Shallow Thoughts

Akkana's Musings on Open Source Computing and Technology, Science, and Nature.

Mon, 16 Dec 2024

Christmas Bird Count

[Three mountain bluebirds on a dead tree, with columnar tuff in the background] Sunday was the annual Christmas Bird Count, and we had unusually good weather for it: sunny, windless, not too cold.

It started with a bang at Overlook Park when a bunch of starlings flew over ... followed by a small falcon. I'm not good at identifying falcons because I see them so seldom, but fortunately I was with an experienced birder who sees merlins at her house and confidently IDed this one. A life bird for me (I'm sure I've seen them, but never been sure enough of the ID to count one), and also a bird that was on the list of birds to watch for since they hadn't been seen so far during the count week.

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[ 18:20 Dec 16, 2024    More nature/birds | permalink to this entry | ]

Mon, 25 Nov 2024

Voting Stories

My hiking group includes several volunteer poll workers. After an election, sometimes you hear some fun stories.

The Case of the Missing Information

Like the absentee ballot that came in with all the outer envelope fields blank.

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[ 11:46 Nov 25, 2024    More politics | permalink to this entry | ]

Sun, 17 Nov 2024

Possible (but unlikely) Leonid Show; Made a Repo for TuxMeteor

[Tux the Linux penguin has his back to us as he observes a sky with stars and several shooting meteors] Salon.com had an article predicting a rare Leonid show on Friday and Saturday night this week: Rare "outburst" meteor shower will be visible this weekend.

I'm not sure where they got that idea; more science-leaning resources, like Universe Today and Science Alert, say 2024 is an "off" year for the Leonids, with an expected Zenithal Hourly Rate (ZHR) of 15-20 meteors per hour even with ideal conditions, which we don'e have because of an almost-full moon.

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[ 10:34 Nov 17, 2024    More science/astro | permalink to this entry | ]

Fri, 15 Nov 2024

PyTopo can Show GPS from Image Files Now (30DayMapChallenge #15, My Data)

[Screenshot of PyTopo showing the track (in purple) of a hike on Pajarito Mountain plus GPS locations for 16 images, which are in two clumps neither of which is near the actual hike track] For Day 15 of the 30 Day Map Challenge, "My Data", I'm highlighting a feature I added to PyTopo last week: the ability to read GPS tags in image files.

JPEG, and probably other image formats as well, lets you store GPS coordinates inside the EXIF (EXchangeable Image File format) metadata stored within each image file.

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[ 12:33 Nov 15, 2024    More mapping | permalink to this entry | ]

Sun, 10 Nov 2024

An Old Autocross Course Map (30 Day Map Challenge #11: Pen and Paper)

[A hand-drawn paper map of an autocross course]

I was going through some old paper files last year and discovered something I thought I'd lost: the event flyer and course map for the first autocross course I designed.

Autocross, or SCCA Solo II as it's technically called in the US, is car racing on a miniature course defined by orange traffic cones in a parking lot, airstrip or other available expanse of pavement. Lots of people autocross their street cars, but there are classes for everything up to highly modified open-wheel formula cars.

I got started autocrossing in Los Alamos in the late 80s, driving my Nissan 200SX turbo. In those days, there was an autocross club based in Los Alamos,

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[ 16:09 Nov 10, 2024    More mapping | permalink to this entry | ]

Tue, 05 Nov 2024

Made it to LA Mountain, Finally

30 Day Map Challenge Day 5: A Journey

[Map showing a track going up LA Mountain in Los Alamos] Last year for the #OpenStreetMap day of the 30 Day Map Challenge, I wrote about a hike that went a little wrong, when we lost our way on the Mitchell Trail and ended up going partway up the trail to LA Mountain.

LA Mountain is so named because Los Alamos High School kids have, for many years, maintained a big "LA" on the mountain that was visible from town. I say "was" because the LA is very hard to see now, and I've been told (but haven't been able to confirm) that's because the Forest Service, which owns the land, said the kids had to stop updating it. I'd seen it from below and always wondered how to get there, so last year, when I realized that was the trail we were on, I vowed to go back soon and go all the way up.

And then, of course, I promptly forgot all about it, until a few days ago when I was reviewing last year's 30 Day Map Challenge projects.

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[ 07:58 Nov 05, 2024    More mapping | permalink to this entry | ]

Sun, 03 Nov 2024

Mapping to Protect Los Alamos Open Space (30 Day Map Challenge Day 3, Polygons)

How to Add Data from ArcGIS Web Maps to QGIS

[Screenshot of QGIS showing openspace parcels that have proposed changes] Open Space advocates in Los Alamos county have been fighting the forces of development.

Ordinarily that's not a big problem. This county is wildly supportive of its open space; a huge percent of residents hike, bike, watch birds or otherwise appreciate the natural beauty around us. It helps that a lot of the town is on finger mesas adjacent to un-developable canyons, so you never need to go very far to be in a natural space.

But the county also loves to hire out-of-state consultants any time anything is changing, and a couple of years ago, they hired a consulting firm to rewrite Chapter 16 of our county code, concerning development. That included the zoning maps. The consultants capriciously changed several parcels previously zoned as open space to zones that allow much more development (like six-story apartment or commercial buildings), ignoring public input protesting the changes, and the County Council rubber-stamped the consultants' changes, promising to revisit the open space changes soon.

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[ 15:36 Nov 03, 2024    More mapping | permalink to this entry | ]

Sat, 02 Nov 2024

Decoding Specialized FIT files (30 Day Map Challenge Day 2, Lines)

[Screenshot from Specialized bike Android app] I have a new eBike! I'll write about it more before long, but for now, what's relevant to the 30 Day Map Challenge is that it's from Specialized, and if you use the Specialized phone app, it can record all sorts of fun statistics for rides, including GPS coordinates.

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[ 13:54 Nov 02, 2024    More mapping | permalink to this entry | ]