Solstice Already?

 Yep, looks like.  Image from NASA/APOD, and you can see what The Old Farmer has to say here.

No sun here today however, with the remnants of TS Claudette raining out upon us.  But this is a good thing, we really need the rain here.

Getting gfortran to Work on a Mac

 Everything was good with my grotty old copy of gfortran -- great even -- until Apple changed the default shell from bash to zshell sometime last winter in the OS 11.4 Big Sur upgrade.  It took a while to get things going again recently.  What follows are both notes to self, and perhaps a rescue line to the truly perplexed.  Here we go.

1. Just get the new compiler.  GitHub is a dandy place but there are others.  It comes in the usual dmg format, so it unpacks and installs and all that automagically.
2. Likewise, get the latest Xcode developer kit from Apple.  It's free, but it's also > 10 GB so it might take a while to download.
3. Here's the fun part, getting the linker to work.  There's a little scrap of code to paste at the bottom of /private/etc/zprofile at this link.  (also, pasted in at the bottom of this post) You're going to have to reset the protections on that file before you can edit it though, via the incantation: sudo chmod 664   You will be asked for the system password.  Be sure to change it back via sudo chmod 444 when done, or some bad magic might leak in.
4. One more step (also found at the above link), type xcode-select --install into the command line window.  Then go fishing, while a couple more GB of stuff gets downloaded from from the Apple servers.  (Only caught hardheads, bleh.  Still it was better than sitting around worrying about the slow download rate.)
5. Re-start the terminal program before you can expect anything to work.
6. Test it with a "hello world" sort of program.  When it's all working, drink a lot of rye whisky and read something fun like Andy Weir's latest.

OK, that was a mean day's work.  Here's that little scrap of path setup code, in case the above link ever goes away.  OK, I'm done, time to get back to work with a functioning compiler.  Yes, it's 8:30 on a Friday night.

if [ -z "${LIBRARY_PATH}" ]; then
    export LIBRARY_PATH="/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/lib"
else
    export LIBRARY_PATH="$LIBRARY_PATH:/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk/usr/lib"
fi

To Vax or Not to Vax?

 Over at Handwaving Freakoutery: The Vaccine Might Kill You and That's Fine

All I can add is (1) RTWT, (2) pretty much my take on it also, and (3) I went with the treatment group too.

Key quote: "Safe is a terrible word, and 'is the vaccine safe?' is the wrong question to ask. Walking across the street isn't safe.  Bicycling isn't safe."

Yes, I can vouch for that last part.  Woo, look at the time.  Got to get rolling before the day heats up.  More.

Winter Field Day 2021 Results

 They're posted here.  The main WFD pages aren't updated, but the key results page is.

Eh, it was fun, as I'd earlier reported.  Rained out, didn't camp, just operated for a few hours while the weather held off, and still my score still came out in the top half.  And I'm already looking forward to WFD 2022.

Weekend after next is summer/regular/plain-old Field Day.  Might go, might not: I'm watching the weather on this one.  WFD is a much better camping option here in the Deep South.

How We Roll

 Oh yeah, I'd be jello in a wheelchair without one.  Earlier commentary on the topic here.

In which Dixie Finishes the Florida Trail

 Over at you-know where, the final episode.  Forty solid minutes of north Florida weirdness with a side order of yellow flies and ticks.  This is what you get when you skirt along the northern edge of a place named Tate's Hell Swamp in early springtime.

Yow.  It seems like it was all they could do to get from Sopchoppy to Defuniak without getting eaten alive.  Note to self: If I ever get the urge to do the FT, start NLT 31 January, and try to launch even earlier.  If any delays push completion into April, bail.

Yes, I've mentioned this series before, here, when they started the video series late April.  It seems that they began the through-hike in mid-late February, after recovering from covid.

ps: from today's Far Side.  Note the lack of yellow flies.

Something to Do

I started playing with the search bar on Atlas Obscura yesterday, and it's a pretty remarkable tool.  While by no means does it give a comprehensive listing of local sights, it does uncover – as the site's name would imply – some fairly obscure and interesting places for a day trip.

Take for example Bude, MS.  I've blasted through there on the way to the Clear Springs mountain bike trails for decades.  It's small, but in seconds the search function dug up about 15 interesting nearby places.  None of these were mountain bike trails, admittedly, but sometimes that is a plus.  It's not comprehensive, it's just unusual.

If you're looking for a day trip, Atlas Obscura's search bar is a pretty good place to start.  If you're just daydreaming, the random location button is pretty nice too.

Here, have some related music.