Helicopter splits in half

 

This is fatigue failure.  It's like wings falling off planes in the 50's.  We get massive failure with buildings in earthquakes due to this.  It happens when metal or concrete is stressed to about 60% of strength numerous times.  It was the failure mechanism of that Titanic sub, although nobody ever mentions it.

That's because it isn't supposed to happen.  Main metal parts should only go to 10 or 20% strength, with allowance for emergencies.  Engine parts for aircraft may go to 60% but have to be changed out regularly.

An airframe splitting from fatigue indicates a poor understanding of the stresses.  Of course, that isn't the case here, where, for legal purposes, and my protection, we must say the polar vortex fairies hit it.

ps an old office chair in the house just split in half with perfect fatigue failure fractures.  Neat.

NOAA warmie PR department still lives!

 

I thought they were dead.  This is a gross distortion without physics.  Just the thing they have always put out.  Next thing will be nosa saying 'Earth is Venus'.  I am happy, I thought we were just settling into a funk with nothing on either side.

Arctic ice extent is totally dependent on how much penetrates the Greenland Gap.  This year it looked good, but the Gulf Stream tilted up, and filled the place with warm water.  I showed it a number of times on the blog.

But Arctic ice volume is looking good and has broken out of the decline.  I expect it to start going up again.  And now, back to the general weather.

This is the warmiest of sites, and yet, they don't mention climate change any more.  Are they tired of the Polar Vortex Fairies?  Have I gotten above 3 readers?  Nope.

I was going to use the title 'A chance of Spring and Meatballs', but nooa got to me.  This is a strong plume, and if it drifts over nicely, we have warmer weather.  But it could do so many not nice things.

It is weird for Toronto.  We have this cold bulb sitting just over us.  Totally stagnant, and the weather forecasts vary a lot.  All depends on how this moves.

One scenario is that the Pacific plume goes high and hits the Arctic.  This is the standard pattern for getting rid of all that cold.  However, it squeezes all the cold down on us.  We will have a very cold May.  The other scenario is that it does a nice Spring hit at Vancouver.  This wipes out our cold, gives us some nice warm weather, but leaves the Arctic to hit us again and again, like a trumpy nightmare.

ps the most median Canadian I know was all agog about the cold going into May.  

Linux - Raspberry Pi 5 does multiple I2C buses like a champ

 This was killing me.  The rp5 is such a magnificent machine for python development.  I use the AI Qwen to write the python programs.  For some reason, Google Gemini sucks at it, even 2.5.  can't wait to see how I can do the Adxl355.  There seems to be a universal timing problem there.

A few minutes of tinkering time.
Bought https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/167295678646 modules. Soldered the header on, and bridged CS to VCC to select I2C mode.
Pi wiring:
VCC to Pi pin 1 (3V3)
SDA to Pi pin 3 (GPIO2 / SDA)
SCL to Pi pin 5 (GPIO3 / SCL)
INT1 to Pi pin 7 (GPIO 4)
GND to Pi pin 9 (GND)

ADXL345 is supported by the adxl34x driver at https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/ ... l34x-i2c.c
Add the relevant config to the i2c-sensor overlay - now a pull request at https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/pull/6712

Add "dtoverlay=i2c-sensor,adxl345" to /boot/firmware/config.txt, and I have an extra input device that gives me positional readouts.

Change config to "dtoverlay=i2c-sensor,adxl345,i2c0". Power down. Rewired SDA and SCL to pins 27 & 28 respectively (GPIOs 0&1). Power up. I have the same input device present and giving me positional readout.
The overlay has all the hardware I2C buses available as overrides, as documented by "dtoverlay -h i2c-bus".

If you wish to use a bitbashed I2C bus, then use "dtoverlay=i2c-gpio,i2c_gpio_sda=0,i2c_gpio_scl=1,bus=8", and "dtoverlay=i2c-sensor,adxl345,i2c-path=i2c@8" (substitute the 8 with the bus number of your choice that isn't already taken, and 0 & 1 with the GPIOs of your choice).

I just did the bus 0 on pins 27&28 and it worked perfectly.  I think the i2c device thing is critical.  The '355' may need a new device, or this one works.  A device file only has a few extra droverlay commands.

All the rp's are quite fussy about putting things in config.txt and rebooting.  I powered off for extra oomph.  My main goal is to put a lot of '345's on a base and running an array.  This can do rotation and tilt and can reduce internal noise.  However, on adxl355 can do for many 345's and I have dreams.  However, the adxl355 has never been shown to work on i2c, and rp5.

This solution was on the rp forums.

ps.  the main problem was that there are a number of pi models, and although you specify rp5, the search engines don't do that.  As well, the rp5 has a completely different gpio chip, and runs Debian bookworm.  They have made great progress to unify everything.

All foreign air has left us

 

Looks like just our stagnant ambient air will determine the weather in another few days.  Nice sunny days, cold at night.

No Pacific air, and now the Atlantic air has taken a dive.  I can finally get in some garden work, after the rains.

The Arctic is still very cold, but it is in recharge right now.  Without Pacific plumes hitting it, it will just hang around, ready to dive on us again.

This shows the Atlantic air diving.  The ambient air is coming in from the west.

ps -- no stupid climate news in my doom scrolling today.  

ps word from the cottage -- way more snow than last year (zero), ice is still heavy on the Lake, big mess with the ice storm.

ps I don't mind a return to the 70's with stagflation and cold weather.  It's a return to 1700 I don't like, with everyone dying all over the place because of no vaccines.  and 10 ft snow, scurvy, etc.

Analyzing the Great Pacific Heat Engine -- Part 1

 Now that we are in a total tizzy of backlash against backlash, we can try to eke out some rationality.  We can do this in a vacuum.  Although there is no physics being measured, no Scientific Method, we also don't have waves of protesters saying "We don't need no stinkin' physics!".  In our coffee groups, where people are complaining about the cold, we can inject "Perhaps there was something wrong with the physics."  -- and not get slaughtered.

My sig other is quite mad at this cold.  When I said I had predicted this in my blog for a while, she said "Boo to your blog.  Boo to cold."  Everybody is in this state right now.

The Pacific Heat Engine is dead.  Alas poor Yorick.  (digression: -- (from the web)  And so, ‘Alas poor Yorick’ is the framing of some very important reflections on life, death, corruption, relationships and social rank in the play, Hamlet.)

We can comment on the futility of physics in looking at why our heat engine collapsed.  The pat religious answer is 'Climate Change', where a prediction of increased warmth, brought increased cold.  Or the agitated Polar Vortex Fairies, who hate humanity because of all that soda pop fizz in the air, tickling their noses.

Two physics principles dominated the former heat engine -- buoyancy and heat transfer.  Buoyancy is a great simplification of the real forces.  You throw a cork into the water and it floats.  Yet, we have to dissect it into the horrible parts that are required to model it with finite differences.  Just like computer game physics, if you go down to finite differences, and it looks good, you have something.  None of this tacking on a 'back fit' or the usual crap of our lost decades.

-- to be continued.

ps.  no, my brain hurts from summing all the forces.  I zoomed into it, and bounced out from the pain.  I'll leave it for someone else in 50 years.  

Like everything else, the Pacific Heat Engine collapses

 The backlash against the backlash against rationality continues.  That's an irrelevant point to highlight the collapse of the Pacific heat engine.

We always have some plumes sticking out.  These drift over and give us extra warmth, over that which is our due, due to stagnant solar heating.  If we just rely on stagnant heating, we are very cold indeed.  Without this mess of plumes, the temperatures stratify.  The bad thing about stagnant heating is that it all goes away in the first few hours of night.  Our night temperatures are our true 'ambient', and that is determined by ocean plumes.

All our storms have been cleared out by cold.

We have our usual incursion of warm Gulf air sneaking up the side of the mountains.  This will ensure another bout of storms.  We wake up to snow this morning.

I love to wake up to the smell of snow in April, smells like victory!  Not really.

Back to the backlash.  We have finished a wasted decade (or two) when the rise of Influencers wiped out all scientific progress, and the Scientific Method.  What did we get?  Lots of useless windmills and solar cells.  Computerization that anyone and their dog can wipe out.  All great stuff.  

The world always has great swings.  This is just a 30's swing against gatsby excess.  It never goes well.

ps omg!  I went out for the dog walk.  Apocalypse Now!  Full winter clothes, and I lasted 3 minutes walking into the snow and wind.  I'm still frozen.  This is the worst for all winter, but maybe I didn't go out for heavy winter storms....

State of the Oceans - April 7, 2025

 This is probably one of the last of these.  I fear they have stopped popping in Argo floats.  Anyway, this was prompted by warmies attempting to use geophysics.

As always, they use charts that have been never used before, and make up stories about them.  The Southern Ocean is the ocean surrounding Antarctica and is really cold.  None of these charts are showing it.  

No warming around Antarctica, and it doesn't affect our weather anyway.  You can see that the Pacific equatorial belt is cold.  It is spinning off very weak Pacific plumes.  Rain on the west coast is caused by these plumes hitting brutal Arctic air.

The Atlantic belt is cold, but pushing water straight up into the North Atlantic.  This is causing the massive weed problem that spoiled my fishing.

The Pacific currents are disorganized, and I have no idea what it means exactly.  There is a weird mechanism here that concentrates the current energy on the belt, due to the Earth's spin.

The North Atlantic is poking up a bit from the current flow, but the Atlantic belt is going down.

A perfect example of heat energy transfer.

The chart that the warmies once loved to use is heading down.

And the Nino zone is no longer being influenced by the S. Hemi summer.  I suppose that wasn't great, but who cares?

I've been looking for heat energy, but not finding it.  I want to plant my garden!  Right now, it's going to get covered with snow.  I predicted snow in April, but I don't really want it.  Snow in May looks likely.

We are in the Dark Ages again.  No Scientific Method anywhere.  

ps once again I raise the northern temperature drift, vs Antarctica.

No drift for the S. Pole.  This is not 'global' at all.  I suspect that urbanization has some role in this.

Solar heat trying to break up the Arctic

 

This is a sign of a very slow weather change.  However, Greenland is still very cold.  

You can see three big storms here.

ps no demand for natgas because all the houses are under water.

Displaced climate PR people go into nuclear

Reference

 

This is exciting.  We are going full blast into toy reactors.  The hope of toy reactors is that they will cost less per MW than real reactors, and you can put them anywhere.  This comes from a standard design and simple operation.

All this hope is from Influencer Science and Engineering.  This is a small version of a US boiling water reactor.  It needs enriched uranium to get a higher power density than the standard candu reactor.  Can it be built without any sign of intelligence?  Remains to be seen.

Both Pickering and these new plants require a tunnel for the intake water.  Pickering will be fun because it is on horribly munged-up rock.  Darlington will be a cake walk.  Of course, with all those new PR people from nosa and nooaa, we won't hear anything.  

The general level of stupidity for tunnels can be derived by a machine that has been stuck under Toronto for ages, the Niagara Tunnel to Nowhere, and the Ottawa LRT.  Doesn't look good, but I am always happy.

Winter continues

 As predicted, winter continues, and, will, into May.  With the crippled geophysics left in the world, I have been looking for heat, and not finding any.  The weak plumes from the Pacific are still going up and forming cold clippers.  Naturally, I say I haven't seen such a thing, but the satellite coverage wasn't there in the 70's.

The cold air is pulsing.  When it retracts, we get the Gulf air.  This is causing huge storms in the states, and they come up to us.  I need a week for the garden to dry out so I can till it, but that may not happen.

ps no climate religion news at all.  I think it was a great blow when nosa and noaa lost their bright PR departments.

Indoor pursuits

 I am getting an AI bump of hits every day.  I am still assuming the usual 3 readers.  Had a very nice day yesterday and we had 2 nice days.  Pruned all the fruit trees.  The apple tree is a mess of suckers sticking up, and I just used my nifty tiny battery chainsaw to mow them down.

All the geophysics is gone, so I'll just stick my head out the door.  Seems to be a succession of very hot and very cold weather, very polarized, just like US politics.  No Pacific moderation in sight.

The big problem is that we have big storms between the changes.  My garden is soaked, and it's no use running out for the single days of warmth.  We hope for the best.

I am back to working with my computer stuff again.  I have got instructions on how to hook up multiple I2C buses.  I thought it didn't work on my rp5, but it looks like it will.  The pain of my previous efforts is delaying me.  Procrastination is a depressive thing.  I need to cheer up.

ps.  The polar vortex fairies are up to their usual antics.  This time they have slid off the n. pole. Don't worry, they'll be as good as new next week.

ps  PV fairies must be considered to be outside the Scientific Method.  They cannot be measured directly and are only inferred to exist by influencers.  None of their actions can be predicted, or reproduced.  Since the influencers predicted a very warm year, they serve mainly as an excuse.

Be happy with religion

 Nothing has affected my compulsion to write.  I don't have it.  I am working on my computer projects.  Today was a nice warm day for pruning the trees.  Tomorrow will be endless rain going to cold.

Since we have lost all geophysics, we must be happy with religious science.  They predicted it would be as warm as last year, and it's cold.  Nobody takes them on about it.  They will predict it to be warmer and warmer and it will be colder and colder.  Everybody is happy.

I am getting ready for our 70's summer of intense heat for 2 months.  My old soaker hose was 5 to 10 years old, and has been chopped up and thrown out.  It's made of recycled tires.  I;m laying in the new Chinese hose.  This will produce a magnificent garden with lots of raspberries and tomatoes.  

Have fun everybody.

Dark ages

 I'm still doing well on fighting the compulsion to write things that offend weenies.  All my geophysics is gone, or I can't trust it.  I think there would be young people trying to get this out in the big institutions, and now they are fired.  Just old crusts left.

We can enjoy our warm day, and our fanatics can claim that this proves their god exists.  Good for them.

Extra!

 I interrupt my moody moodiness, to bring you the perfect storm.  You can put that on your lock screen.  Makes the ice storm look like day care.

Can't wait to hear the explanation for this.  We should have these all April.  "April Storms Break May Norms".

It's a perfect start to the "World Great Depression".

ps they want a knock-knock joke

Knock knock -- Who's there? -- Wheely -- Wheely Who? -- Wheely glad to meet you.

End of Times

 I have used this blog as a public diary, like Dr. Johnston.  I like to consider it ahead of its time, but I won't be around to see if I am right.  It is a compulsion to write, because its like the Harry Potter memory thing, pluck it out of your mind and forget it.

So, I am stopping my weather forecast, earthquake forecast, etc.  There is no more geophysics in the world, it has all stopped with the trumpy purge.  Perhaps it still exists, but I'm the only one looking at it, and if I say it's gone, it's gone.

You can accept all the 'reasons' for the weather, that come after the fact, and are never right in prediction.  This is the fun life without physics.  You can grumble about it getting colder, and the only reason will be 'It's getting colder.".  This is truly the life of the 'Clockwork Universe' of the Earth being the centre of the Universe.  Add another gear, when there are new results.

The big question is 'How soon' do we climb out of this?  You'll never get that answer, because the politicians won't admit we are into anything, and they control all the physics spending.  

My previous attempts to exit have all failed because of my compulsion to shout into the dark of the Universe.  However, now I can shout at Gemini 2.5, and they can give a summary that pooh-poohs everything I say.  I'll bind these 'letters' into a book that can gather dust for 100 years.  And then, people will say "Man, what an idiot."

It's been fun.  Hope natgas doesn't go through the roof.  

Geophysics is leaving the building, as well

 All the story-tellers have been evicted from nosa and nooa, but the babies have left the bathwater, as well.  Some of my monthly physics is showing up.  Maybe it's just late.

But I predicted that a while ago, that they would shut down all physics, if it got in the way of fantasy.  Now, we will be stuck with just looking out the door, and listening to stories of the weather giants playing football. 

According to fantasy, this winter was supposed to be as mild as last winter.  Why not?  Natgas was stored, and snow-clearing budgets were based on this.  Let's postpone clearing the trees from the electrical lines.  No more winter!

I think I'll stop my daily "It's getting colder." forecasts.  Who cares?  

Linux -- Openwrt - opkg is now apk

 I just updated the router.  You never trust a mass router operating system like Bell.  There is a great incentive for bright minds to crack it.  Openwrt is nearly impossible to install, and has a zillion options.  My conjecture is that Linux is very secure because things barely work on it.

So, I write this for future me.

Conservatives go for woke

 I can't believe that some liberal guy makes a quip about turning in some other politician to the Chinese embassy in Toronto for 10 bucks, and it is double-translated to "I want to torture and kill him, and eat his children'.

That is the definition of 'woke', and 'politically correct' speech.  Jordan Peterson went to town over that, and now weenie pp is doing it.  That is a fine demonstration of his state of mind, and general brain neuron activity.

ps  the "Cat in the Hat" translated to Chinese and back again to English would come out as "The Many Sexual Positions of Animals" and smithy/pp would demand it be banned in Alberta.

Quantum entanglement in sheep

 

This is much better if you are like me and forget what day it is.

ps and as another joke, the new Costco paper leaf bags rip when you look at them.  blah

Oracle breach is real

 Reference

I knew it was real!  6 million records.  It is my contention that any company or organization that uses the windowthing has been breached, but they just don't know it.

The main Oracle engine could be the old Sun Unix, but can be winserver.  No security whatsoever.  I used to get some news of hospital installations and I could only shake my head.  And after the breach, everybody will just shrug and do it again.

I'm pretty sure all our tax info is now available on the Dark Web, but they want money for it.  We sure aren't getting our info from the CRA, which has gone into conniption fits.

Here Comes the Super-Clipper

 

Isn't this fun?  The weather is so dull and drab.  However, lots of excitement is coming.

The regular parade of Pacific plumes that gives us Spring is mucked up.  Instead, we have a Pacific plume going straight up into the Arctic.  This is what we need to break up the Arctic cold, but, in the process, it is scooping out all the cold air down on us.  On the anomaly map we see that the Gulf air is trying to sneak up along the mountains.  Thus the collision of a Super-Clipper and hot Gulf air.  Never seen this.

The forecast is very heavy rain coming soon.  And I'm adding 'followed by cold air'.  

ps from Sci American, we see that it is probably best not to invest in banks right now.

ps now we are talking 3C rise as 'certain'.