2021 Year-End Wrap-Up & Greatest Hits

Well, 2021 turned out to be interesting, perhaps too much so, but interesting nonetheless.  For this year's wrap-up, let's run through the best-of for each month, then follow with the Greatest Hits section.

OK, on to the best-of for 2021:

• January: Winter Field Day!  
• February: Day hiking in Tate's Hell
• March: All about the 1973 Mohs Safarikar  No, I didn't win the auction.
• April: More hiking & radio in Tate's Hell
• May: Back on the St. Marks Rail Trail  It's been 30 years.
• June: Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir's latest book.
• July: Summary of Bell's Theorem  (not mine, just a link)  Not much posting in July.
• August: NPR's Sci-Fi & Fantasy poll: call (from June) and results
• September: Fractals, Aesthetics, and Sanity
• October: Coffeeneuring returns for 2021!  Spans a couple of months centered on October.
• November: a new term, "grant blight" defined
• December: Tetra-Neutron, maybe.  Probably.

Bonus Honorable Mention:

• August: FL Man wrecks bike, flips into water, grabbed by gator  Wasn't me.  This time.

Strangely this year, I don't have any "You Must Read This!" book recommendation.  Project Hail Mary (linked above) comes close, but no cigar.  Maybe next year.

On to the Greatest Hits section.  These Hits need not be from 2021, they're just the top posts from any year that got the most traffic this year.  That in and of itself is sort of interesting.  From the #1 most read over the last 12 months, working down a ways:

• Programming a Yaesu FTM-7250D radio, May 2019
• Shortwave Antennas: Vertical or Horizontal?, October 2020
• Quick & Dirty Guide to Getting a Ham License, December 2017
• Programming a Yaesu FT-60 using ChiRP, July 2017
• Programming a Yaesu FT-70 by hand, June 2020
• Silca Tattico Mini-Pump Review, February 2019

Mostly a lot of how-to-ham reference posts.  One more image, and then let's close it out for the year:

TS Mindy in September: Not that awful, but it was a direct hit.

Book Mention: Exhalation by Ted Chiang

 Ted Chiang, the author behind the short story that would ultimately be adapted into the 2016 movie Arrival, is back with another book of short stories, and as you might expect, it's really good.  If there's a central theme to this collection, it is that it takes various ideas seriously and explores how they would play out in the real world.  Non-contradictory time travel, robots who don't know that they're robots, offloaded human memories, Fermi's paradox, young-Earth creationism, and communication between time-lines in a many-worlds universe – these ideas and their implications get a thorough exploration through fiction.

The stories each develop slowly and naturally, and flow forth from the mind of the author at an appropriately leisurely pace.  This might be off-putting to some readers, but fortunately there is a chapter of story notes at the end of the book.  For many (myself included), these notes were helpful in getting oriented into each story; others may wish to save the notes for reading after completing the collection.

Finally, I have to compare this book to a caffeine source.  If something like Weir's Project Hail Mary is like a cup of strong black coffee, then Chiang's Exhalation is more like a subtle cup of fine tea.  Each should be enjoyed on its own terms.  Don't expect slam-bang space action in this collection; rather, expect a slow contemplation of ideas in the most human of ways.

Christmas Comet!!!

Nice pic at APOD today:

Merry Christmas!  All I got today.

Mac Monterey Upgrade Blues

Apple's at it again, randomly overwriting and breaking stuff with their latest sidegrade.  Two things to watch out for if you want to keep your gfortran compiler working.

1. Before you upgrade, make a copy of your .zshrc file.  The upgrade seems to do a search-and-destroy on the file in your home directory, so that all the cool custom stuff you may have added goes bye-bye.
2. Whatever was in your /private/etc/zprofile gets overwritten too.  Let it, the new zprofile seems to have some new stuff.  But then come back and add that scrap of code from the end of this post to the file to get your linker to work right.
3. Also, don't forget to upgrade the Xcode toolkit.  Still free from the Apple store, but you've got to go and get it.  Don't forget to restart terminal.

On the whole, not as bad as last June's fiasco, but it was still a little bit of puzzling around.  "It just works"?  Well, somewhat.  Admittedly, running a fortran compiler on a Mac is really getting down into the weeds.  Anyway, it's nowhere near as bad as that company that once proclaimed "don't be evil."

Metaverse Described for the People Who Prefer IRL

Here's a short (2:50), informative video over at the BBC describing what this is about.

Since the 1980's I've seen these things come and I've seen these things go.  However, this time I think it might stick.  The concepts have been floating around for decades, the hardware seems finally up to the task, the basics behind the software have been there for a while, but most of all there's finally a business driver behind it now.  Integration of all the parts seems to be happening very quickly.  We shall see, and likely fairly soon.

BTW, Ted Chiang's novella The Lifecycle of Software Objects, addresses some of the unexpected twists that partially existing in a shared interactive virtual world can take.  It's in his 2019 collection Exhalation, which I highly recommend.  I'll write something up about it just as soon as I finish the last third.

The Clash's 20 Greatest Guitar Moments

Short & sweet: https://guitar.com/guides/essential-guide/the-clash-greatest-guitar-moments/

Even if you don't listen to more than a clip of each song, it's still a treat.  And an education.

When Paleontologists go Oystering

A short article over at Atlas Obscura describes how paleontologists are digging into oyster bars in Apalachicola Bay to get some baselines on what a normal, healthy bay once looked like.  It's a convoluted tale and it's still developing, so I won't try to summarize further than saying that it's a sub- 5 minute read.

Interesting, and I wish them all the best.

"Tetra-Neutron"? Sure, why not.

Article here, with actual links to the actual paper.  Go & read (it's short), come back for commentary.

OK, got all that?  It does seem likely that this group has managed to make atoms (and I use that term very loosely here) of neutronium.  That and an equal amount of carbon-10 as a by-product, which is pretty cool all by itself, by smacking two lithium-7 nuclei together.  I'd like to see a confirming experiment though.  It ought to be pretty easy to do with a time-of-flight chamber, a fat E-dE diode detector, and some elementary kinematic deconvolution.  Interesting stuff.

Not actual size.

So, what was that in last Thursday's pic?

It was a very strange Soviet sort-of airplane.  Video here.  Wikipedia article here.  And a little more here.

The Single Sentence Sci-Fi Challenge

Prodded by this post, here's my attempt.

With my cut from the Miami run in hand – a supposedly untraceable combination of cash, crypto, and lint – I hit the return-to-hanger control on the ekranoplan and stepped into the apartment to finish the black sapote I'd picked up at the turn-around point.

Eh, it doesn't have to be good, it just has to sound good.  Now it's your turn.

Happy First Day of Not Hurricane Season

 

Some Season's Greetings that everyone can get onboard with.