Tag: weather

Earth Day and Things

I have a couple things to say tonight.  First of all, happy Earth Day.  It was a pretty nice day today, and I’m looking forward to the weather getting springier and springier.  It’s a nice environment, let’s try not to go too far out of our way to destroy it.

Second of all, if you run or work at a restaurant, please, please avoid having wobbly tables.  It is annoying, especially when you’re risking getting a bowl of soup in your lap.  Tweak the table, call a fixit guy to come look at it, or even stick a matchbook or two under one of the legs if you have too.

It’s Warm Out and other thoughts

Well, it was kind of warm today.  I’m not one to blame climate change, as this is a normal January thaw (so it would seem to me).  But it’s a lot like spring outside, and that’s something.  I mean, it’s certainly T-shirt weather, and almost shorts weather (depending on your definition of shorts weather).  Not a lot of snow is left, and it was raining last night.

This is weird, and short-lived, of course.  I mean, next week we could just as easily have a foot of snow here in the swamp.  But I will say it’s kind of enlightening.  I don’t like the overcast days but I do like feeling like spring is close.  In the midst of worrying about school and work and all that other stuff, I can now say The Future Looks Bright.

And that brings me to my next point.  While not one to pick favorites as far as the subject of music goes, if pushed I would say that Steely Dan is probably one of my favorite bands (or duos, or however you want to describe their operation).  By extension, I do enjoy Donald Fagen’s solo works as well (his earlier two in particular).  Recently I was listening to the song IGY from his album The Nightfly, and was reminded of the sophisticated lyrics of this piece.  The theme behind the album centers around the perspective of a teenager in the 1950’s, dealing with the fears and dreams of people at the time, including optimistic visions of the future.  Getting back to IGY, take a look at this lyric:

A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellows with compassion and vision
We’ll be clean when their work is done
We’ll be eternally free yes and eternally young

I love this quote because it shows the optimism people had as technology progressed.  I mean, I guess nowadays we have computers that “make big decisions,” but then the idea of a big thing that did calculations was quite different.  It should be obvious, but as I sit at my laptop, which makes any room-sized computer from back then look like the crappy little calculator on a clipboard I can’t help but find it fascinating.  And to boot, it’s an ironic warning against Skynet!  (If it was a warning against Windows, Mr. Fagen has failed.)

Of course there are other references in the song too, like to Spandex and an underwater, transatlantic railroad.  I have to wonder how different the future will be than what my generation perceives…

End of August

Finally, it’s getting colder out at night.  A month ago I needed to have the AC on in order to sleep – it’s much easier for me to when it’s colder out.  Now it’s comfortable, and not too humid.

I guess I might as well throw out a few random things here.  First of all, for his entry in the Buffalo 48 Hour Film Project this year, my brother has won the award for best use of prop.  The prop is a head of cabbage, and the genre is mockumentary.  (Check out their site for details.)  Four of the six currently active members of Jack Swift (myself included) recorded a five-song sound track on Saturday the 15th of August for the film (which was due the 16th).  Here is the film, titled Cabbage in Common:

It was quite a time.  They may have one in your area, check it out.

Here is an interesting picture I took a little while ago, but never uploaded.  It’s the moon in Endicott, NY.  I was having trouble sleeping, so I grabbed the camera:

Endicott Moon

So let’s see, what else…  Well, last fall I talked about my light flicker circuit, and how I would put up something resembling a schematic.  And then I never did.  Well I’ve been thinking about it again, and now I will try to get something going.  It’s a little convoluted, but it’s not a terribly complex thing and I think people would get a kick out of it.  I would also like to make a PCB layout for it too, and clean it up.  But schematic first.

Well, that’s it for now.  It’s the last day of August (right now there are 15 minutes left), and while we’ve still got a few weeks of summer left fall is on the horizon.  So until next time, whenever that is, have fun.

Small Scale Solar, and Other News

Well, for those of you in the Rochester area I will be talking a bit about a small solar power system I put together this Saturday at BarCamp.  This is my first time there, and I wanted to do something a little different than the other things that were on the list.  First, though, I have to make up a presentation, which will probably mostly happen tomorrow after my test.

But I have been thinking about it, and so I guess I’ll post a little preview here.  My system is small, utilizing a 10 watt solar panel.  Energy production, obviously, depends on how much the panel is in the sun; since it is not a permanent system, I don’t really have a fixed answer to that other than I’ll take it outside for an hour while we go to play frisbee.  The system is just the panel, a batter, and a charge control.  I use it to run some lights, charge my cell phone and radio, and my laptop.  I guess you could add an inverter too, but I find that most things I want to run I can do directly off of 12 volts (or through a DC-DC boost converter in the case of the laptop, which likes 16 volts to charge the battery.)

This system could be nice to take camping, or to an event of some sort.  While it might not anihiliate your electric bill or make you an ecoviking, it can be useful during power failures and emergencies.  And of course it’s a great learning tool; if nothing else it makes you aware of the fact that electricity has to be produced some how.  (After all, they don’t just pump it out of a hole in the ground, amiright?  At least, never that directly.)  We’re so used to electricity being that cheap stuff that comes out of the wall to power our digital lives, and kill us if we fuck around with it too much.  Well, there is something neat about making your own power.  So come on down to learn more.

Now for some other news.  It is actually starting to warm up a bit here.  The temp has been in the 50s quite a bit, even the 60s sometimes.  That’s a ncie temp, IMHO.  Sun’s out more too.

It was warm in our apartment too.  Warm and steamy, actually.  I went home for Easter, and came back Sunday night to find that the bathtub faucet was leaking, providing a steady stream of hot water for a decent chunk of the weekend.  My roommates had put in a maintenance request, and they finally fixed it on Monday.  It was actually pretty neat, aside from the gigantic waste of water and gas.  Our entire apartment was warm and humid, like a tropical paradise.  The sound of water was also kind of nice, though it was kind of lucky that I couldn’t hear it from my bedroom.

So that’s that.

Battery Life and Other Nonsense

As I mentioned before, I have switched my laptop to Gentoo again after getting a new battery for it.  When I first finished my Gentoo install there was this beautiful feeling of euphoria…  It was just a raw Linux system, somewhat optimised for my machine.  It could be a normal Gnome desktop, it could be a mobile server…  It could be a workstation with no GUI at all…  So much potential, so many things I could do without having a predetermined computing environment like what Ubuntu provided.

Yeah, I ended up putting Gnome on it, along with the other types of apps normal people tend to put on their laptops: OpenOffice, Firefox, Pidgin (thus completing the desktop publishing-Web browsing-instant messaging trifecta), etc.  And now I find myself trying to replicate a lot of the things Ubuntu did configure out of the box.  Things like PulseAudio, multimedia codecs, and power management settings.

Actually the power management was a bit of a sticking point with Ubuntu.  I mean, it did provide decent control over LCD backlight brightness, and it configured CPU frequency scaling out of the box.  But at the same time I still never got the battery life I got in Windows.  The same is true for Gentoo.  I can get maybe four hours of life, which is nice.  But the older, smaller battery was rated for about this also.  Yeah, I know that rating’s a bit optimistic, but I sitll got maybe three of those hours on XP.  I’d like to get about 5 or 6 with this battery.

So I have some tweaking to do, no matter which distro I use on here.  I really do like having a less-bloated system, and at the very least Gentoo is a little more encouraging of tweaking, and is more familiar to me, so I may as well try diferent power saving methods on here for a while.  (Yeah, compiling software takes a bit of juice, but I do that when I’m plugged in anyway.)  Ubuntu 9.04 is coming out soon, and I’m thinking I might go and try it on here.

So, that’s that.  On an lighter note, the sun is coming out more and more here in Rochester.  We’re finally starting to get some Spring weather, even though we also just got some snow.  (I woke up one morning and it looked like it was winter outside.  It didn’t last long, but it was still weird.)  Though I do enjoy winter I am looking forward to the warmer weather a lot.  Soon it will be summer, and I will (hopefully) be working.  Getting away from class will be nice.

Spring and Optimism

It’s coming up on mid-February, and the weather is beautiful.  Not only is it warm out but we’re also getting plenty of sun.  Well, it is a little cloudy right now, but it’s been beautiful.  I really don’t even need a coat going outside.  Of course this won’t last forever; already it’s supposed to drop into the 20’s come the weekend.  But I’ll enjoy it while it’s here.  Soon it will be March, then April…  And soon it’ll be too warm.  But whatever.

Well, all the quirks of Rochester weather aside this has made me feel good, despite hard times in classes and such.  The whole seasonal affective disorder (SAD) thing never really got to me much (I don’t think), but the sun definitely uplifts me.  So, despite not knowing what I am going to end up doing over the summer I can say that I’m quite happy right now.

So I’m feeling optimistic.  I know that doesn’t necessarily jive with some people, but for me a positive angle on things is healthy.  Now, there’s a difference between being optimistic and delusional, and it’s something every optimist (and pessimist) should watch out for.  But, at least for me, if I am to get through life I have to try at least to be happy about it.

And you know what?  Ask me when the weather’s crappy, or when I’ve just had a bad day, and I may very well feel otherwise.  Bad days do that to everyone.  I guess overall I would say I’m 51 % optimistic.  Well, whatever, take it how you will.  But at least join me in taking pleasure in the fact that it will be spring soon.

Winter Without Christmas

I believe that today is the Nativity, or the last day of Christmas or whatever.  It is also the day I am heading back to school, back to the daily grind…  Actually, I shouldn’t complain.  My quarter is relatively light, and I’m used to the schedule and the campus.  All and all it will be great, even if I do have to get up and think each day of the week.  (Well, think about school, not that I don’t think otherwise…  You get the idea.)

Well, as anyone who reads this blog regularly has probably figured out I like to talk about the weather.  And I must say it is looking great outside, snowy, and sunny.  Not too snowy, but it looks like winter.  Now that the first set of Winter holidays are wrapping up it is becoming quite clear that it is really only the beginning of winter.  Yes, we’ve got a ways to go, at least up here.

Now, the funny thing is, a lot of people complain about winter.  And rightfully so; I hate digging my car out and the like.  But I also love the snow, and I think more appreciation needs to be paid to it.  I mean, if you live in an are in which a huge snow storm is pretty much the worst disaster you would expect to occur somewhat regularly, consider yourself lucky, I say!  Because after all is said and done, it melts.

So I am looking forward to some nice days this winter.  The sun is there; the days have been getting longer since the Solstice, and they will continue to get longer until the summer.  Admittedly it’s harder to like winter without Christmas (at least I could see that), but it’s another season, and I say that as long as there’s sun out to keep the spirits high be happy.  Gray days suck, but they don’t last forever.

Well, on a different note I would just like to point out that this place actually gets a ton of comment spam.  You wouldn’t notice it thanks to the Askimet plugin I installed, which intelligently detects spam and marks it for me to look at and delete en masse.  Now, it’s not perfect, so I do check it over, but I will appologize now if I missed a legit comment.  If it was something basic, like “Thanks, great post” then it may get marked as spam and I might very well just delete it.  But I will do my best to look for intelligent thoughts.

Healthy Again

Last week was hell for me, but now I feel better.  I’m still blowing my nose now and then, but it’s fairly manageable, so it’s all good.  I can also sit through a class without wishing to be put out of my misery feeling like utter crap and hardly being able to concentrate.  So, I am happier now.

The weather has been pretty cold lately.  It was in the teens the past couple of days, though today it’s in the 30s.  We have some snow now; I actually have some pictures from home which I will put up later after I take them off of my camera.  Today it was rainy and slushy, but we still have snow and pretty soon (I hope) we’ll get some nicer, cleaner, winter weather.

It’s Over

Simply put, it’s over.  Tension has subsided.  America has picked anothe president.  Now we don’t have to listen to campaign adds and the like.

I hope things will change.  Maybe the will, maybe not; out of all the factors that can screw our country over I doubt that the president is the biggest one we have to worry about at the moment.  I like Obama, and think he might just make a difference.  Let’s see what happens.

On another note, it’s been pretty warm around here.  It’s actually about 70 degrees, and I’m wearing shorts.  Two years ago around this time we were getting over a blizzard.  Back in 2000 I can remember a snow storm of epic proportions.