November 13, 2023

I spent Sunday fiddling in the garage to set up a Raspberry Pi (a small comptuer) with an antenna so I can "listen" to planes transmitting their location. I put the device up on the roof and waited to see what would come in.

Hundreds of planes! You can see them all moving on a map up to 200 miles away, and click on any of them to see where it's coming from and going to, how high it is, how fast it's going, and more.

Kind of neat to see the icon on my screen, then walk outside, look up, and say, "Yup, that's United 1381 on approach."

John Gribben's Deep Simplicity has been the best math book I've ever read; there's barely any math in it, yet he's explaining chaos theory and complexity!

Very very cool stuff, and well worth a read if you (like me) have a fascination with what math can do but very little experience with actually using it beyond some quick grocery store addition.

Saturday early morning I got to be a mule! The San Diego River Park Foundation was supporting a Veteran's Day hike on one of the harder trails in San Diego, and they asked me to hike in a bunch of water and be a miniature water station out in the wilderness.

I carried out a little camping chair, my Gribben book, a few snacks, and a couple gallons of water. It was enough to top off those who needed it (and fill up a few who needed way more than topping off.)

Super nice to sit on the side of the trail tucked into the shade of a scrub oak and just read, gabbing and watering when folks came by.