A few weeks ago I got back in the Tidbyt-app-making business, relaunching my Planes Overhead app with a new backend. With that success still fresh in my mind, I wanted to keep the momentum going and try to finish off a project I had started a number of times before without being able to actually finish off - building a “departure board” for LAX.

The Inspiration

A few years ago I flew back to the US from Sydney and was blown away by the beautiful departures board that was mounted along the wall by their lounge.

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In March, news broke that a French scientist had been denied entry into the United States after making critical comments about the Trump Administration’s research policies.

The story wasn’t a one-off — it seemed to hint at a broader trend. Increasingly, tourists and travelers are being denied entry into the country or even detained for days or weeks. And now, the chill is starting to show up in the numbers, as foreigners rethink their travel plans.

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Finally! The Washington Nationals seem to have realized that the game of baseball is a heckuva lot easier when you’re able to knock the ball out of the park!

After years of kvetching, I can’t say how pleased I am with this development, and the thought of how much better our offense might be this season… next to the Chicago White Sox isn’t where you want to be on any lists of team batting statistics, as we were in 2024:

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About six weeks ago, my Planes Overhead app for the Tidbyt smart display died.

This death wasn’t exactly a surprise - the founder of DHub.io, the backend service I was using which ceased operations, had reached out to give me a heads up - but it did mean that I would need to do some unplanned engineering work to get the app up and running.

I did the bulk of that work last week and tried to document my elegant (if I’m allowed to brag a little, it really is) serverless solution in a blog post.

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Last year I wrote a blog post outlining my use of DBHub.io as a serverless backend for typecode lookups in my Planes Overhead app. Unfortunately, DBHub.io ceased operations at the end of February, putting me back in the market for a new solution!

The Need

As a reminder, my Tidbyt app uses the OpenSky API to obtain the closest plane overhead and populate the display. The typecode detail on the middle-left was a late addition that leverages the unique icao24 identifier for a given plane, which is checked against a flat-file database to fetch the relevant aircraft model.

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It should come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I frequently have planes on the brain…

Recently, this obsession interest led me towards building a small ADS-B ground station in my house! It’s got a dinky little antenna, so it can’t really pick up planes too far away, but it works great within the reaches of LA County and provides a pretty incredible live view of all of the traffic overhead.

The setup is almost dead simple if you choose to deploy the FlightAware PiAware solution - one just needs to snap together a Raspberry Pi, connect a 1090 MHz antenna to a receiver dongle/antenna filter, and flash a Micro SD card with their software.

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With Spring Training well underway in Florida and Arizona, I’ve started doing a little reading and research in anticipation of Opening Day - set to be March 18th for the Dodgers and Cubs in Tokyo, and March 27th for rest of the league.

One of the biggest topics of conversation this offseason for the Washington Nationals was whether or not they would be active on the high-end free agent market, potentially signing a few veterans to augment their promising young core. While they did make a key trade to address a clear area of weakness at first base, acquiring Nathaniel Lowe from the Texas Rangers, they didn’t sign any marquee free agents to bolster their roster or rotation, much like the 2024 offseason, 2023 offseason, 2022 offseason, and 2021 offseason.

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Yesterday the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) released their latest set of Team Report cards, following the 2024 release and 2023’s inaugural data. These report cards include grades by 1,695 players, scoring their own teams on a variety of player experience dimensions from A+ to F-:

• Treatment of Families
• Food/Cafeteria
• Nutritionist/Dietician
• Locker Room
• Training Room
• Training Staff
• Weight Room
• Strength Coaches
• Team Travel
• Head Coach
• Ownership

As I’ve done the last two seasons, I spent a bit of time this evening sprucing the data up into a few easy-to-read visuals!

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A few days ago, CNBC released their latest valuations of NBA franchises. The data shows the Golden State Warriors with a nearly $2B lead on the Knicks as the most valuable franchise, and biggest revenue earner in the 2023-2024 season.

The Warriors’ move to the Chase Center and San Francisco has clearly earned huge financial dividends, though I can’t help but feel that their departure from Oakland has cost them something spiritually - trading away that blue-collar soul which made Oracle Arena so electric in exchange for more luxury boxes…

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On December 18th, the Senate Budget Committee dropped a doozy of a blog post, titled “New Data Reveal Climate Change-Driven Insurance Crisis is Spreading”.

They didn’t bury the lede at all, getting right to their conclusion that “climate change is increasing insurance non-renewals around the country” and that “the failure to deal with climate change is also affecting whether families can even get homeowners insurance”.

How I Found This Data

I wish I could say that I stumbled upon this post and the accompanying data as part of a research project. Unfortunately, that is not the case - I was turned onto this data in the aftermath of the enormous Palisades fire, which burned about 3 miles north of my house.

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