Is San Juan Island the sunniest location in western Washington?

While waiting for the ferry in Friday Harbor, I passed some time at the window of a local real-estate agent, entertained by ads for houses I will never be able to afford (unless someone buys a few hundred thousand of my books!). In some of their literature, there was the claim that the San Juan's were "sun central" for western Washington with more than 240 days of sunshine a year! And looking around on the web, I found that claim repeated on many web sites. Earlier that day I hiked around Lime Kiln Park, on the south shore of the the island and looked southward at the Olympics. It was sunny and warm, the prairie around me sandy and dry. Miles to the south, low clouds had moved through the Strait, and Port Angeles, Sequim, and Pt Townsend were in clouds. I wondered...could the sunniest place in western Washington be where I was standing?


Well, the traditional answer to the sunniest location in western Washington question has been Sequim and adjacent areas--locations downstream of the Olympics during the winter. During our wet season the winds are generally from the southwest, so air moves up the SW flanks of the Olympics (enhancing clouds and precip) and down the NE side (producing drying and less clouds). You can see this effect clearly in satellite imagery (see first image above) and the Camano Island weather radar. The San Juans, and particularly the southern San Juans, get some of this Olympics action, but they are clearly on the northern edge of the downslope drying. I suspect a quantitative analysis would show that Sequim and nearby towns are sunnier during midwinter than anywhere else in western Washington. And this explains Sequim's SunLand Condominium, Sunshine RV Park, and Sunshine Herb and Lavender Farm, among hundreds of other sun-related business names.

But hold on there! The climatological winds are only southwesterly during midwinter and during the spring and summer the incoming winds are often from the west and northwest . And there's more! There is another topographic barrier that has a rainshadow--the mountains of Vancouver Island. And with westerly flow the rain shadow from it is centered right over the western San Juans...and NOT Sequim and its fellow travelers. Take a look at the satellite picture this morning( above)...can you see the lack of clouds over San Juan Island? While Sequim is in clouds. This happens ALL the time in the late spring and summer.

So what is the bottom line here? Sequim is rainshadowed and sun endowed during the winter, but the San Juan's get a lesser piece of this action. During the warm half of the year, San Juan Island gets rainshadowed by Vancouver Island and escapes all the gunk passing through the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Thus San Juan Island could be sunnier than Sequim during the summer.

It may well be that considering the whole year that southern San Juan Island and Lopez could be as sunny or sunnier than Sequim.

This could be calculated more quantitatively using satellite imagery, but at this point I will be content to let the real estate agents battle it out!

Running Down the Odds

2 to 3: A Superhero based movie becomes the highest grossing individual film of all time within the next decade.

2 to 1: within 3 years, there will be a movie starring either Steven Seagal, Wesley Snipes or Jean Claude Van Damme released direct to DVD called Death Panel.

5 to 2: At some point in the next 3 years (if it hasn't come to pass already) someone will make a pornographic movie featuring a parody of either Billy Mays or Vince Offer.

3 to 1: One of the celebutards (Lohan, Hilton, Richie etc) gets indicted for fraud or some other financial related manner within the next decade.

4 to 1: Someone receives a lead actor Oscar for playing a comic book superhero within the next decade.

6 to 1: A major film critic or other cultural leader declares that indeed a video game that was released for a console was worthy of being called art within this console generation.

7 to 1: A movie based on a comic book wins for best picture in the next 15 years.

10 to 1: A new cable channel is founded in the next decade which shows only mashups and other materials which are of questionable copyright status.

18 to 1: Video gaming becomes so mainstream that within 5 years there will either be An Apprentice-style reality show for a job at a hot studio, or a video game playing competition series on a major network (which includes one of the surging cable networks).

25 to 1: In the next decade, all of the following films are remade: Casablanca, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shawshank Redemption, Dementia 13, The Breakfast Club, The Ten Commandments and Easy Rider.

40 to 1: A movie will be made and released for wide distribution of a human being filming their entire life with some form of cybernetic camera within the next 15 years.

100 to 1: A major A-list celebrity will murder another A-list celebrity within the next 15 years.

200 to 1: There will be three major motion pictures made from the work of Terry Pratchett within the next decade and a half.

400 to 1: Someone will film a fictional war movie during the next major American war on the ground while it is happening.

1000 to 1: A reality show wins an Emmy for Best Drama.

2000 to 1: A series is filmed entirely on an airplane in flight within the next 10 years.

3000 to 1: Jack Thompson becomes a lobbyist FOR the gaming industry.

8000 to 1: Uwe Boll produces a feature length movie that is nominated for an Oscar.

140000 to 1: Uwe Boll writes and directs a feature length film that wins an Oscar.

3 million to 1: Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton are nominated for Oscars in the same year.

50 million to 1: 3 reality show stars win the top prize in a lottery.

500 trillion to 1: Uwe Boll wins the lotto after winning an Oscar for his adaptation of Lumines and subsequently marries and divorces the Academy Award winning leading lady in that epic, Paris Hilton, after she goes to medical school and cures herpes.

1 googolplex to 1: I somehow discover the secret of the Infinite Improbability Engine and making all these things within the realm of possibility in the same year.

A well earned retirement for the SOAP Search API

There’s a time for everything in life: a time for playing, learning & growing up; a time for maturing, working & performing, and a time for retiring, relaxing & handing the reigns over to the next generation. This is true for products too, and this is why, six months ago, we announced our Labs program for Google Code. This program provides clear distinction between graduate developer products where you’ll find mature products with transparent deprecation policies which you can count on for the long run, and labs developer products where you can explore our newest products and get started with them early.

As we also said in that announcement, the time has come for the SOAP Search API to retire – the new generation is around, has graduated, and has largely taken over already as a better and more versatile solution for the vast majority of use cases. In the spirit of our deprecation policies, we’ve continued to support the SOAP Search API since its deprecation in 2006, but we wanted to remind you that it is finally sunsetting. That had been planned for today, but we thought we'd give the few of you still using it another week to be prepared, so we'll be shutting it down on September 7th instead.

By Eric Tholomé, Director, Developer Products

San Juan Islands Weather

San Juan Island prairie (top) and lavender farm (bottom)

I just got back from giving some lectures in the San Juans and if any place has localized weather features...it is there. The complex combination of terrain and water caused large weather variations, as does the proximity to the Olympic and Vancouver Island rainshadows.
First, there are large variations in annual precipitation. The southern portions of San Juan Island and Lopez get around 20 inches a year due to their proximity to the Olympic rainshadow, while the northern SJuan Island (say northern Orcas) gets around 30 inches, with more on Mt. Constitution and the higher terrain. Lavender likes dry conditions, so there is no surprise that a large lavender farm is found on southern San Juan Island (Pelindaba lavender farm). With dry conditions, wind, and sandy soils, southern SJ Island even has natural prairies (see image above).

Wind variations are huge there. Blockage by the terrain causes "wind shadows" in their lee. Locations (such as Mt. Constitution on the NE side of the islands get hit by the strong wintertime northeasterlies exiting the Fraser River valley. While I was kayaking one morning on the eastern side of the Orcas I was struck by the strong wind accelerations near even modest points and headlands. During the wintertime, strong southeasterlies can buffet the islands (particularly the eastern portions)...winds that are accelerated by troughing (low pressure) to the lee (north) of the Olympics. In fact, when I hiked a bit on the top of Mt. Constitution (2500ft) I could see trees that had fallen in two directions...to the SE (from the Fraser flow) and to the NW (from the strong wintertime southeasterlies).

I found lots of well-educated weather enthusiasts on the San Juans and appreciated the invitation of the San Juan Nature Institute and the San Juan County Dept of Emergency Management . And two very nice book stores--Darvill's Books (Orcas) and Griffin Bay Books (Friday Harbor) graciously attended my lecture with my NW weather books. I left signed copies at both of them.

Editorial comment: Yesterday, I went to Lime Kiln park to view the Orcas...and was not disappointed. Viewed at least a dozen of these magnificent creatures. But I was shocked that both pleasure boaters and some fishing vessels ran just offshore revving their engines and making a terrible racket as they banged repeatedly into the water. Couldn't they stay offshore to allow the poor Orcas a chance? And then a helicopter came in low and circled over them, followed by a twin-engine aircraft that came in for a look. This cacaphony can't be good for the whales, can it? The whale watching boats were out their too....shadowing the orcas...but they seems a bit more discreet than the others.

Sunday Video: A Porno I would Watch for the Jokes

OK, this one is a little weird for me, but aside from the title and a little bit of swearing, this is safe for work.

This week, Semaj wrote an entry regarding a list that the Huffington Post put together of recent pornographic movies that were based on sitcoms, one of which was a Triple X version of 30 Rock, and you know what... I actually want to see it because for the most part, it seems they sort of went for towards actually trying to make it funny. I don't want to see the sex so much as I want to see actual plot and writing (wow, that look weird in writing).

I mean, the dude playing Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy really sounds like him, while Bishop, who plays the character based on Tracy Morgan/Jordan, seems to really run with the character too. It is like they actually thought this whole thing through and tried to make something that is almost an homage to the show (granted, it could be like most other movie trailers where the best parts are shown).

Of course, even from this nudity free trailer, there is some porn acting (Amy Reid, I am looking at you). And that dude who is playing the character based on Pete/Scott Adsit has hair that is just messed up. I mean, if you are in for a penny for something like this, you should be in for a pound. OK, my commitment to verisimilitude in parodies is a little too strident I admit it.

And the woman playing the character based on Tina Fey/Liz Lemon is also the woman who played Sarah Palin in porn, so it is funny how this worked out.

I wonder how Tina Fey feels about all this. I am hoping that she takes it with good humor like Zach Braff did about the Scrubs XXX movie this same company produced.

Tags: 30 rock, huffington post, xxx, liz lemon, tina fey, scott adsit, alec baldwin, porn, jack donaghy, pete hornberger, kenneth, bishop, parody, black to the future

Week 16: Pageant of the Transmundane

A man in Sweden was arrested for trying to sell some jewels. What? Not bizarre enough for you? How about this added fact: the man who the goods were offered to was a jeweler whose house had been broken into the previous night, and those gems were in fact, his property. Naturally the nimrods involved got busted. So I guess the moral of the story is to fence things outside of town.

This week's winning entry comes for the blog Turksville, a blog I found through No Smoking In the Skullcave.

The winning entry is something that looks very Victorian, and it is sort of freaky looking to me. It is the front cover of a book. Yes, the book has a title which is risque now, but it is the illustrations that made this entry a winner.

And like last time, I am presenting the Homer Simpson image without commentary, as I want the entry to be seen first, rather than me really indicating what it is.



So congratulations Phil Turk for freaking me out a little bit this week. Not a lot, just a little bit. ;) Here is your badge.



The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Tags: homer simpson, pageant of the transmundane, turksville, pussyland, sweden, jewels, no smoking in the skullcave, victorian

Links of the day

A couple of links of interest today:

• Children and texting: this NYT article looked devices that got kids into texting. This provoked the inevitable discussion of when is young, too young? Here is my 2 cents: texting is a form of communication. We teach children to speak and write, what's wrong with getting them to write short messages at an early age? My kids get to text with abandon. The other day I saw my 5 year old doing something with a device. "I'm messaging." "Who?" "Mummy." Turns out that she was playing with a calculator but the experience of communication was invaluable. When she is a teenager we will long for the days she was willing to communicate by calculator.
• Evidence-based guilt: Andrew Leigh points to two research papers in economics that indicate that the competitive college admissions environment is driving parents to spend more time with the kids in the hope of giving them an advantage. The flip-side implication is that if you aren't doing that you are sabotaging your kid's future. Usual caveats about correlation and causation apply.
  

Smack Down: Me vs. A Troll

It is such a rare thrill for me to have someone hurl invectives at me, so when it happens, well, I respond with great vigor, because frankly, I am an asshole.

Last night, someone was looking for the Discworld MUD and after doing a Yahoo search, they discovered my blog entry regarding what I called a former addiction to online gaming. The person in question was so incensed by what I wrote that they just had to tell me about it, and since such correspondence is such a rare occurrence, well, I just had to share it with you. Of course, you know there will be snide commentary on the whole thing, but I have not changed the spelling, punctuation or grammar of any part of the comment, nor did I edit out any phrase.

It begins with 4 simple words:

Your such a joke.

Coming from someone who is semi-anonymously leaving a message on my blog 3 years after I wrote the post, this really hurts. I mean, how can I go on after this scathing insult. I guess I'll have to manage because you seem to have more to say.

How weak willed and lame can you be to consider yourself addicted to a online game?

Yep, you nailed me right there. I know it isn't heroin or crack, the latter of which you seem to be an addict of, so I am willing to concede that you are in fact the Bob Saget to my Dave Chappelle in this Half Baked scenario. Of course, this means that in the end, I got some sweet lovin' from Rachel True and you, well, you sucked dick for some coke while another dude watched... so I think I win this round.

1 if you skip classes its not cause the game is holding a gun to your head, I have mudded in class and never had it effect anything.

Apparently, you were mudding during those oh so important English classes. Now, I know I am not a grammarian, but wow, proofreading is your friend. Then again, the crack and the anger may have just been getting to you, so I will forgive you, especially since it is generally poor form to criticize someone's (mis)use of language when there are other, more glaring reasons to find fault. In your case, it isn't even the easiest stone to throw.

2 You were having fun, all you needed to do was figure out that you had your whole life to play the game.

Why didn't I think of that? I guess it took your keen insights and condescending tone for me to realize that. I am sure that attitude would go down well at, say, a Gamblers Anonymous meeting. Try it out and tell me how it went. Well, after you have you teeth fixed, because I think someone might hit you for something like that.

It's not like it was gonna run away why you were at class.

That was never my worry, though it is strange that somehow that thought occurred to you. I guess when you act like such a strident asshole, people have a tendency to run away from you at great speed.

3 What the hell is addiction anyway, but a way to make someone feel bad about doing what they like. Discworld mud is a never ending game no matter how much you play, so you can advance to the day you die.

Somehow I have a feeling this subject has been brought up to you before, because really, this is an unhealthy amount of anger. I mean, really, why are you so angry about this very subject? I mean, the phrase touchy comes to mind. Admit it, you are the kid in this video.

There's no reason in playing 8 hours a day, unless you wanted to because it was fun. Addictions come in two ways, mental and physical, physical can be beat by quiting the substances and replacing them with healthy ones. Mental can be beat by you thinking cleary, and if there is something that prohibits you from doing that it can be treated with medication.

At the end, no it wasn't fun. It was a compulsion, so 4-6 hours a day wasn't fun at all. You understand compulsion right? I mean, you felt compelled to leave an angry comment at my blog, and I am sure that it wasn't the first time you had felt the need to do a hit and run blog comment in the heat of the moment. And you notice that I don't do the thing you are ripping on me for anymore. And think about it, with me not playing anymore, well, that is less burden on the server, isn't it? So tell me again, why you are getting so bent out of shape about this? I mean, disproportionately so. I mean, if I was insulting your mother or perhaps slapping a family member around, I could see it, but I am talking about a game that I don't play anymore, a game that I didn't really say anything bad about. What are you really projecting? Oh, I know, you are a Scientologist, and you won't admit it, so you decided to instead lash out at me about this... I mean, what you wrote above sounds like it is right out of their playbook. I mean, that has to be it. No one could be so legitimately upset about something written 3 years ago that has nothing to do with them unless there was some ulterior motive, or they were merely a little dense in the head, but if you are indeed a Scientologist, than that second part is a given.

Since the fact that I wasted my time writing this message, is already starting to annoy me.

It is likely not the first time you and annoyance have been linked. I have a feeling that you and annoyance have a high correlation, especially when other people are involved in that equation. But I do have to tip my hat to you for the effort. I mean, it must have been a lot of work for you putting all those words together. But I do agree that you did waste your time, and it is a good thing that you agree with that sentiment. I am sorry your pitiful attempt at trolling did not gain you the satisfaction you were looking for. Wait, I take that back. I am ecstatic that it failed to meet your meager standard of self-fulfillment.

Hopefully someone will read this,not be bs'd by your crap, and have fun doing what they love whether it be muds, mmorpgs, etc.!

Well, you have a much larger audience then you would have had if I would have just left it alone, but I don't think this is really the way you wanted it presented. Then again, no matter how someone came across your semi-literate stab at profundity, you wouldn't have come off very well. You didn't need any of my help, though I was glad to assist, and maybe someday you will get help for your crack addiction, anger issues, literacy and your adherence to the tenets of the Church of Scientology, but I gravely doubt it.

Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out, because frankly, you might get a concussion based on where your head is currently located.

Tags: troll, scientology, discworld mud, bob saget, half baked, dave chappelle, addiction, gamblers anonymous, cocaine, angry comment, milking it

Midweek Video: Foamy goes off on Comic and Game based movies

A rant after my own heart, though it doesn't have any magical lines like "Mark my words, this lollipop will be up your butt by week's end". I mean, I agree with everything that is said here.

Hey, it needed to be said.

Tags: foamy, ill will press, jonathan ian mathers, neurotically yours, unmentionable auction, rants

Final Results for our Fifth Google Summer of Code

We've just finished collecting final evaluations for our fifth Google Summer of Code, our flagship program to introduce college and university students to Open Source development practices. With nearly 3,000 mentor and student participants this year alone, this global initiative has brought together thousands of developers worldwide for the past five years, all for the love of code. For more details about the final results of Google Summer of Code 2009 and information on when to find the source code produced by this year's crop of students, check out the Google Open Source Blog.

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team

Warm and Dry Ahead

I don't want to hype the heat, but it will be warming up a bit in a few days. But before I talk about that, check out all the action in the Pacific visible satellite image (see image). Two tropical storms over the southern Pacific, a nice midlatitude cyclone in the central north Pacific, low stratus off of California, and thunderstorms over the Colorado Rockies. Something for everyone!

A weak front passed through this morning, but only trace to a few hundreds of an inch of rain fell. As the front moved through skies opened over most of the western side and temperatures rose into the upper 60s and lower 70s today. Tomorrow (Wed) will be a step up in temperature, but Thursday will be the big day as ridging aloft develops and offshore flow strengthens at low levels. So I would expect mid to upper 70s tomorrow and mid-80s over the lowlands (away from water) on Thursday. A weak front will follow on Friday morning...but few if any showers will reach the western interior...although some showers may occur on the coast. The front will bring the temps back into the mid-70s..which is normal for this time of the year.

So nearly perfect weather...you don't need a meteorologist for a while. That is why I am heading to the San Juans to give two public lectures...see info to the right if you are interested.

Several people have asked me what is happening with the coastal weather radar. Well, my colleagues in the National Weather Service and their contractor are hard at work evaluating sites with the aid of some of us at the UW. Work is going well and a report will be made public early this fall with potential sites. But we still need for the remaining money to pass through Congress...and our U.S. Senators are working on this, with the help of our local congressmen. Looks good.

Katherine Heigl may be with Spawn

There are rumors that Katherine Heigl may be pregnant. Seth Rogen is unfortunately not involved, so there will be no laughs (or humility, let's be honest), but somehow she will come up with a way to slam someone a few months down the line because of this. I mean, I am just waiting for her to make a sanctimonious statement about her pregnancy in the same way she has made snide remarks about so many other things and people. Part of me thinks this song was prerecorded just for this occasion, because she is just so smug already, and I don't think we are fully ready for the hell on earth a doubly smug, hormonally charged Katherine Heigl is capable of unleashing.

And you know this baby will be smug too... the only way it could be more smug is if somehow it was secretly fathered by Kanye West. And for those of you who are taking offense to me ripping on a celebrity's hypothetical baby, imagine the lessons such a child would learn from its mother... that baby is going to become the next Paris Hilton or her male equivalent... a kid who feels entitled to everything and expects deference when they haven't earned it.

I mean, Katherine Heigl acts like she is as accomplished as Meryl Streep or something. And when you think about it, even Meryl Streep doesn't act like that, and she's earned that. You don't think Katherine Heigl's hypothetical baby would be a diva, and one we will likely have to hear about for decades.

We're doomed... we are all doomed. Maybe by the time this comes to a head, reality tv will finally have the balls to have a celebrity child version of Battle Royale. OK, I admit that one was a little mean.

P.S. Feel lucky I didn't make a Knocked Up pun in this entry.

Tags: katherine heigl, meryl streep, kanye west, paris hilton, smug, seth rogen, knocked up, stuck up, battle royale, reality tv

The demand and supply of guilt

In the NYT today, an article by John Tierney on guilt and childhood behaviour. It's worth the read. Basically, it argues that there is a demand for guilt in that it assists in developing good social behaviour later on and there are some issues in expanding the supply of guilt from your children.

It is an interesting read; especially, the important distinction between shame and guilt. It also picks up a theme that I wrote about in Parentonomics regarding installing guilt in the utility function to ensure good eating behaviour.

Get Your SVG On: The SVG Open 2009 Conference At Google

At Google we're excited about Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). SVG is an open, browser-based standard that makes it easy to create interactive web graphics with new HTML-like tags such as the CIRCLE tag. We like it because it's part of the HTML 5 family of technologies while being search engine friendly; easy for JavaScript and HTML developers to adopt; exportable from your favorite drawing tools like Adobe Illustrator^TM; and straightforward to emit from server-side systems like PHP and Google App Engine. It's also available in all modern browsers.

As part of our commitment to the Open Web and SVG we are helping to host the SVG Open 2009 conference this fall at our Mountain View campus. The theme this year is SVG Coming of Age. It will be held at the Google Crittenden Campus in Mountain View, California on October 2nd through 4th 2009, with additional workshops on October 5.

Co-sponsored by W3C, the SVG Open conference series is the premier forum for SVG designers, developers, and implementors to share ideas, experiences, products, and strategies. Over 60 presentations will be delivered by SVG experts from all over the world, tackling topics such as design workflows, mobile SVG, Web application development, Web mapping, geo-location based services, and much more.

Two panel discussions will allow the audience to discuss ideas and issues with the W3C SVG Working Group and implementors. Many W3C Members will be participating, including Google, IBM, Mozilla, Opera, Oracle, Quickoffice and Vodafone. The conference schedule and confirmed keynote speakers are now available.

The deadline for early-bird registration is August 31st, so get your registrations in soon! Full-price registration will remain available until October 1, and limited on-site registration may also be available at the registration desk during the conference. The W3C SVG Working Group and W3C's Chris Lilley and Doug Schepers will participate.

A wide range of exciting talks are on the docket. Here's a small sample:

* Ajax Toolkits supporting SVG graphics: Raphaël, dojo, Ample SDK, SVG
Web Project, JSXGraph
* SVG in Internet Explorer and at Google
* Beyond XHTML
* Progress in Opera and Mozilla
* Using Canvas with SVG
* Progress in Inkscape
* Implementors and Panel Sessions
* SVG and OpenStreetmap
* SVG in Wikipedia/Wikimedia
* SVG and ODF
* SVG for Scientific Visualization
* SVG for Webmapping
* SVG for Games
* SVG for Mobile Applications
* SVG Wow - demonstrations of great SVG demos

See you there!

By Brad Neuberg, Google Developer Team

Sunday Video: Weird Video Game Ad

The Japanese make a lot of weird ads, so it makes sense that they would also make some rather strange spots for video games as well.

This ad for God Hand is a perfect example of that. I mean, it has nothing to do with the game, but it is certainly memorable, and with only six seconds of in-game footage, it certainly sells the sizzle rather than the steak.

An ad like this for a mainstream video game would definitely not be acceptable for the North American audience, and I don't mean because it is weird. The spanking would have made it a no-no.

But the weird thing is, even though I don't understand a word that is being said, I get everything that happened (in the context of the commercial).

I also have to respect the game in question... in the first North American trailer, it tells you it is going to kick your ass... and the game is so hard, it actually does.

Tags: god hand, capcom, weird ad, video game ads, japan, japanese, hard game, north america, spanking

Global Warming Misconception II and Two Talks on the San Juan Islands

C02 at Mauna Loa, Hawaii

Global Average Temperature Courtesy of NASA

Well, let me start with the San Juan's first. I have been invited to give two talks there later this week. On Thursday night I will be speaking at the Senior Center, Eastsound, on Orcas at 7 PM and on Friday night at the Grange Hall in Friday Harbor (also 7 PM). These will be "meteorological red meat" talks on the some of the powerful and extreme weather our region endures. The talks will have some common material but will be different. (These talks are sponsored by the San Juan Nature Institute and the San Juan County Dept of Emergency Management).

Now down to global warming. A few comments on this blog and a HUGE number of letters to the letters of local newspapers and online comments have asked the following question:

You say CO2 causes global warming. Well, CO2 has been going up the past ten years and the earth hasn't warmed during that period! Doesn't that mean that the global warming "theory" is wrong? What gives? Some of the more passionate comments go further, talking about liberal conspiracies, Al Gore, hoaxes, and places I don't want to go right now. But reasonable people ask this question...and there is a reasonable (although complex) answer.

Lets start with the data, shown above. Co2 and other greenhouse gases are going up steadily and have been as long as we have had direct measurements. We understand this. Mankind is the culprit. No responsible scientist doubts this. The other figure shows global temperature--generally going up, but there are are some periods of slight cooling or steady temperatures. Since the late 1990s, temperatures, albeit high, have shown little trend. This is what has some people concerned. But its worst that that they say. Some global warming computer simulations show warming during that period (see figure). Now we are really in trouble. Some of the models are failing too! Fox News was right! Mayor Nickels was wrong!
Not so fast. It turns out that global warming IS a real issue and the above doesn't prove anything really. The truth is that we have a signal to noise issue. The signal is the warming due to greenhouse gases. From our computer models and theory, we know that human-induced warming was quite small until recently (last few decades). And our models and theory indicate it will rapidly increase during this century. But there is also what I will call "noise"--natural variability in the atmosphere that obscures the global warming signal.

The atmosphere has all kinds of natural cyclic and non-cyclic phenomena that causes temperatures to vary even without any global warming. You know some of the them...El Nino and La Nina. Or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. Or the Arctic Oscillation. There are too many to list. And the essential character of the atmosphere can produce variations on time scales of years to decades. Call this noise. And such noise obscures the global warming signal. When global warming is relatively weak (like now) the noise can even stop the warming or even cause temporary cooling. But it won't last. Eventually the noise will change sign (to warming) or the global warming signal will inevitably strengthen as greenhouse gases increases. Global warming will become apparent and more and more significant. There are also some other minor players to note...like solar variability (e.g, the sunspot cycle), which can produce slight reductions in solar radiation for a few years (like the past few).

During the past several years, global warming has undoubtedly lessened due to a combination of natural variability and a slight weakening of solar radiation, but you can bet that this will turn around very soon. (e.g., El Nino's bring warming and we are now switching into one). The fact that warming has paused for a few years really doesn't mean anything and doesn't disprove anything.

Finally, if you have my book there is a chapter on climate change, global warming, and its local implications.

Week 15: Pageant of the Transmundane

A woman was arrested this week for getting into a fight with a 13 year old boy in a wheelchair wearing a medical halo. And yet, there were even more classless acts this week, and I am sure a lot of you have seen the Youtube videos.

Anyway, Jeremy Barker from the blog Popped Culture is this week's recipient of the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award.

He discovered a particularly wondrous Threadless T-shirt which mashes two cultural phenomena into one striking image.

And I picked the below image just because I could. Sometimes I should have the luxury of doing that... or was that the real reason? You decide.



Congrats Jeremy. Here is your badge.



The rules of this little contest: Every week I will be selecting one blog post that I have seen from the vast reaches of the blogosphere to bestow with the Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award for being one of the freakiest(in a funny way) things I've seen or read during a 7 day period. It doesn't necessarily have to have been written during the week, I just had to have encountered it. That means that if you find something interesting and repost it like a movie or whatever, if I saw it at your blog first, you get the prize. Of course, creating your own content is also a very good way to win.

Now, if you see a post that you think is worthy of this illustrious prize, just drop me a line at campybeaver@gmail.com and we'll see if we can't get your suggestion up and award-ready while giving you some credit and a link to your own blog.

Tags: homer simpson, the hulk, jeremy barker, the flash, popped culture, flashdance, threadless, pageant of the transmundane, medical halo

Friday Favorite: Man, I Miss Zines

It again has been one of those weeks, so I thought it would be a good time for another Friday Favorite column.

And those of you who remember previous trips back in the vault can probably surmise that this is yet another entry from the formative days of this blog... back in mid-2006.

Yes, I still miss zines and the zining phenomenon. I admit it.

--
Last night I was going through my box of zines and thinking about how much I missed that phenomenon. I know, a lot of people have said that blogging is the more accessible and more mainstream version of zining, but on many levels, it just isn't the same.

I miss looking through Zine World, MaximumRockAndRoll and Factsheet 5, looking for oddities and quality, substantive journalistic work.

I miss entering into that strange bond of trust with ziners that if you stuffed a buck or 5 into an envelope, that it would get there in one piece and you would be given a little piece of their mind in turn.

I miss the smell of xeroxed covers, each one showing a black and white image of an individual world, one that was unique to its writer and the dualities within.

Happy Not Stupid, Murder Can Be Fun, Temp Slave, McJob, Guinea Pig Zero and so many more either gone or very minimalized now. I wonder how many of their authors went on to create new works... how many Pagan Kennedy's emerged from those folded pages to become larger figures in the publishing or writing world, and were the mirror for the bloggers who are finding wider spread acceptance and book deals nowadays?

I think I guess being able to hold a copy of a unified work rather than an ever-changing array of opinions and articles. That and the fact that those who zined loved it so much that they did it at a loss and with a lot of effort, and I think my own failures in this department makes me admire those who were out there every day pushing their own little piece of the publishing pie. I mean, I would have loved to have brought out even one issue of History Is a Nightmare: A Neomodern Review, but alas, it wasn't to be.

I do have a lot of hope that blogging with continue the spirit of zining in an electronic body, but I still wish more people were still into zining. As a sidenote, I have to say that Gimme Your Stuff sort of reminds me of a few issues of Beer Frame, and I appreciate the good memories that site brings back for me and I thank them all for that.

Tags: zines, temp slave, happy not stupid, factsheet 5, gimme your stuff, mcjob, murder can be fun, zine world, guinea pig zero, zining, blogs, blogging, beer frame, history is a nightmare, pagan kennedy

GTUG Campout - 3 Day Hackstravaganza

The Silicon Valley Google Technology User Group (GTUG) held the first GTUG Campout, a 46 hour hackathon, over the weekend of August 7-9. Nearly 200 developers, designers, and business people came to build working applications using Google Technology, focusing largely on the Google Wave API.

The event was intense, spanning 3 days. In that time, attendees had to pitch ideas, form teams, and code like heck to have a working prototype to demo by Sunday evening.

Friday evening, we had over 50 pitches. Afterwards, people had a chance to mingle and find teams that they wanted to work with. Groups whiteboarded and discussed their ideas, then started working hard. Over 30 coders were still working past 2:00 am Saturday morning.


Sunday night we had 32 presentations of working applications followed by wooden nickel style voting to determine the winner. The crowd chose Videowave, a Wave gadget that allows synchronized viewing of videos from YouTube. They were awarded 1 pass to Google I/O '10, 2 G1 phones, and lunch with members of the Wave team.

Screenshot of Videowave in action

The list of winners:

• 1st place: Videowave, by Solomon Wu, Aaron Tong, Nelson To. (their blog)
  
• Gadget URL, Open Source ActionScript Wave library
• 2nd place: H3LP, by Jen McCabe, Steve Okay, Stig Hackvan, Andrey Petrov
• Android app and mobile web app for emergency medical situations. If launched, app locates you and notify authorities and emergency contacts.
• Mobile web vers: al3rter.appspot.com
• 3rd place (3 way tie)
• PoppyWave, by Hitesh Parashar, Van Riper, Kewaljit, David Elliston, Dave Lyman, Prathap Nimal, Dave Neubaur, Toby Morning, Perrine Crampton
• Wave-Email Gateway that lets non-Wave users to participate in Wave.
• Robot: poppywave@appspot.com
• BeerTime Bot, by Jason Katzer, Aaditiya Bhatia, Joe Mulvaney
• Measures hostility level in a Wave. If too high, hijacks thread and geolocates participants and suggests nearby drinking establishment. Robot and gadget components.
• Robot: bartimebot@appspot.com, Gadget XML
• Open sourced code: beertime, meetuptime
• Cutebox, by Audrey Roy
• A Wave gadget - JS toy for drawing and editing cute boxes with your Wave friends.
• Gadget URL, GitHub repo

Congratulations to all the winners and other attendees who worked so hard! Thanks also to the Googlers who helped out and answered questions, and our volunteers, especially those that helped with videos and photos.

A fun slideshow of the event:



The Silicon Valley Google Technology User Group is one of the first GTUGs around the world. Today around 70 GTUGs exist worldwide. Information about starting a GTUG in your area can be found at http://www.gtugs.org. The first GTUG Campout was a great success and we are looking forward to doing the event next year, and hope other GTUGs will host GTUG Campouts in their neighborhoods.

Update: Video and some images courtesy of Shirley Lin of WooMeOver.

By Kevin Nilson, co-leader of the Silicon Valley Google Technology User Group

Build a house with Lego

Lego fans are devoted. This article by Damian Whitworth demonstrates just how devoted. But let me just hit on this one bit:

And therein lies the crucial truth about Lego. Parents don’t just buy it for their kids, they buy it for themselves. Or rather, dads buy it with themselves in mind.

The first sentence is definitely true. The second one, not so much. Well, at least for us. The flood-gates on Lego were unleashed when both parents argued over who was going to build the set with the child. This was solved by getting two sets and some extra children.

Whitworth then goes on to imagine building houses -- yes, real ones -- with Lego. One thing is for sure, it will make rearranging things relatively easy.

Is it just me?

Is it just me or does anyone else think it is weird that the movie Shorts is being marketed as from the director of Spy Kids, but not mentioning Robert Rodriguez at all.

I wonder if the use of his name indicates that the movie is full of Danny Trejo, gunplay, blood, gore, murder and all that other wonderful stuff that he is known for and the use of the line "from the director of" is meant to indicate that it is indeed a film for the kids, which he is also becoming known for.

I guess the point where the rubber meets the road is going to be when Machete is released and if it is marketed as "From the director of Planet Terror and Sin City".

Tags: machete, sin city, spy kids, shorts, robert rodriguez, danny trejo, kids movies, el mariachi

The Fall Collection on Google Code University

Back-to-School usually means preparing new courses and topics. Educators as well as students are looking for exciting and fresh content. We are happy to announce that we are able to share some new additions to Google Code University's repository of CS course materials just in time for the fall semester. As always, all of these course materials are Creative Commons licensed and can be reused and adapted to curricula at universities everywhere:

• University of Southern California: Exercises on AJAX Programming
• California Polytechnic State University: Lectures and lab exercises on Distributed Systems
• University of Washington: Assignments on Distributed Systems

Please also check out our CS Resources page for updates on useful training materials.

But that's not all! We want to encourage educators to contribute their great content to Google Code University. By implementing a submission form we hope to make the process easy and convenient. Just follow the big blue button on the homepage and tell us about your materials. We look forward to hearing from you!

By Andrea Held, Google Code University Team

Aza Raskin: Conversational Computing (Ubiquity & Jetpack)

Aza Raskin delivered the eighth Web E^xponents tech talk at Google last week. Aza is head of user experience at Mozilla Labs. He's an entrepreneur and Renaissance man, as evidenced by the breadth of topics in his presentation.



What I like about Aza is that he's a user advocate - sharing our frustrations over the complexities and hurdles of interacting with computers. It's not that applications lack functionality. Aza points out that "90% of the feature requests for features in [Microsoft] Word are in fact for features that are already in Word." The problem is that humans can't interact with, speak with, computer applications using a familiar language.

Ubiquity is one of the projects from Mozilla Labs that bridges this digital divide. Ubiquity is a Firefox add-on that allows users to complete tasks using a more intuitive language. One example Aza shows is highlighting part of a web page and typing "translate this to Russian". Ubiquity acts on the user's request by replacing the text in the web page with the Russian translation. Another example is typing an address in a Yahoo! Mail message, typing "map this", and having Ubiquity embed the desired Google map inside the email.

Aza calls this you-centric computing - allowing us to interact by talking about what we want to do, rather than forcing us to think about how to do it. Ubiquity achieves this, moving us from a web of nouns to a web of verbs. The point, according to Aza, is "perhaps by adding language, by making things hackable, we go from interfaces which work to our failabilities and our frailities, and instead are a little bit more human and hence a little bit more humane."

Jetpack extends Ubiquity's theme of making the Web hackable. Aza describes it as "an incredibly fast prototyping environment for changing the Web to make the Web yours. Sort of like taking the idea of Greasemonkey and mashing it up with extensions and giving it all steroids." Ubiquity and Jetpack allow each of us to make the Web our very own by modifying it to work the way we want.

Empowering users to customize the Web and more easily complete tasks moves us from a feeling of helplessness to a feeling of being in control. This is an important point and reminds me of Matt Mullenweg's talk at Velocity about slow web sites (my personal bent). There Matt says, "...when an interface is faster, you feel good. And ultimately what that comes down to is you feel in control." Empowering users is a common goal, and yet today's web applications still contain many hurdles (complexity, poor interaction language, slowness) that need to be addressed to make users feel in control and ultimately happy. Thanks to Aza and the folks at Mozilla Labs, we're moving closer to the you-centric Web each of us wants.

By Steve Souders, Performance Evangelist

Marine air Starting to move in...

Marine air is starting to move along the coast..we should have a very weak marine push tonight...enough to cut the temps by 5-7F degrees tomorrow. The thermal trough is now moving over the mountains and an onshore pressure gradient has developed. Stratus is starting to push across the coast..and you can see this on an image I have never shown on this blog before...the fog product. By combining several infrared wavelengths observed by satellite we can see low clouds at night..take a look at the figure. See the whiter stuff on the coast..that's the low clouds. The latest surface chart below shows southwesterly and westerly flow pushing in around Hoquiam.
Low clouds may make it into the Strait and perhaps to Shelton and Olympia..but it should burn back rapidly in the morning. If today was a tad hot for you, tomorrow will be heaven.

If you want to see an extraordinary picture from the high resolution NASA MODIS satellite...look at this. You can clearly see massive amounts of smoke from the BC fires and the low clouds off the coast.

Finally, my kidding around with KING-5's hypesters should not be taken as a lack of respect for their weather personnel, which are really top rate. And lets face it, other stations partake in weather hype as well....although to be fair, none of them have ace Jim Forman, who is in a class by himself. And their segment on the heat wave tonight was quite reasonable. Sometime, perhaps after a few glasses of wine, I might blog about the TV weathercasters of our area, but the bottom line will be fairly unexciting..we have unusually good tv weather people in this market. But I better stop before I get into any more trouble.

Midweek Video: Walking with Thee

Warning: If you find mannequins creepy, this is not the video for you.

So basically we have a band whose gimmick is wearing hospital attire and masks (Clinic) making a video featuring the relationship between two mannequins. It is as weird as it sounds.

There are weirder videos out there... but this one is somewhat strange.

Tags: mannequins, ski lodge, clinic, music, walking with thee, scrubs, surgical masks, band, scotland, dating

Towards a programmable web: PubSubHubbub for Google Alerts

Why shouldn't the web itself be programmable? A programmable web enables one application to be extended by another to create new applications that people haven't imagined before. This goes beyond mash-ups, which primarily combine data sources together into new views. A programmable web is reactive and relies on Web Hooks for event-driven notification, syncing, chaining, modification, and extension.

One simple example of programming the web itself is the post commit-hook on Project Hosting, which lets developers call their own web service every time someone commits to their repository. An advanced example is the Wave Robots API, which gives developers the power to enhance and modify the behavior of Wave in new ways that no-one has envisioned. The magic of this programmable approach is that these services come to *your* webapp whenever something requires attention; there's no need to poll for events or data that you're interested in.

In keeping with this goal of programmability, over the past few weeks we've enabled the PubSubHubbub protocol for many Google services, including FeedBurner, Reader shared items, and Blogger. This protocol provides web-hook notifications when Atom and RSS feeds are updated, delivering web applications near-real-time information about what's new or changed.

Today we're happy to announce that we have gone a step further and added PubSubHubbub support to Google Alerts. This gives developers the means to write web applications that process newly relevant search results as they become available. Think of it as an AJAX search API that tells *you* when it finds new results. Acting upon these notifications your app could update your website, email friends, send an SMS-- the possibilities are endless.

Like the huge number of Maps mash-ups out there, we hope to see a whole new class of applications built on top of these notifications. So give the protocol a try and tell us what you've built in our Google Group!

By Brett Slatkin, Google Developer Team

Express Checkout: Time Travel, Emmys and Dirty Dancing

Insta-Fail? ABC and Friends creator Marta Kauffman are teaming up to bring The Time Traveler's Wife to television as a weekly series. If you've read this blog for a while, you know that I've sort of documented the fact that if you are introducing a show that is based on time travel, it has to be pretty spectacular to make it past its first season these days, as it seems that the American viewing public can't really get into new series like these anymore. So, despite the weepy sentiments of a generation of film goers, I still don't think this one is going the distance.

Family Guy Emmy videos: I am sure some of you have seen those videos Seth MacFarlane and company have been making mocking their fellow nominees for the Best Comedy Show award. I don't know about you, but if I was an Emmy voter, that would definitely make me want to vote against them. And I would say that even if another show was doing the same thing. It isn't edgy... it is just sort of sad really, so as a strategy, it is poor at best.

Dirty remake: I've recently read that now there is a Dirty Dancing remake on the table. Seriously, I think it is ice floe time for the group of executives that are just greenlighting all this stuff, because if this is the best they can come up with, well, we deserve better. I mean, this irks me more than the reported White Chicks sequel that is also in the works.

Tags: dirty dancing, television, time traveler's wife, family guy, friends, marta kauffman, time travel, seth macfarlane, greenlight, ice floe

Killer Heat Wave or Killer Hype?

IRONY ALERT!!

Updated 2 PM, Wednesday. Guess who showed up at my office just now????...a reporter (Glenn Farley) and cameraman from KING-5 TV!!! They wanted to talk about the hot, dry summer and how unusual it was! When they closed my room's shades, turned on their blinding lights, and closed the door...well, I was a little concerned. I am afraid to see what will go on air tonight. Some sort of revenge tactic? Will they turn me into a scarester too? We'll see.


The media was up to its old tricks last night-- this time hyping the upcoming "dangerous" heat wave. All the TV stations do it, but none are better at it than KING-5. They are masters of the art. First the news anchors broach the topic, with tremulous voices asking the question--will a dangerous heat wave hit the region the next day? Then they turn to a smiling, yet serious, Jeff Renner who provides a knowing, sympathetic, nod of agreement. Last night, he had his work cut out for him, but finds the most extreme temperature maxima in the region to provide some reason for concern (last night he had to really stretch, quoting the temperature in Vancouver, WA.,which gets the Willamette Valley heat). And then they always turn to their on-scene scarester-reporter. And KING has the top weather scarester in the country...Jim Forman. I love this guy. I wish they sold tapes of his segments...I could watch it for hours. In the winter he hypes snow and in the summer heat. During the last heat wave he had a giant round thermometer stuck at 105F that he kept on flailing about. If nothing threatening is going on...no problem..he will describe the terrible events that will certainly happen to the unprepared. And he always shows people desperately buying emergency supplies in convenience stores and supermarkets. I mean...this guy has a winning formula.

Anyway, our models are indicating a substantial warm up tomorrow...and the central and south Sound could see a few 90s....particularly away from the water. The probcast forecast system (www.probcast.com), whose strength includes these types of days is predicting 92F for Sea Tac tomorrow. (Check the graphic for max temps tomorrow).

Easterly flow will develop tonight over the region, bringing further warming to the west side (and the over us is already quite warm). As you can see from the surface weather chart (pressure and temps shown), the famous thermal trough will move into western Washington (chart) with the heat....our temperatures will spike tomorrow and then decline a bit Thursday as some marine air moves in Thursday AM and the thermal trough jumps to the east side.

7 AM update...on wed..looks more like 89-90F at Sea Tac today..warmer, but not that warmer than yesterday

Correct Me if I am Wrong...

...but isn't it customary to remove stories which may not be accurate?



I mean, I thought that's what happened. Maybe that's just me.

There is a reason the entertainment news media is on my enemies list.

Tags: brad pitt, enemies list, sherlock holmes, rumors, gossip