February 11, 2018 Night

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Good evening! Light rain and 37 degrees in Delmar.☔ Calm wind. Finally we are well above freezing and the threat of ice is past us. The skies will clear tomorrow around 9 am.

Tonight will have scattered rain showers before 4am, then a slight chance of rain and snow showers. Areas of dense fog before midnight. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low of 31 degrees at 6am.☁ 13 degrees above normal. Calm wind becoming north 5 to 8 mph after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 40%. Little or no snow accumulation expected. In 2017, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 23 degrees. The record low of -16 occurred back in 1979.

Tonight will have a Waning Crescent Moon with 12% illuminated. 🌙The moon will rise tomorrow at 4:50 am. The New Moon is on Wednesday night with a chance of showers then chance of rain/snow. The Snow Moon is on Wednesday, February 28th. The sun will rise at 6:56 am with the first light at 6:27 am, which is one minute and 19 seconds earlier than yesterday. Tonight will have 13 hours and 31 minutes of darkness, a decrease of 2 minutes and 38 seconds over last night.

Tomorrow will be mostly cloudy, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high of 33 degrees at 1pm.🌞One degree below normal. Breezy, with a northwest wind 9 to 14 mph increasing to 15 to 20 mph in the morning. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 31 degrees. The record high of 55 was set in 1932. 13.5 inches of snow fell back in 1988.

Next weekend looks like it might be perfect weather-wise, well as perfect as a February weekend could be. 😎Next Saturday, mostly sunny, with a high near 31. Next Sunday, mostly sunny, with a high near 42. Typical average high for the weekend is 35 degrees.🌞

In four weeks on March 11 the sun will be setting at 6:58 pm (Daylight Savings Time), which is one hour, 34 minutes and 42 seconds later then tonight.😍 In 2017 on that day, we had snow, cloudy skies and temperatures between 22 and 7 degrees. Typically, you have temperatures between 42 and 24 degrees. The record high of 70 degrees was set back in 1977.

My Arduino based GPS trip logger  is done for all practical purposes, although I want to make up a more permanent power supply and package it up discretely in a yogurt cup. It’s nice, it records my exact location within 6 feet, elevation, speed of travel, direction of travel, time and date, every second. 80 characters or bytes per second works out to be 2.5 gigabytes per year, assuming that I never shut it off. It uses a 8 gigabyte MicroSD card for logging.  I fixed the VMS time and countdown display  system, just by switching the Vin pin to the 5v pin. No more crashing with a slight voltage drop. 

I got out grocery shopping today which was good, as eventually the ice melted and I was once again low on supplies. 🍝🍳🍎🌽🍄

Looking ahead, Winnie the Pooh Day is in 1 week, 🍯Average High is 40 is in 3 weeks, Daylight Savings Time is a month away, April Fools Day and Easter is in 7 weeks, 👩Mothers Day is in 13 weeks, Fathers Day is in 18 weeks👨, Daylight Savings Time Ends in 38 weeks,😸 Veterans Day (Sunday) is in 9 months and First Sunday of Advent is in 42 weeks.

😎Only 102 days remain until the start of Memorial Day Weekend!😎

My Power Solution At The Cabin

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"There is no electricity at the cabin so this is the workaround we use in order to charge up small devices like my computer, GPS, etc. Works great!"

February 11, 2018 Morning

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Good morning! Happy Sunday.⛪ Next Sunday is Winnie the Pooh Day.🍯 Freezing drizzle and 31 degrees in Westerlo. There is a north breeze at 9 mph. The skies will clear tomorrow around 9 am.

💮Only 37 days remain until the first day of calendar spring!💮

Today will have some freezing rain before noon, then rain.🌧 Areas of fog between noon and 3pm. High of 39 degrees at 5pm. Six degrees above normal. North wind 5 to 9 mph becoming south in the afternoon. Chance of precipitation is 90%. Total daytime ice accumulation of less than a 0.1 of an inch possible. A year ago, we had cloudy skies. The high last year was 34 degrees. The record high of 59 was set in 1981. 9.6 inches of snow fell back in 1933.

The sun will set at 5:23 pm with dusk around 5:52 pm, which is one minute and 18 seconds later than yesterday.☁ At sunset, look for cloudy conditions and 39 degrees. There will be a south-southeast breeze at 6 mph. Today will have 10 hours and 26 minutes of daytime, a decrease of 2 minutes and 37 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a chance of rain between 9pm and 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 28 degrees at 6am.☁ 11 degrees above normal. South wind 7 to 15 mph becoming northwest after midnight. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. In 2017, we had cloudy skies. It got down to 23 degrees. The record low of -16 occurred back in 1979.

So yesterday, I figured out why the Arduino Nano kept crashing and refusing to operate the MAX7219 module like the Arduino Uno did. It turns out the Nano, at least the clone I have, doesn’t like voltage to be inputed via VIN pin if you are only supplying it with 5 volts. The linear voltage regulator doesn’t automatically switch to a direct connection like the Uno. So the voltage was dropping too lower for the microcontroller, as the voltage from the USB power adapter dropped as the LED display started demanding higher amounts of current. I guess this also happened with the Uno too but it took a bigger drop in voltage for it to crash/shut-off. At least that appears like the problem. This time when I rebuild the case, I’m going to cut out the cracked part and make it smaller (as the Nano is smaller), and glue it and make sure the glue is fully set before putting components in there and having them accidentally stick.

I told myself I would not order any more electronic components, until I discovered I needed a few more pin headers for a project I was working on. So I broke down and bought them. But I am not buying anything further,⚡ until I have used up and built out all the projects I’m doing now. I promise. Even though most components I’ve bought are under $10, after a while that shit adds up. But at any rate, I’m saving money by not traveling much this winter, although my heating bills have been relatively high because it’s been a cold winter.🔦 $95 in electric and gas last month, once again. Ouch. But now my electronics toolbox should be very well equiped for the basic projects i’m building, assuming the big bags of cheap basic electronics components I ordered from China arrive.

Other then that, with the freezing rain🌧 I’m going to stay home for now, 🏠although later on I’ll probably head down to the library to upload some stuff to the blog. 📚 I’ve gotten a lot of new maps done. Then I will have to go out shopping for groceries later on. Mostly just stuff for lunch although I’ll also want to pick up some shredded cheese, pasta sauce and a few other things. My goal is to make it out of the grocery store with less then $40 in damage to my checking. Even though I did take home a fair bit more last week thanks to the Trump Tax Cut, but a lot of that money is going away going forward, as I’m putting it in savings.

As previously noted, next Sunday is Winnie the Pooh Day🐝🍯 when the sun will be setting at 5:32 pm with dusk at 6:01 pm. On that day in 2017, we had partly cloudy skies and temperatures between 52 and 18 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 35 degrees. We hit a record high of 63 back in 1981.

February 11, 2018 11 AM Update

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The days are quickly getting longer … Daylight Savings Time is now only four Sundays from now. And it won’t be getting dark until even later, figuring a half hour or so between sunset and dusk. No more getting out of work at 5 PM in the pitch blackness.

5:30 pm sunset – Thursday, February 15
5:45 pm sunset – Tuesday, February 27
Daylight Savings Time Begins – Sunset on Sunday, March 11 is at 6:58 pm
7:00 pm sunset – Monday, March 12
7:15 pm sunset – Sunday, March 25
7:30 pm sunset – Saturday, April 7
7:45 pm sunset – Friday, April 20
8:00 pm sunset – Friday, May 4
8:15 pm sunset – Friday, May 18
8:30 pm sunset – Tuesday, June 5