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10K Miles: 10K Trees – REACH GREEN Virtual Challenge

In October 2025 I took part in the 10K Miles: 10K Trees Virtual Challenge which was organized by Reach Green.

Here’s an excerpt from a post on October 16th, 2025:

Every mile logged in the 10K Miles: 10K Trees Challenge plants a tree and builds community. The early success of the 10K Miles: 10K Trees Virtual Challenge has done more than exceed expectations, it has validated REACH GREEN’s mission. We set out to prove that when people are given a way to take meaningful environmental action that feels relevant, accessible, and achievable within their everyday lives, they respond.

This month-long challenge invites the REACH GREEN community to collectively log 10,000 miles by October 31. If we reach that goal, we’ll fund the planting of 10,000 trees through our partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation, REACH GREEN’s first beneficiary. Each mile logged represents a tangible step toward a healthier, more resilient planet, and the restoration of North Carolina’s endangered longleaf pine forests through our first collaborative project.

I was a little skeptical but I figured I was going to ride my bike anyway so why not join in and contribute. I love trees!

I’m not really a competitive person. I mean, I occasionally set goals for myself, but I’m not out to beat anyone. It was fun to watch the stats though, and I was usually between 9th and 12th place in the standings. October was amazing for bike riding. Not too hot, but still warm outside. I rode to work 15 days in October (often talking a longer route home) and was doing longer rides on the weekends.

In the end I came in 9th place (out of 226) with 26 hours of riding and 306.536 miles. Not too shabby! Since I was riding to work that also means it was just over 200 miles where I did not drive a car to and from work, so there’s a double-win there since I burned less gasoline and created less carbon emission from the car.

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Your RasterWeb! Wrapped!

This year you’ve visited RasterWeb! at least once… right now!

We don’t know if you’ve visited before, read any posts, subscribed via RSS, or bookmarked or shared anything.

Because we don’t track that shit.

We disabled analytics years ago, because we don’t need Google tracking you or running their trackers on this site.

It just doesn’t matter.

Sure, numbers and stats are fun to look at, but we don’t care that much. (We can always look at the server log files with Analog but honestly we’ve been too lazy to set it up again.)

We don’t rely on advertisements to run this site. Besides a normal day job we’ve got a side business that usually makes enough to cover the server costs. (Need a controller?)

You can learn more about the data we collect from you on the Privacy Policy page. It’s not much.

Well, thanks for stopping by to check out your “wrapped” for RasterWeb! We’ll leave you with a fun quote from The Prisoner:

“I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”

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The Book of Pete

There’s a very good chance I’m going to die. Hopefully not soon, but you never know. At the end of every calendar year my body breaks down, it gives up. Usually I end up doing physical therapy, some doctor visits, and either end up in the emergency room or urgent care, and each time I learn about a new way my body is failing me.

The recent death of Rob Reiner is just another reminder that when you die, people look to your work and the kind of person you were, and hopefully they think fondly of you and what you brought into the world. So many have spoken so kindly about Reiner. My introduction to his work was Spinal Tap. I’m pretty sure it was my friend Milt who showed up with a VHS copy of it and said “Dude, we gotta watch this!” and it was glorious. We even went to see Spinal Tap when they came to play in Milwaukee.

But, back to me and my failing body… When my cat Tink passed away in 2021, it hit me hard. She played a huge role in getting me through 2020 when I faced a pandemic, job loss, job change, another job change, and going through therapy. That cat remained a constant loving companion to me, and writing and reading about her comforted me greatly. You can see what I wrote in The Tinkerbell Pamphlet. I’ve advised others to write about their pets after they’ve passed away, and I hope it helped.

Besides the cats, I have a loving partner, and other family members I will leave behind. There’s a chance some of them do not know me as much as they would like to (or have liked to) because in many ways I am a closed person. Sure, I’ve been publishing since the 1980s but like any good publisher I don’t share everything. I also do a lot of weird things my family and (many) friends don’t really understand. (And that’s okay!)

While “blogging” at it’s start was very much about sharing your opinion about things on the (new) World Wide Web, I have an archive that starts in 1997 and goes on to today. It’s not the greatest writing, it’s not groundbreaking, but it is mine. And my hope after I’m gone is that the site gets hosted long enough for the people who knew me and cared about me get a chance to explore it. To see what I thought, what I did, what I made, the images I created, the weird music and videos I shared with the world. This web site is, for lack of a better term, “The Book of Pete”.

I don’t want this to be dark, because I want to keep living for a few more decades, but I also want to encourage others to view blogging as a legacy they can leave behind. You’ll make mistakes, you’ll get things wrong, but if you use those failings as opportunities to learn and grow, then I think that’s pretty cool.

There are people having the conversation about what happens to your digital footprint once you are gone, and how it can/should be maintained or preserved or archived, and it’s not something I’ve dug into yet, but in the grand scheme everything is ephemeral. We as people, our work, our digital output… it all fades away in time.

And I guess I’m looking for a way to make it last a little bit longer.

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NeoPixel Bike Light V2

About a month ago I posted about my first NeoPixel Bike Light but I’ve also been working on a newer version, and also got distracted along the way, but came up with a compact version, well, two versions. Here’s the first one.

I designed five parts that were then 3D printed, and added in a thin sheet of 0.04″ thick PET plastic.

It’s all held together with four button head screws in the corners. This back cover is plain (and white!) but I have something else in store for an upgrade coming soon.

There are two Micro USB ports on the side, one for charging and one for programming. I don’t love that they are exposed so that’s something I’ll work on in a future version.

Let’s look inside! There’s a 8×8 NeoPixel panel, a microcontroller, a charge controller, and a lithium battery. Here are the parts:

Let’s talk about the parts!

I never really build electronic things that use LiPo batteries and chargers, so this is somewhat new to me. For this project the LED panel sort of sets the X and Y dimensions, so I chose a battery that would be smaller than the panel. The batteries were a 4-pack but ended up being less than $5 USD each. The TP4056 Charging Modules come out to less than $0.75 USD each. They may not be the best, but they work. (Don’t forget to add a diode, though!) The ones I got were Micro USB but there are also USB-C versions. That’s our power sorted… oh, add a switch to make it a real project!

The LED Matrix comes in a two-pack for $11 so it’s about $5.50 for one. It’s a nice panel, seems to work well, and you only need to solder three wires to it. The mounting holes are in the middle of the PCB, not on the corners, which is fine. I just made pegs in my 3D printed part that it can snap onto.

Now, that Pi Pico. There are obviously smaller boards. I do prefer an RP2040 board nowadays if I can use one, and I usually have a few dozen Pi Pico boards in the shop. Alternately if you did want really small and maybe USB-C the Seeeduino XIAO 2040 would work great, though they often cost a lot more than a $4 USD Pi Pico. (Depending on where and how you get them.)

The The Waveshare RP2040-Zero is another small and cheap option. There are a ton of knock-off clones of that board under $4 USD each, but Waveshare is a good company worth supporting.

Hey, it lights up! You can program patterns or whatever. This one just does a “lime” color for reasons.

It’s fairly compact. I could make it slightly smaller (in fact, that’s in progress right now!)

So this is what I call “Pocket Light 1.0” which is an old Adafruit Circuit Playground. I got two of the “Classic” or “Developer Edition” board a long time ago, I think for super cheap. Anyway, they have built-in NeoPixels, can be programmed, and run with an attached LiPo battery. I was dropping this into the pocket of my hi-vis vest for a little extra light when riding my bike in the dark of winter.

So here’s the light! In my pocket, shining bright. I’m mostly pleased with how it turned out, but also know there are improvements to make, and I can do better, so I will.

This post was too long, but I have more so I’ll expand on things in another post.

Note: This post may contain Affiliate Links. Read More.

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50 Bike to Work Days

On Thursday, August 7th, 2025 I (e)biked to work using an ebike I borrowed from my friend Matt… and I was hooked.

Less than a month later I got my own darn ebike and kept biking to work. In fact, one of the primary reasons I got the ebike was to bike to work. (I mean, I am also old, have knee issues, and do not like going uphill.)

It’s now the end of November and I’ve rode to work (and back home) 50 times. That’s 50 bike rides to and from work in less than four months. That’s 25 hours fewer hours I spent sitting in a car in traffic, waiting, dealing with aggressive drivers, and just… being bored. (Driving can be pretty boring.)

That’s 25 more hours I spent outside, and probably another 25 hours in addition because while the ride is a little bit longer by bike, I also would leave early or come home late because I just wanted to keep riding.

That’s also 650 miles I did not drive my car, and instead, was on a bike, outside, often on the Oak Leaf Trail, seeing nature at a slower pace. I ride next to the river, I see rabbits and deer and people leisurely walking their dogs or kids playing soccer or runners or other cyclists.

Money-wise it’s probably still under $100 USD in gas that I’ve saved, but that’s fine. There’s also less wear and tear on the car since I didn’t drive it the days I biked.

Driving would normally take me 15 to 20 minutes depending on traffic, stop lights, etc. Biking takes me about 24 minutes if I really pedal hard, and 28 to 30 minutes if I go more leisurely or have to wait to cross busy roads.

And, none of that even mentions the good it does in the way of mental health or physical fitness. Granted, I am riding an ebike, so I can take it a little easier if I want, and sometimes I do, but other times I will pedal hard and get a good workout… but I also won’t kill myself. My knee doesn’t like that, and ultimately, I’m commuting, not racing.

My bike thinks I’ve burned 12,253 kcal and saved 231 kg of carbon emission. Cool! I’ve got my winter gear mostly sorted and I’ll see how much longer I can keep riding during the cold winter months.