Mixed Feelings

 From today's xkcd:

Independence Day.... it's almost here.  First I really ought to move the cryopump out of the foyer, then work things from there.  Maybe put it over by the pile of bike parts.

NPR's Sci-Fi & Fantasy Poll

 The question is straightforward: What are the best sci-fi and fantasy books you've read that were published in the last decade?  You can nominate up to five or as few as one.  The info you enter is simple: name, your local NPR station, book name, author.  Here's the link.

They did a similar poll ten years ago, however it was "of all time" not "of the past decade."  (results here)  OK, LOTR won that one hands-down, no surprise there.  This time the results should be more interesting with the focus on more recent work.  I'm always looking for new, good stuff.

FWIW, I nominated Star's Reach and The Martian; you can read my thoughts on them at the links.  Some others I considered but did not included are the Area X trilogy (Annihilation, etc.), Weir's second book Artemis, and the hard sci-fi anthology Carbide Tipped Pens.  I haven't finished Weir's third book Project Hail Mary, but I'm making good progress.

Predictions: Because the article mentions "our panel of expert judges will take your nominations and use them to curate a final list of 50 titles" [emphasis added], we can expect a fair number of little-known books – likely for good reason – that reflect NPR's values.  And that's OK too, their poll, their rules.  Another prediction I'll hazard is that several widely read books that were made into movies will be on the list: the above-mentioned The Martian and Annihilation, as well as Ted Chiang's Stories of your Life and Others, which was heavily adapted into 2016's movie Arrival.  Finally, I will flat-out predict that of the 50 books there should be some interesting stuff.

No "expect the list on or around" date in the article, but I'll keep an eye out for it.  Might have to buy another bookshelf.

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.