Next Time – Thursday January 24

Today’s sunrise was at 7:16 am. The next time the sun will rise later then today 🌄 is in 271 days on Tuesday, October 22.

Today’s sunset was at 4:58 pm. The next time the sun will set earlier then today 🌆 is in 283 days on Sunday, November 3.

Almost Full Moon

Long John Silvers.

Last autumn when I was working out in the field, one day I decided to get lunch at Long John Silvers. I am not one for fast food or even eating out, but I was getting reimbursed for meals, so I got lunch there. It was quick, easy, and gross. I’ve avoided fast food for years, as I hate all the packaging, and I was equally grossed out on what I got.

Fast food is fried food, and it’s just plain gross, a mass of hot congealed fat with some fish dipped into it. I guess if you enjoy eating melted lard, it’s good, but it did absolutely nothing for me. I just wished as much that I had packed a sandwitch in my reusable container and passed on the work reimbursement as I often do.

There are better sandwitch shops and other businesses out there then the local chain fast-food, but most of them still come with what I view as excess packaging. But that was the place my colleagues wanted to go. I certainly wouldn’t stop there again on my own, especially not at my own expense.

Plants release up to 30 per cent more CO2 than previously thought, study says

Plants release up to 30 per cent more CO2 than previously thought, study says

"During daylight hours, plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen through photosynthesis, and at night only about half that carbon is then released through respiration. However, plants still remain a net carbon sink, meaning they absorb more than they emit.

"Currently, around 25 per cent of carbon emissions from the use of fossil fuels is being taken up and stored by plants, which is good, as it helps reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," ANU researcher Owen Atkin said. "Our work suggests that this positive contribution of plants may decline in the future as they begin to respire more as the world warms."

January 24, 2019 Morning

Good morning! Happy Thursday. First day heading to spring when we climb out of the average high of 30 to become thirty one. 🌷 Also the last sunset before five pm until daylight savings time ends the first Sunday of November. Three weeks to Valentines Day ❀️. I love that it’s a fact we are getting closer to spring even in Trump’s Shutdown America. Fog and light rain and 47 degrees in the city. β˜” Breezy, 16 mph breeze from the south 🌬 . There are 8 inches of snow on the ground but it’s melting fast with the rain and warm temperatures. β˜ƒ Watch out for tonight’s evening commute 🚐🚓🚕 🚗🚌🚚🚛🚗 with temperatures dropping below freezing at around 5 pm. β˜ƒοΈ

Today will rain before 4pm, then rain likely, possibly mixed with snow.β˜”Patchy fog before 10am. Temperature falling to around 34 by 5pm. South wind 13 to 18 mph becoming west 5 to 10 mph. Winds could gust as high as 29 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny. The high last year was 41 degrees. The record high of 54 was set in 1999. 7.6 inches of snow fell back in 1948.❄

What is there to say but it’s a rather mild and rainy January. I am certainly not complaining at the point as the rain is killing off the snow and ice on the sidewalks, which will make walking safer. 💧While I have had new dress shoes for two weeks now I’ve not worn them yet as I’m afraid the poor weather conditions will damage them. 👞 I like the style and I probably should try them on for fit before it’s too late to return them. Alfred Hammond’s It Never Rains in California is playing on the radio.

The sun will set at 4:58 pm with dusk around 5:29 pm, which is one minute and 17 seconds later than yesterday. 🌇 At sunset, look for rain 🌧 and snow 🌨 and temperatures around 36 degrees. Breezy, 18 mph breeze β›… from the west-northwest. Today will have 9 hours and 42 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 5 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of snow before 7pm. Partly cloudy 🌨, with a low of 23 degrees at 6am. Nine degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical night around March 8th. Pretty mild for late January. West wind 8 to 13 mph becoming light and variable after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 23 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2018, we had mostly clear in the evening, which became mostly sunny by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 14 degrees. The record low of -12 occurred back in 1963.

Last night I got the transistors in the mail and finished building the new board that will control the color adjustable light I built for ease of getting to sleep in the evenings and awake in the morning. :idea:The ESP32 LOLIN32 board has a lot of advantages over the Arduino Nano plus an infrared remote, including much better PWM as you can use PWM on all output pins, and a 5,000 Hz or potentially faster switching speed which has less flicker than the 428 Hz speed of the Nano which also had limited numbers of PWM and only three internal timers which meant you had to share one of timers with the IR library which caused a lot of flicker and poor results with one of the color channels, which I used to assign to blue as I use the color the least. Controlled by Bluetooth means that I have much more flexibility especially once I create a phone app to work with it. More energy efficient too as well as I drive the microcontroller with a buck converter rather than a linear regulator.

As previously noted, there are 3 weeks until Valentines Day ❀️ when the sun will be setting at 5:26 pm with dusk at 5:55 pm. On that day in 2018, we had mostly cloudy and temperatures between 45 and 28 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 34 degrees. We hit a record high of 63 back in 1946.

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