Assassin bugs are bad ass. They seem to be more common than ever in our yards. They’re also not camera shy. We welcome them!
Lessons learned: in MSFS 2020, never change flight phases if flight plan is manually input to FMS. Super lame because the Plan UI doesn’t let you select transitions, VIAs & airways so its IFR plans are 100% bonkers. Also saved flights don’t seem to save my FMS programming. 😤
Finally got to the season two, episode two of Picard 😳 what a great premise
Only 4% of Flight Simulator players have completed an Instrument Landing System landing‽ Clearly I’m too nerdy for this game.
Poppies (1st photo) are now in full bloom and clarkias (2nd) are about to do the same. 🌱
Recent mornings, our cultivated native California grape leaf tips have droplets of water. Apparently this process is called guttation. They’re likely telling me to cut back on way earlier than normal drip watering. 🌱
Now in bloom in our backyard: cultivated California Wild Roses (pic 1) and Elderberry (2). Still gorging themselves: ladybugs. Everywhere in our front yard. They’re just decimating aphids. Ladybugs particularly love coyote bush (3) and sage.
Latest Shortcuts for macOS Has Vast Improvements
What's new in Shortcuts in iOS 15.4 and macOS 12.3:
“End If” and “End Repeat” can now be dragged in the Shortcuts editor
That’s a big deal. I’ve abandoned attempts at refactoring shortcuts solely because I couldn’t move entire blocks of If statements.
“Combine Images” no longer produces empty images on macOS
I ran into this bug right away and couldn’t believe it.
The "Shortcuts Events" app, which provides scripting functionality for Shortcuts on macOS, no longer needs to be opened manually before it can be used from scripts
Here goes my second brew - a simple Bavarian Hefeweizen. With way warmer than normal temperatures I figure our house will be close to or within the ideal fermentation temperature range. 🤞
Eurasian Collared Dove drinking party.
Potatoe croquettes for lunch today. Great use of leftover mashed potatoes.
Citrus gummies are a great way to use backyard citrus. We made Meyer lemon with Valencia orange gummies. An Alton Brown recipe. We’ve frozen our remaining Meyer lemon juice. Our citrus season is now over.
macOS Shortcuts, Logger for Shortcuts, Shortcuts Temporary Files, and Hazel
Logger for Shortcuts provided me exactly the information to figure out how to get Hazel to properly use a Shortcut against a file. Now I can have Hazel run a specific Shortcut against a file whenever a new file shows up.
Background: for some reason when Hazel starts a Shortcut, the Shortcut operates on a copy of the file in a temporary folder. My programmer brain assumed that the Shortcut Input would be immutable. Nope. Turns out Shortcut Input is a temporary file that all Shortcut operations (like exiftool) must then run against. So while you think you’ve been working on a specific file in a specific folder, Shortcuts has been working on a copy of it all along in a temporary folder. Thus you must output the Shortcut Input to provide the file you’ve been modifying (in this case with exiftool). It’s very frustrating for Shortcuts to override paths with its own temporary paths but thanks to Logger for Shortcuts I quickly figured out this vexing issue. Already the app is worth $9.99 because now I’ve got the time saving Hazel ruleset I always wanted.
From last Monday near Tomales Point in beautiful California, a genus Arctia moth caterpillar on lupins.
Raspberry Shakes do great science in the challenging conditions of Haiti: When a seismic network failed, citizen science stepped in on Ars Technica
I’ve been playing Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 on the Xbox Series S. I’m surprised at how it keeps my mind off everything and on a passion of mine and so it really helps my anxiety. Last time I played was w/ FS 98. This is amazing but not without some bizarre issues.
From last Monday, a very loud acorn woodpecker at the Point Reyes National seashore visitor center.
From last Monday, the Pacific Ocean and Tonalite rock at Tomales Point.
Peppers and two tomato seedlings are making great progress. We’ll likely be hardening them off in a few weeks and plant by April.🌱
