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.

Ash throated fly catcher looking somewhere to the right.  It has a black head with gray, white, and rust red on the wings. It is perched upon a high branch. They have cool spikes for hair.

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 Oblique view of a yellow and black single propeller Air Tractor plane against a pale blue sky with cirrus. Underside of a yellow and black single prop aircraft. There’s a fan shaped seed spreader mounted under it.

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

Doppler radar view of a south heading storm with lots of high intensity returns and lightning.

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
A Black-necked Stilt bird is waking through a shallow brown pond. Small forbs surround the pond, including low laying purple flowers and then, further in the background, yellow flowers. The Black-necked Stilt has a all-white underside and all-black back and top of head. It has long legs and a long black beak.

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.  A brown butterfly with patches of orange and black eyes near the top edge of its wings. The butterfly is surrounded by green to brown grass.An American Avocet has a brown head and neck with black wings and a white underside. It’s stepping through a pond and beyond it is a floor of purple and then yellow flowers.A Lesser Goldfinch (we think) seems to be using gymnastics to collect grassy nesting material. It is upside down on a stand of grass or a slender branch. It has a beak full of small grassy material.A dragonfly hovers in midair amongst bokeh of grass. It has a slight blue iridescence and looks to be about to fly downward.

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.

A dead pine tree pecked full of holes meant for woodpeckers to store acorns.A close up of actual acorns in the holes of the granary.

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 😙👌

A spiral of creamy scalloped potatoes in glass bowl with the slices edge up. The top is brown & crisp.

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