Good morning! Save the Pine Bush Hike today at 9:30 at the Discovery Center.  😎Happy Saturday.  Next Saturday is The Day the Music Died. Mostly sunny and 30 degrees in Delmar, NY. 🌞There is a south breeze at 10 mph.

🐣🐸Only 52 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!🐸🐣

Today will have increasing clouds, ⛅with a high of 49 degrees at 4pm. 18 degrees above normal. South wind 10 to 14 mph, with gusts as high as 24 mph. A year ago, we had mostly cloudy skies. The high last year was 40 degrees. The record high of 62 was set in 1974. 9.3 inches of snow fell back in 1963.

The sun will set at 5:03 pm with dusk around 5:33 pm, which is one minute and 18 seconds later than yesterday. At sunset, look for mostly cloudy conditions and 49 degrees. ☁There will be a south breeze at 14 mph. Today will have 9 hours and 49 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 12 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have showers likely, mainly between 11pm and 4am.💧   Cloudy, with a low of 36 degrees at 4am. 21 degrees above normal. South wind 6 to 13 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2017, we had cloudy skies with some clearing in the early hours of the next day. It got down to 30 degrees. The record low of -16 occurred back in 2005.

Today is the Save the Pine Bush Hike at the Albany Pine Bush. I think the hike is at 9:30 but for some reason Facebook says nine.👬 I should be there by nine. Should be a nice hike. A few people have indicated that they are planning to go, it will hopefully be a nice hike. 

Last night for the first time in a long time I went out for my evening walk. It was a bit cold but not too bad. The sky was clear and the stars and moon were nice, once I got to the quiet spot out by Sunset Farm and the Bethlehem Bus Garage. 

Studied and worked on some code except for my walk just stayed home. I think I figured out what my next Arduino project will be – a GPS logging device. I found they make a GPS chip for under $10 for the Arduino that can be wired up also to a MicroSD card, and you can program it to save your GPS coordinates. 🌐Seems like a fun project to build and program. With one of the Arduino Nano it will be quite small too. I’m thinking of mounting it in my truck and keeping a log of everywhere I drive. 📟It would be fun to keep a detailed log of my road trips for later review. I know don’t publicly tell that on your blog, it’s not good for the authorities with subpoena power to know. 

What I could also do is maybe also mount a RGB LED in the case and make it glow red when heading north, green when going south, yellow west, etc. Might be a cool special effect after dark. 📱All that is easily revealed by the GPS chip. I guess I could also build something with a rechargeable battery and make a bearing direction / speedometer for hiking, using one of the character displays I have unused in my electronics kit.  The only thing with that is the battery would have to be relatively large, as GPS chips plus the Arduino can easily pull 100mA and you would want such a logging device to last at least all day. 

Today I’m also going to get clamps so I can hopefully snap the plexiglass in a smoother fashion. 🔳And maybe superglue because I’m not sure I want to use the acrylic weld that is supposedly so toxic to breathe inside with the windows shut. 🔱Won’t look as nice or be as durable as the weld but less toxic. 

Tomorrow is starting to look nicer with sun in the afternoon. While I was thinking about a trip to the Catskill Mountains I’m increasingly thinking it will be icy even with the microspikes so I won’t be best off to go someplace with fewer cliffs. 🚵Maybe one of the local parks or preserves. 

I also need to get to the library and return my library books today. 📖

As previously noted, next Saturday is The Day the Music Died 🎤🔇when the sun will be setting at 5:12 pm with dusk at 5:41 pm. On that day in 2017, we had cloudy skies and temperatures between 30 and 19 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 32 degrees. We hit a record high of 57 back in 2016.