Schuyler County is a county located in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 18,343. The county seat is Watkins Glen. Schuyler County is in the western part of New York State, west of Ithaca at the south end of Seneca Lake. The Finger Lakes National Forest is in the north part of the county.
It looks like today is going to be another fairly nice day, but I’m not moving fast 🦉as I was a night owl and stayed up late hoping see more shooting stars. ✨
I did not buy enough ice yesterday and it was a warm evening 🌃 so I need to go to Dandy’s or another gas station ⛽ for more ice.
I’m thinking about going to Robert Treman foraswim 🏊🏻♂️ if gorge swimming is available even though I’m not really that big fan of it. I might in the afternoon hike at Lake Treman above Buttermilk Falls although truth be told I’m hardly ambitious. 😔 It’s vacation, why hurry? I know, I should get out and do stuff before it’s done.
Wednesday if it’s not too wet ⛈, I am thinking of hiking part of the Finger Lakes Trail 🚶🏻 through Texas Hollow and maybe over the hill to Cayuta Lake and Connecticut Hill. Never done that before. One of these days I want to get out with the kayak 🛶 maybe Seneca Lake if it’s calm.
Just another soon to be hot and possibly stormy ⛈ summer day. Very calm and quiet this morning in the woods, I was in no hurry to get up this morning as I stayed up way past midnight looking for shooting stars 🌠. Only saw one.
Sunny and 68 degrees at the Finger Lakes National Forest. 🌞 Calm wind. The dew point is 61 degrees. I don’t have cell service here at camp, but I walked down the road where I knew that I could get a signal 📶.
I decided to pitch the tent 🎪 so I have a place to store my dirty clothing 👚 and things like pots and pans 🍳. This makes it easier to move things from the front to the back of the truck.
The two big ways I process data for the blog is using QGIS for mapping and spatial analysis and LibreOffice Calc spreadsheet for pivot tables, formulas and statistical analysis. Sometimes I also will use PHP to process data like for creating graphs with the help of ChartsJS.
It works but it’s somewhat clunky and slow, requiring the opening of large programs that use a lot of memory and a lot of pointing and clicking. For very large datasets, this can really push the software to its limits. That’s why I ended up looking into GeoPandas and python more generally. It’s kind of a gateway drug.
The GeoPandas library is great as you can do quickly with a few lines of code spatial joins of coordinates and shapefiles in a few lines of code. I’ve done a little with the Pandas library in the past but suddenly now I’m really interested in what I can do with data processing in Python. Seems like a much better option than those afformentioned libraries. So I got a book out of the library called Python data science essentials : become an efficient data science practitioner by thoroughly understanding the key concepts of Python / Alberto Boschetti, Luca Massaron, and suddenly I’m so fascinated by the topic of data science and what I can do with it, especially mixed with Geospatial data.
To be sure, I’m an open source and open data guy, I’m only interested in building things out of information that is freely available. But I’m interested in learning new tools and finding new ways to process data both for my blog and other purposes. And despite what the internet advertising suggests, I’m not interested in data science to get a job, I just want to be able to do quick and dirty things in python to build new ways for analysis of data and maps.
Good evening! The Watkins Glen Pool closes now at six o’clock on weekdays. 🕕
I am really not digging that. 🏊🏻♂️ Because closing at six means I need to get out of the pool by 5:30 so I have time to shower and get changed. 🚿 And it’s still warm on a hot day at this point. Although sitting by Aunt Sarah’s Falls is quite nice and cool. 😎
Spent the bulk of my day at the swimming pool, really kind of lazy vacation day 🏖 during the dog days 🐶 of summer. Hiking and birding in the Catharine Creek Marsh and decided to take the trail to the falls. Once I get back to my truck it’s off to Tops and ice cream 🍧, followed by maybe Clute Park or maybe camp. Still haven’t had dinner yet, so I might not want to get back too late and I kind of want to watch for shooting stars 🌠 later on into the midnight hour of I have enough energy.
Still kind of hot evening. 🌇 Partly clear and 82 degrees at the Aunt Sarah’s Falls. There is a west-northwest breeze at 6 mph. 🍃. The dew point is 62 degrees.
This year, the gypsy moths are so bad in parts of the Finger Lakes National Forest. Earlier this summer they hatched out of their egg sacks that can be found on many of the trees, leaving the forest partially deforested and denuded. Fortunately, trees have a lot of energy stored in their sap and an ability to regrow leaves, which many have done but still look small and immature for mid to late summer.
Most healthy trees can survive a years gypsy moth attack and will go on quite fine a bit with stunted growth for the year. But they will heal. It’s much more of a menace to farmers and those raising trees as a crop, as year of stunted growth is a year of loss, land not producing what it should. And I’m not happy about the loss of shade for camping but ultimately what I can I do about it?
