A timelapse portrait of San Francisco on New Year's Eve 2019.

Hike: Mt. Livermore on Angel Island

Catfood Earth 4.00 has been released. The new version includes 4K remastered day, night and cloud images as well as the latest timezone database.

It's a month for updates - you can also grab Catfood WebCamSaver 3.20 which includes an updated list of working webcams around the world. WebCamSaver is a Windows screensaver that shows you a feed of open webcams.

Meeting defragmenter is real!

How to fix the Washington Post democratic candidate quiz.

Previously:

• 2019: Amazon Alexa Echo Wall Clock Review
• 2018: I'm not afraid of Google
• 2017: I didn't think I'd ever fall for fake news of Facebook

Photo of the transit of Mercury on Nov 11.

Kidlapse is live - make a movie of your child growing up.

Previously:

• 2018: Book reviews for November 2018
• 2017: The top four Petitions that will help to Impeach Trump
• 2016: Book reviews for November 2016

Timelapse of the 2019 Parade of Ships at San Francisco Fleet Week.

Bangalore Timelapse.

Previously:

• 2017: End the Electoral College: Amendment, Compact, or Supreme Court?
• 2016: San Francisco November 2016 Propositions

SFO has just banned bottled water. Why not Coke?

In need of a simple tool to de-duplicate and sort photos and videos into year and month folders on Windows? Check out PhotoSorter.

Rebuttal of an op-ed in the NYT on the simulation hypothesis.

More on simulation. Have we proved this isn't true? No. Also - what does analyzing the physics of Conway's Game of Life tell us?

New project: generate a timelapse of a kid growing up from a set of any photos (uses machine learning to spot and align faces). Check it out at kidlapse.com.

Previously:

• 2018: Draw the rest of the Hummingbird
• 2017: Why Microsoft is Likely Doomed Based on one Email Folder
• 2016: Slow Camera for Android

Timelapse of the night sky over Pinnacles National Park.

Google just broke automatic backup of Google Photos to Google Drive. Here's an apps script to get it working again.

Could Google do one or two things to fix phone spam already?

Compilation timelapse from a road trip - features Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Glacier and Humboldt Redwoods.

Previously:

• 2018: What if the Senate Voted Proportionally to Population
• 2017: Email Alerts for new Referers in Google Analytics using Apps Script
• 2016: Methyl L-α-aspartyl-L-fucking-phenylalaninate

Timelapse of Pacifica State Beach.

Cory Doctorow argues for adversarial interoperability as a tool to weaken tech monopolies. I've reached the same conclusion: Facebook shouldn't own your social graph.

Dead Ringers S18E04 (available very briefly) has a halfway decent Brexit / Douglas Adams joke. Here's a better one.

A longer hike at China Camp State Park.

Previously:

• 2018: Animation of a year of Global Cloud Cover
• 2017: Reading and Writing Office 365 Excel from a Console app using the Microsoft.Graph C# Client API
• 2016: West Portal Timelapse of Timelapses

Nevada is close to joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Why this is important and how you can help.

Should there be a constitutional amendment for tire chalking?

Limantour Spit hike.

Previously:

• 2018: I just want to get rid of Windows 10 Notifications with one click
• 2017: Real Time
• 2016: GGNRA Dog Management Round 3

Conway's Game of Death.

The site I had been using for global cloud cover images in Catfood Earth abruptly shut down recently so I've had to scramble to build a replacement service. This is live now and updates are available to download for Windows and Android.

More details about putting together the best possible clouds image for Catfood Earth here.

Previously:

• 2018: How does the Nest Learning Thermostat work?
• 2017: The Harvard Business Review Fallacy
• 2016: The real reason Americans don't have passports

Catfood Earth 3.44 is available to download. This version updates the timezone database to 2018i, moves to a new source for timezone mapping an fixes a bug in the volcanoes layer.

Golden Gate Bridge timelapse - shot from the Marin headlands, the Golden Gate Overlook and near Fort Point.

Colorado looks set to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. What you can do to help.

Could we solve the youth turnout problem with age weighted voting?

Previously:

• 2018: Facebook shouldn't own your social graph
• 2017: Book reviews for February 2017
• 2016: Chromecast won't connect to wifi - finally found the fix

If the atmosphere was the population of the United States...

A Tarsier.

Thomas Friedman in the New York Times today: "Could we have our first four-party election in 2020 — with candidates from the Donald Trump far right, the old G.O.P. center right, the Joe Biden center left and the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez far left all squaring off, as the deepening divides within our two big parties simply can’t be papered over any longer?". Here's my daisyworld analogy from 2010, and a write-up of an Intelligence Squared debate on the same topic from 2011.

The scoop on Material Design 3.

Previously:

• 2018: Export Google Fit Daily Steps, Weight and Distance to a Google Sheet
• 2017: #Resist
• 2016: Get an email when your security camera sees something new (Apps Script + Cloud Vision)