worthless for many applications. It also doesn't look like it will detach.

There doesn't seem to be any elegant solution here so I came up with a brutal one.

Step 1: Hacksaw. Just cut off that base as close to the camera as possible.

Step 2: A chute to introduce the camera to the window at a reasonable angle and block indoor reflections. This gets attached to the window with strong double sided tape.

Here's the OpenSCAD code for the window mount:

There is also an STL file on thingiverse.

One more horrible hack to confess to. My filament kept getting tangled while printing this. I have it on an under-counter spool and I think it's just too loose so the printer pulls out more slack than it needs and then gets in a mess. Seems like it should be a common problem but all the advice I could find was worthless. I wrapped the spool with kitchen towel until I created some friction but with enough give that the 3D printer could ingest the filament. There is probably a better answer with a more expensive spool that has some tension built in, but this was enough to get the part to print for me.