Elm Ave Park & Ride – CDTA

The Elm Avenue Park and Ride offers a convenient way to get downtown without the hassles of urban traffic. Located next to the Elm Avenue Park at the end of the Delmar Bypass (NY 32), it is serviced by several buses that will quickly transport you downtown.

There is a new, expanded schedule for the Elm Avenue Park and Ride. 5 morning buses depart there, 5 buses in the afternoon plus a mid-day bus schedule. Very convenient. http://www.cdta.org/uploads/Route719.pdf

April 12, 2019 Morning

Good morning! Happy Grilled Cheese Day ๐Ÿง€! Tonight actually might be a good night for Grilled Cheese and Soup. Next Friday is Good Friday โœ๏ธ. Cloudy and 45 degrees at the Elm Ave Park & Ride – CDTA. โ˜ There is a south-southeast breeze at 6 mph. ๐Ÿƒ. The skies will clear tomorrow around 11 am.

Not a half bad walk ๐Ÿšถ down to the park and ride. Cloudy but mild. Things are starting to green a bit on medians ๐ŸŒพ but it’s not summer yet. Some years spring has sprung at this point in the city but not this year. But with freezing temperatures becoming increasingly rare in the city its certain to happen at some point soon.

Taking a hybrid bus downtown today, which is nice because they have nice smooth stops ๐Ÿšฆ at the red lights along the Delmar bypass. Hybrids have a very good braking via magnetic force.

Today will have a chance of showers, mainly after 5pm. Mostly cloudy ๐ŸŒฆ, with a high of 55 degrees at 3pm. Two degrees below normal, which is similiar to a typical day around April 9th. Maximum dew point of 47 at 6pm. South wind 6 to 11 mph increasing to 13 to 18 mph in the afternoon. Winds could gust as high as 29 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. A year ago, we had mostly sunny in the morning, which became light rain by afternoon. The high last year was 54 degrees. The record high of 84 was set in 1977. 3.3 inches of snow fell back in 1962.โ„

I didn’t wear my rain jacket, so I’m certain it will rain. โ˜” Just hopefully not while I’m waiting for the bus in the evening. I prefer more sunshine today but at least tomorrow is supposed to be quite nice.

The sun will set at 7:34 pm with dusk around 8:03 pm, which is one minute and 9 seconds later than yesterday. ๐ŸŒ‡ At sunset, look for a chance at rain showers ๐ŸŒง and temperatures around 55 degrees. The dew point will be 47 degrees. Breezy, 16 mph breeze โ›… from the south. Today will have 13 hours and 16 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 48 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have showers and possibly a thunderstorm before 4am, then showers likely. ๐ŸŒง Low of 53 degrees at 1am. 16 degrees above normal, which is similiar to a typical night around June 2nd. Maximum dew point of 52 at 4am. ๐Ÿ–๏ธ South wind 9 to 16 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. In 2018, we had light rain in the evening, which became cloudy by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 40 degrees. The record low of 19 occurred back in 1874.

I got to run to the bank today ๐Ÿฆ so I can get $1 bills for the transfer station and barber ๐Ÿ’ˆ shop as I probably should try to squeeze in a hair cut tomorrow. Going to be a busy Saturday but nice weather at least.

As previously noted, next Friday is Good Friday โœ๏ธ when the sun will be setting at 7:42 pm with dusk at 8:11 pm. On that day in 2018, we had cold weather but partly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 44 and 34 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 60 degrees. We hit a record high of 92 back in 1976.

I still don’t know if I’m heading out of town next weekend. ๐Ÿ˜ŽForecast doesn’t look that great, I might wait another week until more of the snow and ice is gone up north. I have the time to take off to make the following weekend a three day weekend if necessary. โ›บ

Pile Abutments

April 11, 2019 Morning

Good morning! Happy Thursday. Next Thursday the Average High is 60 ๓Ÿ€ฎ. Mostly sunny and 33 degrees at the Elm Ave Park & Ride – CDTA in Delmar. Chilly spring morning, just waiting for 8:26 to roll around to head downtown. I think we are about to roll now. There is a north-northwest breeze at 5 mph. ๐Ÿƒ.

Definitely lots of sun โ˜€ today, but chilly. Nice walk down to the express bus ๐Ÿš. Spring is only a few weeks away most likely though. ๐ŸŒทThe plan is at lunch time to take a bus up to DePaula Chevrolet and get that part I need. Pretty smooth commute on this rather sunny Thursday.

Today will be mostly sunny ๐ŸŒž, with a high of 52 degrees at 4pm. Four degrees below normal, which is similiar to a typical day around April 2nd. North wind around 6 mph becoming calm in the afternoon. A year ago, we had partly cloudy. The high last year was 50 degrees. The record high of 87 was set in 2017. 1.7 inches of snow fell back in 1942.โ„ Heavy snow is increasingly rare this time of year but it occasionally happens as Midwestern folks are discovering. I guess it’s a break from them hauling manure for a few days. ๐Ÿ’ฉ

The sun will set at 7:33 pm with dusk around 8:02 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds later than yesterday. ๐ŸŒ‡ At sunset, look for mostly cloudy skies โ˜ and temperatures around 48 degrees. There will be a calm wind. Today will have 13 hours and 13 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 48 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy ๐ŸŒฅ, with a low of 36 degrees at 5am. Typical for tonight. Light southeast wind. In 2018, we had mostly clear skies. It got down to 29 degrees. The record low of 13 occurred back in 1874. I think I’ll keep the windows closed one more day.

I got to continue cleaning out the refrigerator tonight, ๐Ÿ  separating out the moldy food ๐Ÿฒ and the cans and glass for recycling โ™ป this weekend. Gross but necessary as I don’t have trash service where I live and pay by the bag for anything I don’t recycle or compost.

As previously noted, next Thursday the Average High is 60 ๐ŸŒผ when the sun will be setting at 7:41 pm with dusk at 8:10 pm. On that day in 2018, we had cloudy and temperatures between 47 and 33 degrees. Sometimes days disappoint. We hit a record high of 90 back in 1976.

Today if I have time โŒš I’ll post some of the maps I’ve been working on ๐ŸŒover the past few days. I’ve come up with unique ideas. I also have some essays, charts and other graphs to post ๐Ÿ“Š from things I’ve developed over the past few weeks.

I am keeping an eye on the really long range ๐Ÿ‘€for the Easter Long Weekend and it doesn’t look great. I have Good Friday off. I’m not hung up on heading out of town for Easter ๐Ÿ‡ weekend but I could decide to head up north on a Thursday night for the final and weekend of April and make my own long weekend trip depending on the weather.

I’m looking forward to packing my camping gear โ›บ in my truck and getting ready for camping season in a week or two to kick off. I like nice nights in the wilderness.

Cold water

Next Time – Wednesday April 3

Today’s sunrise was at 6:32 am. The next time the sun will rise later then today ๐ŸŒ„ is in 163 days on Friday, September 13.

The average high for today is 53 degrees. ๐ŸŒก The next time it will be on average cooler then today is in 216 days on Tuesday, November 5 when the average temperature will be 52 degrees.

Today’s sunset will be at 7:23 pm. The next time the sun will set earlier then today ๐ŸŒ† is in 155 days on Thursday, September 5.

The average low for today is 33 degrees. ๐ŸŒก The next night it will be on average cooler then tonight is in 224 days on Wednesday, November 13 when the average temperature will be 32 degrees.

Heldebergs

April 3, 2019 Morning

Good morning! What day is it? A beautiful early spring Hump Day, of course. ๐ŸŒทFour weeks to May ๐Ÿ•Š. Partly sunny and 38 degrees down at the Elm Ave Park & Ride – CDTA. Calm wind. Pleasant ๐Ÿ˜Œ morning. Temperatures will drop below freezing around 3 am. โ˜ƒ๏ธ

This morning, not being a session day, I walked down to the express bus station ๐Ÿš‰ and are now riding into work. A fairly mild day, the heat was off in my apartment but it was quite comfortable waking up. ๐ŸŒž Waffles with blueberries and raspberries this morning. โ˜• With a good cup of fresh coffee, a good start to the morning. I was feeling pretty rested, finally caught up after the Big April Fools joke known as working for 24 hours straight.

Today will have isolated showers after 3pm. Mostly sunny ๐ŸŒž, with a high of 61 degrees at 2pm. Eight degrees above normal, which is similar to a typical day around April 20th. Breezy, with a light and variable wind becoming west 20 to 25 mph in the morning. Winds could gust as high as 43 mph. Chance of precipitation is 20%. A year ago, we had light rain. The high last year was 44 degrees. The record high of 79 was set in 1981. 11.0 inches of snow fell back in 1891.โ„

Today looks like it will be an awful nice early April day. Maybe not quite warm enough to leave the windows open at home ๐Ÿก but I’m certainly going to walk ๐Ÿšถ during my lunch break. Going to be windy by mid afternoon and the temperature will drop a bit but the air is expected to be pretty dry. I got the email from the national weather service office today about the Red Flag ๐Ÿšฉ Warning โš  due to the high fire ๐Ÿ”ฅ risk that is common in the spring time. I guess if you burning stuff up in the woods, like having a campfire, you should be careful,.

This afternoon after work I’m heading over to John Wolcott’s house to continue sorting his historical files ๐Ÿ“‚. Probably stay until around dusk ๐ŸŒ† and catch the 7:30 bus ๐Ÿš home. No more late nights or session this week at work. The legislators all booked out of town yesterday. I packed some Save the Pine Bush Dinner lasagna ๐Ÿ›to heat up and eat before leaving work tonight. Seems like a fitting thing.

The sun will set at 7:23 pm with dusk around 7:52 pm, which is one minute and 8 seconds later than yesterday. ๐ŸŒ‡ At sunset, look for partly clear skies ๐ŸŒ„ and temperatures around 53 degrees. Breezy, 25 mph breeze โ›… from the west-northwest with gusts up to 39mph. Today will have 12 hours and 51 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 51 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will be mostly clear ๐ŸŒƒ, with a low of 30 degrees at 6am. Three degrees below normal, which is similiar to a typical night around March 28th. Breezy, with a west wind 18 to 23 mph decreasing to 11 to 16 mph after midnight. Winds could gust as high as 37 mph. In 2018, we had partly cloudy in the evening, which became light rain by the early hours of the morning. It got down to 30 degrees. The record low of 14 occurred back in 1954.

Tomorrow will be sunny ๐ŸŒž, with a high of 47 degrees at 3pm. Six degrees below normal, which is similiar to a typical day around March 23rd. West wind 10 to 18 mph, with gusts as high as 31 mph. A year ago, we had light rain. The high last year was 52 degrees. The record high of 79 was set in 1950. 4.3 inches of snow fell back in 2016.โ„

Yesterday morning was crazy ๐Ÿ˜œ too as the bus was packed with exchange students heading downtown and I had some client issues to address over the phone ๐Ÿ“ฑ on the bus. The evening commute – I got out a five – was much easier. Fairly smooth commute home, not too much traffic. Not quite nice enough though yesterday to go down tot he park.

Yesterday after work I went down to the library for an hour to work on the blog and a few other things. ๐Ÿ“ Been really busy at work, I’ve not had the time to even briefly update โ˜‘ my blog from time to time on my phone. I skipped my evening walk ๐Ÿšถ because I was tired. I did however ride the bike ๐Ÿšฒ for a while but stopped as I don’t have any more interesting YouTube videos that I’ve downloaded.

Sunday looks like the best day of the weekend, although maybe not for fishing as it will be quite sunny ๐ŸŽฃ. Saturday, rain likely before 8am. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 59. Chance of precipitation is 60%. Sunday, a chance of showers after 2pm. Partly sunny, with a high near 61. Chance of precipitation is 30%.โ˜€ Maximum dew point of 43 at 2pm. Typical average high for the weekend is 54 degrees.

No camping โ›บ this weekend as I’m going to my niece’s three year old birthday ๐ŸŽ‚ party on Saturday but Sunday sure looks nice, although maybe too sunny for good trout fishing. Maybe early morning or evening in a deeper valley? I don’t know. I do need to get some night crawlers for sure. ๐Ÿ› A nice hike would be good too.๐Ÿšถ The following week I should go to the transfer station and then start loading my camping gear back in the truck. Still hoping for decent weather for the Easter holiday weekend. ๐Ÿฐ

In four weeks on May 1 the sun will be setting at 7:55 pm,๐ŸŒ„ which is 31 minutes and 49 seconds later then today. In 2018 on that day, we had partly cloudy, rain showers and temperatures between 74 and 43 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 65 and 43 degrees. The record high of 86 degrees was set back in 2001.

Looking ahead, May ๐Ÿ•Š is in 4 weeks, 8:30 PM Sunset ๏ธโ›ฑ๏ธ is in 9 weeks, Primary Day ๐Ÿ—ณ๏ธ is in 12 weeks, Altamont Fair Opens ๐ŸŽก is in 19 weeks, State Fair Opens ๐ŸŽก is in 20 weeks, September 11th ๐Ÿ‡ธ is in 23 weeks, More Night then Day ๐ŸŒŒ is in 25 weeks, Last Sunset After 7 PM ๐ŸŒ† is in 6 months, Election Day 2020 ๐Ÿ—ณ๏ธ is in 19 months and Inauguration Day 2021 ๐Ÿ‘ด๐Ÿป is in 94 weeks.

Photo.2013.04.05 12.56.41

Python

This year I hope to improve my skills at the python programming language. While no means a novice at python as I’ve written several plug-ins for QGIS that I use for my generation of maps, the truth is that PHP is still my go to language for when I have to write stuff for command line processing and not just the web. PHP-cli has a lot of built-in functions but anybody will tell you that python is a vastly superior scripting language, even if it does require a lot more additional classes than PHP-cli has built in.

Python code is clear and relatively simple. It uses most of the standard ways of doing things as an object oriented language, so most concepts using python aren’t unfamiliar. I’m not sure what to say about indent based control structures over brackets, as a misplaced space can mess things up, but so be it. It’s a lot less convoluted than perl, which for the first decade of the century was my go to language. The virtual disappearance of perl in favor of python probably was a major step forward for us programmers.

While there is nothing wrong with using PHP for command line processing, using python just seems like a better tool and is more future compatible and easier to bind to QGIS and many Linux desktop apps. DBF format, essential for using and manipulating shapefiles seems to have stronger, more up to date libraries in python than PHP, the later seems to be moving away from this very old format only kept alive by shapefiles. Although with GeoPackage becoming the future, Sqlite seems to be more important and I don’t even know if php has a library for that.

I’ve been reading about Micropython for microcontroller coding and while on paper it seems like a really elegant solution with easily read code and none of those things that make C# a somewhat nasty language to work with, it has limited hardware support compared to the many Arduino C# libraries that support a wide variety of sensors and components. It’s cool that you can change the code in real-time with Micropython but that comes at the cost of memory, which often is very limited on microcontrollers.

I feel like resolving to use more python in my desktop projects this year will make me a better programmer in that language and more future compatible. Python isn’t the go to for everything but it has a lot of benefits over the perl and PHP especially on the command line.

 Trees

January 3, 2019 Evening

Good evening! Mostly cloudy and 33 degrees in Delmar. โ˜ There is a west-northwest breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. The skies will clear tomorrow around 4 am.

Another long day, busy but still its good to be back in the Albany area, able to take the bus home after a long day. 🚌 I can complain but I enjoy the routine and I think I do good work. Making a lot of progress on the report, I don’t plan to stay late tomorrow, which is Friday. I heard we should have some really nice weather come tomorrow than cooler for the weekend. But then again it’s January, and relatively speaking it’s been quite mild.

Tonight will be mostly cloudy 🌥, with a low of 27 degrees at 6am. 12 degrees above normal, which is similiar to a typical night around March 19th. West wind around 6 mph becoming light and variable. Should be a quite pleasant evening. In 2018, we had with more clouds in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 14 degrees. The record low of -15 occurred back in 1904.

Tonight will have a Waning Crescent Moon 🌘 with 3% illuminated. The moon will rise at 6:05 am. The New Moon will be tomorrow with mostly cloudy skies. The Wolf Moon 🌝 is on Sunday, January 20th. The sun will rise at 7:25 am with the first light at 6:53 am, which is earlier than yesterday. 🌄 Tonight will have 14 hours and 50 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 58 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly sunny 🌞, with a high of 43 degrees at 2pm. 12 degrees above normal, which is similiar to a typical day around March 12th. South wind 5 to 10 mph. A year ago, we had . The high last year was 22 degrees. The record high of 64 was set in 1950. 8.8 inches of snow fell back in 2003.โ„

Once I get home I’ll cook up some dinner then go for my evening walk. 🏃I successfully renewed my library books so I can finish them up without having to worry about getting them back. I could read for a while after I get back from my walk but I probably will just retire early to bed or maybe jot down my thoughts on a few things.

Mild but wet for the first half of the weekend. ๐Ÿ˜• Saturday, a chance of rain or freezing rain before 10am, then rain likely. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 38. Calm wind becoming north around 5 mph in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. Sunday, partly sunny, with a high near 39. Typical average high for the weekend is 31 degrees. I have a family event on Sunday to attend to, and I think I’ll enjoy Saturday at home working on some projects. The budget has gotten tight again for me so I need to continue to find ways to cut expenses and spend more time doing things closer to home. I’ll travel more come the spring time.

In four weeks on January 31 the sun will be setting at 5:08 pm,🌄 which is 33 minutes and 8 seconds later then tonight. In 2018 on that day, we had partly cloudy, snow showers and temperatures between 30 and 15 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 32 and 15 degrees. The record high of 58 degrees was set back in 1913.

Looking ahead, Valentines Day โค๏ธ is in 6 weeks, Spring 🌷 is in 11 weeks, Average High is 50 🌸 is in 12 weeks, Average High is 60 🌼 is in 15 weeks, Average High is 70 🐮 is in 19 weeks, Independence Day 🇺🇸 is in 26 weeks, August 🌻 is in 30 weeks and Election Day 2020 🗳๏ธ is in 22 months.

Windham High Peak and Zoar Mountain