webtrail Brian · My field notebook for trails and the web
Me on a rock below a snow-dusted ridge, looking out across the glen
Field notebook

Walk it yourself.

Trails through the open web.

Trails · newest first

Recent trails in the web and nature

NREL map titled "Data Center Infrastructure in the United States, 2025", showing US data center locations as yellow, orange and white circles sized by demand capacity in megawatts over the electric transmission and fiber optic networks, with dense clusters around northern Virginia, Dallas, Phoenix and Atlanta.
8 stops · 6 September 2026

AI Data Centers: What the Numbers Say, and Who Made Them
Two women operating the ENIAC computer around 1946: one stands at the left-hand control panel while the other adjusts a bank of switches and patch cables on the machine, in a room lined with equipment racks.

The Psychology of Software Development in the AI Era

7 stops · 4 September 2026 A woman in a blue jacket and cap, seen from behind, carries a blue-and-white daypack up a rocky sunlit desert trail through dry brush toward a low ridge under a clear sky.

Day Hiking, Properly Equipped: Kit and Skills That Matter

3 stops · 3 September 2026 Photographer Dorothea Lange sitting on the roof of her 1933 Ford station wagon at the side of a California road in 1936, holding a large-format camera, the car door open beside her and a bare hillside behind.

Find your best travel camera

4 stops · 16 August 2026
All 4 trails
From the catalog

Stops worth the detour

Reusable stops from the catalog. Each one has a page of its own, and the trails it was walked on.

See the whole catalog →

Synergy Research Group article datelined Reno, NV, March 19 2025, headlined 'Hyperscale Data Center Count Hits 1,136; Average Size Increases; US Accounts for 54% of Total Capacity,' with a bar chart of operational hyperscale data centers rising from about 430 in Q4 2017 to 1,136 in Q4 2024 under a yellow growth arrow, beside a pie chart splitting Q4 2024 capacity between the United States at 54 percent, China 16, Europe 15, rest of APAC 10 and rest of world 5 AI datacenters

Synergy Research's 2024 Hyperscale Data Center Capacity Count

In AI Data Centers: What the Numbers Say, and Who Made Them arXiv abstract page for 'Concentrated siting of AI data centers drives regional power-system stress under rising global compute demand', submitted 13 March 2026 by Danbo Chen and five co-authors, with an abstract reporting Power Stress Index values above 0.25 for Oregon, Virginia and Ireland against more absorbent grids in Texas and Japan AI datacenters

AI Data Center Siting and Regional Power-Grid Stress, on arXiv

In AI Data Centers: What the Numbers Say, and Who Made Them OSTI.GOV bibliographic record for the technical report 'United States Data Center Energy Usage Report: 2025 Update,' dated 18 June 2026, listing eight Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory authors, an abstract projecting data centers at 11.8% of US electricity by 2030, a green 'View Technical Report' button, and a details table naming LBNL as research organization and three USDOE offices as sponsors AI datacenters

Berkeley Lab's 2025 US Data Center Energy Usage Report on OSTI.GOV

In AI Data Centers: What the Numbers Say, and Who Made Them Screenshot of the PMC page for the Patterns journal article on data center carbon and water footprints by Alex de Vries-Gao, showing the NIH/NLM header, the Cell Press Patterns banner, the December 2025 citation with DOI and PMCID, the title and author byline, and a right-hand sidebar with View on publisher site, PDF, Cite, Collections and Permalink actions. AI datacenters

A Peer-Reviewed Look at AI Data Centers' Water and Carbon Footprints

In AI Data Centers: What the Numbers Say, and Who Made Them
Six black and white pictures of Brian — three at a keyboard from 2000 to 2025, three on trails in Scotland and Switzerland
Keyboards on the left, trails on the right. 2000 to 2025.
Hello

I walk, kayak, bike and build tools.

Webtrail is my notebook.

By day I work as a senior consultant and help customers improve their IT landscape. In my free time I build PackLite for hikers. The content comes out of a small content factory I run on the side.

Someone walked this path before you.

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An orange tent under fresh snow at the edge of a pine forest
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Behind the catalog

honestfactfactory

The factory that researches and writes every stop here. No front door, on purpose.