The Project It’s been a year since I made a post about making animated gifs. If you would like to know how I made the animated gif above, the process is explained in that post along with the Python and Bash code. Over the last year I collected all the daily NIWA UV weather predictions. The animated gif above is the final product of collecting those images. The completed animation shows interesting trends for UV weather in New Zealand, specifically for Hamilton....
Make an Animated Gif from Images: An Example
A Timelapse of UV Weather Data The Project Most days I check the UV (ultra violet) weather for my region. This is especially important during the summer months because the sunlight in New Zealand is harsh. To check the UV weather forecast, I go to the NIWA UV forecasting site . I noticed that the forecast images are static URLs and that the image is updated each day. So, I just bookmark the URL and visit it in the morning to check the forcast for the day....
Lake Rotokauri LOTA
Lake Rotokauri LOTA Activation It was a cracker spring day to get out and around so I figured I’d check out Lake Rotokauri. The lake is north west Hamilton, and has a couple of tracks that go along its shore. I wanted to make things a bit more interesting so I took along my radio kit. The lake was on my list of LOTA (Lakes on the Air) to activate (the list can be found here )....
Te Awa Cycle Trail: Hamilton - Cambridge Return
Te Awa River Ride Hamilton to Cambridge It was a sunny day, and I knew there would be work pressures for the next couple of weeks. So I figured I would finally give the Te Awa Cycle Trail a good go. I did a little planning by checking out the official website, and looked at the map. There were a couple of track closures, many of them were North Hamilton based....
Lakes Around Hamilton for HAM Radio
Lakes Around Hamilton for Portable Radio Activities Portable Radio Awards Hamilton city sits within the Waikato Basin, which doesn’t have many large hills in it. This is a bit of an issue for someone who wants to participate in radio award schemes. SOTA (Summits on the Air ) is a popular award scheme for activating hills. POTA (Parks on the Air ) is another scheme for activating large parks, but there aren’t many that are close to Hamilton....
Mt Taupiri Activation
Mt Taupiri SOTA Activation - 4th March Context The summit of Mt Taupiri has a splendid view of the Middle Waikato Basin (including Hamilton) and the lower Waikato Plains. It’s possible to see Mt Ruapehu on a clear winter’s day, but unfortunately for me I chose a summer’s day early March. I had read about ZL2AJ’s activation from 2017 and his descriptions still ring true 6 years later. Access to Summit There are two tracks to the summit....
Music: Electronic Music to Code To.
Music: A Background Electronic Playlist. I stumbled across this Youtube playlist recently and liked it as a background tracklist for doing work. I’m partial to instrumental music when I’m typing and studying. There are a good mix of different artists in this list that means there is a bit of musical diversity in the songs. I also like that it has a chill component to it but isn’t so slow that it puts you to sleep....
Doco: The Century of Self (2002)
Intro I recently discovered “The Century of Self” (2002) documentary, which covers the life and career of Edward Bernays 1. Bernays was a social engineer and developed techniques to persuade groups of people. His techniques are often used in advertising, and over the last 100 years, have been used for political persuasion of the masses. The methods he used can be summerised as “appeal to emotions”. The documentary often puts his methods in a poor light, and hints at a sinister side by comparing Bernays to his contemporaries, such as the Nazi party....
Blog: Lessons from Last Week
Lessons from Last Week The last week of my life has been met with a couple of changes. It’s been nothing crazy, but there were definitely a couple of lessons I have relearned. Several of those lessons are ones where you don’t really know what you have (or don’t have) until you go through the experience. You don’t know how much stuff you have until you move house. I have relearned this lesson far too many times....
The Raven: As Read by ...
The Raven: Audio Versions Preface I was recently reminded of the famous poem called “The Raven” written by Edgar Allen Poe. I find it to be a moving poem, and one that resonates with my experiences with depressive episodes. This is especially regarding the eternal presence of the dark raven, the fixated mind of the main character, and the emotions that the character goes through. The haunting of the raven reminds me of the “black dog” that Winston Churchill spoke of regarding his own depressive spirits....