"On the original hex grid guide I had claimed there were over 70 variants of hex grids. Most of these turn out to be merely a different choice of axes, either by renaming them or by negating the sign."
- Amit Patel
These are next to the Topaz Solar Farm[1] (largest solar farm in the world) and north of Carrizo Plain, home to California Valley Solar Ranch[2] (fifth largest in the world)
- Amit Patel
"Recently, scientists at Stanford University have uncovered a phenomenon that's a bit more fun than wetting: spontaneously dancing liquid droplets. In particular, they found that droplets of food coloring containing propylene glycol (PG) mixed with water spontaneously move across glass slides, creating intricate patterns."
- Amit Patel
Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. Most of the poppies had died out a few days before I got there, but it was still nice seeing what remained. There were other flowers mixed in there too.
I saw approximately 40 bald eagles on my eagle-watching trip! That's more than I've ever seen before. Unfortunately they were all far away. Here's a tree with lots of eagles, plus a few on the ground.
"The purpose-built city of Naypyidaw – unveiled a decade ago this year – boasts 20-lane highways, golf courses, fast Wi-Fi and reliable electricity. The only thing it doesn’t seem to have is people"
- Amit Patel
I thought about that, then I did an export anyway. And I'm purging posts to see how far back I can go. I'll probably do another export before the end, but whether I'll ever look at anything after that is moot.
- WoH: Professor MOTHRA
You can always delete your archive later, but once FF disappears, if you change your mind and want to re-read something, it's probably impossible to grab your stuff if you didn't before The End.
- Stephen Mack
"The Carlin Trend was discovered in north-central Nevada, near the town of Elko, in 1962. Some fifty years later, at this time of writing, it remains one of the world’s largest actively mined deposits of gold ore. In fact, the region has become something of a category-maker in the gold industry today, which describes analogous landscapes and ore bodies as “Carlin-type” deposits. The Carlin Trend is a standard, in other words: a referent against which others are both literally and rhetorically measured."
- Amit Patel
" The mines of the Carlin Trend remain unhealed—in fact, year on year, they are growing—a raw scurvy of rocks exposed on a scale so monumental that geologists estimate mines, not cities, will be the final trace of humanity left visible in a hundred million years’ time."
- Amit Patel
"Karst is a landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks including limestone, dolomite and gypsum. It is characterized by sinkholes, caves, and underground drainage systems"
- Amit Patel
"How did toast become the latest artisanal food craze? Ask a trivial question, get a profound, heartbreaking answer."
- Amit Patel
"For a few weeks $4 toast became a rallying cry in the city’s media—an instant parable and parody of the shallow, expensive new San Francisco—inspiring thousands of shares on Facebook, several follow-up articles, and a petition to the mayor’s office demanding relief from the city’s high costs of living."
- Amit Patel
"My name is Anders Hoff. I write algorithms that generate images. To me it is fascinating how complex and intricate results you can get from a set of simple rules. My works are often a result of me trying to recreate some behaviour I have seen elsewhere. Either in nature, in previous works by others or in mathematical concepts."
- Amit Patel
Also odd: Lancaster is a really strange town. Huge grid structure, but most of the streets and avenues are empty desert. I want to read about the town's history to understand how this could've happened.
- Amit Patel
"With downtown densification usually comes a lack of light in surrounding spaces, leading one architecture firm to develop the world’s first algorithm-driven strategy to allow a tower to fully shed its shadow."
- Amit Patel
There's an animation on the page that shows the light reflecting from one tower to the other. They made the reflection angles just right so that light would reflect to the right place at every time of day. Boggling.
- Amit Patel
Yes! I saw lots of wildflowers on my weekend wildflower watching trip. This one is in Lancaster, on Avenue L. Thanks to desertusa.com for alerting me to this spot. It was … amazing!
While on a scenic drive this weekend, I drove past the "San Clemente Dam Removal Project". Of course I had to look it up. Turns out it's the largest dam removal project in California.
- Amit Patel
Western Meadowlark. Instead of asking John the Bird Whisperer, I'm learning how to figure things out on my own. Without FF, I need to become more self-sufficient…