Raspberry Pi - Just the Thing on a Dark and Stormy Night ...

[Jim Manley]

First, let me say that we here in the States are commiserating with our cousins on the Isles who have been inundated recently - there seems to be a lot of that going around these days. It's no laughing matter that people have been losing their lives, above-and-beyond the tragedy of homes in families for generations being badly flooded, to the point of destruction in some cases. We certainly hope that none of our Foundation friends and family have been adversely affected by the weather, along with our fellow and fellowette Pi community members.

Here in Northern California, we're between the first and second of three so-called "Pineapple Express" storms that originate from the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands and build in intensity as they cross the Northern Pacific Ocean. We're due to get upward of a foot of rain through this weekend, and some places in the Sierra Nevada mountains may receive up to 20 feet of very wet, heavy snow (aka "Sierra Cement"). All of that means one thing for sure - we're about to transition between two California seasons - from Fire to Floods, and it won't be long before the next season is upon us ... literally in some cases - Mudslides.

For reasons not yet determined by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, I am posting this while sitting in the cold and dark, except for the warm glow of the LED backlighting in the display of my $50 Motorola Atrix lapdock that is powering my $35 Pi! Thank goodness I am able to use my smart phone as a WiFi access point, since the wireless broadband Internet modem is AC powered and therefore useless (I suspect the other end of the broadband infrastucture is equally as cold and dark as the modem here).

With the thousands of milliamp-hours of power in the lapdock and my smartphone charging from a USB port in an old, but well-endowed laptop with thousands of its own milliamp-hours available, I will be able to surf the web for far longer than I will be able to stay awake tonight. The power outage started at 9:02 PM local, and the lapdock can run the Pi for at least six hours in its current casual use, based on my experience (display backlighting powering down after a few minutes without use). That's at least twice the amount of time that my 12-inch laptop will be able to run, although about four hours short of what the iPad can endure, which has no keyboard unless I dig out the Bluetooth model stuffed into my backpack.

It hasn't even started raining from the second storm yet, which will hit the coast here around 4 AM local Friday, and the third storm will slam into us by Sunday. As Gordon Lightfoot sang in "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", "Fellas, it's been good to know ya!"

[gritz]

We're due to get upward of a foot of rain through this weekend,

Holy schnorkel, that's a lot of water. Take it easy and keep us posted Jim.

[adlambert]

When I was in the Bay Area (in the days when Java 1 was new) PG&E supply would regularly go AWOL in the summer when it was peak heat and everyone was running their domestic air con flat out. Loss of supply meant complete paralysis of society. Nothing else to do but lounge in the pool (I had learned to open the electric pool cover in advance of the inevitable power loss). Of course, no Pi in those days. Just early Palm Pilots.

[petershrew]

I just heard that we are meant to get a prolonged period of -20 degrees this winter in London - nattttt a good thing at all! *gulps*

[liz]

Yikes, Jim! Hope you've got something cosy to huddle up in for hunkering down purposes.

[excollier]

I just heard that we are meant to get a prolonged period of -20 degrees this winter in London - nattttt a good thing at all! *gulps*

You believe a weather forecast more than 3 days ahead??
They told us last winter would be like the two previous - wrong, it was relatively mild
They told us we were going to have a scorching summer - very, very wrong, saw a man building a very large wooden boat the other day, on a hill.........
Relax, we will get what we get.
Any way, when you are busy with your Pi, you won't even notice.....

[Jim Manley]

Well, so far, so wet! We had 16-foot swells crashing onto the rocks this morning at the South end of the Monterey Bay, aka Point Pinos, where a lighthouse still warns mariners of the shoals that rise suddenly from the 9,000-foot depths of the underwater Monterey Canyon. It was hard to tell whether we were being drenched by the spray from those breakers or the pineapple-flavored precipitation (if only!) being driven sideways at up to 50 mph across the hilltops in the area. In any case, the power was restored only after I had taken the precaution to relocate to a friend's place (in an area with power) all of the frozen and refrigerated month's worth of bulk food I had bought last week for Thanksgiving and the upcoming holidays (nothing like stuffing/dressing and crab legs by the 55-gallon drum at Costco! ). I did discover that canned goods are only really a treat if you have some way of heating them, and even the marine battery from the boat and a hefty 12-volt/120-volt inverter doesn't work for long to keep the microwave going. I need to dig out the propane camp stove from wherever it is in the storage area. At least everything is charged back up, now.

It's just supposed to shower all day Saturday, but then Sunday is predicted to have the worst storm in the wave of three of which we're between the second and third. My emergency Li-ion lights that sit plugged unto wall sockets kicked in as designed last night, and they're back "in battery", so to speak, so, I won't be tripping over various furniture and storage bins as I merrily work on Pi projects through the soggy weekend, when neither rain, nor snow, nor dark of night shall keep me from my appointed rounds.

As Churchill was wont to saying, "Courage!"

[liz]

Mice ate my winter duvet.

This is not as bad as Jim's weather problems, but it does mean that the bedroom erupted earlier today in what looked like a snowstorm of goose down and mouse poo, as I shook the thing out over the bed without realising it was full of holes and mouse-currants. And it's a PITA, 'cos duvets are expensive, it took about an hour to clean up, I am freaked out by scuttling, and our bedroom gets *cold* - sloping roof without space for much insulation, and antique central heating.

Next Pi project: an automated warfarin-cheese distributor for the attic.

[ukscone]

Mice ate my winter duvet.

Is that the first line of a new blues song?

Mice ate my winter duvet.
I'm covered in feathers.
My cat has an attitude.
And i've got them cold winter blues.

[Jim Manley]

I have to admit imagining you covered in a flurry of goose flock made me bust out laughing, Liz! The associated rodent droppings, not so much, of course - those dagnabbit wascawwy wodents can be such a pain in the patootie.

Winds got up to 120 mph in the Sierras Friday and the rivers running to the coast are already swollen approaching flood stage. A nearby river that normally flows behind a barrier beach made the decision moot as to whether the beach should be breached using excavators to prevent flooding downstream when the river just overflowed and carved half a kilometer through the beach directly into the ocean - Nature sure can be a Mother.

The calm before the next storm will be ending late Saturday night here and the rain will continue beating us up until early Monday, when the flooding along the coast will really start to get serious. The entire town of Guerneville on the Russian River South of Napa Valley may become submerged with at least a few feet of water in every building for the first time in a few decades. This usually happens during the Spring thaw after a Winter with higher-than-average snowfall, but it looks like they're going to get whacked both now and then this time.

In the meantime, everything is charged up for when, not if, the lights go out again on Sunday.

[W. H. Heydt]

Guerneville used to flood on a regular basis. Probably the only reason it hasn't done so in recent years has been code enforcement to prevent (re)building stupid.

Just to add a milder note to Jim's points...

I'm at the northern end of the SF Bay Area (Vallejo). Where I live is on a hill. We haven't had any power problems with the current systems, but I do keep everything behind a couple of UPS's.

Does cause one to wonder how long a Pi could be kept running by a 1.5KVA UPS...I'd tend to bet that the internal circuitry would require more power that a Pi, and possibly more power than Pi plus monitor, switch, router and cable modem (though the switch and router could be bypassed under emergency conditions...

[Burngate]

Mice ate my winter duvet.
...
Next Pi project: an automated warfarin-cheese distributor for the attic.

What's happened to Mooncake?

[W. H. Heydt]

Mice ate my winter duvet.
...
Next Pi project: an automated warfarin-cheese distributor for the attic.

What's happened to Mooncake?

Indeed...why not just use a ball bearing mousetrap?