Let's Start the Weekend Off Weird

Let's start it off with a story of a 1948 UFO chase at thisdayinaviation.  F-51D's!  A (likely) Project Mogul balloon!  Crashes, tragedies, coverups, conspiracies!  Ain't history great?  This whole incident has that feel of wonder-sliding-into-paranoia as the warm post-war glow faded and the cold war began ramping up.

Here, have some mood music inspired by the incident: Anoxia by MoAM.

I'd file this under 'space' but it doesn't really fit.  It's more of unclassifiable... possibly even unidentifiable.

Link to the Webb Telescope Schedule

 So far, so good, and things are moving along on schedule (as you've probably already heard).  But, in case you missed it, NASA has a pretty good clickable schedule of what's happened and what's next at:

https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/deploymentExplorer.html

The really risky parts seem done now, but the rest is far from routine.  Anyway, link to the schedule above.  Also, here's where the telescope is at the moment on its journey to L2, along with some interesting temperature and other stats:

https://webb.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

All for today.

Omnibus Post: New Year, New Events, New Gear

Three days in and I'm finally here to say that this blog continues.  Why?  Because it's here.  What is going on?  A new bike helmet (wore out the pads on the old one, and yes the new one damn near glows),

new coffee maker (cracked the glass on the old one), Winter Field Day is coming up (link), and the patch for Coffeeneuring 2021 arrived today (that was fast!).  After finishing Ted Chiang's latest short story collection, I'm kind of at loose ends on books, though I am making some headway on The Wim Hof Method (insane), Horowitz & Hill's The Art of Electronics (slow), and maybe Baa Baa Black Sheep if I can ever get that rolling.

Beyond that, I swear that I'm going to get that new antenna up this week (not shown actual size).  So, yeah, there's plenty going on here, just not much that's blog-amenable.  But stay tuned, I'm sure something'll turn up, even if it's only X-rays from the latest ER adventure.

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."