Posts from — August 2008

Bridget Kendall, BBC diplomatic correspondent, has an interesting piece, Russia’s neighbours go their own way, that is rather surprising to me in many ways.

I’m going to be putting up some pieces on the creative cartography of the Soviets, and some of the reasoning behind it. Unlike the map drawing done by the Europeans after the First World War, many of these quirks were not simple ignorance, but designed specifically to cause problems, rather than resolve them.

Keith at Invisible Library reminded me of one of my favorite comedy bits: Eddie Izzard’s Cake or Death routine performed with Legos.

Position: 29.3 N 81.4 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: West [270°] near 3 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph.
Wind Gusts: 70 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 175 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 994 mb.

It is 25 miles Northwest of Daytona Beach, Florida, and dumping buckets of rain wherever it goes. It’s chasing the ‘gators and snakes to higher ground.

There was a question in comments about “Netiquette” that I thought needed to be addressed because people seem more than a little confused. The topic is covered by RFC 1855 which predates the use of HTTP, the “World Wide Web”.  [The World Wide Web is a segment of the Internet, not its entirety.  It is one of about two dozen protocols that are used on the network.]

As the question was about an HTML page, the authoritative answer would have to come from W3.org and their Mark-up Language standards.

The problem is the question was really about “style” and not function, and there is no widely accepted manual of style for Web pages. Actually, that really is one of the points of the Web, you can “do your own thing”.

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The site will be down for a few minutes beginning at 3PM CDT for a software upgrade.

External factors prevented more notice because it needs to be done, and I need to do several other things that I have put off because of uncertainty over Fay.

Update: Done with only a minor glitch, that I will have to investigate.

Position: 28.9 N 80.5 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: Nearly Stationary.
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph.
Wind Gusts: 65 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 140 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 994 mb.

It is 35 miles Southeast of Daytona Beach, Florida. It now just off the coast which restricts development in normal storms. The water along the coast has cooled because of the runoff, rain, and cloud cover, but nothing about Fay can be assumed.

There are unofficial reports of 22 inches of rain having fallen at one location just to the Northwest of Melbourne, Florida.

Fortunately the Shuttles will float, so there’s no need for Arks, and the hatching baby turtles will be able to swim into the ocean rather than crawling.

These are the results for the computer models, all initialized at the same time this morning. To say that the models can’t figure this storm out is an understatement. This thing will be studied for a long time, but there is fortunately a lot of data available to look at.

Update: because I couldn’t resist:

I have long complained about the media practice of sending some poor schlub out into the rain and winds of storms so the “folks at home” can experience how bad things are. I also complain about the idiots who head to the beach with their boards to “catch the awesome sets” that storms kick up as they approach.

Those people are Nobel Prize material compared this human shaped mildew. Channel 9 has video available so you can see what “Mr. Brilliant” did to himself because he thought kiteboarding in a tropical storm would be a great idea.

Position: 27.7 N 80.7 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: North-Northeast [030°] near 5 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 50 mph.
Wind Gusts: 65 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 140 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 990 mb.

It is 30 miles South-Southwest of Melbourne, Florida.

The pressure has fallen and there is what appears to be an eye forming. This storm is just weird. [Noon]

The wind speed is increasing!  If it gets over Lake Okeechobee this thing could reach hurricane intensity over land! This is not how things are supposed to work. [2 PM]

Dr. Jeff Masters: “Tropical Storm Fay (AKA “The Joker”) is pulling a trick that may be unprecedented–significantly intensifying over land, developing a full eyewall.” [3:09 PM CDT]

Position: 25.3 N 81.9 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: North [360°] near 9 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 60 mph.
Wind Gusts: 70 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 125 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 995 mb.

It is 60 miles South of Naples, Florida.

It currently looks like Naples with be the target as the storm is heading due North.  while the pressure has been dropping, the winds haven’t caught up, so it might be a minimal category 1 when in comes ashore tomorrow morning, but a burst of intensification is looking less likely given the current windshear conditions.

After landfall the steering becomes confused, which is why the models are showing solutions that are from West to East.  Very weird.

It would appear that the Russian version of what was going on in South Ossetia that was used to justify their sending in troops, doesn’t seem to match the evidence.

What a surprise.

I own LPs with two of these on them. Actually, almost all of the songs I post are things I have in my own record collection, or I played on one of my college radio shows.

A cappella

Instrumental

Mixed on multiple levels

Here’s a little Georgian music to start off this rant about stupid people getting people killed for no good reason.

Saakashvili looks in the mirror and associates his self-image with this music, but this music is closer to the truth.

“Uncle Billy” Sherman knew something about war, and he only tried what Saakashvili did once. Joe Johnston showed him the error of his ways and he learned not to announce his target to his opponent. If your opponent knows what you are going to attack they can plan their defense in great detail.

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Position: 21.4 N 80.6 W. [10 PM CDT]
Movement: Northwest [305°] near 10 mph.
Maximum sustained winds: 50 mph.
Wind Gusts: 65 mph.
Tropical Storm Wind Radius: 105 miles.
Minimum central pressure: 1001 mb.

It is currently 235 miles South-Southeast of Key West, Florida and 170 miles Southeast of Havana, Cuba.

The pressure is dropping, the movement is irratic, and it is slowing.  It may be getting ready to turn.  Dr. Masters has been calling this storm “The Joker” because it doesn’t do what you think it is going to do.  The models keep whipping back and forth across the Gulf.

At 10PM it looks like it’s turning.