A very different pattern: Dry, sun, and fog

We are now about to experience very different weather from the wet, blustery conditions of most of November. The last precipitation for quite a while just passed through tonight..the remnants of a weakening frontal system. High amplitude ridging, associated with building high pressure over the eastern Pacific, will leave us high and dry for the remainder of the work week. The only risk...you guessed it...FOG, particularly tomorrow and Wednesday morning in the lowlands. But we should see plenty of sun later this week, and the mountains will be in sun nearly every day.

Our long range computer models..which have notorious problems with cold wave situations....are not agreeing over the weekend and beyond. Right now the US model..the GFS..shows a major arctic front passage with strong NE winds into Bellingham early Saturday and cold air streaming into our region. (see graphic) But no snow. The European Center Model..normally superior...has a different, warmer, solution. Anyway, I never get excited by snow and cold more than 5 days out...so lets wait until the models are all on the same page. But it is clear we will be dry for days with little or no wind. Normal temperatures. Exceptional weather for raking leaves.

Jim Forman of KING 5 should start preheating his wool hat and gloves, and Seattle DOT...well, you know.

Remember last year. We transitioned to cold and snow about a week later.

Special Lecture: I will be giving a noon-time weather lecture ("Is Rainfall Getting More Extreme?") and a book signing at Elliot Bay Books, December 2 at 12 PM. Downtown in Pioneer Square

KIRO TV WEATHER SPECIAL: Wednesday, Dec 2 at 7 PM. For more info check out: http://www.kirotv.com/station/21774954/detail.html

Additional functionality for Google Chrome's Developer Tools

The last few weeks, Google Chrome's developer tools have become much more useful. Besides benefiting from the work the WebKit team has done to improve Web Inspector (our developer tools are partially based on Web Inspector), we also recently released the heap profiler and the timeline tab in Google Chrome's Developer Channel.

With the heap profiler you can now take a snapshot of the JavaScript heap at any point in time. A heap snapshot helps you understand memory usage, and by comparing snapshots you can also follow memory usage over time. You will find the heap profiler in the profiles tab along with the sample-based CPU profiler.

The new timeline view gives you a complete overview of where time is spent when loading a web app. All events -- ranging from loading resources over parsing and executing JavaScript to calculating styles and repainting -- are plotted on a timeline.

Besides these product improvements, we've tried to make the Google Chrome Developer tools easier to find and understand by putting together mini site with tutorials and videos.



To take our newest release for a spin, get Google Chrome from the Developer Channel and you'll automatically be brought up to date. We welcome your feedback and your contributions to improve developer tools in WebKit and Google Chrome even more.

By Pavel Feldman, Software Engineer and Anders Sandholm, Product Manager

Express Checkout: Ugly Betty, Twilight, Persona 3

- I was rather pleased to see Ugly Betty take some really good swings at Scientology over the past couple of episodes. It wasn't doing it bare handed either... it was swinging a golf club. I applaud them for doing so. I hope more shows take on that challenge and go after them in more and more pointed ways.

- Well, horror of horrors... apparently there is a Twilight television series in the works starring he-who-must-be-bathed, Robert Pattison. OK, I'd root for Jay Leno against that (if his show lasts until next year that is). If this goes through, it is going to be a long few years for pop culture.

- I've been playing an RPG as of late (Persona 3: FES), and I have to say I've been impressed not only by the story and character development but by something that is so seemingly random, but something which seems so ubiquitous in gaming that an exception is worth noting. In a lot of games, the attire that is given to female characters is, how shall I put this delicately, unrealistic to say the least. The game takes place in a modern Japanese setting, and in this case, I can actually believe that the characters involved would dress that way as part of the narrative. It seems almost refreshingly conservative for the most part (because yes, there is a piece of armor which is almost like a Leia bikini, so there is some fan service in there too, along with a few other bits I've heard about). As a sidenote, if it continues to be the quality narrative it has been for the first quarter, it would be a title that would be worthy of my top 25 PS2 games list.

Tags: ugly betty, persona 3 fes, princess leia, gold bikini, fan service, scientology, atlus, shin megami tensei, top 25, ps2 games, robert pattison, twilight, tv series

Sunday Video: Twilight Intervention

Skyler Stone of Con fame decided to stage an intervention for Twilight fans on the opening night of New Moon. Much hilarity ensues.

Now, that's a burn.

Tags: skyler stone, con, twilight, stephenie meyer, new moon, intervention, fangirls

An Amazing Lightning Story

The lightning stuck the antenna on the upper side of the car

Once in a while, I hear some amazing weather stories. Imagine being hit by lightning while driving. Instant destruction of the car's electronics, with the a window blowing out due the blast? Here is a true story shared by Judy Lew--she described it so well, I thought I would leave her own words, slightly abridged. And some pictures she shared. She sounds like the kind of person you would like to have around in an emergency! This lightning hit occurred on the 520 bridge in Seattle during commute time.

This story illustrates how safe it is to be in a car during an electrical storm, since the current will pass around you.

Her story:

On Friday November 6^th 2009, I picked up my two daughters in Redmond around 5:50pm and started heading home (west-bound) on SR-520 back into Seattle at the height of rush hour in very heavy traffic. It was dark and rainy, and I was driving a 2003 VW Passat wagon. My girls and I didn’t get to the 520 bridge over Lake Washington until just after 6:15pm (and that was after merging and maneuvering around many cars just to get into the HOV lane before we got to the bridge).

The girls and I were just chit-chatting in the car when all of the sudden – BOOM! We heard a loud explosion and I saw a flash of red light outside of the corner of my eye and all of the sudden my driver side window dropped down and a rush of cold air and rain came in. I screamed (as did the girls) but I had no idea what had just happened. I then realized that the brakes were no longer working. We were moving but I couldn’t slow or stop the car. I then realized that there was something wrong with the car as I couldn’t go faster either and something smelled funny – like there was something burning.You can see where the current passed through the tire.

A blown out window...with some enhancements
by the Bellevue Fire Dept.

I immediately realized that the explosion I heard was related to what was going on with the car (yes, you would think that was obvious at this point but everything was happening faster than I could process). I then realized I needed to turn off the car and stop it as I was worried it was going to explode (the burning smell freaked me out). I immediately used the emergency break, stopped, and turned off the car. It was only at this moment that I got a chance to turn around and see if the girls were okay. Everything happened so fast. Fortunately they were both fine and surprisingly weren’t screaming though my older one looked kind of wigged out. My youngest was just confused.
I immediately called 911 while anxiously looking over my shoulder as I was worried about cars hitting us. We were stopped in the middle of rush hour traffic in heavy rain on the bridge. (For the record, no passing motorists stopped to assist us. No one!) Basically my worst nightmare on the road. The 911 operator had to ask me twice for my name as I had immediately gone into what happened. She surprisingly asked me to move off the bridge. I told her my car stopped working and I was worried about trying to start it up again for fear it would explode. She told me I had to try as it was dangerous to be stalled on the bridge. I tried again but to no avail. Given this she said she would send help.

It was only after I hung up with the operator did I notice that my front passenger window was completely blown out. It was shattered all over my front seat. I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea what happened. Plus the lights in the car were flashing on and off erratically and the car horn started going off. I called my husband and told him the car was going bonkers. We were both befuddled as we had just taken the car in for a 70,000 mile tune-up earlier that week. And now the car had apparently had a catastrophic failure. What was happening?!

After what seemed like an eternity (though was really around 20 minutes), I finally saw flashing lights behind us. The tow truck arrived and soon after a fire truck. My husband called again at the same time and wondered if it was possible that lightning had struck us. He didn’t know of any other explanation. When I saw my blown out window I had actually wondered if we had been shot somehow. I hadn’t even thought about lightning but it made perfect sense as we had the worst thunderstorms the night before and tonight looked just as bad. I told the firemen this and they thought it was conceivable. They had me try to start the car again and confirmed that there was an electrical malfunction. They ended up severing the car’s battery to turn off the horn (which by this time was constantly blaring). After some more investigation, they told me that it indeed looked like lightning had struck the car and had done so through the antenna.

One of the firefighters was a woman. She and everyone else was very nice and reassuring to my girls. When everything appeared to be safe, she reached in and shook my hand and said that I should buy a lottery ticket the next day. She said the car apparently did what it was supposed to and absorbed the impact of the lightning and that we were very lucky. I couldn’t believe it myself. What are the odds of a moving car being struck by lightning?! I couldn’t find the answer online although NOAA says that the odds of being struck by lightning in general is 1 in 3000. When the firewoman walked away, I only then realized that she was the captain of the fire department (it was emblazoned on the back of her jacket).

So how did we finally get home? After the fire truck left, the WDOT tow truck lifted the car up and pulled us in it across the bridge to the first exit until we got to a flat shoulder on the exit ramp where we could safely wait for another (AAA) tow truck and ride to get us home. I was hoping the ride could be fun for the girls but unfortunately it was quite cold as the rain came blowing in through the front windows. It was 7:30pm and the girls were cold and very ready to go home. Fortunately, they did amazingly well given the circumstances and went to bed that evening very happy like nothing had even happened. We were very lucky…

The next day, the University VW dealership was quite accommodating – where we became minor celebrities (for a couple of days). The service manager and garage foreman but said everyone in the VW and Audi dealership had come by to see the car – no one had ever seen anything like it. We’ve also just confirmed with the insurance company that they are “totaling” the car due to the extensive damage to the various electrical systems….so now we’re in the market for another vehicle.

I would like to thanks Judy Lew for providing this amazing story and pictures.


Special Lecture: I will be giving a noon-time weather lecture ("Is Rainfall Getting More Extreme?") and a book signing at Elliot Bay Books, December 2 at 12 PM. Downtown in Pioneer Square.

Week 29: Pageant of the Transmundane

A heterosexual couple in England applied to have a civil union and were denied, as that is a designation reserved for same sex couples only. The couple in question feel that they should be equal under the law.

With that being said, there are some weeks where it is very difficult coming up with a definitive winner in this contest... whether it be having to choose from so many qualified applicants or one of those rare occasions where there is an utter dearth of quality stuff for that week.

But this is one of those times where there was one thing which dominated a week, an entry which was head and shoulders above the rest. In this case, the item in question was on a lot of sites this week, so I have to give the award to the first place I saw it.

For those of you who have been surfing the net this week, I am sure you have seen The Muppets' Bohemian Rhapsody, and the first place I saw it was at Electronic Cerebrectomy. Muppets are always a winner in this competition, and since it was something done by the actual Muppets and not a mashup, it is super professional.

So to mark this win, I wanted to pick an image which was somehow related to that masterpiece, but I've used almost all the Simpsons/Muppets pictures out there, so I had to go with Homer working with a sock puppet to try to convince Maggie to eat spinach.



Congrats to Aaron for getting to the top in my own little corner of blog reading the fastest with the mostest. And you certainly know the drill. Here is your blogging 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 blogging village 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: pageant of the transmundane, aaron davis, civil union, muppets, bohemian rhapsody, jim henson, homer simpson, sock puppet

Sun, Fog, and Rain Takes a Holiday

Yes, it is true. The weather stretching into the middle of next week is going to be very different from the rain and wind of November. We are talking DRY now. But with dry this time of year comes the potential for fog.


Take today. Yesterday's front and moderate rain has pushed through western Washington and sunny skies have spread over the lowlands (see satellite picture), including much of the WA coast. There are some low clouds on the western slopes of the Cascades and the coastal mountains--extending to the mountain crests. Temps will be in the upper 40s. Perfect raking and walking weather.

Tomorrow a weak disturbance will bring increasing clouds and rain for the northwest portion of the state, but the computer models suggest the lowlands will be mainly rainshadowed by the Olympics and coastal mountains. Want dry? Go south!

On Sunday the ridge builds up again and rain will end. In fact, for much of next week a very high amplitude ridge aloft will provide dry conditions. Little wind.

The only problem with all this is that when high pressure and clearing skies are parked over us, with weak low-level winds, there is a real chance for fog this time of the year.

Now, I can be pretty sure about this forecast...using a technology I often don't talk about, but use all the time--ensemble predictions. The National Weather Service runs a forecast ensemble--many forecasts all starting slightly differently. If the atmosphere is sensitive and the forecasts uncertain, the slight changes in the initial state will cause the predictions to vary greatly. If there are all on the same page...we can have more confidence in the predictions. Take a look at the ensemble predictions for Sunday (this is called a spaghetti diagram for obvious reasons). Virtually all the predictions are going for the ridging!
Look at the spaghetti diagram for Tuesday afternoon....amazing agreement that far out. Ridging is in!
And remember, we are now finishing the historically wettest period of the year. We have ascended the meteorological peak...we now move slowly (very slowly at first) towards summer. The worst may well be over...especially considering this is an El Nino year.

Midweek Video: Jim Gaffigan on Holidays

Seeing as a lot of my American readers are celebrating Thanksgiving (or at least enjoying some time off of work), I thought it would be fitting to post this segment from the Jim Gaffigan special Beyond the Pale that basically hits a lot of the holiday seasons including Thanksgiving. And since some of you may be seeing family or stressed in general by this occasion, I thought you could all use a laugh.

Happy Thanksgiving folks. I'll be Back for Transmundanity!

Tags: jim gaffigan, beyond the pale, holidays, thanksgiving, transmundanity, special, stress, family

The Thanksgiving Day Forecast

Thanksgiving is coming and with lots of people on the road starting tomorrow, so the forecast is important. Bottom line: a benign weather situation...but not entirely dry.


A front is now offshore and it will move slowly towards us during the day tomorrow, with rain reaching the western lowlands around dinner time (see graphics above). No big deal for us, but the rain will be heavy tomorrow on the western side of Vancouver Island. So travel should be fine for most of the day with no issues crossing the Cascades.

Thursday looks like a wet day as a warm front moves up the coast (graphics). This warm front is associated with low moving NEward to our south. It will be quite wet on the SW side of the Olympics and the Skokomish could flood (AGAIN!). The low will bring moderate to strong winds (30-40 mph) along the central Oregon Coast and will open up and weaken as it moves inland late Thursday.Behind the system the temperatures will cool and showers will continue on Friday...but mainly over the mountains. Snow level will come down and the snow level will hit the passes. So be ready for some white stuff if you crossing the mountains on Friday. Good day for shopping on Black Friday.

Right now it looks like we might have a big, big treat next week with a ridge from heaven....but we will wait to talk about that.

Special Lecture: I will be giving a noon-time weather lecture ("Is Rainfall Getting More Extreme?") and a book signing at Elliot Bay Books, December 2 at 12 PM. Downtown in Pioneer Square.

Address:
101 South Main Street
Seattle WA 98104

Twilight Themed Heroin baggies...

I'm sorry, but if the selling point of heroin for you is buying it in a Twilight themed baggie... then you are indeed too stupid to live.

Then again, if you have a raging heroin addiction, I doubt you have the concentration or the monetary resources to get into the novels or the movies (though heroin would likely make both immeasurably better).

What, you thought I was going to let everyone else have all the fun taking jabs at Stephenie Meyer's literary creations? Especially Samuraifrog.

I mean, you know Meyer wouldn't approve of heroin on religious grounds.

Tags: stephenie meyer, twilight, heroin, baggies, mormon, samuraifrog, baggies

Randomness: Peanuts, Zine World, Myspace

-I know I can get stuff like Bacon Salt and a lot of other different flavoring elements in a shakable form, but are their any commercially available spice combinations that mimic the spice blend they put on prepackaged dry roasted peanuts. I mean, that is something I would gladly pay good money to have in shaker form.

-I received an email from someone who worked for Zine World regarding my post about how much I missed zines and it really made my day. Turns out this gentleman ended up moving on to greener pastures writing for an alt-weekly I used to pick up all the time before I moved. It really is a small world.

-I use an older version of Firefox (not a super old one). Apparently Myspace doesn't want my patronage at all because they will not let me access the site until I upgrade my perfectly functional browser. And yet, they'll let me in with an ancient version of another browser (from 2000!) and another browser which is much older than my Firefox. If my browser can interpret CSS, HTML and Javascript, I think it is capable of viewing your site.... and keeping me out because I don't have the newest version of a browser is absolute bullshit, so Tom and his merry band of pranksters can all FOAD. I didn't think keeping people out of your social networking site supported by ads was something you were looking to do.

Tags: bacon salt, dry roasted peanuts, zine world, zining, myspace, alt weekly, spices, tom anderson

The Wettest, Stormiest Two Weeks of the Year!

During Thanksgiving 1983 this was the only way to cook a turkey in western Washington. This particular turkey looks a tad overdone.

Yes, its right now. On average the last two weeks of November are the wettest, windiest, stormiest time of the year here in the Northwest...by any measure. Take a look at the average daily rainfall (see graphic). There is a rapid ramp up in daily average precipitation in October, with the end of November being ground zero weatherwise. It is almost a tradition here in the NW for power outages during Thanksgiving weekend....sometimes with turkey cooked

on the barbecue. Strangely, December is generally much better...less storms and heavy rains.

Our weather changes around here are really strange...very rapid turn on in fall, followed by a slow improvement starting in early December.

Currently, the central Puget Sound region is roughly 2-3 inches ahead of normal November rainfall. But fortunately, this week the situation is far more benign than last ...with some extended dry periods mixed in. High pressure will maintain a hold through much of the week, with only a few weak weather systems passing through. Thanksgiving travel looks very good.

Special Lecture: I will be giving a noon-time weather lecture ("Is Rainfall Getting More Extreme?") and a book signing at Elliot Bay Books, December 2 at 12 PM. Downtown in Pioneer Square.

Address:
101 South Main Street
Seattle WA 98104

Sunday Video: Teacher Teacher

Well, here is a title track from a movie that has all but been lost to the annals of pop culture. I am of course talking about the Nick Nolte/JoBeth Williams vehicle Teachers (which a surprisingly robust supporting cast).

The song is by 38 Special, who we all know had bigger hits than this too.

I wonder what ever happened to this movie.

Tags: 38 special, teacher teacher, teachers, nick nolte, jobeth williams, crispin glover, laura dern

The low is here

10:50 AM update...here is the latest Doppler velocity image. I normally don't show you this. Blue is incoming westerly winds of 36 kts. A convergence zone has formed with heavy rain in the central Sound.



The low pressure system moved in a little south of the last model forecast, but strong winds are now hitting the central and southern WA coast . For example, the above image shows the surge to 45 knots at Tokeland at the north end of Willapa Bay. And Astoria and Westport have done the same.

And here is an official spotter report on the southern coast...85 mph.

0430 AM NON-TSTM WND GST 1 SW OYSTERVILLE 46.54N 124.05W

11/22/2009 M85.00 MPH PACIFIC WA TRAINED SPOTTER

DUAL ANENOMETERS...BOTH READ 84 AND 85 MPH PEAK GUSTS.

You can see the wind transition in the vertical looking at the Westport "atmospheric river" observatory information:You can see the wind switch around 12 UTC (4 AM) to the NW, with winds just above the surface reaching 40-50 kts sustained.


As noted last night, this is NOT a general western WA windstorm. Moderate winds will be limited to the area south of Puget Sound.

The next issue is the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Considering the track of the low the westerly surge will probably be weaker...but it still will happen. But the low has to get past us first. Watch the pressure down the Strait....you want to see the pressure at Quillayute rise significantly against Bellingham. It should all start happening during the next few hours...but again, this won't be one of the major westerly surges that cause major damage. Just a garden variety one. Rain should decrease substantially over the next few hours.

Finally, if anyone is interested KCTS TV is repeating my weather program at 1 PM.

Update

The forecasting is changing a bit...and getting more serious. Moderate rain has overspread our area and winds in NW Washington have picked up substantially...take a look at Smith Island...getting near 50 kts. That is serious wind.
But the big issue is the small, but significant, low center out there right now. A critical forecast question is its track across the State. New runs suggest it will move a bit further north...crossing the central WA coast and tracking over the south Sound. With this track there will stronger winds along the central WA coast and SW WA (see graphic)...sustained 40-50 mph, with gusts to 70 mph, in some places. Even more serious is that the westerly surge through the Strait of Juan de Fuca looks stronger than suggested earlier...with powerful winds gusting 60 60-70 mph (see graphic).

I am working on research about these Strait surges and writing a paper about them. A particularly strong one hit in October 2003 and destroyed Ivar's Mukilteo Landing Restaurant (my book has a whole section on this. Ivar's rebuilt the restaurant on a weather theme--I love this place and food is very good. The best thing is the weather instrument panel.....if the winds get above a certain level you are supposed to push this red knob and go back to your table and order dessert. ) Another surge in 1990 half destroyed the WSDOT Ferry Elwha where it was being repaired in Everett Harbor. This surge should occur sometime between 4 AM and 9 AM so be aware about it. Northern Whidbey Island could get hit very hard.

PS: Nights like this illustrate why we need the coastal radar. In the NWS discussion the forecaster admits he doesn't know exactly where the low is or its strength. But it is close enough now that a coastal radar would have provided a definitive answer..right now..when we need it....

NW Washington Gets Hit Again...and an Unusual Low

This is a November that just keeps giving meteorologically. And a low with an unusual track is on the horizon.

Today is somewhat of a break. Some sun, some clouds, a few light showers. Good enough to rake some leaves, as I will do soon.

Tonight it will get much more interesting...and Jim Forman from KING TV should be gassing up his van for a trip back north! (By the way, I have been encouraging KING TV to create a DVD with a collection of his weather segments--it would be a hot seller!) A low goes north of us (AGAIN!) produces conditions that will increase winds AGAIN over NW Washington (check out the latest WRF model forecasts). Winds will also increase along the coast, with both regions seeing sustained 30-40 mph with gusts above 50 mph. And of course rain will return.

But that is not the unusual item. Take a look at the sea level pressure forecast for the same time (graphic above). A moderately intense and small-scale low is approaching the southern portion of Washington and will cross SW Washington south of Seattle. There is an intense pressure gradient behind the low, which could produce strong coastal winds (see graphic below), and as the low moves eastward there may be a good eastward surge of westerly flow into the Strait of Juan de Fuca (see graphic). The central Puget Sound area won't see any real wind from this.

And as the low moves through and cool, westerly flow becomes established there will be a LOT of snow in the Cascades tonight through Sunday--at least a foot will fall. Thanksgiving skiing is in the bag now. If our forecasts are wrong and the low goes north of Seattle, the weather would be very different.

It appears that there will be a major pattern shift next week and our intense weather will be over for a while. We will even have a large scale ridge of high pressure in our neighborhood.

Week 28: Pageant of the Transmundane

A person in a chicken suit showed up at a Durango, Colorado City Council meeting during a period when they were discussing changes to the city ordinances on the keeping of live chickens on residential property. And this person made quite a spectacle of themselves. No news on if this was Crackers the Corporate Crime Chicken in disguise (because we all know that there was no way Michael Moore was getting in a chicken suit).

Anyway, this week's winning entry comes to us from The Girl Gamer.

Christina discovered a Youtube animation which combined the Mushroom Kingdom with the world of Quentin Tarantino. It isn't a mashup... more a reimagining of Mario's trip through the surreal world he found himself in back in 1985.

And because this week's winning entry is Pulp Fiction related, I thought a picture of Homer Simpson in a black suit from his time as the Mayor's bodyguard would be the most appropriate, non-Mario related image. I also thought about paying homage to Bruce Willis in that movie by choosing a picture of Homer during his boxing career, but somehow I think the suits are more iconic.



Congrats Christina. Here is your web 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 blogging village 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, bodyguard, mario, the girl gamer, pageant of the transmundane, boxer, pulp fiction, reimagining, animation, chicken, crackers, michael moore, quentin tarantino, nintendo, durango, colorado

Friday Favorite: Remembering some good ole 1980's Schlock!

As I wrote in the introductory passage of this entry, I wrote this the day Snakes on a Plane was released theatrically, and I've been once again revisiting the Schlock of my youth, and this entry captures a lot of those movies in one place.

--
With it being Snakes on a Plane Friday, I got a little wistful and began thinking about some of the wonderfully cheesy 1980's horror movies I saw as a kid, and I thought I would share a few of them with you.

Now I could mention movies like Tremors and Return of the Living Dead, but where would the fun be in that?

The first movie that I thought of when I started on this little odyssey to the era or Reagan was 1986's Night of the Creeps. Now, the recent Slither took a lot from this movie, but accept no substitutes. I mean, it has all the requisite elements for an 80's horror movie. College kids-Check, aliens-Check, Zombies-Check, a Serial Killer-Check, and yes, a sense of campy humor-Double check. The basic plot involves worm-like creatures that eat people's brains from the inside and it is all good, gory fun from there, and if you love the attitude of Bruce Campbell's Ash, you will really enjoy Tom Atkins take on the burnt-out cop Ray Cameron. (And did I mention that every main character in the movie is named after a horror director). Editorial Update: Night of the Creeps was recently released on DVD.

Now I could try to describe 1985's The Stuff to you, but I think the New York Times does it better than I ever could. I would describe it as 1 part The Blob, one part The Thing and one heaping spoonful of social satire. All in all, it is a frothy and sweet good time, and you will never look at Cool Whip the same again.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention C.H.U.D., after all, you can't talk about the schlock without it, because C.H.U.D. is a glorious return to the B-movies of the 1950's. There is radiation in them there sewers and where you got radiation, you got blood-thirsty mutants, and of course, mutants got to feed above ground, and in this case, they have a choice buffet that includes Daniel Stern, John Heard, John Goodman, Jay Thomas and Kim Greist. It isn't a great film(though it is award winning), but it delivers some good jolts for bucks. The IMDB has it rated at 4.5/10, but it is better than that.

Of course, I am sure you, my readers, have a few more suggestions that could satiate someone's appetite for some cheap and messy thrills this weekend, so I open the floor to you all.

So, if you don't want to bear witness to the Rocky Horror Picture Show with snakes tonight or this weekend, you can still get your B Horror flick fix this weekend at your local video store or even perhaps from your On-Demand cable system. I am not guaranteeing you will like these movies, only that they bring back good memories for me.

Tags: chud, night of the creeps, slither, the stuff, snakes on a plane, rocky horror picture show, john goodman, evil dead, b-movies, tremors, return of the living dead, zombies, aliens, horror, cult, dessert

Captions available for all Google I/O videos

We work hard to make sure that the videos on the GoogleDevelopers channel on Youtube are captioned, but when I/O added over a hundred hours of video content, we got a little behind. I'm happy to announce that we're finally caught up! Every English and Spanish video from I/O now has captions that you can turn on in YouTube.

Didn't know we had captions? Just click to select captions from the menu in the lower right corner of the video player.

Some caption and subtitle-related news:

• A group of volunteers from Russia used the translated.by software to crowdsource translation for Google Wave video captions. Thank you, habratranslation! Check out one of the Wave videos with Russian subtitles. (You have to choose Russian from the caption menu in YouTube to see them.)


• If you'd like to help translate captions for any of our videos, please email google-video-captions@googlegroups.com with a request. We'd be happy to share any caption files that you might be interested in under a creative commons attribution license. If you send us the translation, we'll credit you in the video caption track and blog about how awesome you are.


• In addition to machine translation for captions, YouTube now provides experimental automatic caption transcription using the same speech recognition algorithms found in Google Voice. The GoogleDevelopers channel is part of the initial pilot, so this feature is available on many of our videos. To learn more, check out the blog post on the Official Google Blog.

By Naomi Bilodeau, Google Developer Team

Why is Northwest Washington getting hit so hard? +Defending Randy Dorn

Its back..... No, not some ghostly apparition...the winds. Here in Seattle the trees are moving again and once in a while I can hear the roar of an approaching gust. (aside...gusts are associated with the downward movement of high speed air from aloft associated with turbulence in the lower atmosphere).

But what is happening here in Seattle is NOTHING compared to the strong winds hitting NW Washington, from Whidbey Island to Bellingham to the San Juans. The power was taken out over large portions of the San Juan's in last nights blow and another wind event is back tonight. Jim Forman from KING-5 TV appears to be camping out in Mt. Vernon, providing dramatic descriptions of the perils of the winds. Be scared, be very scared. Winds gusted to around 70 mph in exposed locations of the San Juan's last night and the rest of the area was close behind.

The wind observations from Smith Island...right off of Whidbey Is....tells the story. Winds gusting to 50 kts day after day! And the winds are coming back up now as we speak! (although it probably won't be quite as bad as last night). Look at a recent wind plot:Strong southeasterlies hitting the San Juans and N Whidbey, but nearly calm in Sequim and Port Angeles. Why this pattern night after night? Can't it give Jim Foreman a break?

The reason for all this is that we have had a sequence of lows or troughs moving across Northern Vancouver Island. This has done two things--created a strong pressure change along the axis of the Strait of Georgia AND sent strong southerlies against the Olympics. When strong southerlies approach that mountain barrier we get enhance high pressure on the windward (southern) side and a lee trough (low pressure) on the northern side near Sequim and Port Angeles. Between the two is an enhanced pressure difference. The superposition of both influences creates a large pressure difference that really accelerates the air moving in NW Washington.
You can see this effect in the forecast pressure and wind pattern for last night (see graphic)Comments on Randy Dorn's Statement

Today Randy Dorn made a courageous, but absolutely correct, announcement. The state will delay the math graduation requirements and will have a two tiered system--students who don't pass the end of course exams at "proficient" level will be able to graduate at a "basic" level if they take more coursework. The Seattle Times has gone after him...accusing him of "blinking" under pressure. But they are quite wrong.

No one wants a more rapid transition to better math instruction and student skills than I and others at the UW. We see firsthand the impact of poor math skills and preparation. But it is absolutely unfair to threaten and deny graduation to our high school seniors when we have provided them with an inferior math education.

The math standards have just recently been changed..they are improved but really not good enough. Many of our districts are using terrible textbooks--long on talk and short on real math. Seattle has extraordinarily poor "discovery" math books at all three levels, and major districts like Issaquah are determined to use books found to be unsound by state mathematicians. Many teachers, and particularly elementary school teachers, don't have sufficient math backgrounds. Fixing these problems and changing the attitudes in our problematic Ed schools will take time.

But some well-meaning, but confused, individuals, such as the editorial writer of the Seattle Times and some business types, believe that pushing a high-stakes exam will somehow fix all the problems. That is complete nonsense. We have lots of exams at the state universities and colleges...entrance exams that test real math needed for real world problems. And you know something? Many of our entering students..the creme of the crop..are failing (more than 50% in community colleges). We had the WASL for years and math capabilities sunk to amazing lows. Randy Dorn believes we need time to fix a failed system left to him by Terry Bergeson and others and he is right. Are we ready to deny graduation to 20, 30 or 40% of our seniors? I really doubt it. And it is not a good idea.

Cold, Clothing and Fatality Risk

In just a few weeks, we will set out from sunny (currently 30 degree plus) Melbourne to Boston where there is, right now, sunny but that hasn't stopped single digit temperatures emerging. Of course, it is November and give it another few weeks and Boston will be colder than we have ever experienced. Our strategy up until this point had been to avoid all that but that point is now passed.

What this means, of course, is that neither one of us has ever muttered to our children, "don't go out like that, you'll catch your death of cold." Indeed, we were never told that by our parents either. What we are more likely to do is to cake our children in protective elements during much of the year when the sun exists. In Australia, sun cancer is such a real fear that we have thrown everything at it including what I suspect is a widespread Vitamin D deficiency that future medical researchers will enjoy pouring over. We don't want anyone going out like that and catching their death of sun.

To see the depth of the problem, this year, my now 11 year old daughter decided she liked shorts and relented to wearing anything else for just a couple of weeks of the deepest winter this year. Suffice it to say, this may not cut it in Boston. Now you might have though that one reason for this is that she would catch her death of cold. But according to the almost five minutes of research I conducted assessing the risk of fatality from cold exposure with inappropriate clothing, your risk of the common cold doesn't really increase although there might be an issue with the flu. Thanks to widespread media coverage of a shortage of swine flu vaccines in the US, we all got ourselves the 'family pack' vaccination just last week. So the flu risk seems minimal although my daughter did possibly contract a side-effect, throwing up going home from school and literally taking a tram out of commission. Talk about side effects with collateral damage!

There is, of course, a risk of being cold if you don't have appropriate clothing. Now a key parental role is to teach your children things like 'how to dress?' This is like other parental roles I wasn't aware of until alerted to them. For instance, when our daughter was one year old, we stupidly picked up a parenting manual in a bookstore and learned that she should be able to do 'pat a cake.' We asked her to do this and she couldn't. Later it transpired that it would have helped had we known how to pat cakes.

Which brings me to the issue that I, with my caking patting wisdom am forecasting, that we can't teach our children to dress because we don't know how to dress. I'm the only one of us who has lived outside of Australia and that was four years in Palo Alto. And while during my first winter there in 1990, I suffered greatly because of the sheer cold, I did learn to deal with it after purchasing my first 'coat' which was a garment you put on outside but not in. Who would have thought it? Apparently, all over the world, people are changing their clothes as they change their exposure to walls and roofs. How do they live?

So now I am going to turn to you, who have made it this far reading about my lack of knowledge of basic weather management, to suggest the items that we need to purchase in order to protect our children. Bear in mind that (a) we don't have this stuff; (b) will have to purchase at least one set of them within a day of arriving in Boston and (c) have no real idea of the terminology for things. Now another commenter suggested LL Bean as the font of all that is good in this regard except that they don't seem to exist within an hours drive of Boston (so that might be good for the extra sets that we will surely need). But what list should we take to like Macys, Target or something right on Day 1? Specifically, fill in the blank, "if you don't put on BLANK you will catch your death of cold!" Over to you.

Miracle Whip? Tone it Down? Wha?

I had one of those epiphany moments last night where I was able to finally see how insane something is.

In this case, it is a slogan that Kraft is bandying about for Miracle Whip.

"We are Miracle Whip and we will not tone it down."

Has anyone in the history of mankind ever said something like that after eating a sandwich or other edible item prepared with Miracle Whip?

Tone it down?

Seriously? Who are these people who have been asking Kraft to tone down Miracle Whip... I want their names, I want their addresses and I want to have them involuntarily committed for the sake of humanity as a whole.

I mean, if someone was to advertise Tabasco sauce like that, it would make more sense. I can just see the ad campaign now (Crazy People style):



Or you know, if Miracle Whip had introduced some new flavors, like a chipotle blend (I just had a Freudian slip there as I typed bland rather than blend... oops), and they were using this campaign to advertise it, then again, that would be great.

It is like having an ad campaign for vanilla ice cream where you talked about how extreme a flavor it is. If you are trying to be funny, it works, but I don't get that sense from the Miracle Whip ads. It is like they are trying way to hard to rebrand themselves as this alternative sandwich spread when they have been the establishment ever since the process for making it was discovered during the Great Depression... and they were the cheaper alternative to mayo back then... now, not so much.

You can't be rebelling against the man if you ARE the man.

What I would love to see is French's Mustard and Heinz Ketchup totally mock these ads in their own special way. I mean, I would buy more of their products if they did. I make that pledge to you, my readers. In fact, I think I would make that promise about any product that prods Miracle Whip for making such a stupid commercial.

Tags: miracle whip, colbert, french's mustard, heinz ketchup, tabasco sauce, hot fuzz, the man, mayo, mayonnaise, kraft, vanilla, ice cream, great depression

Windy Night

Lots of wind tonight....not a major windstorm...but...take a look at the latest observations (see graphic). Sustained winds of 40-50 mph on the coast, with gusts to 60-70 mph at some locations. Also strong winds over NW Washington, with gusts to 40-55 mph. NW WA has really gotten it the last week--as described in my book, a major causes is the lower pressure in the lee (NE) of the Olympics. Winds hitting 30-40 mph over the lowlands...particularly over water. Should quiet down later tonight.

Very substantial precipitation during the next two days, particularly over the mountains: 2-6 inches probable there. And the Cascades should get a few additional feet. It is looking very good for skiing over Thanksgiving...a great gift to the ski resorts. Turns out this is a wonderful year for ski resorts all over the U.S. One reason...we had one of the coldest Octobers on record across the U.S. (see map). But skiers beware....this is an El Nino year and the El Nino effects don't hit until after the new year--low snowpack is a major feature of El Nino late winters. So get your runs in now!

Midweek Video: Deeper and Deeper

I was going to subject you all to a song that has been stuck in my head since a visit to the supermarket last week, but I didn't want to start the next "Rickroll" with that song, and thus, we have arrived at this selection.

I love the movie Streets of Fire and this is the song that they close out the credits with, so it has stuck with me for a number of years.

Tags: streets of fire, deeper and deeper, the fixx, supermarket, rickroll

The latest addition to Google's open source projects

Did you know Google has released more than 300 open source projects to date? Yesterday, we announced the latest addition to Google's open source projects - YouTube Direct, a new tool that enables any developer to solicit video submissions, moderate and display them on their website, all powered by YouTube. We recognize the role that open source plays at Google and how it helps us create better applications and we try to give back to the community as much as possible.

YouTube Direct was built on top of YouTube's public APIs and is designed to run on Google App Engine - Google's highly scalable platform. To date, several media organizations like ABC News, The Huffington Post and Politico have taken advantage of the open platform to deploy their own version of YouTube Direct to empower citizen journalism and enrich their site in the process. We look forward to see for more creative usage of the tool.

By Amanda Surya, YouTube Direct team

Welcome to Google Developer Relations, Don!

A couple days ago, Google welcomed Don Dodge to our Developer Relations team, where he joins us as a Developer Advocate working with developers, startups, and other Google Apps partners. We're expecting Don to be a fantastic addition to our team. He's already a prominent voice in the developer community, well-known and highly-regarded among entrepreneurs, technologists, and the media.

In the TechCrunch post first announcing Don's availability, Michael Arrington wrote how Don, "makes a big effort to give young startups the attention they deserve. This is a guy who gives a heck of a lot more to the community than he ever takes back." This dedication to the community of developers and the businesses they build is one of the things that excites us the most about having Don on our team. These businesses have been central to Google's success over the years, so we already know that Don's attitude will fit right in with our efforts. Don has deep experience working in startups from his days at companies like AltaVista, Napster, and Groove Networks, and has always continued to maintain the connection and passion for that community since leaving their ranks to join Microsoft, and now Google. We are eager for Don to share his personal experience and professional insights with developers and small businesses integrating with Google Apps, and be an advocate for developers and partners inside the company.

Don already wrote about his first day on the job at Google. Tomorrow you can hear him speak on the Enterprise Cloud Summit Panel in New York City. You can follow Don on his personal blog, email him at dondodge at google.com, or follow @dondodge on Twitter.

By Michael Winton, Google Developer Relations