Year: 2021
Some reflections on 2021
Happy New Year! What a year 2021 has been with the year starting much how 2020 ended. The year was filled with a lot of unexpected twists and turns but also a lot of hope and optimism.
The Red Mill
The Red Mill located in Clinton, New Jersey all decked out for the holidays.
The most frequently used emojis in 2021
Emojis are great way to express emotions and feelings through online messaging. It may even make you appear friendlier when you use them, even at work.
According to the Unicode Consortium, 92% of people use emojis in their digital communications.
The Consortium, a not-for-profit organization responsible for digitizing the world’s languages, analyzed the most frequently used emojis over the past year.
The rankings for newer emojis (less than a year) many not be as accurate since they have had less time to sort out among older emojis. Over time, the newer emojis may become more or less popular than its current position.
The most popular emoji worldwide is the Tears of Joy emoji (😂), which, according to the Consortium, accounts of 5% all emoji use.
When each country begins listening to Christmas music
Millions of people around the world listen to Christmas music around the holidays.
Depending on where you live, you may start listening as early as the beginning of October or as late as Christmas.
Spotify analyzed when each country’s residents began listening to Christmas music. According to them, a country has officially started listening when Christmas music accounts for more than 2% of all listening.
Most countries, on average, begin listening toward the end of November.
The following table shows when countries around the world begin listening to Christmas music. The earliest country is the Philippines where residents begin listening on October 9. The latest is Uruguay and Argentina where residents begin listening on Christmas Day.
Schenectady Holiday Parade
The Schenectady tree lighting ceremony kicked off the annual Schenectady Holiday Parade. It was a chilly and brisk night, but a huge turnout despite the ongoing pandemic.
The days it snows the most across the Northeast
As the weather turns colder, most lost locations in the Northeast and New England see accumulating snowfall.
Analyzing data from the past 30 years (1990-2020), the following charts indicate how often it snowed at select locations in the Northeast. The numbers indicate how many years out of 30 there was accumulating snowfall on that date.
The data does not indicate trace amounts of snow that fell at the locations. Amounts of 0.4″ or more are considered accumulating snowfall.
Click on a city name to see the days it snows the most at that location. Tap or click a day to see the number of days it has snowed on that date.
Top Halloween costume in each state
Google released its annual findings on the top Halloween costumes people are searching for in each state.
Google Frightgeist ranks costumes based on the top 500 costume searches in the United States. The interactive tool allows people to see each state’s most popular costume and what is trending in their local communities.
The following table shows each state’s most searched costume. See more local data and other top costumes by using Google’s Frightgeist tool.
Waterfalls and Fall Foliage
I have been meaning to get to Thacher Park in Voorheesville. There are so many beautiful spots to take photographs of, one being the Indian Ladder Trail where there are two waterfalls.
The foliage is now post-peak in many spots across the Capital Region, but the colors are still pretty vibrant.
Here are some other photos from the hike:
Jack-O’-Lantern Festival
It was a fun evening at the Hallowed Harvest Jack-O’-Lantern Festival in Altamont, New York. I was curious to see how my iPhone 13 Pro would take pictures in extremely low-light environments. I was really impressed with the quality of the photographs and is comparable with my DSLR.
Overlooking Albany
I shot this from the office overlooking Albany and the Hudson River. I love the cloud pattern and how it contrasts with the sun-setting sky.
Macro Maple Leaf
One of my favorite parts about fall is seeing the vibrant colors of the leaves. The beautiful colors are a sign of change, a part of life that many of us fight due to how sometimes uncomfortable it can be.
This is why I love fall because it is a visible reminder that nothing in life is permanent. I saw this maple leaf on a park table and was experimenting with my iPhone 13 Pro’s macro lens. It captured the details and color of the leaf, something that could be missed when looking from afar.
Vibrant Orange Leaves
This one tree near my house has always had vibrant colors in the fall. Last year, I was not able to grab a shot of this tree due to how quickly the leaves fell off the tree. I learned the hard way that you should always have your camera in case you come across a photographic moment.
In fact, the same thing happened this year. A week after I shot this photo, the tree was completely bare.