5 ms·

Coming home from the South Pole

147 points by sklargh 3y ago

kylehotchkiss 3y ago
I’m gonna miss these blog posts, they’ve been so fun. Dear author if you’re reading, please write some more blogs in the future. Maybe you’ll take a cargo ship across the ocean as a passenger or something else unique and mysterious.
- nerdwaller 3y ago
  Agreed, this has been a really fun experience to follow. I know these last couple will continue to be engaging, but I hope there's something else in the future from the author!
- gooseyman 3y ago
  I too have really enjoyed - thank you author! Your curiosities and resulting blow posts really appealed to me as they were questions and things I would want to know. The breath in unconditioned spaces freezing, the fuel storage, planes landing, power generation. Awesome topics! Kudos and respect.
jedberg 3y ago
I hate the cold, I don't like being in snow for more than a few days at a time. But if I were single I would seriously consider applying for a winter-over at the pole based on these blog posts. It just seems so interesting and different.
joshuaheard 3y ago
"going through 14 months of accumulated postal mail" As an extended traveller myself, I've found mail forwarding services to be indispensable. They scan your postal mail and email you the image. You can forward original documents to your current location, and have them cash your checks (although I do everything electronic now). If you move around a lot, like for work, one benefit is that you get to keep the same mailing address. I have used VirtualPostMail and PostScanMail, but there are many out there.
- jcranmer 3y ago
  To be fair, forwarding mail to yourself at the South Pole, which doesn't receive deliveries of any kind for half the year, isn't necessarily an improvement. See also the blog author's previous post on the topic (https://brr.fyi/posts/mcmurdo-postal-mail https://brr.fyi/posts/mcmurdo-postal-mail).
  - poulsbohemian 3y ago
    I could be wrong, but I believe at least some of these services forward them to you electronically for exactly that reason…
  - mkl 3y ago
    > They scan your postal mail and email you the image.
anthk 3y ago
Back in the day there was an open officialish IRC channel from the Antartica researchers. Sadly I missed that. Also, on the limited connection they have, mosh and IRC among mail/nntp could be life savers for comms as they can be slow and unrealiable. If they work under mosh against a public Unix server they could discuss nearly anything. On images, Imagemagick can do dithering magick and save lots of bytes under a JPG/PNG format with 256 colours. Also, if the goal is to send data even with connection cuts, nncp can resume data packets on the fly until it finishes.
- cozzyd 3y ago
  I routinely ssh into my experiment at the south pole during satellite windows. I just use tmux on the other end...
  - cdelsolar 3y ago
    How is the latency as you type?
    - cozzyd 3y ago
      Same as any non-LEO satellite link (probably like, O(700 ms) latency? About the same as our experiments in Greenland...). Not great, but fine for administration and light vimming. The worst was when I had to update some py2 to py3 code after a system was updated, and there was no way to test except on the South Pole machine. The places where bytes vs. strings bite you when dealing with serial devices are plentiful...
      - anthk 3y ago
        With mosh you can even resume connections after disconnecting but without losing interaction with the target machine as it happens under SSH. Also, it will use far less bandwidth. I tried it with 2G/ISDN-DSL like speeds and it worked great. And you can keep using tmux just in case. On the "caveats", you need UTF8 support in the client machine, but today that's granted.
OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago
Youtuber Joe Spins the Globe has many interesting videos from his winterover ~2021. I think he's a medic. Playlist below includes a three-part tour of the South Pole Station and interviews with scientists and staff. "Different world" doesn't begin to cover it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaectJyCeIU&list=PLFWX3wT095-NndlBrzlR4muHtnfPA6eZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaectJyCeIU&list=PLFWX3wT095...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nektro 3y ago
top notch domain name
andyjohnson0 3y ago
I re-read Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Antarctica a couple of months ago. Characters in the book refer to leaving Antarctica as "going back to the world". To me it seems like it might be similar to returning from another planet. I wish I'd had that experience. (Good book, btw. Recommended.)
tommymanstrom 3y ago
One of my favorites found here, interesting and fun. Looking forward for the last tidbits :)

147 points by sklargh 3y ago

I’m gonna miss these blog posts, they’ve been so fun. Dear author if you’re reading, please write some more blogs in the future. Maybe you’ll take a cargo ship across the ocean as a passenger or something else unique and mysterious.

nerdwaller 3y ago
Agreed, this has been a really fun experience to follow. I know these last couple will continue to be engaging, but I hope there's something else in the future from the author!
gooseyman 3y ago
I too have really enjoyed - thank you author! Your curiosities and resulting blow posts really appealed to me as they were questions and things I would want to know. The breath in unconditioned spaces freezing, the fuel storage, planes landing, power generation. Awesome topics! Kudos and respect.

jedberg 3y ago

I hate the cold, I don't like being in snow for more than a few days at a time. But if I were single I would seriously consider applying for a winter-over at the pole based on these blog posts. It just seems so interesting and different.

joshuaheard 3y ago

"going through 14 months of accumulated postal mail" As an extended traveller myself, I've found mail forwarding services to be indispensable. They scan your postal mail and email you the image. You can forward original documents to your current location, and have them cash your checks (although I do everything electronic now). If you move around a lot, like for work, one benefit is that you get to keep the same mailing address. I have used VirtualPostMail and PostScanMail, but there are many out there.

jcranmer 3y ago
To be fair, forwarding mail to yourself at the South Pole, which doesn't receive deliveries of any kind for half the year, isn't necessarily an improvement. See also the blog author's previous post on the topic (https://brr.fyi/posts/mcmurdo-postal-mail https://brr.fyi/posts/mcmurdo-postal-mail).
- poulsbohemian 3y ago
  I could be wrong, but I believe at least some of these services forward them to you electronically for exactly that reason…
- mkl 3y ago
  > They scan your postal mail and email you the image.

anthk 3y ago

Back in the day there was an open officialish IRC channel from the Antartica researchers. Sadly I missed that. Also, on the limited connection they have, mosh and IRC among mail/nntp could be life savers for comms as they can be slow and unrealiable. If they work under mosh against a public Unix server they could discuss nearly anything. On images, Imagemagick can do dithering magick and save lots of bytes under a JPG/PNG format with 256 colours. Also, if the goal is to send data even with connection cuts, nncp can resume data packets on the fly until it finishes.

cozzyd 3y ago
I routinely ssh into my experiment at the south pole during satellite windows. I just use tmux on the other end...
- cdelsolar 3y ago
  How is the latency as you type?
  - cozzyd 3y ago
    Same as any non-LEO satellite link (probably like, O(700 ms) latency? About the same as our experiments in Greenland...). Not great, but fine for administration and light vimming. The worst was when I had to update some py2 to py3 code after a system was updated, and there was no way to test except on the South Pole machine. The places where bytes vs. strings bite you when dealing with serial devices are plentiful...
    - anthk 3y ago
      With mosh you can even resume connections after disconnecting but without losing interaction with the target machine as it happens under SSH. Also, it will use far less bandwidth. I tried it with 2G/ISDN-DSL like speeds and it worked great. And you can keep using tmux just in case. On the "caveats", you need UTF8 support in the client machine, but today that's granted.

OldGuyInTheClub 3y ago

Youtuber Joe Spins the Globe has many interesting videos from his winterover ~2021. I think he's a medic. Playlist below includes a three-part tour of the South Pole Station and interviews with scientists and staff. "Different world" doesn't begin to cover it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaectJyCeIU&list=PLFWX3wT095-NndlBrzlR4muHtnfPA6eZM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaectJyCeIU&list=PLFWX3wT095...

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nektro 3y ago

top notch domain name

andyjohnson0 3y ago

I re-read Kim Stanley Robinson's novel Antarctica a couple of months ago. Characters in the book refer to leaving Antarctica as "going back to the world". To me it seems like it might be similar to returning from another planet. I wish I'd had that experience. (Good book, btw. Recommended.)

tommymanstrom 3y ago

One of my favorites found here, interesting and fun. Looking forward for the last tidbits :)