TFW an author has done just enough research to get things spectacularly wrong.

I have such a hard time getting rid of old textbooks. They cost me a fortune. An who knows when you'll need to look up something on the empirical stability rules for atomic nuclei, reflectometer theory or stellerator equilibria :-/

Same data again, but in a new Elastic projection I've been experimenting with that avoids disintegrating Australia.

Same data, but now plotted in the Elastic-2 projection described at kunimune.blog/2023/12/29/i.... This reportedly has less area inflation around the East China Sea, and we do see that the vessel traffic in Asia appears less dramatic.

I need to do a little clean up on the repo I'm using before I open it up–I'll try to do that in the next few days–but in the meantime, I used the projection code from github.com/rtlemos/spil... to do most of the work. My main contribution was convincing Matplotlib to do backgrounds in a way I liked.

@paulwoods.io @davidkroodsma.bsky.social I played around with this over break and managed to map vessel presence in the Spilhaus projection. It really shows how little vessel traffic the southern oceans have. It's also a good candidate for a black light poster with this color scheme.

I just completed all 25 days of Advent of Code 2024! #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com Ugh! Day 24 was kind of brutal, but finally saw the trick of it.

I've completed "LAN Party" - Day 23 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/23 I was handicapped by a complete failure to follow instructions, but eventually–after taking a break to shovel a few tons of gravel–saw the light.

I've completed "Race Condition" - Day 20 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/20 This one was fun and had a closer to uniform difficulty between the parts. My solution was more general than it needed to be, but still ended up running decently fast.

I've completed "Warehouse Woes" - Day 15 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/15 Today was nice and straightforward, softening us up for some gruesome puzzle tomorrow I imagine.

I just got $10 in the Equifax settlement⁉️ As paltry as that sum is, I suspect that this may be the high point of data breach settlements and it's all downhill from here.

I've completed "Restroom Redoubt" - Day 14 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/14 🥶 That involved more ad hoc fiddling that I prefer, but hey, it's done.

I've completed "Claw Contraption" - Day 13 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/13 Ugh! This was the first day where I really wandered off on the wrong track. I kept thinking about doing it the right way, but was continually seduced by a flashier, but wrong, approach.

Blasting "Operation: Mindcrime" while reviewing code: good idea or the worst idea?

I've completed "Red-Nosed Reports" - Day 2 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/2 In UIUA (uiua.org), which was interesting, but probably not something I need to do again.

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I've completed "Mull It Over" - Day 3 - Advent of Code 2024 #AdventOfCode adventofcode.com/2024/day/3 The portion of advent of code where you still think you've learned all the lessons from the previous years and that this year will be easy.

Old Pixies song just popped up in my playlist and man the Pixies were great.

Lots of stuff going down in the world, but GDAL is still a huge pain to install, so at least some things haven't changed. #dataBS

People keep posting things like, "LLMS, can't even spell" or "LLMS are credulously reposting obvious nonsense" as if this makes them seem less like humans. Have these people payed attention to the last 30 years of the internet? [For the record, LLMs are clearly dumb as rocks though]

Derek Lowe, pulling no punches on RFK Jr: "We have enough cynical, manipulative bullshit artists in politics already, and Robert F. Kennedy's record in this area is utterly, totally disqualifying to him and to anyone who works with him." From: www.science.org/content/blog...

Coffee roastery down the street is roasting. It smells good, but also like something might be on fire.

Today's project: trying to convince the skunk camping on my back deck to move by making it listen to talk radio.

There seem to be a lot of people out there who think people convincing you to be buy junk you don't need is some sort of new fangled internet thing. These people should go back and read "Jack and the Beanstalk" published in 1734.

Absolutely can't tell if the jerks spamming me with political adds 24/7 are democratic operatives who are bad at their jobs, republican operatives trying to make the former look bad, foreign actors sowing chaos, or just awful grifters.

If you see this... post a photo you took at sunset (Phoenix, April 2024)

Good luck finding any information on an ML paper if it has the same title as a My Little Pony Episode.

Orcas will end up milkshake ducked.

You wouldn't last an hour in the asylum where they raised me.

Apparently British readers of audio books all learn their American accents from the same source–old gangster movies or something–and all their American characters sound the same and not like any person I've actually met.

Today I came across a road runner while hiking (road runners are the best) who was just ambling along eating lizards. Grabbed my phone and took a pile of pictures. Got home and realized I'd flipped the camera to selfie mode and now had a dozen picture of myself squinting in the desert glare 😞

Reminded again that there is no opinion expressed on social media, no matter how much I agree with it, that the wrongness of the replies won't make me question it.