Nola.com: NewsFlash – Poor New Orleans neighborhood floods again
As many as 500,000 people in southwestern Louisiana, many of them already displaced by Hurricane Katrina, were told to evacuate. And for those who refused to leave, Gov. Kathleen Blanco advised: “Perhaps they should write their Social Security numbers on their arms with indelible ink.”
That’s not a comforting thought.
Seriously people, stay safe.
I upgraded my Gallery to version 2.0. It seems really slick, and is supposedly more themable than the older version. Check it out.
Josh mentioned this Houston blogger as one of those who is going to remain in his home and ride out the storm. I’ll be checking in from time to time to see how its going. Jkotr also mentioned Stormwatchers, a blog for Houston area bloggers who are similarly riding out the storm.
Good luck everyone. Stay safe.
Addendum: Traffic is apparently really bad leaving the Houston. You can click on the image at the right to get live traffic cam views. I45 North seems bad.
How about a plastic bunny that waggles his ears when you get mail? Or you can use it to send instant message. Or songs. Via Wifi. It’s… just… so impossibly useless.
I need one.
I’m always on the lookout for new blogs to read. Unfortunately, it is often hard to find blogs that are interesting. I suspect that is because most of the blogs that I find interesting are in the long tail, rather than the short head, and search engines rely on the short head.
For instance, witness the Top 100 Blogs as listed by Technorati. How many of these blogs are actually of interest to me?
And that’s it for the top 100.
I guess popular blogs aren’t all that popular with me.
Well, it’s hardly surprising, given that you can (with a little effort) stand them on end pretty much every day of the year. But today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day features Bad Astronomy’s Phil Plait demonstrating that egg stability seems to be unphased by changes in the seasons.
Still, today marks the beginning of fall. If I was in someplace that actually had seasons, I’d be watching the leaves turn. No such luck.
Addendum: Bad Astronomy has a blog too.
Why do all my pictures look like bad security cam footage?
Well, Adam doesn’t read my blog, but today is his birthday. Happy Birthday, Kiddo. His girlfriend is coming into town this weekend, so we’ll be holding off on the celebration mostly till then.
The milestones of life just keep tickin’ by….
I know, bashing Microsoft is becoming a theme with me over the last few weeks, but I keep reading stuff on the news and blogs, and I can’t help but comment.
Today’s big news is that Microsoft is reorganizing: here is their press release.
There has been criticism of late from both inside and outside that Microsoft simply isn’t very innovative. It’s big. It’s bloated. It’s less profitable. Groups within Microsoft find it nearly as baffling to navigate their hierarchy as customers do when they call for support.
Now, a reorganization. It’s probably needed. But ask yourself: look back on all the announced reorganizations of all the companies you’ve ever dealt with in the past. How many have really enhance your relationship with them as a customer? How many have actually rejuvanated the company into releasing better products?
The fact is that dancing is done by lithe young people who don’t eat very much, not by lumbering pachyderms. I’m simply not convinced you can teach an elephant to dance, and you can’t change the facts: Microsoft is an elephant.
The gents at Forever Geek were saddened to think that they didn’t have one of those little 80×15 buttons to link to their site, so they used a button maker to generate one. So did I.
Feel free to download it, and use it to link back to me. 🙂
This news item caught my eye:
Intel claims ultra low power breakthrough
Mmmm. Moore’s law continues it’s march to the future.
A classic of puzzles (most of which I would call only marginally mathematical) Amusements In Mathematics, by Henry Ernest Dudeney. has been made available via Project Gutenberg. Lots of puzzles having to do with geometric dissection, board games, and a host of other topics. Very nice.
I mused about a retro-style game console in today’s podcast, and over lunch I found xgamestation.com, who manufactures a simple video game system which is obviously inspired by the same ideas:
Imagine understanding how video game systems are designed and developed at an engineer’s level. Imagine writing your own games for a piece of hardware you’re personally capable of building. This isn’t a field trip to the factory — this is decades of video game hardware development boot camp compressed into a single product designed to upgrade your brain and take you to the next level of skill and understanding. It was estimated that only 100-200 people on the entire planet understood the workings of the legendary Atari 2600 and its design. What if you could design machines like this and beyond?
Nifty.
It uses the Ubicom SX52 chip, which is an interesting choice. The chips run fast enough that they support the idea of virtual peripherals, and are quite inexpensive. Far too inexpensive to really justify the $199.00 pricetag of the xgamestation, but still, there are probably some good ideas hidden in this.
Logged for later consumption.
Today’s podcast recaps a bunch of topics which have floated to the top of my conciousness: a recap of last night’s baseball game, my experience in programming the old Atari 2600 video console, what it might mean to have a video game console which promoted consumer experimentation and programming, some musings about Field Programmable Gate Arrays, and just a general recap.
Enjoy.