Went out to Burris Creek today, west of Black Butte Lake. For the first time we saw Lewis’s woodpeckers! They were constantly harassing each other. They’ve gorgeous pink bellies. We also saw a Nuttall’s woodpecker and an Emirates A380 Reg. A6-EVO Dubai-SFO (EK225) at 39,000 feet #LewissWoodpecker …

Well, it’s a fine photo but I’m not going to try any harder. It’s cold and windy out there and this Californian can’t stand it 🥶

It’s been years but managed to boot up an old QNAP TS-251. Last firmware was from 2023. If I decide to use this I better firewall it off from the ‘net or find an alternative OSS firmware for it. But it’s likely I’ll just wipe it clean with zeros multiple times and be done with it.

Central Ducted Fujitsu Heat Pump: Use the Wall Thermostat Sensor instead of the Air Handler's Sensor: If you have a central ducted Fujitsu Heat Pump with a wired remote control unit (wall thermostat), you may know that the central air handler’s temperature sensor is used by default instead of the wall thermostat’s temperature sensor. If your wall thermostat doesn’t have the thermometer icon at the …

Today I finally photographed one of several Orange-crowned Warblers that use our backyard as a hunting ground #OrangeCrownedWarbler #Birds #Fujifilm #SOoC

The resident Scrub Jay had herself a vigorous bath on this fine California day #WesternScrubJay #Fujifilm #SOoC #Birds

I’m stoked that our asparagus bed, now in its third home over the last ten years, is beginning to produce enough to harvest. It’s been a long road with many years of our not caring but they persisted anyway and thus eventually regained our affection #Yarden #Gardening

For the A330-900 Neo by X-Plane aircraft developer Toliss, I wrote a FlyWithLua script that enables Yawman Arrow controller multifunction buttons. Special to the A330-900 Neo, the Yawman's POV center click toggles the HUD #XPlane #XPlane12 #FlightSim #FlyWithLua #YawmanArrowController

My top 2024 albums per the Albums app. This is not a full dataset though as I used Tidal until they ended Plex integration & then I switched back to Apple Music but it’s reasonable! #2024TopAlbums @albumstheapp@indieapps.space

2024 was an off year for travel as I didn’t once make it to a major airport. I only stopped in Medford for an overnight stop and so spent a short time at the airport watching Coulson tankers and E-175s #2024Top4AviationScores #AvGeek #Aviation #Fujifilm

If you fly X-Plane 12 with the Yawman Arrow Controller, check out my basic aircraft specific FlyWithLua scripts to enable multifunction button operations to limit reaching for your keyboard/mouse: https://www.distortions.net/yawman-arrow-controller-xplane/ #XPlane #XPlane12 #YawmanArrow #Flightsim

Today: Downy Woodpecker skillfully foraging at the Pine Creek Unit of the refuge #DownyWoodpecker #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Fujifilm #SOoC

Snow sculptures from a very wintery Berlin in early December 2023

Last Sunday, we witnessed a Western Meadowlark in a meadow! 😲🫣 #WesternMeadowLark #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Birds #Fujifilm #SOoC

Poor Great Horned Owls have no privacy in the winter #GreatHornedOwls #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Birds #Fujifilm #SOoC

A soggy juvenile Bald Eagle at the Refuge today! #BaldEagle #Birds #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Fujifilm

Last Sunday: an American Kestrel. Just look at that face! 🤩 #AmericanKestrel #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Fujifilm #SOoC

Stereotypical Black-necked Stilts at the refuge yesterday #BlackNeckedStilts #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Birds #Fujifilm #SOoC #MondayIsForTheBirds

The Snow Geese cannot be missed right now at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. Also not to be missed: widebodies on approach to SFO. In this case, a KLM 787-10 #SnowGeese #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Fujifilm #SOoC #Aviation #SFO

When my wireless network goes on the fritz, adding another WiFi node fixes it. Then I remove it a few days later and there’s no instability 🤷‍♂️ It’s like Ativan for my network

Only 9am and already there’s an inch of rain for the day! Gotta pump the closed basin in our backyard again (it’s a couple meters from the house) #CaWx

Overnight rain total was 1.25”. That’s quite good for the Sacramento Valley! #CaWx

Marsh Wren! #WrensDay #MarshWren #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Birds #Fujifilm #SOoC 🪶

Some ducks had a bad hair day yesterday on account of the wind. These may have been Mergansers #Ducks #CommonMerganser #Birds #Fujifilm #SuperCropped

The new Dawn dish soap scent is… intense. And therefore bad. Didn’t they think of the poor oil sullied ocean critters??

~M5.7 earthquake just happened southeast of Reno, NV. I did not feel it but of course my Raspberry Shake did. #Earthquake #RaspberryShake

A stunning clear day today. Here’s Mt. Lassen from the Black Butte Dam. Quite the change from burn pile smoke of the last several days

A nice, if breezy, day at Black Butte Reservoir. It was not great for bird watching… unless you prefer seagulls and vultures

A fire pit at a Christmas Market in Berlin, 2023 #Berlin #Travel #Fujifilm #SOoC

USGS reports a M6.6 off Cape Mendocino. Here’s my seismograph curtesy of Raspberry Shake. Be sure to log a Did You Feel It at the USGS site. #CaWx #Earthquake

well that was an earthquake that I felt. Thought I was losing it for a moment #CAWx #Earthquake

Berlin, December 2023. Looking across the Spree toward the Berlin Cathedral #Berlin #Travel #Fujifilm #SOoC

Frankfurt Airport train station on December 4, 2023 #Travel #Trains #EDDF #Fujifilm #SOoC

On this day in 2023, we began our trip to Germany. We flew KSFO-EDDF (Frankfurt) on United 777-3 reg. N2250U #Aviation #Avgeek #Travel #N2250U #B77W #KSFO

A random San Francisco photo, looking south down Main Street from Market Street. January 2023. #SanFranciso #Fujifilm #SOoC

A very grim story - it doesn’t candy coat the great human tragedy of airplane crashes: “Chaos in the Clouds: The Crash of TWA Flight 514 and Its Lasting Impact on NoVA”

Our first frost! And so the birds are having a lousy morning (re)discovering frozen water #Birds 🪶

November 26 and we’ve already heard Last Christmas.

I nearly forgot to show-off this Ruby-crowned Kinglet that foraged in our backyard today. It loved the asparagus fronds, sweet basil, and grapes. It’s quite the rare to see their full crown! #RubyCrownedKinglet #Birds #Fujifilm #SOoC 🪶

Big storm coming, the air is thick with smoke, so all the ag piles must be burning 🤢 glad we’ve an decent air filter

Yawman Arrow is celebrating MSFS2024’s release with a sale on their fantastically portable controller - $149 USD #YawmanArrow #MSFS2024 #FlightSim #XPlane #Aviation #AvGeek https://yawmanflight.com

More big birds from yesterday: a White Egret, a Red Tailed Hawk, and an Air India 777-2 VT-AEG flying SFO-DEL at 30,000 ft #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #WhiteEgret #RedTailedHawk #B77L #AI174 #AvGeek #Aviation #Fujifilm

Today’s best birds at the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge includes a Bald Eagle, a Belted Kingfisher (!!!!!!), a well hidden Meadow Lark, and a Black Phoebe #BaldEagle #BeltedKingfisher #MeadowLark #BlackPhoebe #Birds #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Fujifilm 🪶

“We have about the same number of federal employees than we had in the 1960s, even though the government does and spends a lot more now. As a percentage of the total population, the federal workforce is at historic lows” from Some basic math about cutting government - by Don Moynihan

Tankless Water Heater citric acid flush day! About 1.5lb citric acid to 3.5 gallons of water. Long ago I did the math to get the right pH and now I just trust it 😆⚖️

Big X-Plane 12 beta release! ATC now support SIDs, STARs, and the AIRAC cycle is now 2402, iirc updated from 1801. There’s lots more.. What’s new in X-Plane 12.1.3? #XPlane #FlightSim

X-Crafts, an X-Plane Aircraft developer, is trying to list all actively maintained X-Plane 11 and 12 add-ons at one webpage #XPlane #FlightSim

House Finches are gorging on shriveled up elderberries in our backyard

A Lesser Gold Finch gorging on sweet basil seeds in our backyard

As previously mentioned, there was a circus behind us from last Friday through Monday. And its final act (for us, twice a day) was a loud explosion from the “The huuuuuman caaaanonbaaaall”. Here’s that canon…. Me thinks there’s nothing actually explosive happening 😹

A circus came to town for the weekend. Behind us. The City got an earful from us and our neighbors as we only found out when the tent was being pitched. Now all I can think of is the announcement “The huuuuuman caaaanonbaaaall”

I just donated to Rose Yee to #KickLaMalfaOut

Welcome back, small yellow bird! #Birds #WarblerOrNot #BirdWatching #Fujifilm #SOoC 🪶

As today is the International Day of the Controller, here’s a photo to celebrate their astonishing work. #SFO #KSFO #AvGeek

We voted! I voted the Not a Loser or a Sucker Veteran slate. Oh, and for democracy and actual freedom.

Big thank you to Hawaiian Airlines for being compassionate and generously refunding our non-refundable airfare 💕

Bidwell Park has goats! Under the watchful eye of a Great Pyrenees, they’re chowing down on the poison oak & vinca choked understory just southwest of the Chico Nature Center. #BidwellPark #Goats #Fujifilm #SOoC

But for the cost, this new lens is tempting. PetaPixel: The Familiar Fujifilm XF 500mm f/5.6 Brings Portable Super-Tele Photography to the X Series

Today we made a quick visit to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. There’s no missing the White Fronted Geese now and there’s still plenty of dragonflies but there’s no significant population of migratory songbirds yet #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #BirdWatching #Dragonfly #Fujifilm #SOoC

It’s a nice 69°F outside in NorCal but the air quality is gnarly because of agriculture/large property owner pile burning. #CaWx

A (western?) toad left this dropping literally at our front door. It’s full of pillbugs (roly-polies)!

Inspector Woodpecker was quite enthusiastic about this eucalyptus #Birds #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #NorthernFlicker #Fujifilm #SooC

Here’s to a fine Sunday morning flying an Embraer E-175 from KSEA to KPHX (Seattle to Phoenix). Mt. Rainier and Mt. St. Helens loom large. #XPlane12 #XCrafts #E175 #FlightSim

At the refuge, the only newcomers are white crowns and white fronted geese. But I only photographed a Black Phoebe that just pooped and a rather brave squirrel. #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #BirdWatching #BlackPhoebe #Squirrel 🪶

XPlane 12’s boat update is fun but IMHO a sailboat just down SFO’s runway 28R is taking it too far #XPlane12 #BetaRelease #FlightSim

It’s great that XPlane lets aircraft devs bypass native modeling but that means other native features may not work. The usual example is a broken native fuel & weight config dialog. A newer one for me is an inaccurate fuel flow data ref. But the model is quite accurate. #XPlane #FlightSimulation

For now, here’s an urban Black Phoebe #BlackPhoebe #Birds #BirdWatching

Geese & White Crowns are back. Soon as the weather stays cooler, I hope to be out at the refuges on weekends. And that should mean photos to share! 🤞

Yikes. Dresden’s Carola Bridge collapsed in their early morning hours. Apparently a tram had just crossed it and no one was on the bridge. And soon floods may begin. Here’s the bridge back in 2009 with a tram passing over. #Carolabrücke

I got the latest iOS 18 developer beta and its Home app can download PG&E energy use data & make it nicely accessible along with comparisons. The interface showing comparisons needs work but it is better than PG&E’s web charts though the iOS charts do not show cost (yet?)

Today, our roofers repaired a set of joined eaves that had been a leaky but exterior only problem for years. It finally got bad enough with the sheathing sagging that I committed to getting it fixed this dry season. That sheathing was pretty rotted

My wife enjoyed sunset at Laguna Beach this last Friday

My modern need to vanquish all notifications and icon badges has bled into World of Warcraft, where I can’t ignore any quests. Over 10 years ago I didn’t care #WoW

Today, my wife (on a business trip) photographed the Southwest “Missouri One” livery at Sacramento International #AvGeek #N280WN #PlaneSpotting #KSMF

I’ve had Grado SR–125 headphones for almost 20 years now. I’ve neglected them the last ten years. Their second set of L cushions were disintegrating, so I splurged on official G cushions. They’re so good. They fit entirely over my ears instead of sitting along the edges (that made my ears ache …

Spam texts are getting feisty

In World of Warcraft’s War Within, I have made it to Dornogal. My Druid hasn’t died yet. Not sure if that means I’m badass or that first part of the game is purposefully easy to solo 🤔 Enjoying it so far #WoW

FlightFactor 777v2 Release is “Imminent” The FlightFactor 777v2 has been in development for a staggering period of time I say this as someone that doesn’t want to interact with fake people, I think they spent way too much time on the crew simulation. #XPlane12 #FlightSim #AvGeek

I just learned about Follower Dungeons in World of Warcraft. Being able to now play the game solo, at my own pace, is very tempting. I’m happy to see WoW is available for Macs #WoW #macOS

Got the new Covid vaccine tonight

Asian pears are ready for fresh eating! The yellow ones are New Century and the brown ones are Hosui. Our nectarines were hammered by the heat and recently got bug infested. But we harvested what we could & cooked them down. #HomeOrchard #AsianPears

Last Sunday, caught this Navy E6-B bird flying west of the refuge. Apparently they were on a west coast tour. #E6B #AvGeek

Saw a bad-ass Tarantula-hawk Wasp at the refuge. I haven’t seen tarantulas around these parts, though. #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Pepsis #TarantulaHawkWasp

Rabbits all day at the refuge this pleasant summer morning #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Rabbits

In X-Plane 12, flew from KLAX to KJFK in the classic 747-200. I came in hot and then a bit low, but everyone got off the plane in short order so guess everyone’s happy 😅 #XPlane12 #FlightSim #YawmanArrow

My RaspberryShake detected the M7.1 earthquake from super early this morning Pacific time. Here’s the USGS link: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000nith/executive #RaspberryShake #Earthquake #CitizenScience #Japan

It’s really disappointing that Amazon can’t be bothered to make reasonable delivery schedules in my own nick of the woods. It’s not a new problem! UPS is unionized & they do fine. On Geekwire: “Driven away: Overloaded by Amazon, rural delivery companies reach the end of the road”

Well, I cannot help but be excited that Tim Walz is a Geographer and a GIS practitioner.

If you have a Yawman Arrow Controller, X-Plane 12, and the Felis 747-200, here’s my amateur-hour FlyWithLua script (on GitHub) to enable the Yawman Controller to have multifunction buttons to control the aircraft #YawmanArrow #FlyWithLua #Lua #XPlane12 #FlightSim

Smoke from thr Park Fire has, for the first time, obviously made it to the surface of the west side of the Sacramento Valley. I can smell it and the Purple sensor reports above 170 AQI #ParkFire #CAWx #AirQuality

Plex is nice. Random album radio FTW. Even better that I can augment my local library by adding albums from Tidal 🥳

The temperatures are in the 70s and it is quite overcast with clouds and smoke. So we took advantage of the fall-like weather and went to Black Butte Reservoir. Here are Western Grebes, a Double Crested Cormorant, a Robin, and an Osprey

I guess this is one way Scrubjays cool themselves off? All splayed & fluffed out with its beak wide open. This jay is very comfortable around us so it often hangs out under our patio messily gorging on seeds for caching elsewhere. It likes to bravely stare at us 😆

A better view of the Park Fire pyrocumulous from the other side of the Sacramento Valley. #ParkFire #CaWx

Park Fire from way across the west Sacramento Valley near Orland ☹️ #ParkFire #CAWx

Today’s Sonos app update restores most local library functionality. Here I go with app and firmware updates 🤞

At Medford, Oregon airport, two fire fighter tanker aircraft on final approach on July 17, 2024. A DC-10 (registered N522AX/TKR512) and a C-130 (registered N382CG/TNKR138). #AvGeek #C130 #DC10 #PlaneSpotting #TankerAircraft

Apple moving drivers away from kernel space to user space on macOS suddenly makes sense. #macOS

With all the CrowdStrike insanity, glad I’m off work today. But hoping my org didn’t get hit too hard!

Today I’m at Medford just for the evening. So here’s a photo straight out of the camera of tanker 912, a DC-10. #TKR912 #DC10 #Fujifilm #AvGeek

So my spouse noticed her Kindle Lock Screen is now trying to sell Large Language Model slop 😖

Finally, alternatives to Lithium batteries are on the market. Undecided with Matt Ferrell: Solid State Batteries Are REALLY Here: Yoshino Power Station

Monsoonal moisture is invading the Northern Sacramento Valley. There are high level clouds now. Normally the wet bulb starts decreasing at daylight. Not today. People living in the South would shrug at 70° wet bulb but for me, it’s borderline intolerable. #CAWx

If you like Watch Duty, the free (!) iOS app Calamity goes beyond wildfires into major airport delays, bad weather, earthquakes, solar flares & more. A decently presented aggregation of publicly available information.https://apps.apple.com/us/app/calamity-disaster-monitor/id6477748950

The highly unusual multi-day extreme heat of over 110°F took a huge toll on our Asian pears and nectarines. Worm food, now. #CaWx

SFGate has a good round-up of the latest at KSFO (San Francisco International Airport): "Why the pandemic was the best thing to happen to SFO's reputation” #AvGeek

Rabbit at the refuge yesterday. #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Rabbit

Today, before the heat got too extreme, we visited a nearby wildlife refuge. Here’s a Heron, King Bird, American Kestrel, and a Steel-Blue Cricket Hunter (a wasp!). #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Birds #Heron #AmericanKestrel #KingBird #SteelBlueCricketHunter

Good morning from the westside of the North Sacramento Valley where, at 06:00, it was 79°F at 31% Relative Humidity. Today, highs could reach 118° but more likely 113-115°, depending on what the winds do.

It is 19:00 and the outdoor temperature is finally dropping. The high was 113°F at 7% relative humidity. I’ll take this dry heat any day.

Today I learned how to use BareBones Edit with Git. It is real easy. I’m such a nerd.

I’m watering the front yard plants tonight because knuckleheads gotta set off fireworks. I must say that the Rachio hose timer is pretty handy in these one-off situations.

In my part of the N. Sacramento Valley, 85 degrees F this morning. The humidity is 20% and it’ll drop. Temperatures may rise up to 113 today. Winds are still strong. Across the valley, at Oroville, is the Thompson Fire, which doesn’t seem to be letting up. #ThompsonFire #CaWx

Internet has been great all morning. Condition Green. Thanks for being good sports over my rants!

I connected my RaspberryPi ADSB receiver to Ethernet and turned off WiFi. It gained an impressive 10-20 mile range increase after the WiFi radio stopped screaming at the Software Defined Radio dongle. My FlightRadar24 box was always connected to Ethernet but also shows a significant range increase.

Maybe my getting stormy today over a few week’s of progressively worse internet speeds dislodged an electron somewhere because suddenly non-VPN internet is behaving as expected. Time will tell! 🤞

I sure hope my streaming services don’t use IP addresses alone to determine a household. ‘Cuz my IP address may be traveling the continent to avoid Comcast’s flawed internet routing/throttling. I swear I am not password sharing! Device IDs and wifi SSID should prove it.

Comcast/Xfinity Internet Woes: Comcast/Xfinity internet at my home has some kind of network issue that sure feels like throttling. For customer service, it’s literally impossible to get more than a chatbot and a chat-based live support agent. The live support agents are 100% scripted and they do the same troubleshooting flows as …

U.S. land management agencies losing Chevron deference will be madness. Generally judges accept that agencies know what they’re doing as they do it day in and day out and have skillful people with the latest science. This will be a disaster. #SCOTUS #ChevronDeference

How about some American White Pelicans doing some formation flying last weekend. They were real far so was glad to be present enough to enjoy their presence. Always surprised to find them in deep in California #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #AmericanWhitePelicans

Fujifilm just released firmware updates that include, for some models, the Reala Ace film simulation. Looking forward to trying it out on my X-T5 this weekend. #Fujifilm #StraightOutOfCamera

A different kind of common bird one can see from the nearby refuge. An Air Tractor. The heat shimmer was super bad though. #AvGeek #AirTractor

Here’s that Northern Harrier, a bit distant & blurred in the center of this photo, that I mentioned Friday. Was lovely to see it on the hunt, swooping low to find prey. #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #NorthernHarrier 🪶

We saw a Double Crested Cormorant at the wildlife refuge today. Not shown here, but there was also a Northern Harrier patrolling the seasonally drained artificial marshes with long, low and slow swoops. Really cool. #DoubleCrestedCormorant #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge

A helicopter has been flying a lot over my town so I looked up their previous flights. Okay… guess I shouldn’t be surprised they drew a phallus in the air with their seemingly purposeless flying 🫢

On PetaPixel: Scientists Capture Never-Before-Seen Footage of Deep-Sea Squid Cradling Huge Eggs

Windows 11’s File Explorer’s Forward and Back buttons randomly not working is quite the treat. The insane part is that after moving the window, they then work. Did not realize how much I use those those

Stories on California ghost towns are always entertaining. The latest one is from SF Gate: It was supposed to be a California utopia. It turned into a ghost town

I received a new kind of spam text message today: “Hey, is this Ryan?” Guess spammers/scammers are now personalizing their phishing expeditions with the data dumps they buy. I can see how that can be very effective. Yuck. Report As Junk!

Our resident scrub jays didn’t have much of a green thumb this year. Or they did a great job eating their cache. This is the only sunflower they grew

Our avocado tree seems to be producing now. But I won’t bet on any of the fruit making it to maturity sometime between this November and next March. Brutal heat is inbound though we’ve got our shade cloth up to protect the small trees

Just as most non-native plants stop flowering in time for summer, the California Fuchsias have just begun adding a splash of red. Currently the native toyon, elderberry, and roses are flowering. California Buckwheat is on its way. We have flowers nearly year-round. Native plants are awesome.

Paramount+'s Strategy is Baffling: Paramount+ still has nothing to watch once a season of Star Trek is over. Paramount cancelled Star Trek: Discovery and there’s only one more season of Lower Decks. Funny thing is, in the past I subscribed to their ad-free product. But Paramount+ greatly increased the cost of the ad-free subscription …

Marestail weeds are impossible to pull out of compacted ground. I’m avoiding herbicide so I’ve resorted to using hand pruners to cut Marestail weeds down to bare mineral earth. It’s as tedious and zen as it sounds. Problem is, they refuse to die. It is as if they have infinite resources in their …

The Flight Simulator Navigation Data Economy: Flight Simulation has quite the economy surrounding it. I’m not particularly fond of the navigation data sector of that economy. If you want the latest navigation data, you must subscribe or buy it from Aerosoft or Navigraph. But those companies that sell it to you must buy the raw data from …

The Capay Unit refuge was bustling today. Here’s a Pipevine Swallowtail caterpillar and a Black headed Grosbeak. Also saw Orioles, Black Phoebes, possibly an inflight juvenile Bald Eagle, Osprey, Ash Throated Flycatcher, Lesser Gold Finches & Red Tailed Hawks #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge

Sonos Ace headphones are not for me since all I ever wanted from such a thing was to transfer my music seamlessly between speakers and headphones. And then there’s the Sonos app mess. It’ll be a while before I can trust Sonos enough to resume buying their hardware. WTFs all around.

Western Wood-Pewee! A first for us. Spotted at the Pine Creek Unit of the #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #WesternWoodPeWee #Fujifilm

Windows 11 Thoughts: I have Windows 11 on my work PC now. What does not work for me: File Explorer's simplified right-click context menu where useful file interaction & application extensions, like Box, are hidden under a More button (UGH). Fix by pressing Shift when right clicking. I’m not yet sure if I like the …

It is hilarious to me, but not surprising, that my AirPods only work properly with the web-based version of MS Teams. Their app on my Windows 11 work computer produces garbled audio,

It is super cool that Flame Skimmer dragonflies are spending time in our backyard. This one was stationed on that stick nearly all day. And then there’s the much more active one that you can see as an orangish blur flying behind the stick. #Fujifilm

Lots of Pipevine Swallowtail butterflies feasting on purple thistle flower nectar at a wildlife refuge today. #PipevineSwallowtail #Butterfly #Fujifilm

From last weekend at the refuge: a Bullock's Oriole in a Willow tree. #BullocksOriole #Birds #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Fujifilm

NO Pedestrians Beyond This Point: Black Phoebe enforced #Birds #Fujifilm #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge

At the refuge yesterday, pretty certain I saw and photographed a Western Kingbird vomit up a stone or something‽ #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Fujifilm #Birds #WesternKingBird

Sometimes unintentional photos are the best. Today at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge south of Willows:

Aurora in Northern California ☺️ Good night, folks!

Tonight with aurora potential in Northern California, there’s opportunity to run three cameras tonight to see who wins the light gathering war. I’m betting the 100V at F/2 vs my fastest X-T5 lens at F/2.8. But my iPhone may well steal the show with its insane processing.

As I understand the Chestnut-backed Chickadee, it being upside-down in the trees is pretty typical. It was a frenetic bird and at the time I had no idea what it was. I was lucky to have it in a frame somewhere!

This is a vicious scam. Chase Bank needs to fix that app prompt ASAP to make it clear they’re confirming YOU initiated the call, not the other way around

One of very many Western Blue Birds at Lynch Canyon Open Space Park, Northern California. Lots of Blue Bird nest boxes there!

In Tonopah, NV, they have a Hometown Pizza and two classy looking hotels 📷 #MBApr

On our hike last Saturday, a few drifting swarms of bugs were along the trail. Probably mosquitoes but I didn’t dare walk through them to find out 📷 #MBApr

One year ago today: spotted three of the California Condor community in flight at Pinnacles National Park. Stunning birds & park 📷 #MBApr

On today’s 3 mile hike at the Lynch Canyon Open Space Park in California ‘s North Bay, we were surprised by a garter snake actively hunting in the tall grass 📷 #MBApr

Poor critter lost its tail! This was also the first lizard I’ve seen this year so it has had a rough start after hibernation 📷#MBApr

I’ve had a lot of gardening to do with sharp implements so finally got my TDAP booster. I’m ready for a sore arm.

I think this is the “Big Al” Allosaurus skeleton at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, MT. Nice spine (backbones)! 📷 #MBApr

I love the layers of light in this photo of me taking photos in the desert near Death Valley 📷 #MBApr

Compared to my old Intel 16” MacBook Pro, this M3 14” MBP is dreamy. As everyone reports, the battery life is ridiculously good. 76% remains and still 20 hrs predicted life. Oh, and I can use this as a _lap_top. Amazing. Funny part? I didn’t notice the lack of a touchbar. 📷 #MBApr

I’d love to be this solo seagull flying sapphire blue skies 📷 #MBApr

Death Valley’s Telescope Peak from Furnace Creek. It is the park’s tallest mountain at 11,043 feet (3366 m) 📷 #MBApr

Mid-March 2024 at the Donner Summit rest area (east-bound). I suppose once the building was dug out, ice formed in the alcove as heat warmed the snow’s bottom (ceiling in this case). Pretty neat. 📷 #MBApr

We’re planting only one row this year. Just tomatoes, various peppers, basil, and an overwintered thyme. All prepped, just need to plant! #gardening

The new The Libertines album “All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade” is solid if you like Britpop

A slightly early birthday present to me: a Sonos Move 2. Sounds very good! It’ll be great keeping me from the odd anxiety of silence and listening to food chewing 😆 📷 #MBApr

Neighbor’s gas mower they use every year: won’t start. My electric mower I start every couple of years: works like a charm!

Got off work just in time to find out Congressman LaMalfa voted against aid for Ukraine. 😩 Fortunately saner, less toolish politicians are prevailing.

Here is a random Death Valley vista. They’re all stunning no matter my mood 📷 #MBApr

Definitely looking forward to the absolute transcendence that is homegrown nectarines! Our two Asian pear trees also have a great fruit set this year 📷 #MBApr

Gotta have a bit of the flâneur spirit to partake in street photography. Or you’d miss a random dog-dog encounter in San Francisco. 📷#MBApr

Today I lucked out and saw a small Painted Lady butterfly delighting in our clover. My X-T5 camera and telephoto lens were thankfully ready to go! 📷 #MBApr

A gorgeous Barrel Cactus from Joshua Tree National Park 📷 #MBApr

My spouse took a page from Korean cuisine and made a nice gochujang-based BBQ sauce for tonight’s sweet potato & kale burgers 📷 #MBApr

In X-Plane 12, I finally managed to get the 747-200 (modeled by Felis) up to cruise with only minor passenger discomfort. Had a little trouble with the auto-throttle. I’m still loving the Yawman Arrow controller #XPlane12 #macOS #YawmanArrow #FlightSimulator

I installed my first Sharkbite plumbing fixture and it’s kinda magic how easy & low stress it was. Anyway, the ridiculous hosebib setup is why no one should let me do plumbing. Listen, I learned a lot from this low-stakes project! 📷 #MBApr

Uncovered a historical artifact while cutting back the lavender. Guess AT&T hasn’t needed this equipment portal for quite some time. PG&E at least periodically inspects their stuff.

Perfect day in California for yard work. So much to do. I can’t believe this young of the year mix of native grape and very not native maple. The maple won’t survive early summer but the grape…

A few weeks ago, we spotted a Bald Eagle high in the sky. It appeared to have nesting material or perhaps prey in its claws. Super Resolution didn’t help much identifying its payload. Just looks like sticks and grass. 📷 #MBApr #BirdPhotography

A narrow gauge steam train engine at Oybin, Saxony, Germany. June 2022. 📷 #MBApr

Last December, in Berlin, we went to the Ritter Sport store and bought what seemed like every chocolate bar except Crispy Banana. I kind of regret that. 📷 #MBApr

I was way more interested in the sunspot. Used the reverse binoculars projection method to aid in blindness prevention 📷 #MBApr #PartialEclipse 😆

The occasional donut or two may not be genuinely super-duper essential to my well-being but they’re soo good in the moment! 📷 #MBApr

Here’s a windy 2019 August day at Coyote Point, just south of San Francisco International Airport. Some activities: plane spotting, kitesurfing, and cosplay (two of these I was not expecting) 📷 #MBApr

Death Valley National Park can seem incredibly (and perhaps dangerously) serene 📷 #MBApr

Last weekend, fresh foliage adorn our stalwart oaks of Northern California. The interior coast range’s Snow Mountain looms in the background. 📷 #MBApr

A M4.8 earthquake northeast of Chico just happened. I didn’t feel it. But my Raspberry Shake REALLY felt it. #RaspberryShake #California #Earthquake

Ever played with Guinness themed cards at Lassen National Park? Eight years ago, we did! 📷 #MBApr

Pear flowers! This year our two Asian pear trees bloomed simultaneously. Good bet they cross pollinated 📷 #MBApr

Absolutely massive earthquake in Taiwan. Detected by my Raspberry Shake seismometer. It was fortunately 35 km deep. Hoping for the best. #RaspberryShake #Earthquake #Taiwan

I’m going to try participating in micro.blog’s April photo challenge. So each day in April I’ll post one photo based on a word given by micro.blog. I’ve skipped the last few challenges. This big espresso toy at Eddie World in Beatty, Nevada, is ridiculously complex! #MBApr

Flying Swallows are tough to photograph. They are speedy! Here’s an assortment of Cliff Swallows #Birds #BirdPhotography

I never appreciated how electric ovens do not exhaust heat like gas ovens. This new oven of ours (with induction cooktop) will be nice during the summer. For the induction, there’s been a learning curve. Mostly that heat is instant and boiling is FAST. Using a pressure cooker is crazy efficient.

My watch today basically told me to breathe. There was no good reason for the surge of adrenaline at the start of a Teams call. If it weren’t for a beta blocker, my HR would have easily climbed above 120 BPM and I’d been hosed the rest of the day above 90. I’m unusually tired though.

Death Valley Road Trip Part 7: 

This is the last post in this Death Valley photo log. After the short hike at Mosaic Canyon, it began to rain pretty decently, so we headed back to Furnace Creek.

Death Valley Road Trip Part 6: 

This is a slightly shorter post today for just Mosaic Canyon.

Death Valley Road Trip Part 5: 

Most of the second full day at Death Valley! 

Death Valley Road Trip Part 4: 

Following the lake at Badwater, we went reversed course to the north.

Death Valley Road Trip Part 3: 

Continuing from the Stove-Pipe Wells village, we went to an actual Stove-Pipe Well just to the north.

For the first time both our Asian pear trees are in full bloom! They can pollinate each other so this is very good of news. No Death Valley photos tonight

Death Valley Road Trip Part 2: 

Tonight I’ve a quick post of our drive into Death Valley.

Death Valley Road Trip Part 1: 

We had been talking about visiting Death Valley for many years. We finally did it! Here is the first post in a series.

Rainbow Canyon near Death Valley

At Death Valley, a Crow Apparently Begs

Passed through Tonopah 🤡 😬

The wind was far calmer today at Death Valley, so here’s a Desert Sunflower without motion blur #BloomScrolling #FlowerReport #DeathValley #Fujifilm

Meanwhile, yesterday, somewhere in Death Valley #DeathValley #Fujifilm

I’m trying the Tidal music streaming service. So far I really like the mixes they make based on the genres I listen to. They’re far more successful than Apple Music’s mixes. Also, on Tidal, when setting up my music preferences I could have gone all day selecting artists. Really good so far.

Conical perforated metal strainers are pretty great for pulpy food compared to fine mesh wire strainers (impossible to clean!). We just juiced all our backyard-grown Meyer lemons, got 8 cups. Now the juice has been heat pasteurized, portioned, and frozen for summer lemonade.

Daylight Saving Time means more energy use. The heat pump works harder w/hour longer low temps before sunrise. In summer, later sunset means the ambient air temperature won’t drop so windows must stay closed longer. I’ll be in bed during daylight, with the heat pump cooling longer to sleeping temp.

Our full bloom nectarine tree

We were barely tolerated by a pair of nesting Osprey at the refuge today. 😬#Osprey #BirdPhotography #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Fujifilm

Yesterday I picked up our wine club box at the New Clairvaux winery in Vina, CA. Couldn’t beat the weather! #Fujifilm

Our front yard Ceanothus bushes are nearly in full bloom. They are very popular with all sorts of bees and assassin bugs #BloomScrolling

A Glossy Ibis at the refuge yesterday #GlossyIbis #Birds #BirdPhotography #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge

Spotted a stunning American Kestrel at the refuge today #Birds #BirdWatching #AmericanKestrel

Lagunitas IPNA is very good for a hoppy non-alcoholic beer. It’s has non-generic, tasty hops (citrus and tropical flavors) with a light malt background. I’d recommend this. Clausthaler is still my favorite NA beer (very malt forward).

Some photos my awesome wife took at the airports she traveled through for a work trip. A319s and a 737-8. #AvGeek

Sun and rain! Thunderstorms are trying to develop. Maybe they’ll amount ri something on the east side of the Sacramento Valley. #CaWx

Today, our nectarine had its first bloom #BloomScrolling

We think this is a Loggerhead Shrike, though could also easily be a Northern Shrike. Either way, what a sharp looking bird. This is the second time we spotted them atop the same tree. #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Birds #Shrike #Fujifilm 🪶

Black Necked Stilts at the Sacramento Refuge yesterday with the Sutter Buttes looming beyond #Birds #BirdPhotography #Fujifilm #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge

Northern California is in full almond bloom. Our backyard fruit trees are on the precipice of blooming. The ceanothus in the front yard is starting to bloom and the manzanitas have been in full bloom for about a week now

Gorgeous day at the Refuge. #Fujifilm

“‘Like sending bees to war’: the deadly truth behind your almond milk obsession” http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/07/honeybees-deaths-almonds-hives-aoe

A Golden-crowned Sparrow 🪶 #BirdPhotography #GoldenCrownedSparrow #Fujifilm

This rainy President’s Day, I’m getting used to the Yawman Arrow Controller by flying patterns in Laminar’s C172. With an XBox controller, I never could fly the C172 well. It really sucked as yaw control was not easy. So far, the Yawman Arrow controller has been terrific …

If the sun can keep breaking through the clouds today, we may see some thunderstorms in the northern Sacramento Valley… looking promising for weather nerds #CaWx

On our induction stove, just a regular silicon mat under heavy cookware is good to protect the surface. EM easily passes through the mat & still direct heats the cookware. Those mats are useful! Baking, candy, and now this.

Near Chico, CA, we just accumulated 2” of rain and this mockingbird has seen quite enough

Local Raley’s grocery has non-alcoholic beer imported from Germany. It’s good as hoped. Malty, which I prefer over hoppy.

Today, finally saw a Spotted Towhee at the Sacramento River National Wildlife Refuge - Pine Creek Unit. I’d only seen California Towhees before and they’re not nearly this fancy looking.

A quick storm today for the N. Sacramento Valley. I missed this in the forecast. We’ll actually start drying out for a few days tomorrow. 50°F right now, should get to 60° today. #CaWx

The weather has been so damp that there’s been hardly any good time to prune. Since we’re finally drying out a bit, I went ahead and pruned our cultivated native grapes. Sunday should be the warmest day, so I will likely prune the fruit trees then.

Turns out a 2023 model year dishwasher is quite the upgrade to a 2003 model year dishwasher. Oh the new possibilities for loading dishes when there is a 3rd rack for flatware! And tines that flatten! And it’s super quiet! 🥳 But will it last 20 years?

I’ve never seen an installed anti-tip bracket for a slide-in oven/stove until I installed one myself.

We’re getting a new dishwasher tomorrow. Whoever installed the old one I’m removing…. WTAF with the electric connection! Madness. The dishwasher is wired directly to an extension cord, which is plugged into an electrical cord that is wired directly into a wall box. All outside a junction box. 🤬

Just had my first flight with the Yawman Arrow flight simulator controller. It is so nice. I’m impressed with its smooth axes operation and their sensitivity. I’m very happy with this and, on first flight, was worth the wait. #YawmanArrow #FlightSim #XPlane

Compared to German Non-Alcoholic (NA) beer, Sierra Nevada Brewery’s NA Trail Pass beer is fine. The IPA is too bitter and like hop water. Malt flavors should be highlighted more in Golden and IPA. Will buy Golden again; it’s most like beer. Big leap over previous NA beers

Here’s a Western Meadow Lark photobombing a White Crown Sparrow. Or was it the other way? #SacramentoWildlifeRefuge #Birds #WesternMeadowLark #BirdPhotography #AvianGeek #Fujifilm

A ravenous Orange Crowned Warbler! #Birds #OrangeCrownedWarbler #fujifilm 🪶

Here’s a surprise flock of American White Pelicans flying north along the Sacramento River near Corning, CA. #Birds #AmericanWhitePelican #Fujifilm

Germany has great non-alcoholic beer and they seem quite popular there. More than you’d expect! They’re so much better than the rightfully maligned O’Douls. So I’m excited that Sierra Nevada Brewery is getting into this market. Can’t wait to try! https://sierranevada.com/brews/trail-pass-golden

A Western Blue Bird living its best life. First time we’ve seen them feasting on our cultivated natives California grapes. #Birds #WesternBlueBird #Fujifilm

Some birds spotted today at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge: a Bald Eagle, a Merlin, and a Black Phoebe. 🪶 #Birds #SacramentoNationalWildlifeRefuge #BaldEagle #Merlin #BlackPhoebe #Fujifilm

Here’s my RaspberryShake’s recording of the M7.5 earthquake at Japan. #RaspberryShake #Earthquake #Japan

#SilentSunday

COVID Sucks (Stay Fully Vaccinated ): Glad I’m fully vaccinated as my post-Germany COVID symptoms/disease could be lots worse. Took several days to test positive. The infection started with an on/off fever, sore throat, cold-like symptoms, & general malaise. My finger tips tingled for a few hours (immune system must have gone …

#SilentSunday #Deutschland #Berlin

A Hooded Crow harasses a generally unflappable Kestrel at Berlin Tempelhof. #Fujifilm #Birds 🪶#Deutschland #Berlin

After two weeks in Germany, Fujifilm’s new XApp was ace for geotags and JPEG transfers to my iPhone. Tips: set custom saved settings' power management to never turn off; wait to transfer at end of the day; geotag backup: use Pedometer++ for GPX, and HoudahGeo to geotag using GPX #Fujifilm

#SilentSunday #Tempelhof #Berlin #AvGeek

I’ve been waiting for this compact flight simulator controller for over a year. I’m pretty excited about it. Made in the USA, which for electronics, isn’t easy! #AvGeek #FlightSim #YawManArrow Orders for the Yawman Arrow begin Jan. 8 – Yawman

Love getting out of the bus at the departure stand. Returning today to SFO from Germany. #Travel #Deutschland #B77W #Fujifilm #AvGeek ✈️

Guten Morgen! Yesterday, after arriving at Frankfurt, Germany, we had lunch with jet-lag friendly alkoholfrei Bier. Today, in an hour, we’re catching a train to Berlin. #TravelPhotography

My 3-year old 777-300 ride tonight to Frankfurt. SFO gate G9 has decent views of that gate’s aircraft. Lucky me! (Not sarcasm; most gates here are awful for avgeeks) #Avgeek #B77W #Fujifilm

On PetaPixel: “Science Explains The Rainbows That Appear in Hummingbirds' Wings” https://petapixel.com/2023/12/01/science-explains-the-rainbows-that-appear-in-hummingbirds-wings/

#SilentSunday

Yellow-Rumped Warbler was on the backyard cultivated Native California Grapes just long enough for this fortunate shot. #Birds #YellowRumpedWarbler #Fujifilm 🪶

Here’s the turkey that appeared out of a hollow at Point Reyes National Seashore (years ago) and tried to steal our lunch. #Birds 🪶

Orange-crowned Warblers are back, feasting on dried out grapes. We’ve also observed Yellow-Rumped Warblers in the grapes. #Birds #OrangeCrownedWarbler 🪶 #Fujifilm

Snow Geese are back in Northern California. It’s nice living in a fly-way. #SnowGeese #Birds #Fujifilm 🪶

Walnut trees in Northern California right now.

We had a distinguished visitor in our backyard today, hunting at our feeder. This is a Cooper’s Hawk or a Sharp-shinned Hawk. Absolutely stunning.

Good morning. The time changed so I’m now technically up an hour early but I got the usual hours of sleep. So here’s a likely Savanna Sparrow from the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

I’m still amazed how the beta blocker Propranolol means I no longer have a physical tachycardic fight/flight response to normal situations like hobbies, people, and work. Game changer. Makes managing anxiety much easier.

The Orange-crowned Warbler(s) is/are back! They found our cultivated native California grapes a few years ago and have been back annually. I like to think it’s the same one bird that returns. #OrangeCrownedWarbler #Birds

KCIC (Chico Municipal) had an open house yesterday. Two BAE-146s, C-GRNT and N908AS, are stored there. Owned by Air Spray, a fire tanker company. I don’t know if they’re converted. Didn’t look like it. #AvGeek #BAe146

Orland, CA government is pretty decent: “Groundwater recharge sites in Glenn County help provide water to households”

I guess it’s good that the lost Budgie (parakeet) keeps returning to our bird friendly backyard. The neon green bird seems to be flocking with house sparrows. The sparrows constantly move while the Budgie preens.

I may have a breakthrough with my anxiety. A beta blocker. Forces my brain to stop being an adrenaline junky for low stakes things like… hobbies, people, & work. My heart rate is now not near to or tachycardic for no good reason and that hugely helps my anxiety. A cardiologist is in my future.

Good morning from California, where Fall is finally reasserting itself.

Some wildlife at the Red Bluff Recreation Area (managed by the Mendocino National Forest). Lots of amphibians at Ben’s Pond(?)! We also observed well camouflaged mule deer and a busy Downy Woodpecker. #RedBluffRecreationArea

Happy new water year! According to WeatherCat software, my wx station recorded a total of 27.91” for Oct 1, 2022 - Sep 30, 2023 water year. Compare that to 13.66” for Oct 1, 2021 - Sep 30, 2022 water year! Nature gave us a 0.5” boost yesterday. I’m in the N. Sac Valley #CAWx

Phew. No U.S. government shutdown for at least 45 days. I’ll take it.

Someone lost a parakeet or a small parrot 🙁😳 #BirdsOfMastodon #NotFromAroundHere

Three episodes into Silo on Apple TV+ and I’m loving it. https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/125988

Whelp. I’m done with work for the week. So, it’d be great if I can show up for work this Monday and not have to complete an "orderly shutdown.” It’d be great to not have my anxiety start an upward climb. I’d rather not hear people invariably state government employees are lazy and not needed and a …

About time Apple Music shows are available in Apple Podcasts. Now, imagine this, I can resume playing shows anytime & easily know what I’ve listened to 🙄 Mainly I listen to Strombo.

In Northern California’s Fall, our whole house fan really shines. We can bring in cooler air at night when there’s no wind. The modern models are not very loud! So our AC (heat pump) is off for the season now. That’s a bit earlier than usual as we often need a bit of cooling at night for sleep.

Got out to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge this morning. The White Fronted Geese are here (along with many small migratory song birds)! #WhiteFrontedGoose

Covid 💉✅ Flu 💉✅

At KSFO, just outside BART, is a pretty great view of the west side of G terminal. It’s easy to miss coming and going. #AvGeek #KSFO #B777 #B787 #Fujifilm

From the KSFO Terminal 2 Sky Terrace. I didn’t have my telephoto lens so I embraced the glass panes. Lufthansa 747-8 (D-ABYL) SFO-FRA #B748 #KSFO #AvGeek #Fujifilm

Covid booster and flu shots scheduled for next Friday! 🎉

We sometimes spoil our resident scrub jays with sunflower heads loaded with seeds.

So long, Google Chrome. The last straw has come.

I finally deleted my Twitter account. Even having an inactive account felt icky. And really really awful and gross over the last couple of days.

Lots of people with Covid at my workplace. I think the worst I’ve seen.

Today: A Coopers Hawk at the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge. #CoopersHawk #BirdWatching #BirdPhotography

Gray Buckeye Butterfly today at the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge. #Fujifilm #GrayBuckeye #Butterfly

Weather was nice today! Summer is waning and so I guess outdoor photography season can begin. Here are a few dragonflies enjoying an overcast and hazy day. #Fujifilm

Here’s a reminder that Fujifilm’s X RAW Studio stores its camera profiles at ~/Library/Application Support/com.fujifilm.denji/X RAW STUDIO It’s a great way to keep an archive of film recipes and very easily load them to your cameras. Copy an FP1 file for a specific camera, rename it, edit it, save …

Hooray, season 5 of Matt Groening’s Disenchantment is out! I’m always surprised now when Netflix releases another season of a show I enjoy.😊

I’ve been learning ArcGIS Pro cartography and I like what I’m finding. However the interface is like a big experiment and it is confusing. But it’s really nice to have fine control over data, symbols, & labels at many different scales without duplicating layers. #GIS

I managed to write an ugly Python script that converts MesoWest (via Synoptic download; nice people there btw) CSV weather data to WeatherCat (macOS software) data. I did some QAQC and it’s a good conversion. I’m pleased. Nice to finally have locally stored & accessible historical weather data.

Everyone should wash their watch bands more often, no matter the watch! Apple Watch bands are breeding grounds for bacteria - 9to5Mac 9to5mac.com/2023/08/1…

“Potentially historic summer storm event to unfold in SoCal this weekend as weakening Hurricane Hilary threatens to move ashore as tropical storm–causing severe flood risk in SE desert region” weatherwest.com/archives/…

The clouds didn’t clear this morning so much of yesterday’s heat couldn’t radiate to space and it’s 84°F outside at 06:40. 😳

Sigh. Appears there’s another big fire on the Mendocino NF. Plume over Mount Linn. Slide Fire @ 1.5 miles N of Mount Linn - #SlideFire share.watchduty.org/i/10500

macOS WeatherCat and Meteobridge with any Supported Wx Station: I figured out how to have WeatherCat work with my Meteobridge that connects to my Ambient weather station. Turns out it is easy to do with Meteobridge’s template system. In the WeatherCat Station Communications dialog, for Station Type select Generic XML (HTTP) and then enter your Meteobridge’s IP …

Session 3 of Only Murders in the Building is out on Hulu!

A female Oriole having a nice evening Mantis snack in our backyard tonight.

Syrah grapes in Vina, California, at the New Clairvaux Winery are looking great! #California #Vineyards #Grapes

Drip line auto sprinkler diaphragm replace after it started leaking. Hope it clears leak checks throughout the day.

Mercury News: “We may be the last maskers’: California COVID cases are rising. “ I’m still wearing a mask indoors (not at home of course) and I’m going to be extra vigilant for a while.

New The Clientele album! I Am Not There Anymore by The Clientele https://album.link/us/i/1678797674

Huge cooldown for Northern California this week. I’m about to get a lot less cranky 😂

Nice! Photomator and Pixelmator Now Support Fujifilm Compressed RAW: https://petapixel.com/2023/07/21/photomator-and-pixelmator-now-support-fujifilm-compressed-raw/

“Abortion bans and restrictions are known to increase infant deaths, maternal deaths, and maternal suffering. And the US already has the worst maternal and infant mortality rates of any other high-income country in the world.” Infant deaths surge in Texas after abortion ban: …

This morning, House Finches were breakfasting on ripe elderberries in our backyard. #HouseFinch #BirdsOfMastodon #BirdWatching #Fujifilm

Much as I dislike that my heat-pump requires a proprietary communicating thermostat, I do like that I can change some deep level settings to optimize things without dip-switches.

Delta 767 (N1604R) SFO-JFK and flock of Brown Pelicans. #AvGeek #B767 #PlaneSpotting #BirdsOfMastodon #BrownPelican

In more expected bird behavior, on the infill shores of the San Francisco Bay, here’s a Willet (a Sandpiper) snacking on a worm. #BirdsOfMastodon #Willet #SandPiper

Back from a relaxing day of plane spotting at SFO. Here’s a series of aircraft landing and preparing for takeoff. Dang that’s a lot of 777s. #AvGeek #PlaneSpotting #SFO #B777 #B787 #B737

Some real dinosaur stuff happened today at Bay Front Park just south of SFO. This Great Blue Heron caught a gopher, paraded around with it for several minutes, then swallowed it whole. Then the heron proceeded to hunt some more. 😬

Volunteer Sunflowers in the backyard. The scrub jays garden really well. I continue to be impressed with the new Fujifilm XApp for transferring photos from my X-T5. #Fujifilm #Sunflowers #BloomScrolling

Out of an abundance of caution, early this morning I’m watering my front yard native plants in case the neighbors get whacky with their fireworks.The Rachio smart hose timer is working well so far. Turned on at 3am while I was sound asleep.

My #RaspberryShake detected the M6.9 in the vicinity of the Tonga Islands. #EarthquakeMastodon

Suppose it will only be a matter of time before the Justices are on the receiving end of their undemocratic, hateful rulings.

In preparation for the heat in California, added a ton of shade for some sensitive trees. That side of our house does get sun blasted in the afternoon, so should help there too. I need to add more attachment points to the shade cloth but ran out of time with work and all.

It sure is easy to rise in FlightRadar24’s ADS-B rankings! I guess most people don’t even try to get a even half decent antenna position and reliable uptimes.

The new Rachio hose timer works well. Currently, it has fairly simple operation with basic App scheduling and timer. It doesn’t yet have smart home support or an API. It’s independent of the Rachio valve controller. But it works quite well for my needs: rare but long (deep) watering of my front yard …

Perfect morning in California to cool the mass of the house off with our whole house fan. Normally it’s in the 90s this time of the year with lows in the high 60s and low 70s. Sorry for those in Texas though 😬

X-Plane 12 performance on a M2 Max Mac Studio: It turns out that Austin Meyer, founder of Laminar and creator of X-Plane, uses a Mac Studio as his main computer (see interview). I imagine he has an M1 Ultra. That likely explains why my new M2 Max Mac Studio runs X-Plane 12 so well. I got the 32 Gigabyte RAM and 2 Terabyte model (I’ve found that …

I was watching BigJet TV’s Paris Airshow Preview and didn’t notice one of my E-175 gears didn’t extend. Landed at KRDD (Redding, CA) and found out pretty quick what happened... Oops. #FlightSim #XPlane #AvGeek

Using Migration Assistant via thunderbolt is insanely fast.

I’ve been very patient with my M1 Mac Mini. But now I have an M2 Mac Studio on the way. Flight simming and photography will be enormously improved. Less likely: And now that Apple allows on personal device “testing” of apps for free, I might resume learning iOS development.

Offline Apple Maps. FINALLY. #WWDC2023

Little NavMap, open source flight simulation flight planning software, is pretty great. I should have looked into it for X-Plane much sooner. #FlightSim #XPlane

Canceled YouTube Premium due to Google’s decision to once again allow election lies. Too bad they didn’t have a survey asking why I canceled.

macOS Universal Control is so very good when I’m multitasking between my Mac Mini and my MacBook Pro. One keyboard + one mouse = total control of both.

I’m slowly getting the canopies of my shrubs off the ground. Mostly to reduce outdoor cats hiding under them. I’ll do a lot to keep their destructive, bird killing lot out of my yard.

Ash Throated Fly Catcher.

The new Fujifilm XApp is a vast improvement for transferring photos to a smartphone on the fly. But the app’s notifications alerting to the camera’s request to transfer photos are a bit aggressive. #Fujifilm

Air Tractor N802WW was overflying rice fields this morning. I think they were practicing seeding the fields. #AvGeek #Fujifilm

It is a few degrees warmer outside but 10% less relative humidity. The whole house fan made it more comfortable in a few minutes & humidity is dropping like a rock in here. Was 60%. I love it.

Our native plants are going to love this storm! #CaWX

I hope the PR hype for the new Fujifilm mobile app is worth it! Seems promising and I like its new settings backup. Out May 25th. Petapixel: “Fujifilm’s New XApp Offers Smooth Connection, Speed, and Activity Tracking”

Virgin Orbit’s Cosmic Girl OBT01 is on its way back to Long Beach. No idea what it is doing out and about. My ADSB receiver is tracking it.https://www.flightradar24.com/OBT01/3061cbdb

My ADSB receiver (plane tracker) has been doing quite well under adverse conditions of its testing location. I plan to dramatically improve reception this week.

Here is a Black-necked Stilt from the #SacramentoNationalWildlifeRefuge #BlackNeckedStilt #BirdsOfMastodon #Fujifilm

We visited the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge and it was busy with all sorts of creatures. Gray Buckeye butterflies, American Avocets, Lesser Goldfinches, dragonflies and more.

Found my old Raspberry Pi 3 and finally got it set up as an ADSB feeder (aircraft tracker). Are people still skeptical of ADSB Exchange? Been a while since I’ve heard anything about them.

Got sick of ArcGIS Pro 3.1’s Export Layout not saving export settings per Layout. So Export settings from one layout end up carrying forward to others especially if you don’t hit the Export Layout button. So made a quick Python script to stop the insanity. Jupyter notebooks are nice. #GIS

Woodpecker granaries are really neat. This one was right on a trail at Pinnacles NP. We did see an acorn woodpecker nearby though the photo isn’t great.

With the family today, we had whole glazed ham with scalloped potatoes (the potatoes are a Kenji López-Alt recipe). The swiss cheese (we used Raclette) makes the dish 😙👌

71°F at 06:23 in the North Sacramento Valley. 18°F warmer than yesterday this time. 😬

I neglected to post that our cultivated native California roses (Rosa californica) are blooming. Their flowers are fragile and nearly just by looking at them they go to tatters

3am today: Another quake, another shake alert. M5.2 and I didn’t feel it. #RaspberryShake

Earthquake east of Chico near Susanville! People in Chico felt it but not here in Orland. Very clear signal on my #RaspberryShake

Ortho4XP on macOS Ventura: Ortho4XP has some code that’s been deprecated in the latest Python 3 Shapely and Numpy. You’ll need to downgrade Shapely to version 1.8.5. On my Mac after following the Big Sur installation instructions (I’m running Ventura): pip3 install shapely==1.8.5 After that you’ll need …

Last weekend: just a taste of the views you can have at Pinnacles National Park, California, if you take the the High Peaks Trail. #PinnaclesNationalPark #Fujifilm #GeologyMakesThePhoto

Last weekend: in its most happiest habitat, predominantly here are Yellow Monkeyflowers within massive rocks at Pinnacles National Park, California. #MonkeyFlowers #PinnaclesNationalPark

I’ve learned a bit about repairing hose bibs and turns out it’s pretty easy. I’m kind of looking forward to repacking my front yard hose bib this Friday so it stops leaking at the stem and I can put a new Rachio smart hose timer on it.

Ash-throated flycatcher was also a new bird for us at Pinnacles National Park.

Went to Pinnacles National Park on Friday and we were treated to soaring and resting California Condors. Amazing to watch these birds, not long ago nearly completely extinct, thriving here.

American Gold Finch digging for sunflower seeds the other day. #AmericanGoldFinch #Birds #Fujifilm

We’ve been monitoring a nest over the last two months. We saw nothing but the tip of tail feathers until today. We thought it was a Hawk or an Eagle. We were delighted to find two juvenile Great Horned Owls and an adult!

Our native plant garden in the front yard. It looks unmaintained but I swear it is! Nearly everything is flowering including sage, Ceanothus, globe gilia, & manzanita (nearly done flowering). Our Clarkias will be blooming soon. Bees (native & European) and ladybug larva are insane this year.

And now a female Bullock’s Oriole has shown up in our backyard. What luck. #BullocksOriole #Birds

Here’s yesterday’s Bullock’s Oriole looking right at the camera. #BullocksOriole #Birds

Bullock’s Oriole in our backyard Ceanothus. This is our first backyard Oriole! Wow. #BullocksOriole #Birds #Fujifilm

Ladybug larvas were later than normal this year but geez do they have a feast now!

We planted our vegetable and herb seedlings today. Our home compost has turned out real nice. Took several years to build up enough for use. The worms do most of the work since we can’t get the compost hot enough for long. 🌱

Present me is very thankful that past me connected all the commons in our newer irrigation box. So I didn’t have to undo the common “water proof” wire nut but only connect up the green wire to move from an older, now broken valve in an older box.

I experienced weirdness with my HomeKit Thread network the other day after updating to the latest HomePod and ATV software. Of all devices, one of my Nano Leaf Essential bulbs ended up as the lead router which really killed thread device response. I had to cut its power for a bit to resolve.

We’re now a one car household. Feels good! My poor Golf has been barely driven since I started working remotely.

My #RaspberryShake caught the M 4.4 Cobb, CA earthquake early this morning. I did not feel it here in Orland.

First Cedar Waxwing ever in our backyard! They have a creepy high pitched song.

Sorry, I’m not selling my X100V. I’ve had it since Sep 2021, and I only had to wait 2 months to get it. It’s great. DPReview: “Can’t find a Fujifilm X100V? What are the alternatives?” www.dpreview.com/articles/…

Spotted our first Marsh Wren today at the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge. That vertical tail is something else. #Birds #MarshWren #Fujifilm

It has been a week. Today, introvert me gets what it needs and now I’m alone for a bit. Always difficult balancing my needs with my assumed & expressed wishes of others, even loved ones.

Annie the Cat taking in a big dose of sunlight (again, but cuter this time). I hope she shakes her sinus infection soon.

Photographed our first Downy woodpecker today. #Birds #BirdWatching #DownyWoodpecker #Fujifilm

Here’s Annie the Cat enjoying some fresh air. She’s been sick but we’re fighting through it. #caturday

Our young “New Century” Asian Pear tree is in full bloom. Our “Hosui” Asian Pear isn’t mature enough to flower and cross pollinate. Maybe next year!

Not long from now is Summer. Better get our fresh baked sourdough fix while we can!

I went to Shasta Dam today for a work thing. I think I overheard they may have opened a controlled spillway gate today? Gorgeous day. Water levels are as high as I’ve ever seen them.

Just got some pea sized hail in Orland, CA. #CaWX

DPReview.com to close. I loath Amazon even more now. I wish DPReview employees the very best. The site was my go-to for everything photography.

European Honeybees were all over our manzanitas yesterday.

Korean Air 777-3 HL7204 from ICN on approach to SFO on January 21, 2023. #AvGeek #PlaneSpotting #AviationPhotography #Fujifilm

I’m getting more sore that MS still don’t have a macOS Bedrock edition. Surely the market is bigger there‽ I end up running Windows in VMWare 🤮 Microsoft is bringing Minecraft to Chromebooks www.theverge.com/2023/3/15…

1.5 inches of rain so far today in Orland, CA. 😬#CaWX

I didn’t lose an hour of sleep but I sure did lose a precious hour of weekend daytime activities.

First bloom of our a front yard Ceanothus today. So many more to come. So. Many.

The iOS Parcel app doesn’t write expected delivery dates to an iCloud calendar but only to a local calendar. So I just created a Shortcut Automation that runs at 9am daily, copying Parcel created events to an iCloud calendar (shared with my wife). No way to share Personal Automations so here’s a …

The iOS Parcel app doesn’t write expected delivery dates to an iCloud calendar but only to a local calendar. So I just created a Shortcut Automation that runs at 9am daily, copying Parcel created events to an iCloud calendar (shared with my wife). No way to share Personal Automations so here’s a …

And here’s a rabbit at the Northern California refuge. Normally they’re at a full run. #Rabbit

Northern Flickers have evaded my best efforts to photograph them. So this photo from today at a Northern California refuge will do for now. #Birds #NorthernFlicker

Last week I nearly missed this Great Blue Heron at the Sacramento Wildlife Refuge. #Birds #BirdWatching #GreatBlueHeron

We just hit 1 inch of rain today in the North Sacramento Valley. 😳

For several years I was in a “I hate hops in beer” phase. After having tons of not hoppy beer in Germany last year, I learned to like IPA beer like Sierra Nevada Brewery’s Powder Day. SNB is going crazy lately with a big focus on hazy & IPA beer.

Here’s the Bald Eagle from last week’s headshot in all its glory. The wildlife refuges in California are a gem.

Snow Geese from last weekend. #Birds #BirdWatching #SnowGeese

Spotted a Bald Eagle today!

X-Plane Official now has a Discord. I didn’t expect that development. Hopefully it’s well moderated. #XPlane

macOS Ventura settings and notifications (STILL getting unfixable log-in item notifications repeatedly) are a pitiful, frustrating mess but Windows, which I use at work, is still awful everywhere and missing key features I rely on in macOS so 🤷‍♂️ #macOS

Overnight, as often it does, a slight breeze developed in the west side of the North Sacramento Valley! No freeze for us, but can’t say the same for sheltered areas like Redding & parts of Chico. #CaWX

A hard freeze likely tonight and tomorrow night in the North Sacramento Valley. Hopefully a light breeze will keep the temps higher. Tonight we did cover up our young trees. Cold days means bees have not been foraging -not great for our nearly full bloom nectarine. Now a freeze

Finished reading: The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️… and now starting there next book in the series, The Ask and the Answer. 📚

This was one of two batches of mandarins juiced today for this week’s breakfast 😋

I hate the MacOS login items notification that when clicked doesn’t tell me jack and furthermore the app it claims has added itself is disabled on that infernal system settings screen. I cannot figure out how to get Citrix to stop even with CleanMyMac X. 😤

A few “better” photos of last night’s brief snow around 1 am last night in Orland, CA. Around 1:15 am it went back to rain but points further north like Redding continued to get snow.

Snow in Orland, CA. Wow. #CAWx

Just a few degrees lower and Orland, CA could get snow tonight. Raining right now at 39°F. Doppler returns look softer at Red Bluff & northward… Impressive. #CaWX #RadarScope

I juiced & pasteurized two liters worth of mandarins today. The mandarins still on the tree should hold quite a while longer even with the upcoming cold snap. #HomeOrchard #Fujifilm

In X-Plane 12.04 Beta 2 I’m following United 2376 (777-2, EWR-SFO) in an A340-6. I’m barely keeping up with the 777. There's some light chop just west of Laramie, which is reflected at BumpySkies.com. This latest XP beta improved weather greatly. More chores to do in cruise!

I spied a Spotted Towhee today by the Sacramento River. #Birds #BirdWatching #SpottedTowhee #Fujifilm

The Western Blue Birds have already discovered the new piles of grape vine trimmings that still have clusters of raisins. And one of the Mockingbirds got really intrigued about the newly pruned grapevines. #Birds #BirdWatching #BlueBirds #Mockingbird #Fujifilm

Finally pruned the bird feeding native California grapes (cultivated of course). Only had a few more weeks until they woke up! Always quite the puzzle pruning two intertwined grapes. #CaliforniaNativePlants

On January 20 at SFO, 2023. Eva Air 777-3 Reg. B-16731 arrives from Taipei with Japan Airlines 777-3 Reg. JA734J holding for takeoff to Tokyo Haneda. #PlaneSpotting #AvGeek #SFO #B777 #Fujifilm

Western Blue Birds have been in the neighborhood for a while now. Today they finally found our desiccated grapes! #Birds #BirdWatching #WesternBlueBird #Fujifilm

Just flying an A340-600 from San Francisco International into Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport. #XPlane #FlightSim #AvGeek

I’m done with 1Password. I'm tired of the 1Password 8 Safari extension breaking. The app itself is still awful with glaring limitations. The good news is, Safari password import has gotten really good. Just be sure entries have websites, true usernames, passwords. Copy security Qs etc somewhere …

Another #Caturday about to pop down into history.

I updated my iOS/macO Shortcut that takes a photo with geotag & date (preferably with timezone) from the Sharesheet and loads @flightradar24@mastodon.world playback. You’ll need a FlightRadar24 sub for beyond 7 days. It is now better at UTC conversion & URL formatting Get Shortcut

I must admit I’m going to miss certain key people & orgs on Twitter no longer showing up in NetNewsWire and likely Mastodon (‪@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org‬ ‘s amazing NWS weather bots). My severance from Twitter is nearly complete. Completely caused by the Twitter itself.

My first listen to Everything Is by Neutral Milk Hotel - released yesterday. Very short. https://album.link/us/i/1659915193

Why companies use Okta device verification for accounts that rarely need to be used is mind boggling. Like I totally forgot it was a thing when I got my new phone and now I have to wait 5-7 business days to get a reset 😳

On the celebrated day of the last ever delivery of a new 747, here’s a throw back to 2005. The lone Korean Air 747 was parked at LAX and the photo with three 747s at Incheon, South Korea. #avgeek #B747

Here’s a quick & dirty iOS Shortcut that takes a photo with full geotag, date metadata (preferably with timezone) from the Sharesheet and loads @flightradar24@mastodon.world playback. Get Shortcut #AppleShortcuts #iOS

Alaska follows up on using boxed water with this is good news: No more plastic cups for Alaska Airlines - The Points Guy thepointsguy.com/news/alas…

A Bufflehead south of the active SFO runways 28L/28R. They’re fun to watch foraging.

Thanks to my library, currently reading: The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik 📚

On BigJetTV first class+ members only live stream (part 3) on YouTube, just watched an insane departure from Toronto of an Emirates A380 literally blasting snow and ice from the sides of runway 23. Insane. #BigJetTV #A380 #AvGeek

UA59 777-322 from Frankfurt landing at San Francisco on 1/20/2023 #B77W #PlaneSpotting #avgeek #fujifilm

I love that people regularly share what music they’re excited about on mastodon. I rarely saw that in my Twitter timeline.

Black-necked Stilt near the City of Burlingame Shorebird Sanctuary. What a pose!

Got lists set up in Mastodon. Much better than a deluge in my main timeline. @ivory@tapbots.social can filter list members out of the main timeline, which is very nice.

Emirates A380 preparing to take off from SFO to Dubai on 1/20/2023 during golden hour #avgeek #planespotting #A380 #fujifilm

Here’s an Emirates A380 turning right onto SFO runway 28R on January 20, 2023. I’m fully impressed with my X-T5 and the Fujifilm 70-300mm lens. Those 40 Megapixels really help with the details and cropping to “zoom.”

Lunar New Year’s Eve in San Francisco. #LunarNewYear #SanFrancisco #Fujifilm

Great Egret on the San Francisco Bay Trail just south of The City Of Burlingame Shorebird Sanctuary. #birds #GreatEgret #Fujifilm

My first time at Bayshore for SFO plane spotting.

I’d love to be able to customize my autofocus boxes. www.dpreview.com

This is super exciting - the Yawman Arrow controller for flight simulation has been (finally) revealed! fselite.net has the details. #flightsim

Indisputably confirmed Yellow Rumped Warbler at yesterday’s visit to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. They were everywhere but it’s rare to have one facing away for more than a split second 😍#birds #YellowRumpedWarbler #fujifilm

What luck today. Photographed a juvenile Bald Eagle (second year?) at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. #birds #BaldEagle #Fujifilm

OMG this is insane. Pea sized hail & the backyard is just flooded here in Orland. Lightening too. #cawx

I really enjoy flying the Toliss A340 in X-Plane 12. This is on approach to Oakland International. Just a short flight from San Francisco International. #flightsim #xplane #avgeek

Now that the latest wave of rain is done, 1.6 inches of rain today. Highest daily total so far I think. Unheard of in Orland. #cawx

0.6 inches/hour now in my backyard😳 #cawx

Annie Creek is flowing! 0.4 inches/hour right now. The back yard is ponding hard.

My partner only looked at cat, bird, and wildfire posts on Twitter using Tweetbot. Its permanent chronical timeline was key. Now that Tweetbot appears to be banned, that’s it. No more Twitter. Fortunately Mastodon is maturing quickly.

1.2” yesterday in Orland. CA. #cawx

Love to see Stony Creek flowing in the main channel and out into its braids. I never saw it flow in the main channel during the 2022 water year. Stony Creek is controlled by multiple dams, the last one being Black Butte. This bodes well for ground water recharge.

Last night an RV and car caught fire behind us. As far as I know, no one was injured. Here are better photos of the action. There was a really nice full moon last night, too, though thin clouds fuzzed it up a bit. #fujifilm

RV and car caught fire behind us in an empty lot. We’re pretty sure it was abandoned. Ambulance left quickly without lights so unoccupied, fortunately.

In my N. Sac Valley backyard, got 0.44” from 17:00-19:00 today. Winds are beginning to gust over 20 mph, approaching 30 where my anemometer maxes out. Lots more rain to come! #cawx

There’s potential for large impacts from weather in California over the next week or so. We just inventoried our emergency kit & are charging our battery banks.

Red Tail Hawk from yesterday’s bird watching at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. It’s not surprising that they’re not easy to spot. Even rarer is the one that won’t fly off if you get within 100 yards. #fujifilm #birds #RedTailedHawk

The Fujifilm X-T5 can output to HIEF (.HIF) with 10-bit color. That gives more room for minor adjustments. But Apple Photos can’t load the .HIF, just its low-res preview. So I used Raw Power for edits and saved to JPEG. Now Photos can load the high resolution versions #fujifilm

While bird watching yesterday, a M5.3 earthquake occurred south of Rio Dell. My RaspberryShake felt it but I sure didn’t https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/nc73827571/executive #RaspberryShake #earthquake

Snow Mountain in the Mendocino National Forest in Northern California still has snow and seems it got a fresh coat.

Spotted a Belted Kingfisher today! #kingfisher #birds

The Annie Cat in her new favorite sleeping place #caturday

Okay I’m glad the brunt of the atmospheric river missed the North Sacramento Valley. Geez. Gerry Díaz :sutro: (@geravitywave@sfba.social) sfba.social/@geravity…

I’m happy to see there’s still snow on the peaks of the interior Northern California Coast Range. Hope the snow survives as they sponge up all the rain for long term water storage. This is Black Butte at 7400 ft.

In X-Plane 12, the KJFK RNAV Z Runway 13L approach is lot of fun. Watch a real-world YouTube video of it.. Default XP is just missing the lead-in lights! #X-Plane #flightsim

May 2016 at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In late 2017 this 747-400 went out of service. Hard to believe Delta ever operated 747s only five years ago.

Our thrice delayed trip to Germany has this year’s three of my top four aviation photos — from SFO and FRA. And then one for a trip back from Montana (the two 787s, the only one taken with an iPhone 11 Pro). #2022Top4AviationScores #Fujifilm #X100V

Randomly thinking about my first A340-600 flight in 2013 SFO-Munich. I love that plane - especially if fitted with lower lavatory hall that also has random snack & drinks. First aircraft I ever flew with stairs and it was great for stretching the legs in economy.

Some flyover photos from 12/24: United 777-200 LHR-SFO at 37,000 ft; Emirates A380-800 DXB-SFO at 39,000 ft; Qatar A350-1000 DOH-SFO 41,000 ft; SW 737 OAK-BLI (Bellingham) at 38,000 ft. #Fujifilm X-T5 at 300mm (35mm equiv is 450mm). I’m impressed

Yesterday: Red-winged Black Birds at the local wildlife refuge. Likely some Starlings in there too.

I’m rather impressed with how popular #caturday is on Mastodon.

Our cat’s 2nd preferred winter sleeping area. #caturday

Snow Geese flying overhead at the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge. #fujifilm

Just had a leak detector go off. This time a toilet water line started leaking at its connector to the tank. I’m very pleased with this result!

Here’s a Red Tail Hawk from today’s visit to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge.

Chef’s treat: caramel scrapings from the pan!

Done. Just need to salt the caramel in 30 minutes.

Almost done making the caramel. Just needs to hit 250°F

I’m going to make caramel today. Alton Brown’s Dark Caramel recipe never fails. Though I prefer a little less dark so I cut the highest temp from 350 to 340°F and then the final temp to 250°F (makes them a tad softer).

The 2013 Dresden Christmas Market. Guaranteed to make you cheerful no matter how cold it is.

A ravenous Yellow Rumped Warbler visited our grapes again. Eat up, little bird!

My RaspberryShake detected the M6.4 earthquake in Ferndale, CA. Sounds like a lot of important infrastructure damage, like the main bridge into town is cracked and closed, but not injuries. I didn’t feel it. #RaspberryShake #earthquake

Frankfurt International last June. I knew there’d be no shortage of 747s there but was still gobsmacked by their numbers.

This Yellow Rumped Warbler (Audubon’s) is yet another bird feasting on our raisins. Yesterday’s Ruby Crowned Kinglet might actually be an Orange-crowned Warbler. No bars on its wings! 🤷‍♂️

Tried the first “Phat Tyre” ale I bottled. It’s good! The batch can use one more week to bottle condition.

Black Butte peak and Black Butte butte. Mostly greenstone/metabasalt at the snowy peak and basalt at the buttes around Black Butte Lake.

Ruby Crowned Kinglet (update on 12/17: more likely a Orange-crowned Warbler, as the Kinglet has bars on its wings, this one — the Warbler — does not). Such a lovely chirpy & frenetic bird.

Today’s moon.

Relatively rare morning where my car door was slightly stuck due to frost.

I am super excited to now have the XF70-300mm telephoto lens. I’ll no longer feel crazy constrained taking pictures of birds and aircraft (mainly). Bonus that it is rather good at close range for macro.

Western Mockingbird foraging for raisins in our backyard.

Pizza night!

Rain in California. You got to love it after months of hazy blue sky.

#Caturday

Extremely interesting to watch KSFO operations with a stiff wind from the south. All the approaches look bonkers landing at opposite ends of runways from normal. Like this WN904 flight-- they even had to do a Take Off/Go Around!

Beer is bottled and now to hope nothing got contaminated during the process. This is so much work. It’s hard to justify it to myself at times.

Bottling day tomorrow! Bottles are now washed and will drain & dry overnight. It’s Phat Tyre Ale.

My account on mastodon.sdf.org straight up vanished during their database upgrades that were meant to increase performance. Lots of people losing accounts, posts, and follows. I’ll put this mildly: screw that. But I hope they can resurrect all those accounts and data.

A quick Mars + the Moon shot

I set up my MBP’s Hazel to sync the latest Fujifilm X RAW Studio camera profiles from my Mac Mini. Now if I’m on the go I’ll be set. Glad they’re simple JSON files (easy to edit too).

First roast of the winter!

Yellow Rumped Warbler in the grapes this time!

Got a Kinglet in one place for a few moments!

Close up of the pea sized hail and frost. The hail didn’t melt overnight!

First major frosty morning here.

Pea sized hail in Orland!!

Some kind of Kinglet, maybe a Ruby Crown Kinglet, in the grapes this time. Was moving fast as birds do.

It’s hilarious to me that it’s easier for me to use the Sonos app to listen to the latest Apple Music Strombo Show. Sonos app can put the show front and center while Apple Music makes me search for Strombo cuz the Radio tab is garbage.

Western Mockingbird enjoying a desiccated grape in our backyard.

Oops. Didn’t quite get the focus right. Still looks delicious. And was. Left over cranberry sauce + Humboldt Creamery vanilla ice cream.

Fujifilm X Raw Studio is very snappy with the X-T5 camera. Hardly any wait for reprocessing lossless compressed raw. Took a few seconds with the X100V, and only a split second on the X-T5 w/provided USB C cables. That makes a huge difference.

#caturday

In the Micro.Blog app, I’d love to be able to selectively disable cross-posting sites instead of all or nothing. Here’s hawk bum for reading my unsolicited feature request!

Gorgeous day today in Northern California. This is from the same place where we saw the Northern Flickers (and Nutall’s and Acorn Woodpeckers).

Northern Flickers galore on the trail today. Managed to photograph one.

My contribution to Thanksgiving is cleaning up the kitchen after major steps are completed by my wife & cranberry sauce. Can’t wait for tomorrow. Lots of prep today!

WiFi tethering with the X-T5 looks like a game changer for around the house photos. I’ve got my Mac Mini as the Fujifilm Acquire server. I tested turning off the camera during transmit. The RAW sent but not the JPEG. I could really complicate things with Hazel and Shortcuts ;-)

The 5 Ghz WiFi setting to transfer from X-T5 to the Fujifilm iOS app is surprisingly usable with only a few seconds per 20MB 40 megapixel JPEG. Excellent. The 2.4 Ghz, like for the X100V, is still garbage at 10+ seconds per image (not actually measured but felt like it).

Backyard House Sparrows - 84mm equivalent & cropped to zoom, using those X-T5 40 Megapixels! I am planning to get a 200 mm lens in a few months & really start birding.

Put the ale into secondary fermentation this morning and my sample is at 5% ABV! 🍺 🙌

Good news. The X Raw Studio config files (~/Library/App Support/com.fujifilm.denji) for the Fujifilm X-T5 are exactly the same as for the X100V. Only a few strings like model, serial #, and IOP (what?) are different. So it’ll be easy bringing over my film sim recipes to the X-T5.

Here’s me on the Snyder Creek trail gazing at the talus field, but still wanting to be out of there (rockfall is the reason for this talus). This is pretty near the end of the trail where there’s a camping area and a paternoster(?) lake, Snyder Lake.

Back in September we visited Glacier National Park. We didn't take the Going to the Sun Road, but opted for the lesser traveled Snyder Creek trail. Here's a couple of fuzzy caterpillars taken with a Fujifilm X100V.

Been over a week since putting in 1 Gbps powerline adapters and it’s perfectly fine for basic Mac Mini server duty (HomeBridge, file server), Sonos, Apple TV, RaspberryShake, and teleworking.

I’ve snagged a Fujifilm X-T5 — it’ll be delivered Tuesday. I haven’t had a camera with interchangeable lens system in over a decade! I’m so excited. I ordered the 55 mm kit. Seems for a kit lens, it is unusually highly regarded.

I’m apparently harvesting Mastodon accounts tonight.

I’ve had good success with an old 200 Mbps powerline adapter, so I’ve finally splurged on a gigabit adapter plus an 8 port switch. A few weeks I’ll know if this is worth avoiding running LAN cables for decidedly non-mission critical stuff like Apple TV, Sonos, & RaspberryShake.

Had my gas & electric company switch our home from gas heat to electric heat service (we now have a heat pump). The main impact is we now get 10kWh added to the cheaper tier 1 electricity allotment for a total of 21kWh a day during heating season.

Phat Tyre Ale is now fermenting. A couple of mistakes were made but nothing critical (probably). It’s getting easier and less stressful every time as I refine my protocols. Original gravity at 1.048-1.050. Close to the documented 1.052!

Funky moonrise tonight.

I just turned the compost and wow those soaking rains bring the FATTEST volunteer earthworms into the compost (or encourages them to gorge & get happy in the compost). We do have volunteer resident worms in the compost, though in the summer they stay at the very bottom.

Went to New Clairvaux Vineyard (home of Trappist-Cistercian monks) to pick up our first wine club order. It’s such a nice grounds.

Sierra Nevada Brewing’s Narwhal Imperial Stout is really good.

Thoughts on Heat Pump Heating: The weather chilled enough that our new Fujitsu 36LMAS heat pump is fully operational transferring outdoor heat into the house (during the cooling season it does the opposite). Our equipment continues to be amazingly quiet, quite unlike the natural gas furnace the heat pump replaced. It’ll be …

Going to try Northern Brewer's Phat Tyre Ale Extract Beer Recipe Kit this Winter. Will be the first time with secondary fermentation.

Fujifilm X Raw Studio for macOS crashed on launch the last few weeks. Worked fine with other user accounts. Eventually I nuked the right crumbs to stop the crash: saved application state!

0.34” of rain today! Finally, the rainy season has begun in California. 🤞

So Slate is suddenly increasing their subscription from $59 a year to $119. And I can’t find the cancel button fast enough. Oh wait, it is missing despite the FAQ saying it exists! Poor form, Slate. I’m sure there’s another news org not doing shenanigans to customers.

Go away, Bolsonaro.

Region appropriate milkweed seeds sown today. Hope we get enough rain to avoid regular irrigation for germination and establishment. 🌱

I’m slowly understanding Mastodon and I’m sure happy that I chose micro.blog a while ago. Wish that searching for Mastodon users wasn’t out of the way on the Discover page.

Replaced a leaky toilet valve this morning. Now that have had quite enough low grade anxiety & I feel accomplished, time to be extra lazy.

More signs of Fall with flocks of birds migrating overhead.

And here I thought we had a neighbor operating a wood stove for heat. Ugh. share.watchduty.org Barn fire with spread to vegetation - Hwy 99W, Orland

Thumbs up on Apple’s Shared Photo Library. We set it up to start with photos starting on 10/24, skipped the Moments, and set it to Manual. Now our Camera apps are set to Shared Library and everything is working very well. It did take quite a while to configure the shared library.

Found European Fanta at World Market yesterday, and it goes very well with pizza. Fanta being slightly sweet and made using actual juice is so good.

Software documentation is usually neglected. So I’m super impressed that ToLiSS has already updated their A321 documentation for X-Plane 12 beta.

It’s the time of the year where every two weeks I prune the front yard native plants back. I fill the green waste bin and then I stop. That makes it easy to not overdo it. After and (way) before photo of our California buckwheat. I left twigs of assorted sizes for wildlife.

I hope M2 Mac Minis are announced this week. X-Plane 12 goes over energy budget of my 2019 MBP (Radeon GFX), slowly draining the battery. Frame rates aren’t great but they’re mostly workable.

I replaced our two bedroom smoke detectors. The new ones have sealed 10 year batteries so no flimsy 9V cartridge to deal with. Love that these new First Alert detectors activate upon attaching to their mounts. Painless.

This is great for X-Plane quick view key bindings: Get a UI Numpad using macOS Accessibility (Easily Create Virtual UI Hotkeys!) - Tutorials - BetterTouchTool Community

Shedding of a mantis on our rosemary plant.

I now always get way inside my head when signing a mail-in ballot. It didn’t used to be this way.

Cleared out the pepper plants that were vigorously revived from rain ~18 days ago & put some clover seed down. The garden is ready for winter. I’ve got a pile for drying out leaves on stems so I’ve got a supply of compost browns without clearing leaves on the ground. 🌱

Mantis in our happiest avocado tree.

The whole house fan is really nice. It actually cools off the mass of the house so its temperature doesn’t rebound like it did with floor fans positioned at window / slider screens. It is also really cheap to run at about .25 kilowatt-hours. Thumbs up!

That’s a lot of Rice A Roni 😬

Part of the HVAC replacement project included removing the decrepit swamp cooler. The eyesore & potential rain entry point is gone!! Contractors did a great job matching the shingles. Last part of the project, to be completed Monday, is a whole house fan.

Heat pump installed and initial impression is it is amazingly quiet compared to the old traditional AC. First photo is the new heat pump (Fujitsu AMUG36LMAS), last is the old air conditioner. No more natural gas for heat! Winter will be amazing without jet engine sounds.

Snagged the best plane spotting spot at KSEA’s N terminal.

Mount Rainier and in the far distance, likely Mount Adams. Flying east from KSEA to KMSO

787s at KSEA. I’m on board that E175 from earlier today & now going to KMSO

I appreciate that we’ll be on this exact E175 later today for a connecting flight to MSO

I’ve been enjoying X-Plane 12 Early Release (now beta 3) even if my MacBook Pro (x86) frame rates never get above 33. Compared to MS Flight Simulator 2020, it’s a change that my actions are the typical reason for incidents rather than bugs or lack of functionality.

The very first storm of meteorological Fall and White Crown birds have already descended upon our backyard. It’s cool that they prefer our warmer backyard to cooler stormy mountains. We’ll see them consistently until June. Welcome back!

In California, our baking season has begun. Inaugurated with Pineapple Upside-Down Cake.

Today at the Orland Flea Market.

To no one in particular… Please remember to wipe your smart phone camera lenses off before taking photos. You don’t need to suffer with that fog in your photos.

My @raspishake detected the M4.4 earthquake out of Santa Rosa, CA. Too far for me to feel though.

Today the weather was very nice and we had to make molè. An indulgent start of heavy comfort food season.

Our volunteer conifers seem happy. First year they’ve developed cones‽ 🌱🌲

Used to be ddclient for dynamic DNS updates required web-skip=’IP Address:’ when checking the web for the WAN IP. But uh, seems like that’s been breaking my ddclient updates for a while now. Troubleshooting showed that removing web-skip in ddclient.conf fixes the problem.

Covid booster ✅ Flu shot ✅

06:54 AM and was 82°F & rising in the backyard here in Orland, CA. Amazing.

beestat says it’s too hot for the A/C to keep up. It’s also a Smart Day / which means we need save energy. That’s easy: increase the AC from 77°F to 83°F.

Got a proposal back from a contractor. It includes a ducted mini split which is a new concept to me and they are awfully tempting. Seems to be better in almost every way than than a classic American-style central heat pump system.

Pacific Gas & Electric SmartDay today and I bet tomorrow, too. Between 1600-2100, we’ll be setting our A/C to “away” and being more mindful of our general electrical use. For the greater good!

For the next week, ~record hot temperatures! Once again, time to protect our Hosui Asian Pear’s central leader with shade cloth. I had to lash an old pruned apricot branch to the tree stake for height for the shade cloth. The tree put on several inches in the last week! 🌱

Had a standoff tonight. White had just rolled the double sixes.

Seems the first contractor I asked for an estimate from for a heat pump ghosted me. Takes a lot out of me for me to call anyone and have them in my home so I’m probably more dismayed than most would be.

Hope this leaf bursting bud on the central leader of my young Asian pear tree survives today’s max 114° heat in Northern California. A few more days of this too.

Smoke from the Six Rivers Lightning Complex earlier this morning creeping in towards our home in the North Sacramento Valley. It’s now smellably (😜) here.

We’re very happy with Trader Joe’s Bavarian Bratwurst. Pretty close to Nürnberger style but much bigger. Of course we had no choice but to prepare it as part of Currywurst.

For All Mankind finale was a heck of a roller coaster. Woah.

Our home heat and air conditioning is 18 years old. We were planning on replacing it with a heat pump & now with the Inflation Reduction Act passing & Europe going all in on heat pumps, it’s time to get in on this before supply becomes a bigger problem.

Guess my endless tweaks to my drip schedules with the Rachio sprinkler controller are paying off. We used 9000 gallons last two months (150 gallons per day in & outdoor). I even added emitters this year! Last year that period had 14000 gallons.

These backyard figs look good but they’re not sweet. We dried them out and plan on using them in a bake in a week or so.

M4.3 earthquake SE of Orovolle, CA occurred at 18:41 Pacific. I didn’t feel it. @raspishake #ShakeNet

Super happy with our peppers this year. Best harvest ever (and much more to pick). Mostly serranos in the bowl. Love ripe peppers. Can’t get those at the market where we live.

Based on my spreadsheet, it’s time to replace our ~20 year old A/C & nat gas heater with a new heat pump. Nat gas is now almost as expensive as electric per BTU (assumes heating seasonal perf factor of 9.5). No surprise gas cost is rapidly 📈. Just got to get thru summer.

Introverts that have to go to the office at least once a week find fridays amazing. Or at least I do. Fridays in the office: Empty - The Washington Post

Peppers & tomatoes (fortunately many of the delicious fruit do not have end rot) are ripening and we’re harvesting every few days now.

Hot air balloons behind our house this last Saturday. Not common at all & a delight to see.

From early June: rain over Munich’s Olympiapark.

All is not great in our garden though. We still have a heck of a time with end rot on our tomatoes despite amendments with calcium. Into the compost these went! 🌱

Pepper garden update🌱

How the Yurok Tribe is bringing back the California Condor - On ArsTechnica

With insanity at European airports I’m thankful our early June trip to Germany was nearly flawless. We 😷managed to not get Corona (we tested ourselves before leaving though the US lifted that requirement while we were there). Almost 4 years of planning! Photo is Frankfurt Intl

Beetle killed trees in Saxony, Germany.

On my Mac Mini I have NetNewsWire pulling Tweets by specific users. Meanwhile, I’ve set my eero to block Twitter on my mobile devices. With NetNewsWire’s iCloud sync, NetNewsWire on mobile devices gets those tweets for me to read. Terrific way to reduce my Twitter use.

Earlier in June: on a trail to Oybin, Saxony, Germany. Saxony has the best sandstone.

Earlier this month: When in Munich, you must ride the catfish?

Before our trip to Germany, I pruned the first big leaves off a sunflower because they were shading out a pepper. Now the sunflower has a flower near each prune cut. Great for attracting bees to our peppers!

6/12: in a forest southwest of Bautzen, Saxony, Germany.

Gray Hairstreak butterfly on one of our pepper plants.

6/14: Minerals under ultraviolet light at the Freiberg Mineral Exhibition.

6/14: Freiberg Mineral Exhibition at Freudenstein Castle. An exquisite collection.

I emergency bought a Ratio 6 coffee maker after my old Ninja broke. Best of all, and I didn’t know about this, @RatioCoffee just refunded the cost ‘cuz I won their drawing 🎉 can’t remember the last time I won anything this good!

June 6 in Munich.

June 6, 2022: the higher regional court building in Munich (Oberlandesgericht München).

Germany trip recap: some 787-9 photos while boarding FRA-DEN. I love it when boarding is at a stand and not a gate.

Our peppers exploded. Best yields ever. Already we roasted some shishitos to go with quesadillas. 🌱

We concluded our trip to Germany. It ended nicely despite the current upheaval of travel. Best unexpected thing to happen was the captain of the United 787-9 we flew on back to the States let me snap photos of the flight deck! Heaven.

Hello my first ever 787 flight! 🛫EDDF🛬KDEN🥳

I’m thrilled with this view of Frankfurt International from my hotel room. Great place to end this trip.

Countryside of Saxony, Germany. Barley fields!

Obligatory photo of surfers at the Eisbachwelle in Munich’s English Garden.

Eurasian Coots in the Pagodenburger See at the Schloss Nymphenburg in Munich.

Gorgeous dragonfly in the backyard today. Lucked out with the lighting.

Been trying to get to Germany to visit very good friends the last three years. Might actually happen this time.🤞

A very comfy Eurasian Collared Dove. Glad our backyard can be a refuge from the neighborhood outdoor cats

So I’ll not fly MSFS 2020 again with it bugging out & turning me straight to the airport at start of my downwind approach despite a properly programmed FMS. 🤬I’ll pay for X-Plane 12 early access (and get a X-Plane 11 license). MSFS is pretty but awful where it matters.

Peppers are on the way! 🌱

A few more photos of the #EdwardFire in Orland, CA today. Fortunately our house was never in danger. Sad that this fire was likely preventable with mere common sense about mowing. A few homes were lost. #EFire

Elderberries are ripening already. And there’s so many more in the hopper! 🌱

One front yard clump California Fuchsias is blooming. This one is always a month ahead of the others. Not pictured, but our yarrow is flowering too. And the Toyon is still very popular with all kinds of pollinators. Meanwhile our neighbor struggled with a gas powered lawnmower.🌱

I do not love it when Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 inexplicably drops my entire approach flight plan and drives me direct to the arrival airport. Keeps me on alert, that’s for sure. I’m pretty close to buying X-Plane. Can’t wait for X-Plane 12 early access.

Backyard is looking good. Peppers & tomatoes are flowering. The elderberries are still flowering.

Our grapes are getting plump real fast. And our volunteer conifers are super happy. They grew several inches this year. 🌱🌳

Baby “Bacon” variety avocados! Latest date I’ve seen berries on this tree. Let’s see if they’ll survive summer and winter. 🌱🌳

Probably going to have a bumper crop of figs this year! Last year was meager. 🌱🌳

Spotted a Hooded Oriole in the front yard as we we started an after lunch walk. What luck. A first!

More of this rain please.

Our front yard Toyon (first photo) and Yarrow (2nd photo) are blooming. Just the California buckwheat and the California fuchsias are left to bloom. 🌱

Been several years & usually I’m behind on WiFi tech so figured it was time replace the old eero Pro with an eero Pro 6E. I only use one eero as the house is tiny. Now getting top WiFi speeds on the local network 🙌

Mockingbirds are going to have an amazing late summer of grapes from our cultivated California grapes. These have an amazing assortment of bugs too. Still have ladybugs in them. 🌱

Pineapple guavas have been blooming for a few weeks now. The Mockingbirds love munching on the flower petals.

Elk at Point Reyes National Seashore, California. Last March.

Spring.

Wild California Grape flowers.

Area scrub jays have really got the hang of our feeder. Although, recently one jay tried to peck at the seeds through the transparent canister.

Our homemade Bulgogi fries. Inspired by a food show that had a terrible implementation of this idea. We got it right 🤫

Here’s a magenta flower from one of our cultivated California Wild Roses.

The Annie Cat.

So far, max gust of 40 mph at my backyard today. And that weather station isn’t ideally located.

The Annie Cat in a bag.

Today was the first taste of the Bravarian Hefeweizen home-brew and it is an unqualified success. This second brew is better carbonated (first was borderline flat) and it is more flavorful than Hank’s Hefeweizen. Both kits were from Northernbrewer.com.

California Scrub-Jays carefully inspecting our just planted peppers and tomatoes🌱

Happy I got the last batch of beer fermented before this upcoming insane heat wave. We’re transplanting our peppers and tomatoes today. Rob Mayeda on Twitter: “…Temps as much as +20 > average with records in reach (1/2) #CAwx 🌡️🥵”

Good morning, Waffle! 🧇

Colors balance shift is a key part of Film recipes so my Shortcut would fail to match as white balance would inexplicably reset via Q. Fujifilm found the bug too: “bug has been fixed, which caused that WB SHIFT saved as ‘CUSTOM’ would be disabled by operating the ’Q’ menu.”

Hefeweizen bottling day. Here’s my factory. This’ll be the last brew until winter as I don’t use much air conditioning or have a fridge for fermenting. I’m quite happy with seasonal brewing. It’s kinda stressful!

Avocado flowers! 🌱🌳

Assassin bugs are bad ass. They seem to be more common than ever in our yards. They’re also not camera shy. We welcome them!

Lessons learned: in MSFS 2020, never change flight phases if flight plan is manually input to FMS. Super lame because the Plan UI doesn’t let you select transitions, VIAs & airways so its IFR plans are 100% bonkers. Also saved flights don’t seem to save my FMS programming. 😤

Finally got to the season two, episode two of Picard 😳 what a great premise

Only 4% of Flight Simulator players have completed an Instrument Landing System landing‽ Clearly I’m too nerdy for this game.

Poppies (1st photo) are now in full bloom and clarkias (2nd) are about to do the same. 🌱

Recent mornings, our cultivated native California grape leaf tips have droplets of water. Apparently this process is called guttation. They’re likely telling me to cut back on way earlier than normal drip watering. 🌱

Now in bloom in our backyard: cultivated California Wild Roses (pic 1) and Elderberry (2). Still gorging themselves: ladybugs. Everywhere in our front yard. They’re just decimating aphids. Ladybugs particularly love coyote bush (3) and sage.

Latest Shortcuts for macOS Has Vast Improvements: What's new in Shortcuts in iOS 15.4 and macOS 12.3: “End If” and “End Repeat” can now be dragged in the Shortcuts editor That’s a big deal. I’ve abandoned attempts at refactoring shortcuts solely because I couldn’t move entire blocks of If statements. “Combine Images” no longer produces empty …

Here goes my second brew - a simple Bavarian Hefeweizen. With way warmer than normal temperatures I figure our house will be close to or within the ideal fermentation temperature range. 🤞

Eurasian Collared Dove drinking party.

Potatoe croquettes for lunch today. Great use of leftover mashed potatoes.

Citrus gummies are a great way to use backyard citrus. We made Meyer lemon with Valencia orange gummies. An Alton Brown recipe. We’ve frozen our remaining Meyer lemon juice. Our citrus season is now over.

macOS Shortcuts, Logger for Shortcuts, Shortcuts Temporary Files, and Hazel: Logger for Shortcuts provided me exactly the information to figure out how to get Hazel to properly use a Shortcut against a file. Now I can have Hazel run a specific Shortcut against a file whenever a new file shows up. Background: for some reason when Hazel starts a Shortcut, the Shortcut operates …

From last Monday near Tomales Point in beautiful California, a genus Arctia moth caterpillar on lupins.

Raspberry Shakes do great science in the challenging conditions of Haiti: When a seismic network failed, citizen science stepped in on Ars Technica

I’ve been playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 on the Xbox Series S. I’m surprised at how it keeps my mind off everything and on a passion of mine and so it really helps my anxiety. Last time I played was w/ FS 98. This is amazing but not without some bizarre issues.

From last Monday, a very loud acorn woodpecker at the Point Reyes National seashore visitor center.

From last Monday, the Pacific Ocean and Tonalite rock at Tomales Point.

Peppers and two tomato seedlings are making great progress. We’ll likely be hardening them off in a few weeks and plant by April.🌱

More Point Reyes National Seashore photos from last Monday: bumble hovering near a flower, elk, and another coyote.

Yesterday, at Point Reyes National Seashore on the Tomales Point Trail, this hunting coyote could have been showing off. The coyote didn’t catch anything.

The freeze we got a few weeks ago, down to 28°F, did no clear harm to our plants. Mandarin, Valencia, Meyer lemon, & avocado flowers fine. Our nectarine is setting fruit as shown by this cute little green ovary. And ladybugs are all over our California wild roses 🌱🌳

Front yard is looking really nice. I’ve been trying to rein it in with lots of pruning. I know our annual wildflowers super appreciated the 0.38” of rain last week. 🌱

After weeks of warmer than normal weather, weather swung the other way and we had freezing temps for a few days. Had to cover up the weaker & less freeze tolerant trees. I don’t see damage to my earlier than normal blooming trees yet: all citrus, all stone fruit, one avocado 🌱🤞

We’re slowly preparing the backyard crop rows for planting. We just pulled all the weeds & bolting cilantro out to the compost pile. Saturday we enjoyed a fresh fennel salad. Next weekend we’ll test the drip tape, make any repairs, remove cat poop 🙄, and then add compost. 🌱

Harvested our first homegrown Valencia orange this year. So very sweet. Even the pith isn’t bitter. We may want to harvest the rest early if there’s a freeze later this week. Fortunately there’s only a dozen-ish. ~243 mandarins harvested so far — makes great juice 🌱🌳

The Annie Cat.

Veggie sushi for dinner tonight.

Gilias were the first annual flowers to bloom in our yard. Can you believe these are just as or more aggressive at spreading compared to poppies? 🌱

First bloom for our Valencia orange tree. About three weeks early compared to 2020 & 2021. 🌱🌳

Ladybug larva gorging on aphids gorging on sage. And nearby, a bright orange ladybug pupa. 🐞 🌱

Honey bee approaching a nectarine flower. 🌳🌱

Our New Century Asian Pear tree, seeing as it’s already showy as heck, will be glorious in a few years. 🌱🌳

Our cultivated native grapes are leaking water from pruning cuts, and that is normal. But unexpected. 🌱

Today I noticed my cultivated native grapevines we’re leaking water where I recently pruned them. A quick search revealed that is totally normal. I’ll try to grab a photo tomorrow. 🤯 🌱

Here’s three more flowering cultivated native plants from the front yard: sage, then manzanita, then western red bud.

… and here’s a lovely jumping spider hanging out on a manzanita leaf that’s surrounded by a creeping sage bush. Some white manzanita flowers show through the leaves.

Sure feels & looks like spring in our front yard. I think this is an assassin bug on a newly blooming Ceanothus. 🌱

…. and here is our new (this year) New Century Asian Pear about ready to burst. 🌱🌳

Our Nectarine is very close to blooming. This is its second year in the ground here. 🌱🌳

California Towhee from this morning. First sighting ever in the backyard but have seen these around the neighborhood. They don’t seem to care much for the white crowns & house sparrows. This is my kind of bird.

Almond bloom season is already upon us 😒. You can’t avoid it in most of California.

Okay, for once in my life I managed to replace a key home feature without any frigg’n drama. Kitchen faucet replaced & why didn’t we do this sooner? The last faucet not only started leaking last night but years ago had seized into place - no swivel. Local Ace hardware was ace

Thanks to a Honeywell leak detector, at 22:30 we woke to an extraordinarily loud beeping from under the sink & found there a fresh leak. Could have got worse fast. It’s leaking at the braided hose & coupling. That hose is integrated -not replaceable without a new faucet.

Took a walk around a small lake today and saw: 1) turtles sunning on a log; 2) a western meadow lark; 3) redwing blackbirds; 4) long billed curlews; and 5) a duck with a cool hairdo (hopefully).

Audio calls where I have to talk are literally bad for my health hah. The two heart rate peaks after 9am were Teams calls. If not for my anxiety med, my peak heart rate would have likely been higher and sustained longer after a call.

I looked out into the backyard just in time to see a Nuttall’s Woodpecker investigating our cultivated elderberry and Ceanothus bushes. So cool!

We started our peppers today: ancho, jalapeño, serrano, shishito, santa fe, and two tomatoes. Trying for variety this year. 🌱

Did a bit of pruning of the apricot today. Doesn’t look like much but I removed lots of suckers and interior branches. I’ve quit trying to top it. Dang tree barely produces so it is not worth the extra effort. 🌱

If you’re new to Apple Music, because reasons, you may follow me. https://music.apple.com/profile/rpmik

Dynamic Range Priority Added to "What was my Fujifilm Recipe?" macOS 12 Shortcut: I’ve updated my “What was my Fujifilm Recipe?” macOS 12 Shortcut. It now includes support for Dynamic Range Priority. The “Scanned Superia” recipe from fujixweekly.com is added. The Shortcut now uses SHA1 hashing, as on modern processors it is much faster than MD5 …

The Annie Cat successfully catting this past afternoon.

Managing Anxiety: My doctor increased my dose of an anxiety med. Took three weeks to feel the effects of that but once again I don’t feel like I’m racing against time when doing a hobby. Or in full flight mode when making calls. My heart doesn’t pound as hard and as long when starting work. HeartWatch, with its …

A few different birds & a landscape from today’s nature walk. One vulture and one 777.

macOS Shortcut: What's my Fujifilm Focal Length?: Since I now have the TCL-X100II attachment and I make ample use of the Digital Teleconverter feature, I made a quick macOS Shortcut to add Fujifilm Effective Focal Length as a metadata Keyword. This Shortcut requires exiftool in your path. It’s a modified version of What’s My Fujifilm …

I pay for 800 Mbps down and 15 Mbps up. Xfinity/Comcast over-provisions my download a ton. Recently I got a free unannounced bump in upload speed. Basically I now have near gigabit internet. Got to be happy about that especially with the small price increase.

House Sparrows on the feeder and a reddening House Finch waiting its turn on top of the pole.

The front yard Manzanitas (1st photo) and Coyote Bushes (2nd) are flowering. Next up are the Ceanothus bushes, then the Elderberries. 🌱

Today I had to remove a trespassing & bird harassing “Happy Birthday To You” balloon from our mandarin tree and then dispose of it. A birthday card can say as much. 🙄

Last night’s roast beef dinner. Sunday night came early! 🤭

Random aircraft photo of mine from 2005 at Incheon International Airport, Republic of South Korea. You won’t see lined up 747s like this anymore.

Today we moved our lemon grass over a few feet to give our new Asian pear tree some room. Then we finally mulched the area. Looking good! BTW, our electric tiller is amazing. Way better than hacking away at compacted soil with pick & shovel.

On Twitter, Matt Roberts, an atmospheric science student, showed a spike in atmospheric pressure at Half Moon Bay airport around 4am. Likely caused by the Tonga eruption. Looked at my weather station and it registered a spike after 4 am. Impressive. Minor(?) tsunami inbound.

Honey bees are apparently feeding on bird seed dust. Never seen this behavior before. More photos on Flickr.

On today’s walk, there was a very photogenic & easy-going Black Phoebe. This one did not want to leave their tree.

My favorite person made cinnamon rolls today for tomorrow morning and another weekend (raw rolls apparently freeze well).

In the great valley of California, one learns to appreciate winter clouds after summer’s constant blue or smokey sky.

A very frosty morning today. My weather station read a low of 29°F just after midnight.

I planted two Asian pear trees today. A New Century (1st photo) and a Hosui (2nd photo). They’re from Stark Bro’s. These may be the last fruit trees I ever plant.

We’re ending the year with disco fries. Everyone, have a good start to 2022.

One more photo of today’s aebleskiver making.

Aebleskiver day!

After a few years of iPhone night mode, high ISO photography (as high as 12800) with my X100V is pretty nice. I really can’t be bothered by the noise since the X100V results in most circumstances look way better than blotchy iPhone night mode.

Last night. Winter views like this make slogging through summer worth it.

As is annual tradition, made caramel the other day. Every batch is unique. Compared to last year, the caramels are harder but bolder in flavor.

Christmas Soup is a before Christmas tradition for us. Easy and so very tasty.

😬 this backgammon game ended more intensely than expected. I won 🙌

Has anyone figured out the rhyme or reason behind Fujifilm cameras expiring smart phone-provided location information via bluetooth? Location information expires in a few hours (I think) and the Fuji Cam Remote app + Camera do not reliably connect without user intervention.

I really enjoyed Hawkeye. A lot of fun. Hailee Steinfeld is great as Kate Bishop (… and Emily Dickinson).

I had rain gage issues the last big rain & wind storm. A mast pole was slightly loose so I wedged it in tighter. I also added weight to the bottom of the structure. It is level and the tipping bucket is not sticky. Hope that increases accuracy in wind despite shrubs.

Listening to last week’s Accidental Tech Podcast– I’m befuddled by Marco Arment’s inability to boot an M1 Mac Mini without any human interface devices. Mine does it just fine. Perhaps the trick is rebooting it using Screen Share? I dunno. The Mac Mini is a great server for …

“What was my Fujifilm Recipe?” macOS Shortcut update: exiftool now preserves the original file dates (-P) and it now overwrites the original file (-overwrite_original). I also added a Shortcut example for batch processing photos using a selection in Finder. Find all this on the …

I didn’t feel the M 6.2 - 38km W of Petrolia, CA earthquake in Orland but it was easily recorded on the @raspishake.

Had homemade Korean pancakes (jeon) tonight. Filled with leftover banchan used in last night’s bibimbap.

Whole wheat waffles… smothered with definitely very healthy butter and maple syrup.

Success! First try of Hank’s Hefeweizen home brew and it is exactly what a Hefeweizen should be: delicious malt flavors and not hoppy. I’m so happy about this. Was a lot of anxiety-inducing work & waiting.

Wind and rain today in California.

Soggy House Finch.

Soggy house finches and house sparrows (maybe a fox sparrow too) sheltering on grape vines from the wind and desperately needed rain.

Installed two of three Caseta switches. The 3rd end of run circuit neutral is miswired somewhere as bulbs flicker when the Caseta PD-6ANS switch is off. Off shouldn’t trickle voltage through lights like the dimmer. Off is off - the point of the neutral wire. 🤷 I’ll revisit soon.

Caseta dimmer switches are easier since they don’t care about hot versus load wires. But the jokers that lived here before connected the upper switch ground directly to the lower switch and… didn’t connect the actual house ground. Also daisy chaining like that is not the way. 🤬

I’m getting really good at installing Caseta switches. A no-contact voltage tester pen is key for safety & to get the hot wire right the first time.

First beer I ever brewed is now bottled and will be carbonating for a few weeks. I tasted it and it is definitely a Hefeweizen. ~4.3% ABV. Not quite 5.1% listed on the product page but I had ~3°F swings in temperature around 68°F. Two weeks and it’ll be ready to drink! 🤞🍻

Finished reading: The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett 📚 ★★★★

Beer bottle label graveyard. Tomorrow is bottling day.

Moravian star - the most festive our house gets on the exterior.

Our front yard cultivated native fuchsias are still blooming. All summer, with minimal added water, and into winter. Amazing plants.

The household chef making sandwich melts. I was just trying out the Kodak T-Max 400 film “recipe” found at FujiXWeekly.

Mushrooms!

Mural at La Corona Mexican Restaurant, Orland, CA.

Better B&W Recipe Detection and exif Keywords added to macOS "What was my Fujifilm Recipe" Shortcut: I know that many people choose Fujifilm cameras for black and white photography. I hadn’t explored B&W photography yet so the original macOS “What was my Fujifilm Recipe” didn’t include one specific B&W recipe ingredient: BWAdjustment (Warm/Cool aka WC). So to better …

Shortcuts for macOS really makes me want to say many oaths 🤬

Turkey Milanese. A great use of leftover white meat.

Turkey Pho (well, inspired by Pho).

Stuffing waffles for post-Thanksgiving breakfast is now 100% a tradition.

My partner in crime sure does know how to cook a golden, juicy bird.

Earlier this month In Lahaina, Maui, two Java Sparrows (Padda oryzivora) silently discussing the two intrusive humans below them.

For the first time, tried a very simple beer brewing. This is Hank’s Hefeweizen. I’m fermenting in the tub because I worry about leaks despite an hours long leak test last night. It’s already bubbling!

From Maui earlier this month: Waihe’e Ridge Trail. A very popular choice these days. It’s in much better condition than the last time we hiked it in 2015. I recall a big storm washed out the trail, closing it for a while. They did a great job!

Was trying to take a casual picture of The Annie Cat and…

Finished reading: Champion by Marie Lu 📚 I read this one pretty dang fast! I returned it to the digital library 9 days early (21 day loan). ★★★★

From Maui earlier this month: a few more early mornings with Haleakala.

macOS 12 Shortcut: What was my Fujifilm Recipe?: NOTE: the link to this Shortcut, and then its changelog, is at the end of this page. About I’ve created a macOS 12 only Shortcut to remind me what Fujifilm Recipe or Film Simulation I used for my off the camera photos. It requires exiftool in your path (manually or via Homebrew etc). For some reason …

From Maui earlier this month: sunset on a boat. While we mostly enjoyed the sunset cruise, we learned that we are firmly terrestrial people and won’t bother with boats again. Unless it is a ferry in exceedingly calm waters (like the San Francisco Bay).

With macOS 12.0.1 Shortcuts’ Run Shell Script, Shortcuts often crashes when reading stdout text. After much experimentation, my workaround: send output to a file and then use Shortcut’s File function to read the file into the workflow.

From Maui: Sea Turtle Part Photos: Here’s a collection of sea turtle parts while on Maui earlier this month. I made ample use of the X100V’s continuous shooting mode, getting several hundred photos and out of those only about six with clearly identifiable turtle parts. They’re amazing creatures and I can spend hours …

Saw a beautiful orchid today.

From the left: Jupiter, Moon, Saturn. Then just the moon.

Haleakala as the morning sun peaks over. Then crepuscular rays! The first time I ever noticed them.

Dragon’s Teeth at Kapalua, Hawaii.

Playing with Bulb on my X100V. 7 second exposure of Haleakala at nautical dawn. So cool that I can control the shutter with my phone.

Sunrises and Haleakala on Maui, Hawaii never get old.

I didn’t get why people include grain in their digital photos, thinking it is an anachronistic hipster thing. I’ve fully come around and find grain added by my camera can make photos seem sharper yet give blur and subjects more character. Photos feel better with grain.

Current Slate of Fujifilm Film Simulations: I’ve got a slate of six Film Simulations from Fuji X Weekly loaded on my X100V. Fuji X Weekly’s Film Recipes app is nice for a quick reference. Here’s what I’ll be working with for a while in hopes of greatly limiting RAW reprocessing with Straight-Out-Of-Camera (SOOC) JPEGs: General Purpose: …

Closer look at a senescing apricot leaf compared to a still green leaf.

Our apricot is almost ready to overwinter. The nectarine at the bottom left is being a bit stubborn. California wild rose at the bottom right is in full growth mode.

Perfect field weather today.

Sourdough biscuits for breakfast today. With the X100V, learning manual focus & judicious aperture settings are key for food. And willing use of the flash. The flash on this camera is good! But don’t use the Velvia Film Simulation with flash as shadows get a very blue cast.

We’ve got patty melts and a cat tonight, but no Aurora.

Oh hello there! 👋

I love not spending tons of time processing RAW by using Fujifilm X100V’s Film Simulations. These on-camera JPEGs look great and Fujifilm X Raw Studio makes slight tweaks using the original RAW a breeze. Definitely getting all value out of this fun camera.

My current drip system is an aging hodgepodge with uneven tree watering. I just got a bunch of new drip stuff from dripdepot.com (20% sale). Will be converting compression fittings to perma-loc. That’s more flexible and fittings are, importantly, easily reusable.

Fridge water dispenser started leaking. Its valve refuses to completely close. This has been an on and off problem but now is permanent. I had to remove the water line junction because there’s no valve. Plumbing is the worst as I never trust that my connections are leak free🤞

This little backyard lizard lives underneath that cinder block.

Chocolate chip with walnut cookie connections.

Turkey taquitos. Fried. Meaning delicious.

So much rain and soon far too much in too few days. 1” total so far this month.

This morning after 0.55” rain. The clouds cleared out astonishingly fast.

No rest for birds this time of the year. Here’s a Yellow Rumped Warbler (lower right) and Lesser Gold Finch (upper left) in our cultivated native grapes.

We got the JJ Covid-19 vaccination very early this year so of course we just went and got Pfizer boosters 🙌

Our cat utilizing all her available space.

I don’t do sports but I have a backyard.

Bird bath mirror.

First measurable precipitation of the 2022 water year in Orland, CA! 🎉

As a follow up, I’ve updated an older Fujifilm Get Film Simulation iOS Shortcut to now include ACROS and Monochrome simulations. This has only been tested on JPEGs from an X100V. Get this not well tested iOS Shortcut here.. For everyone else, enjoy a stuffing waffle using the Velvia film simulation.

There’s a thoughtful post on Fuji X Weekly. After spending several weeks with a X100V, I’m in agreement with the utility and power of Fujifilm Film Simulations. As a hobbyist, it is liberating embracing Fujifilm out-of-camera JPEGs. I barely need the RAW Power app.

Cooler weather = bread baking season. My partner made Sourdough specifically for stuffing. Excellent priorities.

Ethereal light shafts in a coastal forest (Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park in California). From 2015.

Perma-loc splice is an okay fix for drip tape punctured by fighting cats. Please keep your cats indoors. Cats are destructive of not only wildlife but also your neighbor’s stuff.

Of all the animals we see in our backyard, the western toad is our favorite. It was very loud tonight in the leaves. Just look at that foot!!

Hygge in the neighborhood. Hygge is part of today’s micro.blog challenge.

M6.9 earthquake in Alaska registered on my RaspberryShake.

There’s now a Thai restaurant where I live! Pretty decent for a small town.

Last night’s constellation of the moon, Venus, and street light at one of the bridges over I-5.

I wouldn’t feel safe flying in that biplane! Almost as bad as a helicopter.

Celebrated mom’s birthday today with chicken fried steak (one of her favorites)! A great day.

Albums queue syncing between my iOS devices is effing amazing. Start a queue of albums on my iPhone, then effortlessly transition play on iPad (and airplay to home speakers). Why Apple hasn’t done this with their Music app confounds me.

A Feijoa sellowiana of ours got very stressed this summer because of a clogged irrigation emitter. It is now flowering out of season. A nice surprise.

At just about Civil Twilight tonight.

Here’s our resident Western Toad that’s likely en route to the compost pile. And yes, that’s toad scat in front of the toad. The toad has a circuit to complete every night.

Spice in the form of home grown assorted peppers. Turned these fine frozen specimens into hot sauce last weekend.

Our street is nicely obscured from the front yard by cultivated native California plants. They rarely get watered but has been more frequent the past two summers. California buckwheat is showy now with its rust colors and white flowers.

I don’t consider this Fujifilm X100V a toy but it sure brings me a lot of joy. Most photos I’ve posted lately are from it. Except this one, of course.

Sharp looking (spotted bird?) grasshopper! It was resting in our California buckwheat.

A little bit of excitement at an over crossing today.

Our first backyard Spotted Towhee!

A majority onion tarte tartin. This tarte literally has the flavors of French Onion soup but this is so much better.

September 22, 2021: full moon after dark.

Our replacement rear fence got finishing touches today. Very excited to no longer have a very old fence threatening total collapse because its wood posts weren’t set in concrete, had split boards, and rails severely sagged. Photos are after and before. Contractor did great.

Just got this year’s flu shot! 💉

I just tried Fastmail’s and 1Password’s Masked email. It’s pretty great especially since it worked with a custom domain on day one!

Preying Mantis in our California Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum). They sure do keep two eyes on you.

Sunflower seeds ready to be eaten by backyard birds. Bet the scrub jays will cache them all.

I was not a fan of this Black Widow that was in my very well sorted irrigation parts bin earlier today. 🌱

I’ve installed valves to isolate our crop rows so we can have slightly better control of what rows get water. Hope to get herbs seeded in the first (closest) row and the other two will be shutoff. 🌱

California fuchsias still blooming, and that makes our hummingbirds very pleased.

Now that I’m adding to our compost pile at night, our resident Western Toad can be seen hard at work. Mustn’t let the bugs get too far away from the pile!

My partner’s new iPhone 13 Mini setup with no fuss. Phew. Coming from an XR, she is super excited about its size. Super pocketable.

Here’s my annual “elderberries are breaking summer dormancy” post.

Before and after: California grape leaves.

I had one last use of Dropbox with a iOS Shortcut. Now that iOS 15 supports file operations anywhere in iCloud, Dropbox is a goner.

Quick temp fence repair. Someone long ago didn’t set the fence posts in concrete so they’ll all rotting out. It’s time for a new rear fence. Cross braced it up on the other side with a long 2x4. Empty lot behind us fortunately.

Long time followers know I cannot not take the opportunity to photograph a mantis.

If you use recent Fujifilm camera (e.g. X100V), they have neat film simulations. I’ve made a iOS 15 Shortcut that’ll get the film sim from EXIF of a Fujifilm JPEG. Handy if you need a quick reminder about what film sim you used. Doesn’t yet work on B&W and sepia sims.

Last night the clouds and last light of the sun put on a good show.

Korean Fried Cauliflower.

Cooler weather today meant I could finally cleanup the backyard garden. I can’t believe how hardy pepper plants are. Most were still alive despite a few months of zero irrigation.

Good morning! The weather in Northern California is starting to feel like fall. 😍

I got a new stand-alone camera. I had forgotten just how powerful choosing your own f-stop is. Makes iPhone cameras feel cramped as they get faster and faster in the pursuit of “more light.”

Being up when it is dark now means we get to see The Infinity Toad.

I kept thinking that my elderberries are late waking up from summer dormancy but my log shows they wake up in early October. I’m impatient! 🌱

A Katydid visited and rested with us today.

Autumn.

Got 0.29” rain last night here in California 🤗 I’m quite happy that our rain gage survived the summer.

California fuchsias and hidden mantis in the front yard this morning.

Grapes are now turning to raisins but the birds still love them.

Mockingbird.

Really cool hearing a Spritualized song on Ted Lasso.

Our first grosbeak sighting! This is a Black-headed Grosbeak. It is eating our cultivated California native grapes.

I see Instagram is phasing me out as a user with their future requirement for date of birth. I can hardly trust anybody with that Personally Identifiable Information these days and certainly NOT FaceBook. Hope more people switch to Micro.blog.

If you live in California, please vote no on the recall of Governor Newsom. There’s literally no good reason to upend State government right NOW. Things are as good as they can be under the circumstances – frankly, better than I expected. He’s made mistakes but nothing fireable.

Mockingbirds enjoying our grapes (these cultivated California native grapes are for the birds!).

Mockingbirds love our cultivated native grapes 🥰 It’s the best seeing them swallow a large grape whole. We’ve seen at least five in our backyard. They mostly get along. We have a kind of neutral zone

Homegrown Fantasia nectarines are amazing, even when still firm. Hope I can keep the tree that’s been planted for 1-year safe from beetles. 🌱

Still many small earthquakes occurring south of Black Butte mountain on the Mendocino NF. Impressive M3.7 today AND a M2.7 on the same @raspishake seismograph.

On 7/31, six small <= M3.0 quakes ocurred on the Mendocino NF near Rocky Basin Creek. All within hours of each other. The last cluster was 7/24-7/25. Total of 12 tremors so far. I don’t know of mapped nearby faults. Fascinating. Here’s the 7/31 M3.0 quake from my @raspishake.

My @raspishake captured the M8.2 Alaska earthquake. And then some. Wow.

So there’s been a cluster of small shallow quakes in a central part of the Mendocino National Forest the last couple of days and this is the largest so far. Hmmm. Recorded on my @raspishake

We started pickling two almost full pint jars of Santa Fe peppers today. Turns out they’re not great for hot sauce as their flesh is pretty thin and they’re very seedy.

We made our first batch of hot sauce the other weekend. Two pounds worth of home grown peppers made about 32 oz of sauce (we like a sauce that is thicker and doesn’t dribble off things). So good. 🌱

It’s our first smoky day of the summer. The automatic air filtration device agrees with a bright LED and maximum power.

We have harvested around 6 pounds of peppers and there’s probably another pound on our plants. They were no longer setting fruit in our heat so we’ve stopped irrigating them. I think the peppers will be fine as the plants will care for them until they’re sucked dry.🌱

I love fixing cracked main drip line tubing and a bad pressure regulator seal in 100°F weather. I took this as an opportunity to remove previous temporary fixes and an unnecessary valve.

M5.1 earthquake south of Eureka, CA registered nicely on my RaspberryShake @raspishake though I definitely didn’t feel it (was asleep).

As far as I can find my county has a paltry 40% of its population fully vaccinated. That is very sad. So though I’m vaccinated, I’m still running errands masked. I don’t want mild COVID or to give it a chance to evolve.

So many ripe Serranos & other varieties. This is hands down our best year for peppers. It has taken many years of trial and error to get here. Hot sauce here we come! (Yes, we are eating some fresh). Oh and it’s fig season!🌱

Volunteer sunflower from this morning. It took advantage of an emitter and I’m a sucker for known flowering volunteers 🌱

Wow big seismic signal from near Tahoe and also the Central Valley‽ Recorded by my #RaspberryShake @raspishake #ShakeNet mobile app. I didn’t feel it. ☹️

Edible garden update: we continue to harvest lots of red & ripe peppers for hot sauce. The tomatoes are basically done for the season at 195 tomatoes weighing in at 34 pounds. We froze most. And finally, our figs are starting to ripen and we’re on nectarine watch 2021🌱

Had a really good Independence Day fried chicken with a slaw based on real garlic aioli & ripe red Santa Fe peppers.

I like Sierra Nevada’s Summer Break. Citrusy as expected and not too hoppy. It’s very refreshing. Just don’t expect a lot of complexity (it is a solid drinkable beer!).

The Annie Cat hoping neighbors don’t ruin her sleepy time with obnoxious fireworks this July 4.

Because of Safari’s new clearly bad UI changes, I’m not installing the public iOS and MacOS betas. Just listening to people talk about the new UI makes me cringe. I’m super excited about Focus though.

Tried Spotify again after a few years and it still is terrible for managing and listening to actual music libraries. Apple Music (my profile) is a revelation after using the Spotify app for 1/2 hour. Weird cuz Music app needs more work (and why Albums app is amazing).

Yesterday’s max temperature at my Orland, CA station was 115°F.

View of the backyard before we shelter indoors from the heat the rest of the day.

Covered up the avocados again in advance of today’s 110°F weather. Every time we do this it gets simpler and better. Wrapping the sheet around a ladder is genius.

Our peppers are now rapidly ripening. And they are crazy hot 🤤! 🌱

Windows 11 requires UEFI firmware. I use VMWare Fusion 12 Player (free) for Windows 10. Seems only VMWare Fusion 12 Pro can change firmware from BIOS to UEFI. Maybe VMWare will be nice and enable the UEFI option for Windows 11’s reqs. firmware = “efi” works not.

The lapins cherry we planted last November is dead. It only grew a few leaves. Super bummed. Stark Bro’s is great & gave me a 125% store credit, no hassle (with proof of dead tree via scratch test), so we will try again this winter. I have no idea what went wrong.🌳🌱

Last Monday, on the Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon, we were lucky to see Spotted Towhees. They really blend in to their surroundings!

Last Sunday at Hoover Dam. Yes, Lake Meade is visibly very low (look at that bathtub ring!) and perhaps the dam is all the more impressive because if it.

No surprise why I spent today processing raw photos. Cool that Carrot Weather can report on my weather station.

Big Horn Sheep seen from the Bright Angel Trail at Grand Canyon NP last Monday. The young one hopped up from below and surprised the hikers. Glad I wasn’t there but had my Olympus TG-4 at the ready.

40 tomatoes harvested today at just over 7 pounds. During cooler weather a few weeks back they managed to set fruit, so lots more on the way. Our peppers, grown for mainly hot sauce, are ripening nicely.

My first flight on a 737-MAX8. Yeah I’m a commercial aviation geek and it’s great to be back in the air.

Went to the Grand Canyon yesterday. Over 250 photos to sort through but here’s two photos from the Bright Angel Trail. Obligatory one of the canyon and then… hops‽

20 months since my last flight. Happily flying on a 737-7H4.

Does anyone else get yearly free download speed increases from Comcast/Xfinity or are they giving rural areas more bandwidth to look better on paper? It’s great 🤗 but I’m cynical 🤨

Six pounds of tomatoes harvested today. Total of 12 pounds this season. Ants have started aphid farming but hoping our mantises keep up! 🌱

Pandoc now available for M1 Macs via Homebrew: The amazing document converter, Pandoc, is finally available from Homebrew for M1 Macs! So I’ve adjusted my journal workflow to be on my M1 Mac mini. I’ll use jhead -autorot *.jpeg (instead of Graphic Convertor since I only have one license and I want it on my MacBook Pro) for …

We harvested 2.5 pounds of tomatoes today. Almost 6 pounds total so far this season. We can’t use them that fast so many go in the freezer for future processing into soup, sauce, jam, etc. Same goes for peppers reserved for hot sauce🤤

We have a crazy amount of tomatoes ripening all at once — this is just one plant. We have three more.😳 Marigolds we started from seed are finally blooming.

I can hardly wait for Shortcuts on MacOS. That’s my favorite announcement from WWDC. Automator never clicked for me. I’m willing to wait so bugs hopefully won’t destroy my Shortcuts or iCloud data.

First ripe backyard garden tomato of the year. 🌱🍅 There’ll be many more to come!

Cultivated California buckwheat (front yard) flowers being buzzed by a honeybee.

These Santa Fe peppers are prolific! They seem to be more resistant to disease than jalapeños. 🌱

I’ve always loved listening to entire albums, as is evidence by my iOS Shortcut to randomize complete albums in track order. I don’t need that anymore. The Albums app is everything I always wanted Music.app to be. Shoutout to MacStories for letting me know about it!

One variety of Cultivated California Fuchsias are full bloom in the front yard. This clump regularly blooms first, the others a month or two later.

This beneficial little mantis (and other excellent insects) is why we don’t use insecticide in our yards. 🌱

One day at 111°F in my sunny backyard and another at 105°F, and my Logitech Circle View doorbell has not overheated. Its circumstances: 24V 20VA transformer, north facing in the shade all day. I’m quite pleased with it.

Finished reading: City of Saints and Madmen (Ambergris, #1) by Jeff VanderMeer ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 📚

Our fennel plants are managing fine in this 105°F+ heat. 🌱

Ooof. Though I have a suspicion my weather station measures higher than it should. It topped out at 111°F today.

That time of the year where we temporarily shade the avocado trees as they have a hard time taking up water fast enough during 105°F+ temperatures… yeah they don’t belong here. At all. 🌱

Front yard cultivated California Buckwheat & a few butterflies (Coliadinae?). 🌱

Happy to say this sap sucking Leptoglossus zonatus is no longer suckling our tomato plants. 🌱

These jalapeños decided they had enough being outdoors and came right off the plant during inspection. They look fit to eat though are a little dried out. 🌱

Not sure why the M4.2 Lake Tahoe earthquake event isn’t showing up in the RaspberryShake app but my Shake definitely detected it. I did not feel it.

Our oldest jalapeños are starting to ripen to red. We can’t get delicious ripe peppers from the local store so it is worth growing them. We’ve got a few more days of temperatures where fruit will set… and tons of flowers. Should be very productive! 🌱

Front yard Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia) is flowering now. Small pollinators are rejoicing. Maybe this winter it’ll finally have bright red berries. 🌱

Serrano & Santa Fe peppers are doing great and just a few dozen tomatoes with end rot. Jalapeños are quickly recovering from black spot. Thai peppers are so close to fruiting and fennel bulbs are growing (not shown). 🌱

Partner made Boston cream pie (dessert after an amazing ribeye). 🤤

First bloom of cultivated California fuchsias. The California buckwheat is about to start feeding pollinators. Toyon is next, though about a week behind last year.🌱

My partner uses my Apple ID for apps and her own for iCloud. When I changed my Apple ID email, her (my) App Store Apple ID seamlessly switched over. Later, her devices tried wrongly to switch her iCloud account to my new Apple ID. iMessages freaked out first. All fixed now. 😖

I just changed my Apple ID email address. That was scary. I think everything is fine? Took a bit of device coercing. Some needed complete log-offs, other devices figured it out on their own. Really inconsistent and that made it more scary. Hope I never have to do that again.

Western redbud has to share soil with a bird planted sunflower.

I think we are having a bumper crop of figs this year. Oh and we did find some tomatoes with end rot but seems localized for now. We likely added calcium to the tomatoes later than we should have. 🌱

Front yard California fuchsias (or maybe the buckwheat or the toyon) are next to flower. Our fuchsias and buckwheat can flower all summer into fall and sometimes into winter.

YesPlz #129 nailed our preferred roast (medium-ish). First time with YesPlz. Was well balanced and not overly acidic. YesPlz (weekend roast) on the left, Tres Pontas (weekday roast) on the right. Basically the same perfect roast but very different beans.

I created a shuffle albums Shortcut a while back. It’s now retired for the iOS Albums app. It’s great with its focus on albums and I love its insights. Album’s new releases section isn’t polluted with artists from Apple Music’s Radio.

With the latest iOS, if a martini is in my face, Apple Watch unlocks my phone 🤗

Ensalada Hybrid Tomatoes are doing extremely well in Orland, CA. No sign of end rot or any disease. 🌱

Santa Fe pepper flower and a young Santa Fe pepper. We did get a bit of bacterial spot (?) on the jalapeño plants but that seems to have winked out. 🌱

Got a new work truck today. Looking forward to breaking it in next week. Hope it handles as well as or better than the last rig 🤞

Pineapple Guavas (Feijoa sellowiana) are flowering. Perhaps this year they’ll fruit.

Our cultivated native California Grapes are coming along very nicely. Same can’t be said for our new cherry tree (more on that later perhaps) 🌱

California Corn Lilies contrast with a burned Forest. There’s possibly shallow groundwater below this patch.

A Shooting Star (Primula) flower in the August Complex burn area about 1/4 mile north below the summit of Black Butte.

iNaturalist hasn’t confirmed but these purple flowers appear to be Moss Phlox (Phlox subulata) near the cirque & summit of Black Butte in the northern Coast Range of California in the Mendocino National Forest. Again, the rocks make the shot!

Glacier Lily (Erythronium grandiflorum) from near the summit of Black Butte in California’s northern Coast Range. Rocks always make a photo great, but I am biased.

M4.7 earthquake near Truckee, CA on May 6 at 21:35 was recorded on my #RaspberryShake. I did not feel it.

Finally had a chance to visit the summit of Black Butte on the Mendocino NF. About time. A geologist’s wonderland: several identifiable glacial landforms (been deglaciated for an undetermined time AFAIK), metabasalt, gneiss, and 360° views.

First bloom of the peppers. Serranos in this case. 🌱

When the gusty winds are trying to uproot the top heavy tomatoes, one must get creative to save them. 🌱🍅

Can’t wait for For All Mankind season 3. Ridiculously good 2nd season 😳

Fairly rare earthquake (M3.0) in Chico, CA today at 11:26PDT. The #RaspberryShake managed to record it though I didn’t feel it 😕 I just noticed it occurred.

I’ve thinned at least a dozen nectarines off this young tree. This “Fantasia” Nectarine is incredibly fruitful. 🌳🌱

Japan — was that you, M6.8‽ #RaspberryShake

Tomatoes are incoming! 🌱

Cultivated California Wild Grapes are looking great after a heavy prune. I always forget to take before photos 🌱

Biiig kitten stretch!

And here’s the follow-up @raspishake graphic of the M3.7 at Lake Tahoe.

I really enjoy how Shadow and Bone (on Netflix) has integrated Six of Crows. Very smart.

The M3.8 Earthquake near Incline Village, CA at 15:33 UTC/08:33 PDT isn’t yet on the RaspberryShake app but it may well have been recorded by my @raspishake

Peppers and tomatoes got their second Jobes fertilization today in advance of likely rain. We really don’t want end rot on our fruit! Flowers should be developing on the peppers real soon. Fruit set is beginning on the tomatoes. Meanwhile, front yard annuals are looking hot 🌱

Going to be starting Shadow and Bone on Netflix today. Really good books by Leigh Bardugo.

M6.5 Tonga earthquake registered on my #RaspberryShake - first non-local earthquake I’ve seen recorded! Took 12 minutes for the seismic waves to hit my station.

My #RaspberryShake detected a M3.9 earthquake in the Bartlett Springs Fault Zone just northwest of Lake Pillsbury in the Mendocino National Forest. I was asleep — happened today at 04:18 PDT. Probably just shook a few rocks loose.

Might be a Copestylum mexicanum (Mexican cactus fly). If so, it is fittingly on a cultivated California wild rose flower.

I just noticed there was another small M2.8 earthquake near Willows, CA last night. This was also clearly detected by my #RaspberryShake — so cool.

Now that is a clear, unambiguous seismic signal! M3.7 near Willows, CA. I didn’t feel it. #RaspberryShake

Our back porch grapes look awesome this year! The fullest they’ve ever been.

The humble shrub that’s predicting a terrible fire season: The humble shrub that’s predicting a terrible fire season. I like the rust color of dried out chamise flowers. I don’t like where this fire season is headed.

Peppers and tomatoes garden update: tomatoes are flowering and peppers are finally growing post-transplant. The Drip Depot crop row irrigation kit is ace. 🌱

Our mandarin tree is in full bloom. 🌱🌳

While adding 1/2 GPH drip to the backyard Ceanothus plants, spotted this glorious lizard doing its thing on our largest Ceanothus. 🌱💚

MeteoBridge Email Weather Alerts & FastMail: MeteoBridge reports my weather station data to all sorts of services. To be rid of IFTTT, I finally set MeteoBridge up to send an email if certain weather conditions happen. And FastMail, to my surprise, has a rule Action for notifications! Yeah, definitely don’t need IFTTT anymore.

The “Fantasia” nectarines are coming along. First ever crop. We’ve had to thin a dozen or so because its branches are too young. We’ll thin more soon. 🌱🌳

iOS Shortcut: RaspberryShake Helicorder 24 Hour PDT Plot: I’ve a RaspberryShake that serves up helicorder plots. By default, they’re in UTC. My brain isn’t yet wired to convert UTC to PDT (my local time). So I’ve modified my original shortcut to overlay PDT onto the left Y-axis. Someday I’ll make this a bit more sophisticated such as switching to standard …

Front yard update. Poppies are now blooming, joining the creeping sage and the Ceanothus (California Lilac). 🌱

Backyard Elderberries are seeking pollinators.

Our “Bacon” Avocado tree is blooming basically right on time as compared to last year on April 11th. It has yet to produce any fruit and it is supposed to be self-pollinating. 🌱🌳

It’s been well over a year since since we last saw lizards in our backyard. I blame outdoor cats. These are alligator lizards and I’ve spotted them twice in the last week. That gives me hope we’ll see them regularly again.

This seems like a legit earthquake signal. Happened in the middle of the night April 2nd so cultural noise is minimal. #Earthquake recorded on the #RaspberryShake #CitizenScience seismic network. See what’s shaking near you with the @raspishake #ShakeNet mobile app

I just hooked up one more drip line to the little Antelco eZyvalve valve box. I think I’m done for the season reconfiguring our drip system. Time to see how reliable this thing is. I’m not sure what I’ll do with the last two valves. Spares for now. 🌱

Spring mornings in our front yard. Sage and Ceanothus are in full bloom. 💚🌱

Our native California grapes have been very busy over the last week! 🌱

This morning, two Northern Mockingbirds briefly hung out on our backyard patio. It seems super rare to see a pair of them.

We planted all our indoor pepper and tomato starts. The Serranos looked most distressed prior to transplant 🤞🌱

iOS Shortcut: RaspberryShake Helicorder 24 Hour Plot: I rapidly made a iOS 14 Shortcut that automatically pulls the last 24 hours of helicorder plots from your #RaspberryShake (it assumes a rs.local hostname). Handy to have on the Home Screen. Let me know if there’s any problems. If you’re not in the US west coast, you’ll need to adjust to UTC from …

I just installed this Antelco eZyvalve 4 Zone Valve Box. I’m very pleased so far. We’ll see how durable and long lasting it is. I’ll be connecting drip to it. It’s wired to my Rachio Gen 2 irrigation controller.

I used the Controller app to create an automation that triggers upon press of my Logitech doorbell button. Then I converted it to a Shortcut so that upon doorbell press, my dining room lights will flash. Real cool. So the light is Set on or off and then reversed depending on the light status.

Ceanothus (California lilac) is magnificently blooming. 🌱

Row Crop irrigation kit from Drip Depot installed. Really pleased with this so far. I need to stake the tubes in a bit. Will be planting in a week or two. The peppers & tomatoes are hardening now. 🌱

Currently reading: 1Q84 (Vintage International) by Haruki Murakami 📚

Finished reading: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin ★★★★★ 📚. I honestly could barely put the book down to sleep. Super.

J&J Vaccine ✅ thanks, quick call list!!

The nectarine is about to start shedding its flowers. Leaves are growing. Since it is pretty young starting its second year in the ground, I’ll be super impressed if it successfully fruits. 🌳🌱

A slow, rolling bloom for the apricot this year. It didn’t fruit at all last year. Here’s hoping for a fruitful year. (it has fruited before so we know it is possible) 🌳🌱

In-flight water drops.

Twitter Feeds in the latest NetNewsWire 6 beta are great. The key is to be really choosy.

The monster alligator lizard in the shed still lives! Maybe 6 inches long. Been well over a year since last seen.

Facebook/Instagram Harvests Location Metadata Before Stripping for Posts: I always expected this: Facebook/Instagram harvests photo location metadata before removing it for posts. That data is added to the poster’s data profile. Presumably for targeted ads. I presume when micro.blog crossposts photos to Twitter, locations have already been scrubbed by micro.blog?

Took a Potensic D58 drone photo today of the backyard (bottom photo) to compare against January 2020 (top photo). Looking real nice. Fun to have unusual views of the yard.

We’re finally eating our backyard Valencia oranges. Sooo good. 🍊🌳🌱

We got some pea-sized hail today!

Currently reading: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚

I finished reading: The Power by Naomi Alderman ★★★★★ 📚

How it started (Mar 2020) and how it’s going (Mar 2021) in the backyard. All lawn is removed! Garden rows are ready for our indoor started peppers and tomatoes. 🌱

Sunday dinner: Sous vide Arm Roast followed by Boston Cream Pie.

Slowly preparing the backyard garden rows over the past few months 😅 Almost time to plant the peppers, tomatoes, and direct sow the herbs. No more lawn!!!!!! Tilling is amazing at removing thatch and dead lawn. 🌱

This is quite the year for catchweed (aka bedstraw aka genus Galium). It is everywhere! It even manages to grow in thick mulch with impressively long taproots.

Our “Bacon” Avocado flower buds are developing nicely. Also, the fig is waking up. 🌱🌳

First apricot bloom. Hopefully, as in past years, far more will follow. Figure this flower puts pollinators on notice. 🌳🌱

The front yard blue oak has awakened! 🌱

This should be my last nectarine flower photo. This year. 🌳🌱

Easiest way to deal with (perhaps) hundreds of mandarins once ripe: juice them. These have brightened to very red-orange I wonder if they are closer to tangerines?

The nectarine is up and at ‘em with many glorious blooms. 🌱🌳

Pompasetting nectarine.

Not my favourite 3/4”-minus gravel as the rocks definitely didn’t come from rivers with their headwaters in the California Nothern Coast Range but it’ll do in the backyard. Just as back breaking 😝

One of these days I’ll paint the PVC pipe to hide my poor PVC cementing job and a few barcodes. 🌱

First bloom today of our nectarine! 🌳 🌱

In 2012 our baby kitten (aka The Annie Cat) was just as clumsy as she is today (though she is more cautious now).

A banana slug from a 2010 trip to Jug Handle State Reserve, California (the north coast).

Got a warm spell in California so now I expect the nectarine to bloom any day now. The local almond trees already have.🌳🌱

There are so many colors in a landslide. This slide complex is at Bar Creek on the Mendocino NF, dropping a main road a dozen or so feet and topping it with mudslides - all in a day. Wish I got to the top but slopes were too steep and very slick. Quite the mess. Gorgeous day.

Currently reading: The Power by Naomi Alderman 📚

Started prepping the garden rows today. Great weather and perfect soil moisture. Was surprised how well the electric tiller did. 🌱

I’m experimenting with HomeKit Automations converted to Shortcuts. This one, when a Home member arrives, will turn on a welcome light if the Logitech doorbell reads < 200 Lux. Otherwise it’ll flash the living room lamp to indicate an arrival.

This morning: the most symmetrical Dutch baby we’ve ever had.

I finished reading The child finder by Rene Denfeld ★★★★ 📚

The peppers and tomatoes are still alive and growing fast. The tomatoes might get root bound sooner than we’d prefer… 🌱

Today, at home, the spice drawer was cleaned out and organized.

The Fantasia nectarine (planted Jan 2020) is still in swollen bud stage. Has been for days. It’s sooo close to blooming. Here’s hoping it’ll produce fruit for the first time this year!

Look, I put a pressure gauge on the new hose bibb! I must be an erudite of irrigation systems. 🙃

Korean cheese buldak for dinner tonight. Chicken in a hot chili sauce covered with mozzarella 🌶🌶🌶🌶 😋

Mount Lassen’s reflection upon Juniper Lake in summer of 2016.

I pressure checked the new hose bibb this morning; it had a slow leak at the valve threads & PVC adapter. Tightening made it worse, so after redoing the pipe thread tape with more layers, the new hose bib seems to be fine at full water pressure.

Front yard update: the manzanitas are in full bloom! The poppies are trying to take over. Waiting on the Ceanothus (California lilac) to bloom… they’re the most showy.

I installed a new hose spigot on an old PVC waterline today. I’m trying to have the patience to give the PVC joints lots of time to cure before pressure testing 😬

Have compassion for your neighborhood birbs and borbs. They may help you relax a bit as you gaze at their theatrics.

Someday we’ll figure out how to make rice noodles right. Did a bunch of experiments today and almost got there. We just want perfect Drunken Noodles and Pad See Ew.

Hello, probably Spruce. Put on some good growth this year, yeah? You weren’t invited, you’re kind of a weed, but I like you anyway.

Got to make the rock rings around the citrus trees larger so drip emitters can be moved back for better root growth. Also may help with frost as the ground can now radiate heat up into the trees rather than be insulated by wood chips. Here’s before and after.

Happy Lunar New Year 🧧

Sporg! A pipe to nowhere 😋

A cozy sleeping machine. Yeah she’s awake. She can sense when the camera comes out to give the stink eye.

Currently reading: The child finder by Rene Denfeld 📚

Energy makes growing peppers & tomatoes in the winter possible. Got lots of jalapeños, serranos, santa fe, and a variety of tomatoe. We’ll transplant outdoors in mid to late March 🌱

I finished City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab ★★★★ 📚

Mud Creek, CA south of Mt. Shasta after a pretty intense debris flow in 2014. The deposits are muddy and full of variously sized rocks and other debris (such as entire trees).

Got a lot of hope for these little peppers and tomatoes! 🌱

For Sunday breakfast, my partner made rösti with Swiss cheese in the middle and a sunny-side up egg on top. For Sunday dinner, my partner made Mushroom Pot Pie. She’s the best.

We’re craving Manzanita flower blooms in the front yard. Almost there… 🌱

Beef tenderloin filets getting the royal treatment of butter basting. Cooked to medium rare.

Our first front yard daffodil flower of 2021. Bloomed about two weeks later than last year (Jan 24, 2020). A small pollinator is already taking advantage! 💚 🌱

Apple Photos thinks eating campfire roasted marshmallows off a metal stick is a sport. I agree.

Pets are the best since they always find new unexpected ways to delight, unknowingly helping their stressed out humans!

Back in 2013 we half-heartedly grew corn. We got so excited over the seemingly nice looking ears of corn. We peeled back the layers of husk and silk… surprise! Hardly any kernels. Very poor pollination I guess. Never tried growing corn again.

Cats are pros at comfort.

Currently reading: City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab 📚

I finished The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker. I’m sooo looking forward to the next book in this series. ★★★★★ 📚

A screensaver with the best most relaxing photos and a nice hot morning beverage to start the day.

Close up of a Meyer Lemon still on the tree. 😋

Tomato sprouts all day today! Peppers should be next. 🌱

Lemon grass is overwintering nicely. This time we dug up the plant to include roots. Last year we rooted a few stalks in water; here’s its progeny 👌 There’s another bunch of lemon grass outdoors. If it survives, that’ll be the second year overwintering outside in native soil. 🌱

We have a lot of citrus in the backyard: mandarins, Meyer lemons, and Valencias. This means it is time for Alton Brown’s Acid Jellies! We don’t coat them with sugar at the end of the cook as we’ve found the sugar is too hydrophilic in humid winters & the jellies get… damp. 🌱

Gorgeous today at Burris Creek in Northern California.

White Crown borb soaking in the warmth of a cinder block & preening outside the slider.

Here’s my iOS Shortcut that uses ShellFish App to show all journals over the years written “On This Day”. I’m pretty pleased with it. You’ll see it relies on good file management!

Secure ShellFish for iOS is wonderful. Its shortcut functions allowed me to create a Shortcut that shows all journals written “On This Day” from my SSH server. Slick.

Last year we successfully grew peppers by direct sowing mid-Spring. Today we’re starting plants from seed indoors. Mostly peppers: Thai, Serrano, Jalapeño, Santa Fe. 🤞🌱

Dutch baby for breakfast. It is really great with Meyer lemons (from the backyard tree; which is great as we can’t get Meyers in town).

Today was a very, very good day. 🇺🇸

Possibly a Cooper’s Hawk casing out bird feeder and really freaking out the House Sparrows and White Crowns. We’re honored to have a hawk visit our backyard. Amazing.

Pruned the apricot today. I only kind of know what I’m doing. It looks about right to me. Every year I open it up a bit more and reduce its height. I let it get too big. Before and after.

Statement from President-elect Biden on Religious Freedom Day: Statement from President-elect Biden on Religious Freedom Day: Today, Religious Freedom Day, is a symbol of that commitment — and a reminder that the work of protecting religious freedom, for people of all faiths and none, is never finished. I love the inclusiveness of the incoming Biden-Harris …

My partner is making beef salami but this time with added pork fat and more spices— the last batch was too dry and too smoky (will smoke less this time).

A Peaceable Washington D.C. in 2015: I’ve been looking through photos of my work trip to Washington D.C. in 2015. Insurrection against the Constitution at the Capitol was not a thought and I felt safe, secure. Near the Washington Monument, looking towards the White House: The Washington Monument: The Yates Building, U.S. Forest Service …

Currently reading: Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker 📚

Bibimbap!!

Lesser Gold Finch picking at raisins that are softened from the rain and dew.

Finished reading: Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor ★★★★★ – pretty dang original! 📚

I’m team pocket universe. It’s bigger inside. Spoilers in this linked article. Star Trek: Discovery’s Turbolifts Defy Logic - CBR

Installed Logitech Circle View Doorbell Chime-Kit and Hardware Doorbell Chime: Why did I decide to install the chime-kit and doorbell chime after I installed the Logitech doorbell (and it worked fine)? Netatmo released their doorbell and in their FAQ they wrote this about why a chime is required (Logitech never explained but they require it despite their doorbell seemingly …

Logitech Circle View Doorbell and new transformer w/junction box successfully installed! I replaced an unused garage outlet with a proper junction box for enough cable slack. Cables are clamped. 👋 old wireless doorbell! 👋 Nest Aware!

I routed the new doorbell wire from the garage, along the foundation tucked under the sheathing, then up the hollow frame of a security door, then through a hole I drilled. The doorbell will replace an old wireless one. Hope tomorrow I’ll successfully install the transformer.

Backlit senescing cultivated hybridized California grapes (“Roger’s Red”). So far the Northern Mockingbirds are its prime visitors for raisins. We’ve seen Lesser Gold Finches seemingly drinking water or eating bugs out of the raisin’s nooks and crannies.

Logitech Circle View Doorbell Initial Thoughts: Got a Logitech Circle View doorbell. I haven’t mounted it yet but I’m already pretty happy with it after setting it up and testing it. It can power up using USB with 2A power. Logitech says it needs a hardware chime but it doesn’t! It indeed has HDR video for dealing with shadows and sun. It looks …

Apple is successfully getting me to put HomePod Minis all over my house. Bought one, liked it for my smaller rooms, so I’m slowly adding more. They all have U1 chips and Thread radios. I hope Apple takes advantage of this new network of devices. So long, Sonos.

I installed a Lutron Caseta in-wall dimmer switch for the hallway today. Before it was wired as a 3-way so one switch is now a wired dimmer and the other switch is now a Pico remote (with adapter for switch box install). Real nice. Caseta is solid for home automation w/HomeKit.

Currently reading: Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor 📚

Earthquake M 3.8 - 16km ESE of Willows, CA: Earthquake M 3.8 - 16km ESE of Willows, CA: well, I heard a quick shifting/crack-like sound from the house reacting from this earthquake and that was that. I filed a Felt Report.First earthquake I’ve felt at home! See, earthquake insurance is needed here ;-)

Finished reading: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman ★★★★★ 📚

Annual chest freezer de-icing, cleaning, inventory, and organizing. This year it’s especially important since we’re about to get a 1/2 Table Mountain Ranch Beef. So excited!

We had a lot of left over brisket so some went into disco fries.

Tonight’s brisket prepared by my partner using Sous Vide for literally fork tender meat and then finished with convection bake for decadent crust/bark.

My New Markdown Editing and Preview Apps: MultiMarkdown Composer and Marked 2 fit my Markdown needs perfectly. One key item is that I can drag a photo into the MultiMarkdown window and it’ll insert the image syntax with relative paths. For some reason that feature I need is astonishingly rare on other editors I’ve trialed. …

Automating Deselection and Unchecking of Twitter Interests - EvilTester.com: Automating Deselection and Unchecking of Twitter Interests - EvilTester.com: The final JavaScript works to automatically deselect Twitter ad interests, but I had to change the timer from 2000 milliseconds to 10000 milliseconds or 10 seconds per uncheck to avoid Twitter Over Capacity errors. The …

I like Apple Fitness+. HIIT workouts are accessible for a newbie. The trainers make me feel at ease and not judged (it’s irrational). I exercise daily for mental and then cardio health. Usually I’m on an elliptical watching Netflix or I go for a brisk walk.

The preceding sunset was way more picturesque than Jupiter and Saturn 😜

Here’s Jupiter and Saturn through a pair of high powered 9x63 binoculars.

A benefit of not having anyone over for Christmas dinner is we can do wild, special food experiments. So we’re making Sous Vide Smoked Brisket for Christmas dinner. Method 1 with liquid smoke.

The front yard California fuchsias (Epilobium canum) are still flowering and providing forage to the hummingbirds. I really need to cut these back but…. the hummingbirds! And other small pollinators!

And here’s the final caramel. They’re perfect. 🤗

Annual caramel making. These seem 👌and perfectly plastic. Here’s a series of photos showing sugar mixture color at ~300°F, 320°F, near 340°F, after cream & butter added, and cooling to finish. Stressful making these as one errant crystal can cause it all to crystallize.

Black Phoebe! These flycatchers are elusive in our backyard.

Unidentified hummingbird enjoying rosemary flowers today. Maybe a Black Chin. Doesn’t seem to have the colorations of an Anna’s.

Split Pea Soup made with a ham hock! Love the cold season 🥰

Just watched the latest Star Trek: Discovery. Did not expect these twists! 😲Helps I don’t watch the “Next Time…” scenes. 🖖

House Sparrows frenetically bathing under the mandarin this morning.

Giant exhale.

Front yard: today and April 19. I cleaned up a lot of it today. This yard of cultivated native plants is so much more rewarding than a lawn.

Pulling out grass from the cultivated native sage is exhausting. At least I’m perfumed with sage now.

Currently reading: Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman 📚

The Annie Cat maximizing sunlight.

Last year this was not our view into the backyard from the house. Now we regularly see White Crowns, House Sparrows, European Collared Doves, Scrub Jays, and less often Lesser Gold Finches. Thanks, bird feeder! What this means for spring/summer tree fruit harvest… 😬

New bird in our backyard! Yellow-rumped Warbler. A pair was feasting on our cultivated California Grapes that now have raisins.

Finished reading: Peculiar Peril by Jeff VanderMeer ★★★★☆📚

December 2nd, 2013: at the Dresden Christmas Market.

Partner made Naan today (along with Turkey Tikka Masala).

macOS Big Sur TimeMachine and Bootable External Drives: If you have any bootable APFS containers on an external drive, macOS Big Sur will not allow you to assign any of the containers on that drive to TimeMachine. I had to delete my SuperDuper! volumes, but SuperDuper! doesn’t work yet on Big Sur anyway. Here goes another reorg of my external …

Stuffing waffles. So crispy & savory.

Mandarins and Meyer Lemons are ripening nicely. Maybe one more month until the Mandarins are sweet enough.

Leftovers 🎉. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Alice’s Restaurant, a Thanksgiving tradition: music.apple.com

The makings of Thanksgiving dinner for a couple is bread for stuffing and Turkey stock for just about everything. My partner is very busy; I don’t cook! ❤️

Pecan Squares instead of Peacan Pie. And as we’re not having Thanksgiving with anyone, dessert is a day early! 😋

Sunset during our isolation vacation at the North Coast of California.

Fox Sparrows (?) enjoying the cultivated California Grape raisins. We’ve also perhaps identified House Finches… in addition to the many White Crown Sparrows (not photographed).

New M1 Mac Mini on the way: I bought a new M1 Mac Mini, 8gb RAM with 1 TB SSD for home server duties and testing software (like Homebrew) I need for a non-server machine. I’ve been using an older MacBook Air for server duties and it did fine but its lack of ports, large power wart, and space it all takes is less than ideal. …

Cistus × purpureus (Purple-flowered Rock-rose)

We brought ribeyes and a cast-iron with us (and the rest of what’s on the plate. Yeah that’s canned baked beans, so what?)👌

Hot chocolate on the North Coast of California.

Moonlight over the Pacific. Above the moon, Jupiter and then Saturn.

Sundown at Trinidad, California. We’re hunkered down here for a few nights, completely self-sufficient and not likely to go anywhere. Not a bad choice with this view. I have a feeling this is the last time we’ll risk going somewhere until vaccinations.

Good morning. This morning’s sun rise almost makes up for my neighbor being obsessive with their sheet metal shelters and sheds.

I’m very thankful that my family is supportive of not getting together for Thanksgiving and very likely Christmas. We’ve so much hope for next year being (eventually) so so much better.

I tested my journaling workflow in Big Sur on a secondary Mac and it worked. So I couldn’t help myself and, despite SuperDuper! not being ready for Big Sur, I installed Big Sur on my production machine. I’ve zero complaints so far.

The Results of the 2020 Home Orchard Fixed Daily Watering Experiment: This last orchard growing season, Iwatered using daily fixed schedules that took into account average daily evapotranspiration and estimated daily plant water use. I set up schedules for each month in the summer, since evapotranspiration and water usage changes significantly month to month. Previous …

Joint Statement by President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris On Diwali, the Festival of Lights: But Diwali is ultimately a reminder of the light that’s within us all to hope and dream, and to overcome our differences and keep the faith in each other. That’s the light we see …

Toad in our bird bath tonight. That’s a first. We usually empty the baths to keep mosquitoes at bay and keep cats from being too keen on the backyard at night. Not tonight!

Planted a New Cherry Tree Today: I planted a replacement Lapins Cherry today. Bought it from Stark Bro’s and it has a great unblemished, no prune cut trunk. That is never the case if I buy locally, even from a family operated nursery. As planted, it’s a 42” tall stick. It’ll develop branches next spring. I finally got to use our …

Pumpkin pie! And rump roast. Sunday is the best.

The rainy season in California is right around the corner, so I just cleaned the rain gage & other weather station components of summer’s dust and ash. Meanwhile, the mandarins are slowly ripening.

Today’s celebratory homemade sourdough loaf and Prosecco

Tearing up here. Biden & Harris wins.

Since November 2nd I’ve stayed away from Twitter & Instagram. Feels kind of nice. Getting some mileage out of Apple Arcade for distraction.

I’m looking forward to winter. Summer was far too long.

I accidentally trashed my Windows 10 Virtual Machine and thought it was a total loss with no backup. Two weeks later I realized I had a SuperDuper! clone of my MBP as I… prepared to update the clone. Phew and glad I remembered!

For today and a while after the election, Twitter & Instagram apps are removed from my devices. So far I’m avoiding their web counterparts. Instead, let’s enjoy some tiny coyote bush flowers!

Dark-Eyed Junco (Oregon) in the backyard! Had to photograph it through binoculars.

Northern Mockingbird in our backyard. They’re not nearly as brave as the scrub jays but they’re using our backyard more and more.

Got two volunteer conifer seedlings in the backyard — their needles are roundish and pointy, not in clusters. Thinking maybe spruce? 🧐 We’re encouraging them.

PowerPhotos is worth the cost alone for trashing duplicate photos in a MacOS/iCloud Photo Library. I’m curious about using it to move legacy scanned photos into a separate library. I’ve got those hidden anyway…

Started reading: Peculiar Peril by Jeff VanderMeer 📚

TBH, Fall is grilling season here.

A happy scrub jay feasting on some big bird seeds.

Gorgeous loaf of homemade sourdough.

Tore out the bark beetle infested Lapins Cherry today. It was half dead by beetles girdling it. In November we’ll put in a new Lapins Cherry from Stark Bros.. The old tree was from a big box store and while it provided prodigious fruit it was oddly pruned and I couldn’t fix it.

Our dropped off California ballots were collected and accepted. I get very anxious when signing — afraid of signing it wrong. I practice a bit first.

On iPhone 12: I love the telephoto lens so I’ll wait for the 2.5x camera or better to migrate down into the iPhone Pro from the Max. The Max is a nonstarter for my small hands. My 11 Pro already pushes my limits. As for the super wide angle lens, I use that more than I expected.

Saved this gorgeous western alligator lizard this morning from a murderous outdoor cat. It was cold, on its back, and sluggish (very vulnerable) when I scared the cat away. It seemed uninjured.

Siri Shortcut for Meteobridge Weather Report: If you have a weather station with Meteobridge, I’ve made a iOS Siri Shortcut so Siri can tell you about current conditions. You can tweak the weather report using variables on Meteobridge’s template page along with other small shortcut adjustments. By default it reports current temperature, …

Backyard cultivated native elderberries decided summer is over! Yay!

My typical workflow: here’s a thing I need to do. Hm. That seems more difficult than expected. What’s easier than that? And easier than that? No, that’s silly and overcomplicated. Easier than before that? Can I live with that? Probably. Not what I wanted but A-OK.

Just voted🇺🇸

The Annie Cat has seasons. She only uses the wool bed during the cold season.

Lemongrass came back this year after dying back over winter (we also took cuttings over winter and one managed to take). So here’s homemade lemongrass ice cream topped with praline. 😋

Franciscan Assemblage. Mendocino NF. ❤️

Been a few years since we first wanted to mulch the backyard. Weather got nice so here we go with 10 cu yd of chips!

We made roasted hot pepper sauce recently. A mix of jalapeños, anaheims, serranos and yellow wax peppers (more orange red upon ripening)👌 Worth the wait growing and ripening peppers to red. 🌶

For iOS 14 Shortcuts, seems the volume control function for AirPlay devices is only reliable after the audio begins. So for a DarkNoise shortcut, it switches to an AirPlay device, then DarkNoise plays, and finally after a four seconds wait the volume is controlled.

Coconut-Gochujang Glazed Chicken With Broccoli is pretty good. We added Gochugaru (Korean pepper flakes) for extra heat. Would recommend serving as a rice bowl though. It begged for a bowl.

Tess of the Road was excellent so now reading where it all started: Seraphina by Rachel Hartman 📚

Billions of almonds waiting to be hulled.

Western Toad finally makes a reappearance in the backyard and it has GROWN. Wish I had something for scale.

The Annie Cat is so displeased that the game controller isn’t working right.

Excellent sourdough shape, crumb, and pretty good flavor (48 hour refrigerator proof).

Accidentally scrolled to the bottom of Sunlit app credits 😉

Today’s obligatory wildfire smoke scene. Halide app made it dead easy to override auto white balance.

Winds started after midnight here and dramatically warmed the air from ~75 to ~87°F. Likely katabatic winds.

Blue Jay yelling at everything this afternoon. Maybe it’s angry at the wildfire smoke.

Can confirm.

Oof.

Good morning: light of sunrise reflecting off the smoke.

Today starts an oppressive heat wave. At least the humidity is low. The smoke from California fires is thin today so not getting much help from it.

A scrub jay checking out the new bird feeder. Birds haven’t taken to it yet. They’re still eating grapes and desiccated elderberries.

Finished The City We Became (great book) and now currently reading: Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman 📚

August Complex smoke this afternoon. Silver lining is the smoke cooled the air temperature down several degrees.

Our trio of Scrub Jays are leaving almond hulls behind. Maybe they’re giving us gifts for providing water? We do compost….

We love this homemade smoked beef salami — could use a bit more paprika but great first try.

A day of discovery making salami for the first time with a smoker we were given. Smells and looks great but it may be a bit loose.

Kimchi-Brined Fried Chicken: Kimchi-Brined Fried Chicken Sandwich Recipe by J. Kenji López-Alt is an excellent recipe — those with lower spice tolerance may want to drizzle the finishing sauce instead of liberally brushing. We did not make the sandwich, but served simply with white rice and kimchi.

Still currently reading: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin – and enjoying it! Making me look through my photos of New York. Oh look, Brownstone buildings! But hardly anything of The Bronx and no surprise: nothing of Stanten Island. 📚

Large ash flake that landed in my safe backyard — over a dozen miles away from the August Complex on the Mendocino National Forest. This had a lot of atmospheric lift to make it this far. You can see the leaf pattern!

Nothing but pleasant emotions with a view like this. I wish this were my backyard but so glad I had the presence of mind to take this photo. Hidden Lakes area, Lassen National Forest.

Overcome a poorly seasoned cast iron pan by cooking lots of fatty things like Guanciale.

The Annie Cat is not always relentless at being judgy. Sometimes she looks borderline benevolent.

Here’s some hope that our trio of Scrub Jays will eat our cultivated California native grapes.

Frosty garden grown hot peppers (from the freezer) about to become hot sauce. We harvest over the summer and freeze until ready.

In mid-2016 we discovered this graceful Silk Moth at Humboldt Redwoods State Park, CA.

I dislike Instagram’s new suggested posts. It is a new source of anxiety in that I might see something I try to avoid. Instagram is in solid FB territory now but is all I have to maintain connections with friends and family. Maybe it’s not worth it now.

This last week was insane and that is why I posted the Sourdough Dashi Scallion Pancakes twice for the micro.blog August challenge. Is that cheating? Well, at least they were different photos. Also there is still a lot of Regina Spektor being played. And now Rilo Kiley.

VMware Fusion 12 Player: It is pretty awesome that VMware Fusion Player is replacing VMware Fusion Standard and Player is free for personal use. This is weird to me since I never expect a company to stop asking for money for great software. Now, it seems, I can upgrade VMware Fusion 11 Standard to VMware Fusion 12 Player …

This perch is pretty much The Annie Cat’s summer home during the day.

Sourdough Dashi Scallion Pancakes from last weekend had some serious crunch. A bit salty but very tasty. Perhaps use a bit less Dashi next time.

Wish I could change today’s cooler smokey summer day to a rainy winter day. The August Complex fires are insane.

Metallic ribbon and a fake bird of prey truly keeps the birds away from our figs.

Falafel on a grid.

This western milkweed bug stuffing itself into the eye of the Brown Turkey Fig is decidedly not cuddly and I do not like them ruining my figs! We actually cut into a fig the other day, decapitating a milkweed bug that got inside.

Likely the plume of the Doe Fire on the Mendocino National Forest.

Currently reading: The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin. I’ve had this book on library hold for months. The eBook finally became available in Libby (thanks to the public library)! 📚

Read Gideon the Ninth by Tamsym Muir. ★★★★☆ The novel meandered a bit but was thoroughly enjoyable. Its prose took a little bit to get used to. I look forward to reading the second book in this series. 📚

These Sourdough Dashi Scallion crepes were not stationary for long.

Unusual weather in NorCal but it is keeping daytime temps cooler than yesterday. The overnight low was about 80°. It is currently 81°. Lightning to the south and west of us (on the Mendocino NF).

The cultivated native plants likely needed some morning water for this California heatwave. It’s like a furnace vent out there.

The Annie Cat in silhouette.

Peppers among peppers. Nachos for dinner tonight. The red jalapeño and yellow wax peppers were home grown.

With the incoming heatwave in California, we will filter out direct sunlight to help keep these little avocado trees from scorching to death. Also: save the U.S. Postal Service. ✉️

West Point Light House on the Puget Sound. During a trip to visit friends Mid–2016.

SFO, August 2009: when 747s were still fairly popular for long haul transport. I’ve never flown on one 😞

Looking out at set of creepy toothy, grinning windows (dormers?) from Dom St. Petri in Bautzen, Germany. 2009.

So much Regina Spektor in my playlist lately.

The Annie Cat is black-and-white and loves self-scritching her mouth and cheeks (don’t all cats?)

Another Bee’s eye view. Gorging on a Gilia. Early 2017.

Hummingbirds love these cultivated native California fuchsias so here’s their bird’s eye view of them.

Daytripping in mid-October can result in this view of Mount Lassen from Brokeoff Mountain. 2019.

Fissures bisect land in the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness. The massive landslide is moving to the left. Late 2019.

A quaternary lava flow at ʻĀhihi-Kīnaʻu Natural Area Reserve on Maui. Haleakalā is in the background. Late 2018. #mbaug

Currently reading: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsym Muir 📚

There was (and must still be) absolute peace in the Haleakala erosional crater. Late 2018. 

A bug that we call the European honeybee, enjoying cultivated native California sage flowers. 2017. #mbaug

Jellyfish floating in an aquarium at the Birch Aquarium, La Jolla, CA in 2004. #mbaug

I can’t say if it’s related but I haven’t received any mail for four days now. I can say that’s highly unusual and concerning. twitter.com

What used to be Up at Coyote Point just south of SFO. #mbaug

Mantis on the cherry tree. … and peppers! Though ants are trying to farm aphids on them.

Cultivated native California grapes. Seedy & thick skinned but good to eat. Since the birds aren’t.

Bulgogi. Beef Bulgogi (asada cut) hot off the grill.

Today’s harvest. Brown turkey figs and a small ripe jalapeño.

Orange Grove Update: This year, our Mandarin orange will provide plenty to eat in January. We’re lucky it’s not alternate bearing (this year, anyway). Meanwhile, this is the first year our Meyer lemon has produced more than a couple fruit. Super exciting! It did lose a lot of leaves earlier this summer, though. I …

The lemon grass coming in strong. It came back from last year’s planting and a cutting we took.

Change your AC and/or furnace filter with high flow MERV-8 every three months or sooner if you’ve got pets (long haired cat in our case). The HVAC blower and evaporator coil will thank you with less repair bills. Fresh filter at the top.

Here’s a drooping Brown Turkey fig — means it’s perfectly sweet & tender for eating. Don’t wait too long after a Brown Turkey fig reaches this stage else it may start to ferment and/or critters will get to it first.

Brown Turkey figs are rapidly ripening. Patiently waiting for them to start drooping as a sign of ripeness.

The birds aren’t eating the grapes, so we might as well. 😋

Here’s an adjusted/“developed” version of NEOWISE (see the original straight from Night Mode)

Anaheim pepper with a surprise mantis for scale. Then a jalapeño. Just popped out of nowhere while I inspected the peppers this morning. It’s protecting our garden!

Garden Update: Experimental pepper garden update: Cayenne, jalapeño, Anaheim, Hungarian wax. We will ripen all peppers to red for making hot sauce and tastier eating. Direct seeded March 29.

Scrub jay!

Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) at 04:17. Very cool. The last quarter moon washed it out a lot. iPhone 11 Pro, night mode.

Watering the front yard and this hummingbird was really curious about the water and I swear the bird took a drink.

Our cultivated native California grapes are ripening! The birds will hopefully soon find them. Or we’ll enjoy them despite their massive seeds.

Our peppers are doing okay despite the very late seeding. Just a bit of brown rot initially but some Jobes organic fertilizer seems to have stopped that.

Somewhere around Tehachapi, CA.

The last two days of 110°F heat has also resulted in our cultivated native California grapes turning to raisins on the vine.

110°F yesterday and today. The avocados we planted 2-3 years ago transpire water more than they can replenish from the ground and so their leaves desiccate and die. Especially the young leaves on the Bacon (1) variety and random adult leaves on the Mexicola (2) variety. ☹️

Scrub Jay patiently waiting for the grapes to ripen.

The makings of Chai ice cream (admittedly without the tea).

Upon a recent update to VMware Fusion 11.5.5, sound began crackling in Windows 10. For some reason sound.virtualDev = "hdaudio" was missing from my .vmx file so Windows 10 was using VMWare’s generic audio drivers. Added that line into the .vmx file and all is well as now Windows is using its High …

So many Brown Turkey Figs!

Leafhopper Assassin with a meal.

Hummingbird enjoying succulent flowers.

Shooting Star or Primula hendersonii (maybe) at Hidden Lakes, Lassen National Forest last Friday 6/12.

Sous Vide Filet Mignon, Medium Rare: We set the Filet Mignon into the water bath (in a bag of course, air displaced by water so water touches as much steak surface as possible), then set the Sous Vide to 130ºF. Once the water hit 130ºF, we set the timer for an hour to officially start the cook. When the Sous Vide cook was finished, we …

Tostones or patacones (made whenever we find green plantains at SavMor, which isn’t often). 😋

Hidden Lakes, Lassen National Forest: We went on a hike to the Hidden Lakes in the Caribou Wilderness on the Lassen National Forest. It started at the Hay Meadows Trail Head, north of Lake Almanor, California. It was six miles of relatively flat hiking with periodic steep inclines. The trails were not at all crowded, though we brought …

Volunteer tomato is flowering. Who knows what kind of fruit this might grow (if pollinated). So too blooms our late April direct seeded peppers blooming.

[Crispy Cheese and Kimchi-Topped Skillet Rice](https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2019/10/kimchi-cheese-rice-recipe.html) — quite delicious.

Keep MacBook from Sleeping with Lid Down: The MacOS app Amphetamine is pretty slick. As promised, it keeps my MacBook Air awake even if the lid is closed and there is no external display attached. So now I can run it as a part-time file server (via SFTP and Secure ShellFish for iOS). At least, that’s the plan. Since it is running on a …

The California Buckwheat is now blooming — cool hot pink anthers!

The toyon is in full bloom and it is impossible to photograph its flowers without pollinators. A very popular plant!

Today’s front yard Poppies and Clarkias.

I finally got around to messing with iStat Menu's Time menu and I’m sold. Having a calendar and events embedded in the clock is lovely.

Cultivated native California grapes are coming along quite well.

... made from the left over Bulgogi the next day, Bibimbap! Crisped up the white rice a bit too.

Homemade Bulgogi.

If only I could have got closer to this gorgeous blue dragonfly in the front yard. This super crop will have to do.

Inaugural cook on the Baking Steel Mini Griddle. We love the original size for pizza, cooking lots of vegetables etc but it is too big for most of our griddle applications.

The Annie Cat in a box.

Bee butt on the first understated blooms of our cultivated Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia).

Upgraded to 16" MBP ❤️: Since 2010, I have always had a 13” Mac laptop — now I’m on a 16” MacBook Pro and I love it. I upgraded from a 2018 MacBook Air. I waited for the new 13” MBP. The new 13” MBP had the necessary Magic keyboard but didn’t satisfy in terms of evolution: its screen was not 14” as rumored; it has the same …

An unidentified grasshopper of some kind on our cultivated native California wild rose. Genus _Scudderia_?

Why must Apple hide three finger drag on their touch pads under Accessibility? It’s my favorite touch feature of the touch pad.

Lunchtime snack: Sweet Cherries fresh from the backyard tree.

Freshly churned strawberry ice cream.

Lunch today: Chuck Roast (left over) Sandwich. Cooked on Baking Steel.

chuck roast (left over) sandwiches on homemade sourdough. The Baking Steel is pretty great as a griddle.

Cherry tree update: almost dark red! (and then they’re hopefully ripe and sweet; had two today and they were not there yet: tasted like early season supermarket cherries.)

The backyard native California grapes are about done flowering and beginning to swell.

Metallic flagging and a fake hawk to discourage birds from the cherries. The blue jays are smart and eventually don’t care but smaller birds stay away. Just say no to critter killing netting.

Our sweet cherries are looking tastier everyday.

Pineapple guava (Feijoa sellowiana) flowers.

Cherries on the bark beetle-caused malnourished, unshaded branches (to right) are blushing fast (May not be very good cherries). The resident blue jays should stick to those branches.... they ignore the metallic tape with malice in their dinosaur eyes...

Just found out that MacOS Catalina’s new shell (zsh) doesn’t require me to remove spaces from file names for my simple Markdown to PDF shell command — nice! for f in *.md; do pandoc $f -o ./Archive/${f%.md}.pdf -t latex; done

Pineapple Guava (Feijoa sellowiana) flower bud. These flowers are going to be huge.

Turns out native California grape flowers ate definitely not showy but are well loved by small pollinators.

I think these are as showy as native California grape flowers get. Will report back.

Backyard elderberry in full bloom. Fence behind it is six feet tall.

Fruit Tree Irrigation: an Experiment: For several years I’ve watered my fruit trees using a Generation 2 Rachio controller and their irrigation method called “Flex Daily”. This method relies on many variables, a few of which I can only make good guesses at. For example, my soil’s Available Water Capacity from the U.S. Soil Survey. Flex …

Wild California Grapes are coming along — these are the flowers buds.

Front yard Clarkia update: nearly full bloom. Hoping the white lined sphinx moth caterpillars show up soon. Though, this year there is far less forage than the last. Not enough rain.

For Earth Day, bees on the elderberry and the avocado.

This HUGE bumble bee really wants the Toyon flowers to open up! Been buzzing around for several minutes.

Today’s Clarkias and Poppies.

Homemade Naan atop a piping hot Baking Steel.

First bloom of our backyard California wild roses (Rosa Californica)!

Today, first time in weeks flour and sugar could be bought 🥳 go King Arthur flour!

Snakefly hunting insects on a bed of elderberry flowers.

Warmer than usual weather means Peppers are rapidly sprouting. We direct seeded this year as an experiment.

I can never remember brackets or parentheses for Markdown links!

Yarrow is now in bloom and the carpet beetles are gorging themselves on pollen.

Seen at lunch: iNaturalist guesses this is a Leafhopper Assassin bug on our California grape. Assassins in our back yard! A good bug!

Today we donated all our U.S. stimulus money to the local food bank.

The swarm in our little blue oak is getting a new home.

With [Watchsmith](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/watchsmith/id1483088503), I get a hamburger when my move/exercise/stand goals are met.

Never knew my penchant for buying cleaning supplies weeks in advance of running out would be useful during a pandemic. Thankful for my insanity under normal circumstances!

When your yards are a pollen and nectar paradise, this can happen. Time to get in touch with a local apiary!

Bee butt on a front yard Gilia 🐝

This western toad is why I carefully cut back the parsley. I knew it was in there somewhere. I stopped at the toad and gently covered with trimmings to maintain shade and moisture.

Got to pay attention to notice avocado flowers. Our “Bacon” Avocado tree is flowering. Our “Mexicola” variety is not— too bad because they’re type A and B so would have pollinated each other.

Falafel soft tacos tonight since we had dry chickpeas, the herb garden was begging for it, and we always have corn tortillas. Topped with red onion quick pickle and herbed buttermilk 🧆

Think we might get cherries in mid to late May! A few tree branches have extremely undersized leaves because of bark beetle damage starving the branches of resources. Mainly from metallic bark beetles. Two branches completely died last year so they got lopped.

Got a few Apricot fruits to set... in a few weeks they may drop as the tree balances its energy.

First elderberry flowers in the backyard.

Our (majority) whole wheat crust pizza.

🐞

Apple delayed shipment of 2020 MacBook Air. Understandable. Buyer’s remorse came fast and furious so I canceled. I’ll keep mashing those butterfly keys for a while longer.

Home fried sweet potato chips. Because we didn’t use the potato in a Massaman curry last week (had spaghetti instead).

I’m experimenting with Meteobridge Templates and Siri Shortcuts so Siri can tell me about the weather just by pulling data off the local network data logger. Works pretty good!

Newly emerged ladybug 🐞

Future native California grapes.🐞🐝

Was prepping the vegetable garden bed and had to dodge lots of ladybugs.

We had been planning a May trip to Germany for a few years. We’re cancelling it. We're patiently waiting to get a refund for airfare. We’re glad to have booked cancellable hotels and trains. Our German friends are encouraging a visit next year.

Front yard (mostly) native garden update.

Good morning! Here’s Orion’s Belt of Ladybugs on white clover.

Yellow Dal w/Garlic & Brown Basmati and make ahead veggie enchiladas all at once.

Our local grocery store’s distributor ran out of eggs by the dozen. 😕

What do you need this morning? Bee butt on Gilia flowers and Baby Blue Eyes.

Realized we can keep our front door open with closed screen because there shouldn’t be door to door sales people right now. The Annie Cat is in heaven.

Takeout from a local Orland, CA restaurant. Even in rural California, online takeout is available! Several restaurants here are offering online orders or call-in. One restaurant has kits to make meals. Another has frozen takeout. 🤞

I’d say nationwide telework went very well this last week. Only had a few hours of repeat VPN disconnections. Bandwidth was not constrained relative to my home internet. Good job, CIO staff!

“Hey Siri, play some music.” “Okay, let’s kick things off with Widespread Panic.” 😳

Working from home today - nationwide stress test of VPN.

It’s high time we start taking photos behind the flowers. Apricot flower.

Sous Vide London Broil (Beef): We had a two pound London Broil in the freezer chest and nowhere to go because of SARS-CoV-2. Might as well try Sous Vide! We did the water displacement method with a 1-gallon freezer bag. I massaged out as many air bubbles as possible. I also pinched the sides of the bag together. The idea is to …

Glad lots of people are learning about public library eBooks. My library in rural California has had them for a while now and I love it. They’re also open saturdays!

Not going anywhere unless necessary so time to try Sous Vide London Broil. Just under two pounds of meat held at 132°F/55.6°C for 8 hours. Just salt and pepper for the beef. Will sear it to finish.

Cherry tree in full bloom.

At the USDA, I’m not allowed to telework as I haven’t been personally affected by SARS-CoV-2. I’m capable of telework and I prefer it. Guess they’re waiting for mass infections at workplaces first. USDA significantly curtailed telework ~two years ago.

There’s a retirement party this Saturday. Could be up to 100 people. So far it’s not postponed or cancelled. I started getting very anxious over SARS-CoV-2 so I’m no longer going.

This morning’s view out the backyard window. The California Lilacs (purple!) are out of control. Mandarin in the foreground. Elderberry to the far left.

A successful section of our vegetative fence line screen. Elderberry (Sambucus mexicana), California Lilac (Ceanothus), and a Mandarin tree. A few years in the making.

Wow first earthquake I’ve experienced in a very long time. Off Cape Mendocino. It was a slow roll. Made me slightly nauseous and confused at first. Filed Did You Feel It.

Sunset over the Pacific. Two versions, no filter, just different exposure settings. iPhone 11 Pro 2x. Northern California.

Gray Whale spouts (center photo) off the coast of Northern California.

Western toad hanging out in one of our irrigation boxes. We have a wildlife ramp in there for this reason.

A Very Good Overcomplicated Journal Workflow: Our journal workflow is probably more complicated than it needs to be. There’s room to optimize this workflow. It grew out of our moving away from Day One when they went to the subscription model. At the time there were some terrible limitations and we wanted none of it. Instead, we went with a …

European honeybee on a California Lilac (Ceanothus). 🐝

Our front yarden sage plants (first two photos) and all the Ceanothus are now flowering.

Our apricot had its first bloom today. A few weeks ahead last year. This tree has rarely yielded fruit. 🤞🌳

Our cherry tree had its first bloom today.

There are many **vision**s brewing in these caskets at [Moksa Brewery](https://moksabrewing.com).

Alcohol dreaming to escape their bottles. Later, I had a dry gin martini on the rocks.

Ember leaping from a pepper roasting over a gas flame.

2020 Spring: Blooms to Come: Here in the Northern Sacramento Valley of California, the blooming seems to be happening all at once with the unusually dry and warm late winter. Apricot is about to start blooming: The cherry will be blooming soon too:  Western Red Bud (Cercis occidentalis) is about to bloom: California lilacs …

And here’s a California gilia.

First front yard California poppy bloom of the year.

We love this red curry paste. Fortify it with fresh lemon grass! 🌶🌶🌶🥵

Glad I’m not below that cherry picker.

Our cherry tree’s super close **together** buds are opening up! Soon flower buds will rapidly drop on stems, bloom, and then by late May... ripe cherries! If the birds don’t get them first.

This horse won’t escape… though I feel jumping the fence is easily within its abilities.

In 2010: Plenty of limestone & marble rock hurdles in the Marble Wilderness, Klamath National Forest, Northern California.

Double

Experimenting with our first bird feeding station. Suet with seed for a variety of birds.

The dull spectacle of me trying to figure out the kitchen sink’s plumbing. My iPhone is a handy remote eye, well suited for dark, tight spaces.

Progress. Nectarine is growing!

A tan greywacke sandstone from the Northern California Coast Range (Franciscan Assemblage bedrock). cm scale.

The pull to “like” on Twitter is impressive. I’m doing my best to refrain but my finger has a mind of its own.

Never for want of space in California’s Central Valley. Those grapes will be waking up soon.

Hard to oppose California’s almond bloom! ❤️ Our apricot will bloom mid March and the cherry late March (but it’s nearly girdled by boring beetles).

One of two Valencia oranges from the backyard tree 😋

Not cool. Whoever installed the kitchen sink didn’t use plumbers putty or silicone so now the under sink bracket is rusted out. Might be a plumber’s job to save my sanity.

Bees seem to never **rest** when manzanitas are blooming. I gave up trying to photograph them.

House Wiring is an Adventure: I finished installing some new switches today. Worst thing I found in the existing wiring that I could fix myself was paint coated copper under the wire nuts. Whoever did that must think wires work off of luck that the wire nuts cut into the copper or magic or induction. Pictured below are neutrals …

Use of ladders require good balance. I barely have that and dislike them immensely despite their great utility.

Mid-February 2020 Update: Home Orchard and Native Plants: It has been 19 days since it last rained here. The outdoor temperatures have been in the mid-70s. The area’s almond orchards are blooming in waves about a week earlier than last year. Our deciduous plants are waking up! We planted a nectarine this winter and it is beginning to grow. Our California …

Warmth and a marshmallow on the Carrizo Plain in 2010.

Late last year in New York I saw many a High Rise including this curvy one.

During the cold season, Annie has an enormous attachment to her heated bed.

November 2010: The Carrizo Plain National Monument. A great spot for geology students to explore structures along the San Andreas Fault.

This morning’s view of Northern California’s interior coast range. Cameo by a Tractor Supply sign.

I. Uh. Well.

During a lull of the wind.

I want a cavern full of juke boxes playing All You Need is Love.

The Prisoner is wild and genius.

The transparent rectangular thing is the push on connector I wrote about earlier. Really nice; way better than wire nuts in some cases.

Quite a contrast! Old switches in bottom photo, new Caseta switches in top. I finally got to use a few push-in connectors and they’re great when the bare wires are perfectly straight.

Last August I went to Coyote Point just south of the main approach to SFO. Coyote Point is famous for people looking above at airliners. It’s probable very few saw this cool hawk perched in the eucalyptus.

The California native plant garden is very green right now and soon there will be plenty of flowers. The blue oak will wake up near end of February.

Wildlife scaring and killing outdoor cats like to hide under our native ceanothus. I regularly scare them out in hopes they’ll eventually stay away from that unpleasantness.

Love it when I can spot Mt. Lassen and Brokeoff Mountain from the valley.

Sweet mandarins reflecting a whole lot of red showing just how ripe they are. Picked last Saturday to share at work. They were gone shortly after lunch.

No sight distance through the evergreen toyon. It’s very happy. So is our manzanita — getting ready to flower. 🐝🌳

Planted more asparagus today. They came with white asparagus sprouts. Looks like freaky white worms in this photo.

My attempt at an open vase pruned apricot tree 🌳 📷

Backyard Relaxation: Relaxing can mean accomplishing things. The backyard always offers things to accomplish! Accomplishing things makes me feel good. Today I: braved a ladder and pruned the apricot cut up pieces of bug ridden wood for disposal (remnant of last occupant of the property that used untreated non-cedar …

I would very much love it if MacOS Catalina stopped logging me out of some anonymous Apple ID service. Every week, if not more. And the process to log back in is mayhem. Maybe 10.15.3 will fix it?

Tree Chilling Hours and a Bad Bug: We’re around 770 chilling hours this season — almost 100 more than last year at this time. We hope this means we get a good crop off our ~800 chilll hour apricot (it was our first fruit tree and we had no concept of chill hours; with the usual climate and especially with climate change we’re now …

Asparagus is weird. Finally moved the crowns to a place we can regularly irrigate.

Previous home owners did not ground the ceiling fan! Such an easy fix for a bit more safety. Did they not read the installation manual? At least the electrical box is not plastic (but metal) and seems very secure. Can’t tell if fan rated though.

Upgraded from (down/up) 175/6 Mbps to 300/11 Mbps soon as I hit the “order” button. $1 less, too. No contract. Worth checking Xfinity internet-only plans periodically! Unreasonably excited at double up speeds.

When a ceiling fan announces that it absolutely wants to be replaced, this happens.

The beetles really tore up our Lapins cherry tree this last year. It is almost girdled. If we’re lucky maybe one more season of fruit.

Yesterday’s planted nectarine began life here in a rather peculiar way:

Going to punt this fan replacement job to another weekend. This nest of wires needs a day I can be relaxed and patient.

Our 2-year old plum died so now we’re trying a “Fantasia” nectarine. 400-500 chill hours is doable here.

Left to right: Moon and Orion (partial; got the belt!)

Frosty morning in the yarden 🐝

Our Elderberries coming back after they scorched in the summer heat last year. Resilient native plants! The birds loved the berries late summer.

Yesterday we spent some time taking a mental break at Burris Creek near Black Butte Lake, CA.

We’re trying to propagate lemon grass after dividing canes from our outdoor plant (hope it overwinters). The centers of the canes have popped up — thinking this means positive water pressure and that may mean the canes are taking in water so this may work.

I disturbed this overwintering ladybug while cleaning up this past year’s Holy Basil growth.

Our Mandarin tree 🌳 is ready for as-needed harvest!

ImperfectFoods is trying to sell people on the produce I get at my rural grocery store: smaller, misshapen, definitely not the produce you’d find at Whole Foods or Raley’s. And this rural grocery store produce is way cheaper and just fine! 🤷‍♂️

This is a nightmare.

Caseta & Dimming LEDs: I replaced a Caseta dimmer switch with the non-dimming version as I’m installing a ceiling fan w/light soon. I’m getting used to tucking and bending wires just so and shoving the switch in with screws ratcheting it snugly in place. I’ve found dimmer switches are difficult since they can’t have …

Dealing with house wiring that makes me go “WTF THEY THINKING?” Don’t DIY if you don’t want to take the time to do it right…

I am really into For All Mankind.

Unearthed and powered up a Raspberry Pi 3. Took a bit of time to remember how I configured it for HomeBridge. Upgrading to Debian Stretch for the heck of it.

Cut down this years’ California fuchsias yesterday to encourage & release a new year of growth.

I’m pleased that MacOS 10.15’s Photos app reconstructs Live Photos from exported .heic and .mov pairs that I uploaded to my NAS via PhotoSync. 📱👍

I love Shortcuts. There goes a tedious repetitive task to oblivion!!📱

Side mirror view: tumbleweed on a front bumper.

Dancy Mandarins are so very close to perfect ripeness. Need to blush a bit more toward red.

A very good Mantis.

Never fails. This infernal badged Sys Prefs issue is so far the most annoying MacOS Catalina issue I’ve had. What services need iCloud to be logged back in? Why does MacOS forget so easily?

My favorite around-the-home power tool. Okay, besides my electric drill/driver.

An indoor aloe succulent growing a flower stalk.

A colorful sunrise and a fresh coat of snow on Snow Mountain, NorCal. I love my iPhone 11 Pro. No way my previous could have exposed these well enough for posting.

Color Stages of Caramel: I use Alton Brown’s dark caramel recipe with some minor modifications to suit taste. First, the mixture always gets to 230°F a few minutes faster than expected and it takes 10 minutes instead of 6 or 7 to get to 300°F. Then, I heat to 340°F instead of 350°F because that’s too burnt for friends. I …

Front yarden update: California Buckwheat’s dead flowers are showy red and the Blue Oak has decided it is winter. California fuchsias still have flowers for the hummingbirds. Front of the house illuminated by mostly bug friendly amber lights. 🐞🐝

To HomePod: “How’s the timer?” HomePod: “The timer is cancelled.” 🙀🤷‍♂️📱

The [iRobot Braava m6 has a threshold problem](https://homesupport.irobot.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/21012/kw/Threshold) and it is a bit frustrating but workable. In my case it can easily go from laminate (higher) to linoleum but not the other way. It’d perhaps take just a quick rev of the wheels …

Dear iPadOS notes: I’d love a default where a new single Notes window launches when I tap your springboard icon instead of the last split screen I used with 1Writer.

Nest Cam vs HomeKit Secure Video: There’s been some frustration with the current state of HomeKit Secure Video, but coming from a very pricey Nest Cam IQ Outdoor that basically is useless without another subscription (cancelled when they removed camera features), HomeKit Secure Video is a revelation. I’m using a Logitech Circle 2 …

Test fromMarsEdit - does RichText convert to MarkDown? Does it bold? Who needs Italians when they steal arctic circle candy? Is underlining for chumps that know nothing of hyperlinks? All these answers and more… to come.

Sometimes my Sonos goes out of sync with the HomePod. The HomePod appears to then go through a process to resynchronize — maybe 75% successful. They’re within earshot of each other so makes since a HomePod might do some fancy sync.

Just cracked open the homemade boozy eggnog that’s been aging since September 8 2019. It’s delightful, smooth, and not gloppy.

Birds gorging on sweet basil seeds.

The birds are gorging on seeds in our front and backyard gardens. So happy to provide them sustenance rather than a lawn desert!

I didn’t end up with even one permission prompt after installing MacOS Catalina & launching various apps. Maybe I accidentally turned off SIP? No… that’s not it. Or it’s not so bad in the current installation version. 👍👍📱

So MacOS Catalina’s SideCar feature requires the Mac user and target iPad to be signed in to the same AppleID even if the iPad is connected to USB. 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎📱

HomeBrew and SuperDuper! just released MacOS Catalina support so I suppose I will try to upgrade today…

Valencia sloooowly ripening & 2) mandarins rapidly coloring but still a month out from peak sweetness

These Extra-crispy Parmesan-crusted roasted potatoes by J. Kenji López-Alt are pretty great.

So my iPhone has started detecting The Annie Cat as a focus area!

One more month until these mandarins are perfectly sweet. Patience!

Armillaria mellea. Honey mushroom 🥾

Very pleased that HomeKit Secure Video streams live video on the LAN. No more stream to cloud and download, adding many seconds of video delay & failure points. 📱

I finally got a HomePod and I’m impressed that it can accurately hear me mumble across the room while it plays music📱

Full Random Albums Playlist Shortcut (Apple Music): I love listening to full albums. But often I’m not in the right mood to choose them. So a long time ago I created a Shortcut that creates an Apple Music playlist of a variable number of full, track list ordered albums. It allows you to unselect albums that you have a strong opinion to not listen to. …

Looking toward Saint John Mountain from near Fouts Springs, CA. Chaparral plants.

Pleased that my HomeKit devices still worked from the Home app during a big Comcast (Xfinity) & Verizon internet outage. Pretty sure Alexa and Google alternatives would have been dead.

Visited some tree frogs in the forest today. Pseudacris sierra.

Old iPad Pro 9.7” just got replaced by an iPad Pro 11”. I did not expect to be impressed by the differences but dang that’s nice!

I have some anxiety over the iOS 13 Reminders upgrade button. If I upgrade, then my partner has to upgrade, and she lives on reminders. So if the upgrade goes wrong… 😱📱

The Prisoner, episode 10, “Hammer into Anvil” — soo good.

Today’s sourdough with a side of Annie Cat stare.

Shared Photo Libraries: All these years Apple still has no way to share entire photo libraries with family. The shared family album is useful only to temporarily share the week’s photos. So I use PhotoSync iOS App to sync our iPhone photos to the NAS, files prefixed with first names, and then once a week manually …

Tree says “It's not fall, but spring!”, Other Tree says “FALL!”: The Lapins Cherry has some confused or mutated buds. It’s probably nothing to worry about. The dormant appearing plum tree, however, did not look well so I checked if it was alive. There’s still some green in a cutting so… I suppose it’s still alive. I needed to prune that branch anyway.

A very good lake. 🥾

Also in bloom! Eriogonum fasciculatum (California buckwheat).

Front yard native plants currently in bloom: Epilobium canum (California Fuchsia; red flowers adored by hummingbirds) and Baccharis pilularis (Coyote Bush; small, pleasantly scented white flowers loved by small pollinators).

Only those with broken circadian rhythms get an hour extra of sleep going to standard time.

We’re starting to get some color on our Mandarins. These should be perfectly sweet by end of December 🌳

In the Yolla Bolly-Middle Eel Wilderness on the Mendocino National Forest via the Ides Cove trail: A landslide-related fissure and then a view.

19 trick-or-treater’s. Half last year. Fortunately, we’re stuck with good candy and not the milk duds with taffy (where milk duds taste like strawberry taffy). Happy Halloween 🎃

Yesterday: Mount Shasta from near Mount Linn. 🥾

iTunes Match to Apple Music: My new iPhone refused to access old iTunes Match music, perhaps as a result of my unsubscribing from iTunes Match months after subscribing to Apple Music. I did that as Apple Music includes Match. But things broke anyway. No idea why. So I spent yesterday rebuilding my collection using Apple Music. …

Barely photographed a bee on our holy basil. They were extremely shy and did not loiter. 🐝

The Annie Cat waiting patiently for the nighttime brushing routine to begin.

Western toads in the backyard 🐝😍

A little more than halfway through The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater and I don’t want it to end.

So the Shortcuts widget syncs the same shortcuts & order on iPad and iPhone. Too bad, as I have very different Shortcuts uses for these devices.

Cooler weather means it’s time to check your tire pressure! A bit low as they need 32 PSI.

Trees & rocks. 🥾

🤦‍♂️📱 iPadOS 13.1.3

Mount Lassen. 🥾

I neglected to post a photo of Lassen National Park’s Brokeoff Mountain. The hike to its summit was 👌🥾

I love a sun-dappled wet meadow with accenting volcanic rocks! Yesterday, on the trail to Brokeoff Mountain in Lassen National Park.🥾

Today: Mount Lassen from Brokeoff Mountain.🥾

A front yard native garden update! Fuchsias & Cal Buckwheat are still flowering. Coyote bushes are struggling to flower (tiny pollinators love them). The Blue Oak has no complaints. Poppies & yarrow are back after a couple of soggy thunderstorms. Toyon barely has berries.

Thankful Apple still allows a different iTunes account for app purchases as Apple STILL provides no mechanism to share app subscriptions & in-app purchases (I’d gladly add a buck or so for a family app subscriptions)! 💻

Praying Mantis on the grapevine. 🐝

Patecones are 👌🍴

Worth the tens cents for the bag. 🐈

Flu shot season!

Apple knew what they were doing delaying Deep Fusion photography feature in iPhone 11. After I saw real world results, I needed to upgrade from my blurry XS. Garden and cat pictures will be amazing. Deep Fusion certainly kept the iPhone 11 in the news cycle longer.

The Annie Cat enjoying her heated bed that comes out every fall. 🐈

Another very good Praying Mantis hanging out in my front yard. 🐝

Oh cool. The exercise trigger for iOS 13.1.2 Shortcuts finally started working today.

This Preying Mantis (or others like her) has been hanging out on one of our California wild grape vines for a few days now. It’s lovely to have critters take refuge in our plants. 🐝

Using iOS 13 shortcuts & iPad home screen widget to set audio output to my airplay capable Sonos speaker and then immediately play music are all I ever needed. Using control center to change audio output is 👎

California Wild Rose (Rosa californica) flowers are incredibly fragile. This backyard plant became quite happy when I added it to the drip irrigation.🐞

This “Beauty” Japanese plum has been quite temperamental. No idea if it should be defoliated by now - happened last year too. Too much water? Sensitive to daylight time? 🤷‍♂️🌳

My new favorite watch face, from WatchOS 6, is Solar Dial. I’m often outdoors for work so at a glance view of the sun ephemeris is nice. Apple put a lot of effort on this watch face!

Good morning!

Piano repair in Flatiron.

This crisp very low IBU Montauk Summer Ale is what I needed this warm late summer evening on Long Island, NY.

Love how Mott Street in China Town (Manhattan) curves out of sight like a movie set.

I wanted all of the knishes.

Gorgeous day on the Brooklyn Bridge. Walked from Penn Station to Atlantic Terminal. Knishes, Lotus Seed Paste Cake, Ruebins, and Cheese Cake were devoured along the way.

JFK, New York. Scene from last night: a traffic jam in the hourly garage. Was treated to a horn serenade near midnight. Was kinda funny though the pay booth operator was clearly having a bad night w/ technical difficulties.

Snow Mountain and St. John mountain are looking pretty good after yesterday’s rain.

The audio sync feature on Apple’s tvOS 13 is 👌 Also, here’s a🌈 🌈

My almost 2 year old plum is so fickle. It’s senescing early. After digging into the soil, I think it is water deprived. So trying adding 1 gallon per hour emitter as 0.5 gallon per hour emitters are not delivering nearly enough water. I’m also annoyed at the borer bugs.

Urban prescribed fire 🔥. Provides volunteer fire department training and reduces city blight & fine fuels in vacant lots.

Epilobium canum (California Fuchsia) keeping pollinators, including hummingbirds, happy.

Mantis enjoying the accommodations of our little Blue Oak.

Anna’s Hummingbirds fighting over native fuchsias!

HomeKit is great because it doesn’t require internet for day to day operations. Internet goes down, I can still operate or expect automations as normal. The same cannot be said of the other smart home ecosystems. Ecobee goes out of business? HomeKit!

Ecobee 3 lite seems nice but had to change its default 0.5°f “Cool Differential Temp” to 1°f. We keep our house pretty warm so its heat saturated mass rapidly causes air temp to rebound. To Nest’s credit, I think it had a non-programmable ~1°f diff. Short-cycling 👎

Bye bye Nest Thermostat Gen 1. Hello ecobee3 lite! I revised the Nest’s fancy screws to avoid drywall anchors — critical as the drywall is backed by 2x4s. Super easy install with the common wire I enabled last weekend.

Almond harvest season.

Can’t wait to replace the 1st gen Nest Thermostat with this Ecobee3 Lite. A Friday project.

Going to be jealous of that iPhone 11’s 📱grown up front camera! About time it has near parity to the rear.

The package only had to go from one end of the state to another. Instead, it first went across the country! 🧐

Tonight’s homemade pizza 🍕

Preparing to move away from Nest (Google) to Ecobee this week. Just used a spare thermostat wire and C terminal on HVAC mainboard to create a common wire. Minimizes fussing with wires at the mainboard and no PEK for me!

Eucalyptus plantation near Corning. This was supposed to be for a sustainable biofuels project.