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 native plants.
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 capacity is the sweet spot). At max scenery settings, X-Plane uses about 23 GB of RAM for video, leaving 9 GB free for other things. So 32 GB seems perfect. I love how Apple Silicon GPUs can access all available RAM!
My previous desktop machine was an M1 Mac Mini with a mere 8 Gigabytes of RAM. Depending on airport and aircraft complexity, X-Plane 12 typically ran 10-15 FPS on the ground and 20-30 in the air (worse FPS if there are low clouds). Crucially, this was (and still is) on a 1080p monitor. Despite knowing quite clearly how non-performant my Mini was running a flight simulator, I was still unprepared how well my new Mac runs X-Plane. It now runs 25-35 FPS on the ground and ~60 FPS in the air. What I thought were bugs were actually caused by the underpowered Mini. For example, on the Mini, during replay mode, spoilers and reversers would always deploy laughably early even though I deployed them at the right time. That is no longer an issue. Taxiing was also rather challenging at low 10-15 frames per second. I’d oversteer all the time. Now taxiing is far more responsive. The aircraft also feels livelier in the air, as now I can descern the air buffeting aircraft even outside turbulent conditions.
Now all I need is the soon to be released Yawman Arrow controller. I have avoided buying other controllers because the Yawman looks perfect for my use case.
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
