Reilly Spitzfaden | Notes

App Defaults at the End of 2025

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:11:17 GMT

Robb Knight has a page listing people's descriptions of their default app choices, and he just did an update for this year. I thought it sounded fun, so here are some of mine as of the end of 2025:

Adblocker: uBlockOrigin
Browser: Firefox; FFUpdater to keep vanilla Firefox for Android updated without the Play Store
Calendar: Fossify Calendar, DAVx⁵, macOS Calendar.app
Chat: Signal
Cloud File Storage: Mega
Contacts: GrapheneOS Contacts app
E-Books: Readest
File Sharing: LocalSend, OpenMTP, Syncthing
Local Backups: FreeFileSync
Mail Client: Mailspring on desktop, Thunderbird on mobile
Maps: Organic Maps
Music: Auxio, Lollypop, Music.app
Notes: Obsidian and Markdown-Oxide/Neovim
Password Management: Bitwarden
Podcasts: AntennaPod
RSS: NetNewsWire, Capy Reader
To-Do: Same as notes for writing the lists; taskfinder for tracking/organizing
Two-Factor Authentication: Aegis
Weather: Breezy Weather
Word Processing, Presentations, and Spreadsheets: LibreOffice

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TTRPGs at the Library

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMT

My local library has a TTRPG group (currently playing Pathfinder 2e). I sat in on a campaign today, the group was very welcoming, and I'm excited about it. I've wanted to get into D&D/TTRPGs for a while, but didn't have a group to do it with. While I hear Pathfinder is a bit more involved than some, I was able to get a copy of the rulebook to take home, and I'm invited to give it a go with making my own character and joining the party next weekend. It's especially nice because the library is right at the end of my street!

I enjoyed how it felt like manually stepping through a computer simulation — the whole time I was thinking of Ben Eater's videos about building a 6502 computer on a breadboard, in which he uses a pushbutton for a clock pulse at some points to manually step through things.

Lately I've been looking for 1) more things to do off the internet and 2) ways to make friends in my area. I made a lot of good friends in grad school, but now most of them have moved; the scarcity of academic jobs means a lot of moving around T-T. I've never been great at putting myself out there, so most of my friendships have developed from being in proximity to a lot of people, which doesn't work the same way out of school. This group seems lovely though, and I'm glad I pushed myself to give it a try.

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Re: Turning towards the positive

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 18:00:00 GMT

Tracy Durnell's recent post resonates with what I've been doing lately to make my computer usage more pleasant.

I've been in the habit of compulsively checking notifications (Mastodon, RSS, YouTube subscriptions, etc.), and I figured out that staying away from that, and using my computer for local things is much nicer. A few specific local things I've been enjoying:

I've wanted to learn the live-coding tool Tidal Cycles for a while now, and I'm finally doing that. Here's a Tidal Cycles performance by Lil Data, and here's one by Moxus (super glitchy and noisy!). This tool is nice because I can code and have my coding be immediately musical.
I've started knitting, and my goal is that once I'm comfortable with some basic stitches, I can use code to generate patterns. I was inspired to do this by Sophia's project using p5.js to generate knit beanie patterns. This is a nice way to feel connected to my programming/computer interests without actually needing to be online or even use a computer for the full project.

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Location Test

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Tue, 19 Aug 2025 18:45:00 GMT

Jo has been using the code I use to get post locations for my /now page statuslog section to add locations to her notes. I realized it would be nice to add it to the script I use to generate note templates as well!

While most of my blog posts are written from home and not associated with a place, I have a number of notes from trips with my partner that aren't just in Rochester.

I like the “vibe” of connecting things on my site to a physical place, so this should be nice to add.

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Powder Mills USGS Gaging Station

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 19:07:10 GMT

My partner and I took a walk at Powder Mill Park in upstate NY to look at the mushrooms and fish hatchery. While we were there, I came across the transmitter for a United States Geological Survey (USGS) stream gaging station—you can go to the link and see the data from this station.

I've been interested in cataloging the stations I see since I saw Sarah from Signals Everywhere's video on the transmitters for these stations. I previously found one at Ellison Park and got some pictures of both the transmitter and what I believe is the sensor. According to Sarah, the stations uplink the data in the UHF band (~401 MHz) to the GOES weather satellites, which relay the data back down for processing by the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). My photos from today are below:

I've long thought it would be cool to connect the data from these to some sort of musical result, but I haven't figured out a satisfying way to do that—a way to both make the data meaningfully present in the music and make interesting music, rather than something blandly demonstrative of the data.

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Photoblog: Natural Stone Bridge & Caves

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 02:41:29 GMT

I went with my partner to the Natural Stone Bridge & Caves park in the Adirondacks for their birthday. They love rocks and geology, and really wanted to go here.

From what they told me, this park was originally gifted to a family as thanks for their efforts in the American Revolutionary War, and after a long time as a sawmill, later members of the family converted it to a park.

The cave behind us is made of marble, and was formed from a collapse several decades ago—I think in the 90s.

My partner standing in the aptly-named “Noisy Cave,” which resounded with rushing water.

The view out of “Noisy Cave”

This area was down in a gorge between two banks. Everything around us was rocks.

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Photoblog—Highland Park

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Sat, 24 May 2025 23:14:41 GMT

Some photos from a walk through Highland Park today:

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Tracking Planes with a Raspberry Pi

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Thu, 15 May 2025 19:56:12 GMT

I'm tracking airplanes by listening to their ADS-B transponders over the airwaves! I have dump1090 running on a Raspberry Pi, sending the aircraft data over my local network, and an RTL-SDR receiver (silver dongle in the Pi in the second photo) picking up the signal.

I've started some notes on ADS-B transponders as well as on using an RTL-SDR receiver more generally in the new digital garden section of my site. I've started putting project notes from my Obsidian notebook on my site — I like the idea of thinking through things in public.

If you want to track planes yourself, you can also use ADS-B Exchange — it takes in data from a bunch of volunteers doing similar stuff to what I'm doing here.

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IndieWeb Stickers from Benji

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Sun, 11 May 2025 21:50:00 GMT

Benji made some IndieWeb stickers that look like a metal band logo, and he sent me one — thanks! He also included some other fun stickers, shown below. The metal one and the goose with a floppy are what I put on my laptop so far, and as the note says, the goose/floppy is from alistairshepherd.uk.

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Photoblog—Stars with Carl

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 17:36:00 GMT

My partner and I went to the Rochester Museum and Science Center's planetarium for the “Stars with Carl” event this past weekend. The “Carl” in question is a 1968 Carl Zeiss Mark VI star projector — a fully analog unit that if I remember right, weighs over 2 tons.

The presenter showed us how the skies change with season and latitude, and demonstrated “star hopping” between different stars and constellations. I took some pictures of Carl at the end — a very cool machine:

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Photoblog—Grimes Glen & Canandaigua Lake

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 00:00:00 GMT

Today we went hiking in Grimes Glen in Naples, NY and stopped by Carolabarb Park, a small scenic outlook over Canandaigua Lake.

At the overlook on Canandaigua Lake, I took this through a pair of binoculars that were permanently mounted there.

I made some field recordings of the creek at Grimes Glen. There were several waterfalls like this throughout the creek. This time I brought my nice field recorder instead of using my phone.

My partner has been very into mushrooms and other fungi lately, so we looked for them in the woods at Grimes Glen. They tell me that viewing will be much better in the summer, but we still saw some interesting ones — primarily polypore or shelf fungi.

An unidentified polypore fungus.

A polypore fungus — likely a turkey tail.

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Photoblog—Mendon Ponds Park

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Sun, 23 Mar 2025 22:30:00 GMT

My partner and I went to Mendon Ponds Park on Sunday. One of the cool things there is the “Devil's Bathtub,” ^[1] a kettle that (like the rest of the area's geography) appears to be left by a retreating glacier. It's a meromictic body of water — unlike the more common holomictic lakes, the layers of water in a meromictic lake do not mix, creating an oxygen-poor region at the bottom with unusual biology. ^[2]

The “Devil's Bathtub” viewed from a small deck on the side

The reverb on the pond was interesting — a few clear, loud taps followed by a quick decay. It's kind of like the “nonlinear” or “gated” reverbs of the 80s, although my phone appears to have applied a noise gate to recordings, exaggerating the effect here.

A closer view of the water in the “Devil's Bathtub”

Kame hills across Deep Pond

We heard a chorus of short, quick, high rising calls at Deep Pond. We thought they were birds in the moment, but now I'm remembering that spring peepers sound like this.

The name immediately made me think of Beck's “Devil's Haircut,” and I had ”got a devil's bathtub in my mind” playing in my head the whole walk. ↩︎
”Very few organisms can live in such an oxygen-poor environment. One exception is purple sulfur bacteria. These bacteria, commonly found at the top of the monimolimnion in such lakes, use sulfur compounds such as sulfides in photosynthesis. These compounds are produced by decomposition of organic sediments in oxygen-poor environments. The monimolimnion is often rich in phosphorus and nitrogen. These factors combine to create an ideal environment for bacterial growth.” (Wikipedia) ↩︎

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Photoblog—Watkins Glen & Seneca Lake State Parks

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Sat, 22 Mar 2025 05:15:00 GMT

I went with my partner to the Watkins Glen and Seneca Lake state parks, both on Seneca Lake in the Finger Lakes. I've started taking more pictures lately (nice new camera phone, and better organization for my photo gallery have both encouraged me to do so), so here's a photo blog of our day.

First, here are some pictures from Watkins Glen. They have a gorge trail most of the way down the gorge, but because of the season it's currently closed. We hiked on the higher rim trail and could see down into the gorge from it.

A view into the gorge at Watkins Glen. The steps in the side are the gorge trail.

There's a suspension bridge between the north and south rim trails, and I took this off the bridge, looking directly into the gorge.

Here's my partner looking out over the gorge.

My partner asked me to pose for them as we were walking down the terraced staircase from the rim trail at the end of the hike.

My partner thought this stone bench looked like something people would get sacrificed on, so they asked me to take a picture that looked like that had happened.

I really like airplanes/contrails and photos of the sky.

Watkins Glen is at the far end of Seneca Lake from us, and on the way home, we stopped by Seneca Lake State Park on the opposite end (since it's one of the Finger Lakes, it's very long and skinny).

Seneca Lake looked beautiful off of Long Pier.

Another view of Seneca Lake from the beach at Seneca Lake State Park.

Finally, I always love to collect photos of roof antennas/weather stations at parks, and it amuses my partner greatly. Here's one at Seneca Lake State Park.

In addition to microblogging, I plan to use my notes page and its feed as a replacement for things like Instagram — this way I own all my photo posts. My partner and I are looking for more state parks and cool geography to visit, so I'll be posting more of this kind of thing.

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Jamesg—Which HTML element are you [Quiz]?

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Fri, 14 Feb 2025 17:40:00 GMT

James posted a "Which HTML element are you Quiz?" and I got the following results:

You are the <a> element!
Anchors like to connect ideas and people, just as the link helps connect HTML documents.

Your nested element is <blockquote>.
You like to think about ideas from multiple places and connect them.

Did you have fun filling out the quiz? Share the URL with friends!

Want to take the quiz again? Refresh the page.

Resources
<a> on MDN
<blockquote> on MDN

I like doing these kinds of web games — thanks for putting this together, James! If other people want to do this, I think it would be fun to see what you get as well.

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Jan 28, 2025, 6:59 PM

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Wed, 29 Jan 2025 00:48:00 GMT

My partner and I were coming home from Target and I liked how the snow looked. It always makes me happy when it's falling so thickly and visible in the air like that.

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Thanks for the info!

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 20:52:00 GMT

Reply to https://www.benji.dog/notes/1738091887/

Thanks for the info! This looks like exactly what I was interested in doing next, and I'll have a look at it.

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Adding multiple RSS feeds

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Fri, 24 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I finally have multiple RSS feeds on my site! I previously used Eleventy to auto-generate the feed, but that method only works to make a single feed, and I wanted to have a separate one for my new notes feed.

I ended up having to make an explicit template for how the feeds should look, and then I can apply that template to each feed that I need to generate. I'd been wanting to do this for a while, but had seriously struggled. Eventually this writeup helped me figure it out, and I borrowed from how Benji imported a template to avoid repeating the same code for each feed. I'm very happy to have this working!

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Setting up a "notes" feed

reillypascal@gmail.com (Reilly Spitzfaden) — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I'm adding a new page to my site. I want the blog feed to be for longer, more thought-out articles, but I also like the idea of having a "microblog"-style (e.g., Mastodon/Bluesky/etc.) feed that's on my own site. Feels more in line with IndieWeb principles of owning what I post.

I'll be adding an additional RSS feed for my notes, and I think it could be cool to do one for my likes, and maybe even add a photo blog (to serve a similar function to Pixelfed/Instagram).

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Reilly Spitzfaden | Notes

App Defaults at the End of 2025

TTRPGs at the Library

Re: Turning towards the positive

Location Test

Powder Mills USGS Gaging Station

Photoblog: Natural Stone Bridge & Caves

Photoblog—Highland Park

Tracking Planes with a Raspberry Pi

IndieWeb Stickers from Benji

Photoblog—Stars with Carl

Photoblog—Grimes Glen & Canandaigua Lake

Blogrolls as a Social Network

Photoblog—Mendon Ponds Park

Photoblog—Watkins Glen & Seneca Lake State Parks

Jamesg—Which HTML element are you [Quiz]?

Jan 28, 2025, 6:59 PM

Thanks for the info!

Adding multiple RSS feeds

Setting up a "notes" feed