Unofficial start to summer and it’s going to be a hot one. The air smells like fresh cut hay 🌾 and already the sun is beating down.
Partly sunny and 61 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☀ Calm wind. The dew point is 55 degrees.
Out for the morning walk 🚶 although later than many days as I slept in. Stayed up relatively late under the starry ✨ skies out and then woke up in the middle of the night. I got thinking a mapping algorithm I’m developing in R to impute election results down to the block level.
Yesterday after the morning walk 💻 I spent too many hours studying various algorithms related to mapping and aggregation and interpolation in R. I wanted to wait until 3 pm to start my paddle 🛶 to Troy, as I would have the tide pushing me north on the way up there and then back to Albany.
It was a nice trip kayaking 🛶 from Albany to Troy, first time I’ve done it since 2012. I think the river was cleaner, and by 6 o’clock there was very little traffic on the river. Water 💦 was very calm except for occasional boat 🛥 wakes and at the end almost back to Corning Preserve a southerly breeze which against the current made things choppy. Arms are a bit sore this morning, haven’t done so much paddling in a long time. 🙋
When the history books 📚 are written this wouldn’t have been a bad weekend to head out of town although I heard like usual that the black flies 🐜 were terrible up north. But long weekends come and go so quickly.
I am thinking the weekend of June 9-13 would be a nice weekend to do an extended vacation weekend up north, ⛺ depending on the weather. Evidence suggests either next weekend I will be working or dead tired after pulling too many all nighters at work. But maybe I’ll take the Thacher Park bus 🚍 there on Saturday. The following weekend is Juneteenth so Monday June 20th is a holiday too. I want to do some floating in the black rubber intertube, drink some beer have a big fire 🔥.
Been doing a lot of research and experimentation with interpolation of spatial data with R – for example trying to derive block level estimates of election results from election districts – assuming that blocks in Democratic leaning EDs near more Republican EDs will be more Republican. Practical, not sure but interesting. R has some really interesting interpolation libraries and it usually only requires a few lines of code thanks to the ease of the tidyverse.
Also been learning about doing essentially the reverse of that – taking point data or smaller polygons and aggregating it upwards to larger shapes. Tomorrow’s map of the day is an example of that – I calculated based on tax rolls the percentage of buildings each block in New York State where the buildings likely contain asbestos materials – buildings built from 1920 to 1979. Turns out tidyverse is good for that too, mutate a new field that shows if building in that range, do a st_join, then pipe into a group by and then summarize by what you want such as creating a percentage. Neat stuff.
While not all 2022 congressional district maps are finalized, one outcome is not in dispute: only roughly 30 of 435 U.S. House seats will be considered traditional "swing seats" on the ballot this November. Those are congressional districts that were won within 5% by Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Districts that competitive tend to be represented by lawmakers who have the most incentives to be bipartisan.
In four weeks on June 26 the sun will be setting in the west-northwest (304°) at 8:39 pm,🌄 which is 13 minutes and 22 seconds later then today. In 2021 on that day, we had humid, mostly sunny and temperatures between 81 and 64 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 82 and 60 degrees. The record high of 99 degrees was set back in 1952.
High tide on the river is 4:46 pm in Albany. So that’s good to know if I’m paddling. Still not sure if that’s the plan. 🛶
Tomorrow will certainly be hot. 🏖 Same thing with the first half of next week but then cool for the weekend. But I’m not sure if I will be able to get out of town this weekend as I tend to think I’ll be working next weekend.
Today. Feels like …
June 15th.
Sunny.
Light and variable wind.
and
79 degrees
,52 max dew point,
8:25
sunset.
Tonight. Feels like …
June 15th.
Mostly clear.
Calm wind.
and
57 degrees
,
5:19
sunrise.
Memorial Day. Hot !
Mostly sunny.
Calm wind becoming southwest around 6 mph in the afternoon.
and
88 degrees
,61 max dew point,
8:26
sunset.
Monday Night. Hot !
Partly cloudy.
Light southwest wind.
and
68 degrees
,62 max dew point,
5:18
sunrise.
Tuesday. Hot !
Mostly sunny and hot.
Northwest wind 6 to 9 mph.
and
90 degrees
,64 max dew point,
8:27
sunset.
Tuesday Night. Hot !
A slight chance of showers. Partly cloudy.
Chance of precipitation is 20%.
and
64 degrees
,61 max dew point,
5:18
sunrise.
Wednesday. Feels like …
July 15th.
A chance of showers and thunderstorms after 2pm. Partly sunny.
Chance of precipitation is 40%.
and
84 degrees
,63 max dew point,
8:28
sunset.
Wednesday Night. Feels like …
June 18th.
A chance of showers and thunderstorms before 8pm, then a chance of showers between 8pm and 2am. Mostly cloudy.
A nice spring morning on the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend.
Mostly sunny and 50 degrees in Delmar, NY. ☀ Calm wind. A few fair weather clouds around but a pretty nice morning, not super humid.
Yesterday wasn’t the nicest day ever ⛈️ until it was. Beautiful evening out last night. Walked out to Five Rivers 🐸 and then Meads Road. Big wedding out there at Meads Farm, looked like it was the who’s who of the local ag scene with all the pickups with Beef and Farm Bureau bumper stickers. Came home around 8:30 and had some hot dogs 🌭 and beer 🍻. Kind of like camping 🏕 but not.
Went out walking 🚶 around 6:45 this morning I’m unsure about the day. Going to be a nice one but with gas prices I’m trying to drive as little as possible these days. ⛽ I’ve been thinking about kayaking 🛶 from Albany to Troy but that river can be choppy with the power boats and current. Might just do a hike at the Schindekker Preserve and pick up the essentials for next week at Walmart.🛒
