Greg Metcalfe
Nature-loving Oregonian security bot.
Nature-loving Oregonian security bot.
Greg Metcalfe's interests
Greg Metcalfe's posts
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I picked a bad week to be really busy. Back in February, I posted https://greg-freestyle.blogspot.com/2017/02/exploring-data-from-linux-command-line.html
I was looking for the last time we had had a 60° F or higher temperature, after an unusually cold and wet winter. While there may be some place on Earth where the weather early in the year offers predictive power for conditions 6 months later, that place is not western Oregon.
Records are going to fall all over the Northwest, not just the Willamette valley. Seattle may set a new all-time high, and Portland may get into the 105-110° range. See https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/07/superheat-coming-to-northwest-this-week.html for details. Mass works in the UW Department of Atmospheric Sciences, and is more credible than most mass-media 'meteorologists', most of whom aren't actually meteorologists.
The hottest it's been at my place since I've lived here was 106°, on 2009-07-28. That was pretty miserable, and it seems likely to be hotter at some point this week.
I was looking for the last time we had had a 60° F or higher temperature, after an unusually cold and wet winter. While there may be some place on Earth where the weather early in the year offers predictive power for conditions 6 months later, that place is not western Oregon.
Records are going to fall all over the Northwest, not just the Willamette valley. Seattle may set a new all-time high, and Portland may get into the 105-110° range. See https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2017/07/superheat-coming-to-northwest-this-week.html for details. Mass works in the UW Department of Atmospheric Sciences, and is more credible than most mass-media 'meteorologists', most of whom aren't actually meteorologists.
The hottest it's been at my place since I've lived here was 106°, on 2009-07-28. That was pretty miserable, and it seems likely to be hotter at some point this week.
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The JSON for this at https://gitlab.com/secinfo/hr.
If it sparks any ideas, you might want to comment on the blog. Or, of course, just fork it. I'm just glad the tedious bits are over. At least I hope they are.
If it sparks any ideas, you might want to comment on the blog. Or, of course, just fork it. I'm just glad the tedious bits are over. At least I hope they are.
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A striking composite image of the Crab Nebula is being widely reported. Less widely mentioned is that the creators attempted to use six - the sixth being ALMA. They couldn't do it, because the ALMA observations were not quite coincident.
It turns out that when modern instruments are used to do high-resolution studies of things moving at 20% light-speed, only 6,500 light years away, it would have blurred the image. Cool enough to put up a post.
It turns out that when modern instruments are used to do high-resolution studies of things moving at 20% light-speed, only 6,500 light years away, it would have blurred the image. Cool enough to put up a post.
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Steve McConnel taught me a lot in the first edition of Code Complete. The second edition was briefly brilliant, but rapidly fell behind the state of the art. I'd love to ask a simple question. Is it even possible for print tech books to be worth their cost?
His opinion of Python, in the second edition of Code Complete follows.
Python
Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented language that runs in numerous environments. It is used most commonly for writing scripts and small Web applications and also contains some support for creating larger programs.
I realize that this was published by Microsoft Press, 2004, but damn. People still read this stuff, in 2017, and think that somehow it is still relevant.
So here. Have a bird. WTF, it's just a pigeon, you ask? Simple. It's the 135th species seen in the yard. Seen by glancing out the office window. There's a story in there, having to do with Real Programmers (not one of those, but have met a couple), but it's time to wrap this up.
His opinion of Python, in the second edition of Code Complete follows.
Python
Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented language that runs in numerous environments. It is used most commonly for writing scripts and small Web applications and also contains some support for creating larger programs.
I realize that this was published by Microsoft Press, 2004, but damn. People still read this stuff, in 2017, and think that somehow it is still relevant.
So here. Have a bird. WTF, it's just a pigeon, you ask? Simple. It's the 135th species seen in the yard. Seen by glancing out the office window. There's a story in there, having to do with Real Programmers (not one of those, but have met a couple), but it's time to wrap this up.
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Total Solar Eclipse 2017. On 2017-08-21, Peoria OR becomes The Coolest Place I Have Ever Lived.
Because reality. Doesn't a total solar eclipse seen from your backyard rate a high Cool Factor? If not, where the hell do you live? Because I probably want to live there, too.
Because reality. Doesn't a total solar eclipse seen from your backyard rate a high Cool Factor? If not, where the hell do you live? Because I probably want to live there, too.
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However we get to a reduced-carbon (and carbon-neutral will not be enough, due to how late we've left it) future, I hope there will still be a bit of non-electric motor sport on offer. Fastest lap ever (6.43.2) for a production car, then driven home afterwards. Turn up the sound.
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Taking a break from pounding a keyboard, I found this Wood Duck. My ten-minute break ending up being more like half an hour.
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Birding this year has been weird. Which is fine: it's supposed to be weird. Anyone expecting least-surprise does not understand the nature of complex adaptive systems.
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Spreadsheets are not the only tool for looking at data. In fact, I don't use them that much. This is a demo of using the Linux command line to answer a simple late-winter question: When was the last day of a ≥ 60 °F temperature around here?
As an aside: I'm not a complete spreadsheet-hater, though my collection of spreadsheet horror stories is large and growing. And binary data formats are loved by neither. But there is a lot of data out there stored in text formats, which Unix pipelines were expressly designed to handle.
As an aside: I'm not a complete spreadsheet-hater, though my collection of spreadsheet horror stories is large and growing. And binary data formats are loved by neither. But there is a lot of data out there stored in text formats, which Unix pipelines were expressly designed to handle.
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