DEV Community: Miguel Pimentel

Aurora Borealis Pocket Guide

Miguel Pimentel — Wed, 12 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Wednesday, July 12th, 2023, was supposed to feature high solar activity, allowing for an incredibly large area of the northern United States to witness the Auroras as long as the light pollution was low enough.

Solar activity stayed at normal levels, so only the usual locations were able to see the lights, causing me to cancel my plans. Nevertheless, I wanted to share them here.

Light Pollution

Take a look at these locations sorted by distance.

Location	Distance	Travel Time	Rank*
Minneapolis	16 miles	25 minutes	0
Bloomington	2 miles	5 minutes	1
Chaska	15 miles	20 minutes	2
Farmington	24 miles	35 minutes	3
Jordan	22 miles	25 minutes	4
Norwood	35 miles	40 minutes	5
Gaylord	55 miles	60 minutes	6
Rapidan	75 miles	75 minutes	7
Chengwatana	95 miles	90 minutes	8
Sacred Heart	105 miles	120 minutes	9

* Higher Rank is considered better.

Tips to Get a Better Look

Viewing the aurora depends on four important factors.

1. Geomagnetic Activity

If the geomagnetic field is active, then the aurora will be brighter and further from the poles. Geomagnetic activity is driven by solar activity and solar coronal holes and thus it waxes and wanes with time. The level of geomagnetic activity is indicated by the planetary K index or Kp. The Kp index ranges from 0 to 9.

For Kp in the range 0 to 2, the aurora will be far north, quite dim in intensity, and not very active.
For Kp in the range of 3 to 5, the aurora will move further from the poles, it will become brighter and there will be more auroral activity (motion and formations). If you are in the right place, these aurora can be quite pleasing to look at.
For Kp in the range 6 to 7, the aurora will move even further from the poles and will become quite bright and active. At this geomagnetic activity level, it might be possible to see the aurora from the northern edge of the United States.
For Kp in the range 8 to 9, the aurora will move even further towards the equator and it will become very bright and very active. These are the events that create the best aurora and the extended auroral oval will be observable by the most people. At these levels, aurora may be seen directly overhead from the northern states of the USA.

It should be noted that the relationship between Kp and auroral latitude are approximate and represent averages. There will be times when these relationships do not hold up exactly.

There is an approximate relationship between Kp and the equatorward extent of the auroral oval. This relationship holds true in geomagnetic latitude, not geographic. At Kp = 0, the equator ward edge of the auroral oval is approximately 66 degrees. And it moves equatorward about 2 degrees for each level of Kp. So for Kp = 1, the aurora would move down to 64 degrees, for Kp=2, it would move to 62 degrees, etc… until reaching Kp of 9 at 48 degrees magnetic latitude.

2. Location

Go towards the magnetic poles. The north magnetic pole is currently about 400 km (250 miles) from the geographic pole and is located in the islands of north east Canada. Find a place where you can see to the north ( or south if you are in the southern hemisphere). Given the right vantage point, say for example on top of a hill in the northern hemisphere with an unobstructed view toward the north, a person can see aurora even when it is 1000 km (600 miles) further north. It should be noted that if you are in the right place under the aurora, you can see very nice auroral displays even with low geomagnetic activity (Kp = 3 or 4).

3. It Must Be Dark

Go out at night. Get away from city lights. The full moon will also diminish the apparent brightness of the aurora (not the actual brightness). One caveat that people often neglect to think of is that the high latitudes where aurora occur are also latitudes where it doesn't get dark in the summer. So combining a summer vacation to the arctic with aurora watching usually doesn't work. The aurora may still be there but it is only visible when it is dark.

4. Timing

Best aurora is usually within an hour or two of midnight (between 10 PM and 2 AM local time). These hours of active aurora expand towards evening and morning as the level of geomagnetic activity increases. There may be aurora in the evening and morning but it is usually not as active and therefore, not as visually appealing.

The best Seasons for aurora watching are around the spring and fall equinoxes. Due to subtleties in the way the solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetosphere, there is a tendency towards larger geomagnetic storms, and thus better auroras, to occur near the equinoxes. However, the number of hours of darkness decreases (increases) rapidly near the spring (fall) equinox so this caveat must be considered for those traveling to see the aurora.

Below are maps showing the most southern extent of where aurora might be observable for different levels of the geomagnetic Kp index (and the NOAA G scale). It should be noted that the aurora can often be observed hundreds of kilometers (miles) equatorward of the actual aurora so these figures do not indicate where the aurora may be but rather the point from which it may be observed.

Aurora Forecast

July 12th, 2023

G is NOAA Geomagnetic Storm Index (0–5)

Kp is Planetary K Index (0–9)

September 18th, 2023

Additional Resources

Being a Firefighter Does Not Save You From Burnout

Miguel Pimentel — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 15:24:01 +0000

My life took a sharp turn early last year. I am a very private person. You will not find me sharing my personal life on social media. That said, these last 18 months have changed me profoundly, and I feel like I need to write these feelings down. This post's threshold of success is helping one other person navigate difficult times.

Burning out is something I had little experience with. A mental image of what it looks like when you burn out was all I had. My only context coming from watching online influencers post articles/videos about how bad it can be. I never really learned what it looks like before you burn out, how you get to there, what the signs are. After three and a half years of being a volunteer firefighter, I burned out. It did not catch me by surprise; I had been struggling mentally for some time. Every day, telling myself that it would be different, that it would change. That feeling went away eventually, leaving me with too much to handle.

What Being a Volunteer Firefighter Means

Depends on where the question is being asked. Volunteer, or sometimes paid-on-call firefighters make up more than 70% of registered fire departments. Minnesota sits at more than 85% volunteer fire departments, according to the National Fire Department Registry. Our setting is Bloomington, Minnesota in the US.

Here are some quick facts on being a volunteer/paid-on-call firefighter for the fourth-largest city (by population) in Minnesota a few of years before:

Bloomington has 6 fire stations spread somewhat evenly over the city.
To be eligible, you need to live within 4 minutes of your nearest fire station.
You carry a pager around, when specific tones play, you are being asked to respond. This meant stopping anything you were doing, driving to the station, and responding to the incident in a fire vehicle.
Depending on incident time, one, two, three, or all six stations can be paged together to respond. For example, medicals calls involve 1 station responding with 1 truck, while residential fire calls start a 3 station response immediately.
You need to respond to at least 30% of the calls that were assigned to your station. These meant emergency calls during your work hours, weekends, holidays count against you.

Learning What Being Homesick Was All About

During the pandemic, the emergency medical calls went through the roof. The Police Department was unable to keep up with the large number of incidents, so the city came to rely on the approximate 100 volunteer Fire Department to pick up the slack. This meant those working normal 8 to 5 jobs had a harder time keeping up with their 30% minimum. Without going into details, it was difficult.

At the time, I was not in a good place mentally. Lots of things were lingering in the back of my mind. Everything has been made worse since I became woefully aware that I was homesick. I had planned to go visit for winter in 2020, but that option was quickly taken off the table. For context, I moved to the United States in Summer 2015, and to this day, due to one reason or another, I have yet to return.

The later half of 2021 overwhelmed me. Several things accumulated over time, some went under the radar and were never addressed until it was too late, and others were willfully ignored. Struggling to maintain my sanity and mental health, I decided to take a 90-day leave of absence from the fire department. My plans were to spend the extra time looking after my mental health. Unfortunately, nothing improved.

When the time came to rejoin, I opted to extend my leave as much as I could. I opted for another 90-day leave of absence, the maximum time allowed before needing to rejoin or separate. Again, nothing improved. I was just not in a good place mentally. A few days before needing to rejoin after 6 months of leave, I broke a bone in my hand.

How Did This Happen

Distracted, I went to move a glass/ceramic base from my desk to the kitchen. It made it a good foot before I accidentally dropped it on a dog bowl on the floor. (we fed the dogs in weird places back them) It slipped from my hands and fell on the bowl and shattered. This was not the first time this had happened. I… struggle to describe what my feelings at the time were. My brain approved the decision to punch something. When tasked with finding something to punch, once again, my regretful train of thought took me outside, to the patio where I proceeded to turn around and punch the side of the house. The factors considered at the time were overwritten by rage.

Being Stubborn is Not the Same as Being Naive

So it happened. I punched the side of the house. Pain. Broke a bone in my hand, unbeknownst to me, of course. I managed to convince myself that it was a minor injury and I didn't need to be seen by a doctor. The hand hurt, but I chose to ignore it because my pride was in danger! (it wasn't) I went about my business for three days before the pain overtook my pride. After the initial triage, and x-rays were completed, the doctor returned to the room with x-rays of my hand and informed me that I had a boxer's fracture in my right hand. My brain could no longer hold the spell it had me under. I wasn't being naive, I was being stubborn.

Unfortunately, having used all the time permitted for a leave of absence, and lacking the ability to rejoin due to my right hand being broken, I quit the fire department.

Accepting Help is the Hardest Part

It does get tough sometimes, life can weight a lot more than what you can handle. What we often forget is to look around, to look for the people that are willing and lovingly ready to help. My biggest mistake was thinking I had no support, when it really was the complete opposite. I am in a much better place now. I have others to thank for that. The road back is long, but I have friends and family right beside me. It has been a long time, but I finally feel like I am moving forward.

Blogging to Tame the Monkey Mind

Miguel Pimentel — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Last week, I came across Danny Guo’s Why I Blog post, and it inspired me to write this.

The term monkey mind is a Buddhist term meaning: restless, unsettled, incontrollable. The original analogy comes from describing the human mind as being full of drunken monkeys, constantly screeching, fighting, distracting, and creating general mental chaos. I’ll go over what helps me keep the monkeys at bay. I hope some of this resonates with you and your monkeys as well.

Clear My Mind

My brain seems to always find distractions for me to tangent off to. Sitting down and making an effort to write everything rushing through my head has been an important mechanism to reduce my stress levels. This concept of dumping your brain by writing isn’t new, but it was to me.

It took me some time to mold the raw output into something I could use. In my case, it started within my journal. Using the left page for brain dump, and the right page to process it down to simple tasks, references, and other tagged entries. Small details like leaving space between entries allow me to go back and add an entry in a much closer position relative to other similar ones.

Share Knowledge

When I think of sharing knowledge, the image of me boring my friends to death on a topic they aren’t interested in comes to mind. It is my goal to minimize those kinds of situations. I find it easier to talk about a topic in person if I have already “talked” about it on the blog. I can actually debate the idea, without feeling the need to interject at every interaction.

A sure way to tell whether you know a topic, comes from being able to teach it to someone else. I am horrible at keeping explanations simple. I am terrible at controlling my impulse to talk when engaged in conversation. Sharing knowledge via these posts helps my overall mental state. It reduces the amount of fleeting ideas going back and forth, and provides me with an opportunity to turn those into actionable ideas instead of letting them grow old and irrelevant.

Document My Learning

Recently, I have been down the rabbit-hole that is Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) tools and apps. Jumping from app to app, looking for something that “works” for you. It’s fun! But, it is stupid easy to lose sight of your initial goal and turn that curiosity into wasted efforts.

By making a public commitment (even if nobody reads it), I am imposing a healthy amount of pressure on myself to be more open and honest about how I use my time. Keeping yourself accountable is hard work. Any amount of effort to curb “mindless wonder” helps tremendously.

Starting a Blog

Blogging pushes me to refine my better ideas. Expanding a fleeting thought into a blog post has a liberating feeling. It’s not even related to others reading your post. You don’t need an audience to start. The same way you should just journal, you should just blog.

Comes from the same idea that producing content is and should be a priority over consuming it. Find what topics make you want to write. Compile your reference material. List articles you’ve read, blogs you have enjoyed, reference that weird website you know and talk about why.

Avoid getting stuck on details. You can change your hosting provider later. The first thing you’d need to consider is whether you’ll be using a custom domain. I highly suggest you do so, as it makes for easier platform changes. My personal recommendation is to start writing anywhere. Pick a platform and focus on writing about things you are interested in.

Here are a few places to start:

Unlock the Sidebar Width in Firefox

Miguel Pimentel — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 05:00:00 +0000

Why Would Anyone Want to Do This?

To enhance the use of the Firefox Side View extension.
To compliment the use of one of my Firefox sidebar extensions.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1) In a new tab, navigate to about:support.
2) Under Application Basics, find Profile Folder.
3) Locate and click the Open Folder button next to it. It will be next to an address similar to: %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{profile-id}.default ¹
4) Inside your Firefox Profile Folder, create a new folder named: chrome.
5) Inside the newly created chrome folder, create a new file named: userChrome.css.
6) Copy the following code ², paste as content and save: ³

#sidebar-box {
  max-width: 40% !important;
  min-width: 300px !important;
}

7) Finally, in a new tab, navigate to about:config, search for toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets, and change its value to true.
8) Restart Firefox and test it out!

%appdata% is equivalent to C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming ↩
After Firefox 107, #sidebar was deprecated, and #sidebar-box was introduced. ↩
You may change the units to any length you find more convenient. ↩

Hello World!

Miguel Pimentel — Sun, 25 Jun 2023 11:28:47 +0000

This must be the fourth time I have started a blog. I haven't been very successful at being a consistent content producer. That changes today. I made a promise I can't break. I have made a real commitment to someone in my life who I rather not disappoint.

The past few years have been difficult for me. I am privileged enough to have access to the resources I do. It is a scary thought; wondering where I would be without therapy and all the other resources I'm able to use.

Since June 2022, I have been pushing myself to journal more often. Note-taking has changed the way I digest information. I've experienced the "productivity app rodeo". Jumping from productivity app to productivity app. Never settling, never producing content, just focused on the "workflow". I think I'm past that. It's time I sit down and type.

I can't go on without mentioning some inspiring people I have had the pleasure of coming across. When it comes to blogging and just being great overall, I highly recommend following the likes of:

Hope you found reading this worthwhile. If you take anything from this post, let it be:

“Better done than perfect.”

Take care, and I'll see you in the next post.

New to DEV Community

Miguel Pimentel — Sat, 24 Jun 2023 14:41:48 +0000

I am beyond excited!

For the first time in a long time, I have been moving along some short-term plans rather smoothly. A rather interesting line of events has brought me here, and I could not be happier to be.

I was aware and had visited DEV before, but not until now have I thought of reposting some of my existing blog posts here. I just learned how to use canonical_url to link existing blog posts to reposts on this site, and in the coming days, I will be reposting them here.

This is the perfect opportunity to use this as yet another reason to stay consistent in producing posts, and remaining engaged in the community.

Thanks for the quick read. Have a nice day.