It’s that time of year again—it’s World Backup Day. Have you backed up your important files? I use 2 external storage devices to backup my files, although they are both at home so are vulnerable to theft and disasters. What method(s) are you using, if any at all?
View some of my other posts related to backups to understand why it’s a good idea to back up your files.
On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will pass over portions of Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. While a path of totality that traverses San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Little Rock, Indianapolis, Buffalo, most locations in the U.S. will feature at least a 50% eclipse of the sun. That means a lot of Americans will be trying to experience the eclipse, whether it be by viewing it directly and/or taking photos or videos of the eclipse as I did in August 2017.
The main focus of eclipse viewing is to do it safely. In short, you should never look directly at the sun because it can damage your eyes. However, with the right eclipse glasses and the proper use of them, you can safely watch the eclipse. Read Safe Viewing of Solar Eclipses and Watching a Solar Eclipse Without the Right Filters Can Cause Eye Damage for additional information.
If you have concluded that you will buy solar eclipse glasses, and if you’ve paid attention to the references above, you know not to trust just any pair of eclipse glasses. The American Astronomical Society has a list of vetted suppliers. Make your your eclipse glasses are made by a supplier on this list.
If you’ve visited a U.S. national park and hiked any of its spectacular trails, you may have been given advice to wear weather-appropriate attire, use activity-appropriate footwear, bring sufficient food and water, travel in groups (or let someone know your plan if hiking alone), and various other helpful recommendations. However, we sometimes overlook one of the most important aspects of visiting national parks: getting there.
Although most people have cell phones with map applications (e.g., Apple Maps, Google Maps, Waze), we may be lulled into a false sense of security that those mobile map applications will get us to our destinations. In the absence of cellular service, those map applications may fail to work. That is why I recommend bringing a dedicated GPS device. I’ve used a trusty Garmin nüvi 650 for decades, and because it relies of line-of-sight communication with GPS satellites, it always works—even when my phone has lost cellular service.
Additionally, whether you use a phone-based or dedicated GPS, I recommend verifying ahead of time that named locations on your GPS device accurately represent your intended destination. For example, depending on the application you are using, if you select “XYZ National Park” it might pinpoint the geographic center of the national park which might be in the middle of the wilderness, or it might pinpoint one of several park entrances which may or may not be the entrance that you had planned to use. While visitor centers may often have named locations that are geographically accurate, campgrounds, trailheads, and parking lots may be less likely to have named locations.
If there are no named locations that match your desired destination, then I recommend finding its GPS coordinates. Some National Park Service websites like this one and that one will provide you with GPS coordinates for common destinations. If you are not given GPS coordinates, then I recommend using Google Maps to locate your destination on a map and grabbing its GPS coordinates. On a desktop or laptop browser, simply single-click on a location on the map, and Google Maps will tell you its GPS coordinates.
Tip: if you are given GPS coordinates in degrees/minutes/seconds, it may be helpful to convert them to decimal degrees for ease of entry into your GPS. Read my blog post about converting GPS coordinates for more info.
Finally, if you found GPS coordinates, don’t stop there. In addition to writing them down and bringing them with you on your trip, enter them into your GPS ahead of time and verify that it is really your intended destination. Don’t wait until you are actually driving to try to figure out how to enter coordinates into your GPS device. Plus, once you’ve entered the GPS coordinates, it is likely that they will remain in your “recently used” list which might make them more easily accessible when you actually need them.
So in summary, when navigating your way to and within national parks, I recommend 3 things to increase your chances of successfully navigating to your destination:
With these tips in mind, hopefully you will spend less time getting to your destination and more time exploring our protected lands.
If you’ve used a global position system (GPS) device or an online map application, you may have noticed that geographic locations on earth can be precisely described using latitude and longitude values. Latitudes range from -90 to +90 degrees, where -90 degrees is the South Pole, 0 degrees is the equator, and +90 degrees is the North Pole. Longitudes range from -180 to +180 degrees, where 0 degrees longitude is the Prime Meridian on which the Royal Observatory sits in Greenwich, England.
You may have also noticed that there are 2 main systems for the communication of latitude and longitude: degrees/minutes/seconds (DMS, a.k.a. “sexagesimal degrees”) and decimal degrees (DD). In DMS notation, each degree is divided into 60 minutes, and each minute is divided into 60 seconds, just like a clock. Fractions of sections can be represented by decimals. In DD notation, the latitude and longitude coordinates are simply expressed as decimals, with a greater number of decimal places conferring greater geographic precision.
To complicate matters, in both DMS and DD notations, locations relative to the equator and Prime Meridian can be expressed using either positive/negative values or north (N), east (E), south (S), and west (W) designations. Positive latitudes are N of the equator, while negative latitudes are S of the equator. Positive longitudes are E of the Prime Meridian, while negative longitudes are W of the Prime Meridian.
There may be times when you may need to interconvert between DMS and DD notations. For example, if you need to navigate to a certain location and are provided with DMS coordinates, it may be easier (or possibly your only option) to enter DD coordinates into your GPS device. A free DMS-DD converter is provided by the Federal Communications Commission, and there are numerous other free options available.
It seems that most airline passengers nowadays are receiving electronic flight notifications via email and/or text messages. Today I was waiting at LAX for an American Airlines flight to Orlando and received a series of flight delay notifications via email (example above) text messages:
As I sat for an extra 2 hours at the gate waiting to board the plane, each time I received a flight delay notification via text message, I could hear a collective groan from the other passengers who had received notifications at the same time. The groans grew louder with each successive delay. Fortunately I eventually made it to my destination, but I thought it was funny that we were all sharing the bad news in synchrony. As the saying goes, misery loves company.
I have a YouTube channel that I use to share my home movies. I do not monetize the channel and therefore am permitted to use certain copyrighted songs in my soundtracks, as long as the owners of those songs allow them to be used in that manner. Some song owners, however, do not allow their songs to be used at all, even if the channel does not monetize its content.
Recently I received a notification from YouTube that a video on my channel which I posted 9 years ago has now been blocked in 4 territories:
Upon viewing details in YouTube Studio, the song is “All Around The World (La La La)” by A Touch of Class (or “ATC”) and has been blocked in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. It does not provide any additional information beyond what is pictured below.
My guess is that it somehow boils down to money, but I am unable to speculate about the laws or policies that led to this music being blocked in those countries. On the bright side, the video is still available in the United States where my main audience resides.
