Most popular posts of 2009

I did this in 2007 and in 2008 and so it is time once again to trawl through this blog's statistics and see what posts appeared to attract the most attention (in terms of hits) in 2009. They are:

1. Star Trek: for kids?
2. Informing economics through toileting
3. Revolutionary parenting innovation: The outdoor computer game
4. The second most intelligent life form
5. 2 hours of self play
6. Cold, Clothing and Fatality Risk

That last one so notable for comments that I now believe have been both life saving and a stimulus to the US economy. Just outside the list was my reaction to the WSJ review of Parentonomics. As it was the only US newspaper review, in retrospect, perhaps I should have been calmer. But I was most proud of this post on Rachel Nalebuff's little book.

In addition, these posts from past years still had enough hits to out do those above (just counting their hits in 2009 alone):

• Anakin Skywalker Lego Cake
• 2 year old birthday parties
• Subtraction before addition
• Swimming lessons
• The Amazing World of Starfall

I realise blogging has been light of late. It has been busy setting up here in the US but hopefully I'll get back into the swing of things in 2010.

My Resolutions for 2010

Well, I did pretty well on my 2009 resolutions, so it is time to push myself a little further this year.

Have 250 articles on sites outside of this blog. I know every year I've done this, I've put up a blogging challenge to myself to reach various post plateaus, and I reach those goals handily. So, I thought I would up the ante and try expanding my reach across cyberspace by writing for a variety of sites this year. I am including things like guest posts in this tally so that I get the broadest experience I can. Of course, I am still going to try to maintain the same level of production here as well.

Get that TV pilot finished: Even if I don't sell it, find an agent or whatever, having that thing done would likely be a huge accomplishment and something I would consider a feather in my cap. I have the books, the outlines and the other materials I need to accomplish this now, so there is no excuse for not getting it done.

Read Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy: I made this resolution a couple of years ago, but the book didn't come out in the year I made that resolution. It has come out in the past couple of months and it will be in trade size this year, so now it seems like I can cross this one off my list.

Do more Remembering Posts: I enjoy writing my Remembering posts, but I haven't done a lot of them as of late. It isn't that there aren't countless older movies, games, books and television shows to write posts about, it is merely that I was a little bit lazy this year. So, I am going to make a concerted effort to try to do a at least a few more of these posts this year.

I don't have a lot of resolutions, but again, some of them are challenging, yet attainable goals. And I think that is the most important part of having resolutions.

Tags: james ellroy, blood's a rover, freelance writing, blogging, remembering, tv pilot

New Years Eve Weather and then...

New Year's is rapidly approaching and so is a strong warm front (see satellite image above).Rain has now reached the south Sound and you can expect a relatively wet day. For those thinking of celebrating outside I have good news....most of the rain should be through by 10 PM...and with with warmer air and scattered showers, it won't be too bad to welcome the new year at the Space Needle or some other outdoor venue. I should note that it will be quite windy along the Oregon coast this afternoon (see graphic). This kind of situation can produce strong coastal accelerations and sustained winds of 20-40 kts and high gusts can be expected in that area.Sea level pressure (solid lines) and low-level temps (shading)

Winds shown by shading

Tomorrow will be showery and then Friday night a modest low will make landfall on central/northern Vancouver Island and move north of us (see graphic). It will be windy on the coast and offshore tomorrow afternoon, and as the low moves north of us (see next graphic) the pressure variations and winds will increase over the lowlands. However, but the winds will be modest (generally 10-25 kts) over the lowlands with higher gusts near water.




Saturday will have some showers and decreasing winds and then Sunday looks dry. Temperatures will be on the edge for snow in the passes today and tomorrow (there could well be several inches of wet snow before the temps warm enough to turn it to rain), but it will be cold enough for snow on Saturday in the post-storm showers.

The long term forecast is very interesting. A weak disturbance brings some light rain on Monday, but then a major ridge builds in the eastern Pacific and stays there for many days. We could completely dry out with no major weather for quite a while. Temperatures would be well above normal. Is the El Nino winter about to begin? I suspect most of our interesting winter weather will be behind us as we start 2010. And happy new year to those reading this blog...

How my 2009 Resolutions Panned Out

Well, as we near the end of another year, it is time for me to look back at the resolutions I made last year and see how I did.

Start a music-based podcast.

Yeah, I totally rocked this one. I did 4 podcasts, and I was a contributor to a lot of the podcasts Lee Sargent did this year too, so I am calling this one a success.

Movies I want to see:

The Machine Girl - Started it but didn't finish it.
Harold and Maude - Nope
Hit Man (a movie with Bernie Casey from the 70's) - Couldn't find it.
The Day After - Yes, I saw this one.
Pi - I saw this back in January. Unfortunately, I was really tired so now I can't really remember it.

225 Posts on this blog.

Yep. This one was easy. Even on bad weeks, I was still putting up 4-5 posts, so even with a few weeks off here and there, I still reached that modest goal.

Work on a writing a novel or a TV pilot.

I put together all my materials for the pilot, and I got a gift card for a Canadian book chain and I ordered a book on writing a pilot and one on screenwriting (because, hey, that is something interesting to learn as well). I also participated in NaNoWriMo, though I only got 3000 words or so, but it was an interesting start. So while I wasn't completely successful, I did actually work at this, and I have a few things to show for it, so I am giving myself a little bit of credit for this one.

One new blog feature.

Well, I guess both Cut Rate Cultural Analysis and My Enemies List count. They are enjoyable to do.

Get the Pop Culture Supreme Court back together.

Yeah, this one... this one just got by me. I just couldn't collect my thoughts together enough to propose a cohesive plan for getting the band back together as it were. I will put this out there though... if there is someone who was part of the original band that wants to take it over, well, maybe I can hand over the keys to the joint as it were.

I think I will be back tomorrow for the new resolutions. I think. Not promising anything.

Tags: 2009, resolutions, enemies list, pop culture supreme court, nanowrimo, television pilot, machine girl, lee sargent, the day after, hit man

A Wet New Year's Eve--and more

And I am not talking about liquid refreshments. After a dry, and sometimes sunny period, we are about to see some serious rain again. Been almost a week.

Tonight we are getting some showers from a very weak front that is moving through (see radar image). And tomorrow there will be some scattered showers and even some sunbreaks--temps climbing into the 40s. Not too interesting.

But don't worry...meteorological fun is in store on Thursday. A fairly strong warm front will move up the coast during the afternoon and will pass over the central WA coast and Puget Sound around 4 PM (graphic). Winds will increase and temps will jump as it passes. Particularly strong winds will strike the Oregon coast behind the front. Moderately heavy showers will accompany the warm front--the 24h rainfall totals ending 4 PM on Thursday show that although western WA will be wet, the real soaking will over western Oregon and NW California (graphic). The subsequent 24-h will be equally as wet, with NW CA and SW Oregon getting inundated. (see graphic)
Enough to make a web-footed Washingtonian happy? But wait, there's more!


The latest runs show a modest low pressure center approaching our area. The first graphic below shows the pressure pattern at 4 PM on Friday--with the low off the Washington coast. Big pressure changes and winds along its southern flank. The track of the low will be critical for who gets strong winds and who doesn't--and subsequent runs have been shifting the low southwards.

Tonight's run...the latest....takes it into NW Washington...which is good for windy conditions over Puget Sound (see graphic). The only problem is that the low is fairly weak...only 1000 mb ...so we can't expect much. Perhaps gusts of 20-30 mph.


Anyway, its good to be getting back into some active weather. And decent mountain snows on Friday and Saturday. I bet Jim Forman will have a good time.

Sky Islands

I was looking for an inexpensive vacation last week that offered lots of sun and interesting weather features--well I found one --Tucson, Arizona.

Perhaps my most interesting weather experience was ascending one of the "sky islands" - the Santa Catalina Mountains northeast of Tucson. Starting around 2500 ft in the Tucson metro area, one can take the Catalina Highway/Sky Island Scenic Byway to 9,157-foot Mt. Lemmon over about 25 miles (see map). This topographic "island" within the Sonoran desert provides a wide range of climatic and weather conditions, with temperature dropping and precipitation increasing with height.

We started in Tucson under sunny skies and temps about 55F--surrounded by Saguaro and other cacti. The Saguaro are the cacti that are so often used to represent the Southwest (one is shown in the figure below), but they really only found in southern Arizona and Mexico--they can't handle below freezing temperatures for any length of time. By around 4ooo ft the Saguaro were gone--just too cold.


Weaving up the road, the vegetation and climate changed rapidly, and by around 5000 ft we started to see some SNOW in shaded areas. By 6500 ft there was loads of snow and we had entered a pine forest--reminding me of the eastern slopes of the Cascades. Moving higher, the snow got deeper (perhaps 3-6 inches at 7500 ft) and the air temperature was probably around 35F. So in 45 minutes one goes from desert to snow and a northern-type forest...there is even a ski area at the top!

Average rainfall is roughly 12 inches in Tucson (slightly wetter than eastern Washington) to 30 inches at the Mt. Lemmon site (slightly drier than Bellingham).

But the weather excitement didn't end there. On Tuesday, Dec 22, a cold front was approaching central Arizona, with a low center to the north--the result was a large pressure difference over the region with winds accelerating to 40-50 mph. We were out hiking in Saguaro National Park as the wind hit and the most extraordinary thing was the rapid loss of visibility (see pic). The situation got very bad on I10 south of Phoenix where winds blew over agricultural fields. (it has been a very dry year...Tucson only has received about half their normal 12 inches a year). The result was a severe dust storm that resulted in over 20 accidents on I10, a death, and the temporary closure of the road (graphic).

The adaption of the plants and animals to the dry conditions is really extraordinary, including the ability of big cacti to store tons of water and the dual usage of cactus needles for both protection and shading. I was not a little disappointed about human adaption down there...lots of large vehicles and relatively few solar panels.



And my family's adventure in Tucson was really enhanced by the very nice bed and breakfast we stayed at: a place called Azure Gate. Friendly, helpful people and extraordinary food.

Finally, what about our weather? Our sunny period ends today...and tomorrow will bring increased clouds and a few sprinkles. Then a few weak systems in store...but nothing of any note for several days. Unfortunately, for active weather lovers the influence of El Nino will now become more significant...and that means that weakened and split systems will be more frequent than normal...and snowpack should be below normal.

Washington DC -- The Mall

So we are here in Washington DC where I had some vague idea that the kids might learn some more about the US that could get them up to speed at school. If that has happened it will be via a grudging osmosis. No overt grand wonder at the knowledge being spread before them.

The first event on this learning by doing exploration of the US was a road trip from Boston to DC on Christmas Day. My idea was to cover several states so that they at least could get a sense that there were more states than in Australia. That lead to complaining about that fact and how much harder it was going to be to learn what those states were. During the road trip I purchased a game where the children had to look out of the car and identify license plates from different states. Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Delaware and Maryland came easily and we picked up Indiana, Tennessee, Texas and California as well. North Carolina proved more difficult as it was the "First in Flight" and obscured by a dealer plate but we got there in the end. The same for Florida and Oklahoma. New Jersey was of interest in proclaiming that it was "The Garden State." However, my 11 year old daughter did remark during our visit to that state that it appeared devoid of gardens. This led to a suggestion that there was, in fact, one garden in the state -- "The Garden" -- and we just hadn't seen it. Nonetheless, the search for more states proved fruitless; including the highly prized Montana. I have no idea how we are going to get Hawaii but I guess we have a year of this to do so.

In DC, our first stop was the other Air & Space museum out near Dulles airport. This museum holds The Enterprise which, to disappoint our children, was in fact the space shuttle rather than the 23rd Century version and also had, in reality, clocked as much space hours as those later versions. It didn't even have real engines but I guess we got a sense of size. Nonetheless, aside from the disappointment at the level of human progress, that museum did have an impressive array of planes including a B1 Stealth Bomber and the Concorde. Definitely worth the trip.

We then moved on to the Lincoln monument leading to the discussion of what a "score" was. This lead to an evening walk amongst other memorials with varying significance represented by various pieces of art and sculpture. Growing weary, my 9 year old son happened upon a tree -- of which there were many -- and asked "what does this represent?"

The next day saw us start at the usual Air and Space museum and another set of disappointment at just how uncomfortable space travel is when we could stand up close with the original Apollo 11 capsule and walk through a Sky Lab prototype. The children came to the opinion that flying in the Wright brother's original plane looked more fun. We were all impressed, however, at the efficiency of the huge McDonalds there that appeared to fund the whole operation.

We then trudged over to the American History museum to learn some history. That turned out to be impossible as there were various artifacts but not much in the way of facts. That said, we did happen upon an exhibit with some pictures of bacteria. My 11 year old daughter has become quite obsessed with stomach bacteria of late -- a story for another time -- so much so that for her birthday I discovered, and I am not making this up, plush toys of various bacteria which now share a bed with her. I could not imagine that the demand for such toys -- which I discovered in the University of Melbourne bookshop -- was more than a single child in the world. Yet there they were.

Anyhow, my daughter was staring at an E Coli picture when another kid came up and said (and I am really not making this up), "E Coli. I have a stuffed toy of that." To say I was shocked is an underestimated. I immediately encouraged my daughter to quickly go and make friends with this kid. But she refused. I am pretty sure they will regret it for the rest of their lives.

We didn't spend much time at American History before moving on to the White House. Again this led to another round of disappointment for the children who thought they might be able to go in but instead were some distance away but quite close to Michelle Obama's vegetable garden. You can't imagine the excitement that generated.

Tomorrow, we will try the Museum of Natural History that has the virtue of being the subject of Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian. I sold it to my kids as such and my son remarked, "you mean we are visiting the set." I said, sure. I gotta go with the Hollywood path on this one.

Guest Post and My Moment of the Year

Remember how I said I was going to be posting sporadically? Well, things just keep happening that aren't letting me get away with that, because I have two new things to report, and I don't think they will wait until tomorrow to talk about.

The first regards a guest post I recently had published at the blog Wrestlegasm, a funny little romp called Cutting a Promo for Beginners, which is filled with both wrestling and pop culture references, because as you know, that is just how I roll. Now I knew that it was going to appear there as I had had a heart to heart with the lovely Ray Davies and she agreed to give me a chance to do the occasion guest post there because I really love her sense of humor and her take on wrestling in general.

In the end, I was quite pleased with the results.

And the second thing is in a way tied to the above item. You see, last night I noticed I was getting hits from a post placement arranged through the blog syndication service BlogBurst, and I just had to see what was going on. Well, the Chicago Sun-Times had picked up one of my stories for exposure on their site (which isn't extremely out of the ordinary based on my history at the site), but I don't think the person who picked the story looked at the image that went along with it.

Can you see something about that image that perhaps shouldn't be on that site? A particular word which both I and a certain black actor love to say all the time.

Yeah. As I said on Facebook when I talked about this and the title alludes to it... this was the Moment of the Year for me!

I like some of the captions that Ray Davies puts on her wrestling recap pictures that I thought I would do that myself... with a sly little reference to Hot Fuzz. Didn't think that it would end up on a major newspaper's site though.

I was laughing so hard last night, I thought I was going to fall over.

Tags: chicago sun-times, hot fuzz, cutting a promo, wrestlegasm, funny site, miracle whip, tabasco sauce, blogburst, samuel l jackson, ray davies, guest post, moment of the year

Week 33: Pageant of the Transmundane

Apparently, you can bicycle nude in New Zealand as long as you are wearing a helmet. Hmmm... I guess you learn something new every day. Why just yesterday I heard that you can deep-fry butter. I don't know why you would want to... but apparently it is possible.

This week's winning entry comes to us from, and let me get this right because it is quite a mouthful (so many jokes... must resist... urge... to be dirty), Calvin's Canadian Cave of Coolness, that bastien of monitor sized header graphics, for Ye it is true.

This is a self-nomination, though I had really do some detective work, as their email didn't indicate that they were in fact the proprietor of the blog in question.

But that being said, there are indeed many things of transmundane splendor on the above site, and one such item has indeed won the award this week.

It is an image of the most unlikely of meetings or even seeming alliances. I am talking about some weird Aquaman/Cthulhu crossover.

I mean, seriously, what the hell is that about? I mean, yes, it could be a Kraken, but it looks like Cthulhu has totally corrupted Aquaman (I guess this was right before the Lovecraftian fiend forced the DC to make that awful game).

Of course, I could have probably done a better search for a Homer Simpson Transmundanity Award picture, but alas, I am writing this on Christmas Eve, so this one of Pieman will have to do for the moment. ;)



Congrats (k)Cal... 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 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, pageant of the transmundane, deep fried butter, naked biking, new zealand, calvin's canadian cave of coolness, cthulhu, aquaman

Boring Weather

Picture by Reid Wolcott of low clouds over the Puget Sound lowlands, taken from Newcastle Golf Course

How many ways can a meteorologists spell "Boring"? For the past several days we have been stuck in the classic mid-winter ridge pattern, when high pressure over the region produces dry, low wind conditions. The problem is that such conditions produce the hated, yes even despised, persistent low clouds and fog. Why? With a ridge there is a lack of clouds aloft and the surface can effectively radiate heat to space without the clouds getting in the way. The atmosphere doesn't radiate as well and the result is an inversion, with temperature increasing with height. Low wind speeds with the ridge result in a lack of good atmospheric mixing in the vertical, and thus a strengthening of the inversion.

Inversions act as barriers to air motion and as the air progressively cools near the surface, fog and low clouds can form. Moisture collects below the inversion, strengthening the fog. And wait! It is even worse than that! The top of the clouds are very effective in radiating heat to space....so you get cooling there, which mixes down into the cloudy layer. If the cloudy layer is thin enough, some sun can get through to "burn" if off. Fog burns off in two ways----from the outside perimeter towards the interior and from the bottom up. We didn't understand how fog burned off from its edges until weather satellites showed this to us. The burning off from the bottom results in fog "lifting" into stratus.

When there is fog around, Sea Tac is often enshrouded (and operations affected), while Boeing Field and Portland are operational. Why? Sea Tac is high--roughly 450 ft up---and when the clouds start lifting in the region, they can still be in the soup while Boeing Fields gets enough low-level cleaning to allow the airport to open. Portland has the advantage of air jetting out the Gorge...which can mix things enough to stop fog formation. In any case, it is always wise to fly as late as possible in the winter from Sea Tac, when fog is least frequent.

And when fog and cold are around, there is another threat to think about ....black ice on the roadways....so be careful.

Computer models indicate this general pattern should hold into next week. Not my favorite weather pattern. And one that doesn't improve our declining snowpack. Right now the snowpack is below normal for increasing portions of the region (see graphic)...and with El Nino effects strengthening after Jan 1, a little pessimism is in order for skiing and water supply.

Merry Christmas from Dr. Girlfriend and The Monarch

The Fairy Tale of New York as sung by Dr. Girlfriend* and The Monarch. And for those of you who aren't familiar with the show, Dr. Girlfriend is singing the Shane McGowan's part and The Monarch Kirsty MacColl's.

Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. And don't piss off Santa Claus... or Brock Samson.

* Yes, I know she isn't "Dr. Girlfriend" anymore.

Tags: pogues, dr. girlfriend, the monarch, fairytale of new york, shane mcgowan, brock samson, santa claus

Sporadic Posting Ahead

With the holidays ahead, I think you will forgive me if I take a little time off and not try to keep this blog updated almost every weekday for a couple of weeks. Well, until the new year.

I am not going to leave this blog by it lonesome all that time... if I have something to say, well, I'll say it.

Of course, I will still be doing the Pageant of the Transmundane, so those of you looking for oddity will still have a place to find it on Boxing Day and January 2nd.

Regular broadcasting will recommence on January 4th.

Thank you for your patience.

Repugnant Milk?

The Courier Mail reports on the 'black' market for breast-milk:

A BLACK market in breast milk has developed in Australia as families desperate to feed their babies the natural elixir are being charged up to $1000 a litre on the internet.

One mother contacted the Gold Coast based Mother's Milk Bank to ask what the real "going rate" was for breast milk after online sharks demanded the extortionate amount when she placed a web advert seeking human milk.

Mother's Milk Bank director Marea Ryan told her that the not-for-profit bank sold milk for $50 for 1.2 litres.

The market has developed because of the marketed qualities of breast-milk. So mothers who have difficulty breast-feeding still have incentives to procure breast-milk elsewhere.

If I understand the article correctly, there are concerns that an unregulated market may give rise to health issues of the quality of milk is poor. That is, it should be regulated as a food. However, it appears to be treated as a bodily fluid and so regulated or open markets with transparent standards are shut down.

The Government clearly can't have it both ways here. If it believes breast-milk is important then ensuring quality supply is available widely is surely a good thing. On the other hand, there may be social norms at work preventing such markets by treating all sale of bodily fluids as a repugnant transaction.

My guess is that they are against the idea because of concerns that some mothers might opt to purchase breast-milk rather than produce it themselves. As an economist, that idea does not trouble me although I think that some regulations might be in order to ensure that mothers do not supply milk onto the market in ways that cause them to deny their own children that milk. Nonetheless, this is not an area where Governments should be dismissive of market opportunities.

Climate Musings

There were quite few comments on my Climategate post last week. There was a bit more I wanted to say and will do so here.

My bottom line message was that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) IS a major problem, but one that has received considerable hype from both "sides." One side is convinced, for good reason, that AGW is a real problem, but is not afraid to dramatize the threat a bit or to see the "other side" in threatening terms. The other believes the whole business is some kind of false science inspired by some left wind conspiracy. Or they repeat ideas that don't hold water under examination: e.g., that since the earth has had climate cycles before, we can't pin changes on greenhouse gases. Or that since we can't forecast weather well next week, how can we predict climate change fifty years from now? Or that there can't be global warming caused by man because the earth's temperatures haven't changed much during the last 5-10 years.

If we had some magic technical fix for AGW (e.g., a cheap and effective process to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, or fusion power was made practical tomorrow) that would still not fix the really serious problem...sustainability. There is simply too many people on our planet and there will soon be a lot more. All want to enjoy the high standard of living in the western world--and how can we deny them what we have? We can't--they have as much right as we do for a comfortable life. We are using up the planets fresh water, exhausting the soils, polluting the air and ocean, using up limited resources (like oil)..the list goes on and on. Our species can't expand our numbers forever and we have to find a way to live indefinitely with the planet's carrying capacity.

Getting back to the Copenhagen meeting. It has been clear for a long time that no nation is willing to hurt its economic development in the short term for ameliorating a theoretical problem mainly in the future. Kyoto was pretty much of a joke in terms of doing anything serious and the agreement of last week lacks concrete measures. Even people who are emotionally committed to doing something about AGW are unwilling to change their personal lives in a meaningful way. How many global warming activists are jetting across the world for seemingly endless meetings? I know some with vacation homes--the ultimate waste of resources. If such committed people won't sacrifice and are not a little hypocritical, how can we expect others to?

Lets be honest with ourselves...there is only a few ways left to proceed now:

1. Put large amount of resources into technological improvements in energy efficiency, new energy sources, removal of Co2 from the atmosphere, etc. Make it cost effective and NO SACRIFICE to reduce fossil fuel emission. Green industry can be a boon for everyone. The U.S. is very rich in solar and wind energy...we are just scratching the surface. And we and much of the world waste huge amounts of energy. Obama should make this a priority---a Manhattan Project like effort.

2. Take serious steps on adaption--making the changes necessary to reduce the impacts of global warming and to take advantage of the good things that go with it. And there will be good things. The Canadians and Russians are going see vast areas opening up to agriculture. Washington State wines will get even better (sorry Californians).

Taking both approaches will help give us time to deal with the overarching problem...sustainability and overpopulation.

But there is something else we have to do educate ourselves better. Too many people on both sides of this are expressing opinions without really understanding what they are talking about. The climate system is extraordinarily complex and people learn a few facts and think they understand more than they do. For example, most people don't understand about natural variability..how the atmosphere has variations without any external cause, like increasing greenhouse gases. Thus, it is possible for temperatures to remain steady or even decline for a few years under increasing greenhouse gases...if the natural variability is on a downward turn. A year ago I explained this to a leading "free market" environmentalist who never understood this fact....I could see the impact this simple (or not so simple) idea had. And global warming activists need to do some learning too...how many times have I heard simplistic arguments that warmer temperatures will cause increased humidity and increased severe precipitation everywhere. Just not true.

And scientists must do a far better job at explaining things...in an open and non-patronizing way. Communication has to be seen as an essential part of our job, and we need to be more open with the uncertainties--what we are not sure about.

Some Candor in this year's Birthday Post

Usually when I write a post on my birthday, it is funny and/or somehow life affirming... well, I don't think I really have that in me this year. Well, if this is funny, it will be more like a black comedy. Naturally, this is going to go into a lot of personal stuff in this too, so this is going to be a departure from the usual stuff I write. Because we all know that me and public candor waved bye to each other a long time ago, and it wasn't that difficult a parting. If anything, it was a mutual break up, as candor didn't want to have anything to do with me, and I didn't trust it, so here we are. The fact that the above analogy sounds startlingly like something that happened to me in real life is purely coincidental.

So I am 33 now. The strange irony is, I've sort of been unknowingly holding a competition with my long-deceased grandfather about who would their first heart attack younger... he had his at 32, so I guess this is a contest I am happy to lose. Of course, I got a grim reminder of my own mortality when a young actress that is 11 months younger than me died of a cardiac arrest yesterday. So it is not a question of if I am going to have a heart attack... it is a question of when. Even though I know the risks, well, I am still not in the best shape. I am in better shape than I was 2 years ago when my mother had her heart attack, but I could be doing so much more.

I think my only consolation is if I have a heart attack and live, well, I will be in some good company. I mean, George Carlin and Richard Pryor had heart attacks relatively young, and hey, who wouldn't want to be like them, minus the cocaine. Of course, the fact that those individuals are now deceased shouldn't dissuade me however.

Yeah, my only real addiction is buying PS2 games. I can't stop buying them. I know I should. It moved beyond ridiculous over the summer and turned into something entirely unsettling. I don't even want to do the math about how long it would take to try to go through them all, because I would be very sad indeed. I mean, if it was booze or pills or sex, well, as a writer I would naturally end up with some stories I could potentially mine and turn into something of interest to the general public, or to tell on talk shows (and I am not trying to reduce those problems into something that could be so easily packaged), but with my little shopaholic problem, well, all I end up with is a lot less drawer space and some lingering debts (along with feelings of recrimination, I can't forget that).

I've also come to the realization that I'm probably never going to have kids, and I'm okay with that now. When I was in my late teens and early 20's, well, I always felt like I had some warped responsibility to carry on the family name, because for the most part, the overwhelming majority of children on the side of the family that shares my surname are female, so I always felt like there was going to be an obligation for me to have children, and that is never the right reason to have them.

I think if I would have had children in my early to mid-20's, I would have been an decent parent, but I don't think I am the same person I was then. Even at this relatively young age, I am already starting to notice that I don't have the same youthful vigor I once had, and I know that I have far less patience than I used to.

And let's face it, I am enough of a child by myself that I need my full attention so I don't play in traffic or do any of the other strange things children do.

I also can't forget to mention the crankiness. Wow, if I would have known that there was going to be individual moments where I was so angry I turned into Lewis Black, I would have never believed it when I was in my 20s.

But I think I should wrap it up there... I don't want to turn into George Costanza discussing his life with the tenant board in "The Andrea Doria". Yeah, I just had to end it with a pop culture reference.

Tags: seinfeld, childless, single, collecting, weirdo, birthday, andrea doria, lewis black, murphy, black comedy

A look back on 2009

2009 was a remarkable year for developers. Vic Gundotra, VP of our developer team declared at Google I/O, "The web has won!" and this year was full of launches and announcements that remind us how the web has become the platform of our day. We found lots of inspiration from the developers at Google I/O in San Francisco and at our Google Developer Days in Japan, China, Brazil, Russia and the Czech Republic.



Here's a look back at some of our favorite highlights from 2009:

• Faster Apps Faster - the theme for the recent Campfire One event letting developers know how GWT 2.0 decreases development time (it's being used by Google Wave & Adwords for this reason) and how Speed Tracer gives you new insight into speeding up your apps


• Make the Web faster - as part of an effort to Make the web faster we launched tools like Page-Speed and our DNS resolution service. We also made our internal JavaScript tools available, called Closure Tools, so you can rev up your js like the guys on Gmail. With PubSubHubbub all your feeds can be real-time streams.


• A faster browser - A few weeks ago we launched Google Chrome for Mac and Linux, along with an extension framework for Chrome and a gallery for developers to distribute their extensions -- there are over 900 to check out already! Chrome has a set of developer tools built on WebKit to help optimize your code. Plus, we released details of Chrome OS...a netbook operating system for speed freaks. Along the way, we've worked with the larger web community contributing to the exciting future of the web with HTML5.


• Mobile - Android launched on one device in one country on one carrier in 2008. This year, 20 devices in 26 countries on 32 carriers have been launched or announced. Developers have created over 16,000 apps in the Android Marketplace. Some were winners of our second Android Developer Challenge. We launched new mobile versions of gmail and calendar using HTML5. You can take a picture to search using Google Goggles and get turn-by-turn navigation with Google maps. Plus, we recently announced our mobile lab for Android hardware.


• Hosting - App Engine apps were allowed to scale beyond free quotas and Java developers were invited to try it out at Campfire 1 in April. Developers responded, with over 100K apps  built on App Engine. Open source developers using Project Hosting were able to host projects on Mercurial, in addition to Subversion.


• New APIs - Google Wave was released early to developers at Google I/O in May. Wave is "equal parts conversation and document" and showcases what is possible in the browser. Developers can build robot extensions to automate common tasks or build gadget extensions to provide a new way for users to interact. Google Maps released v3, Friend Connect got more personalized and then got cozy w/ Twitter, Google Analytics released an API and then added asynchronous tracking.


• Google Web Elements - From maps to search to translate and more, Google Web Elements made it even easier than ever to add Google products to your site.


• Labs - Google Code Labs was created to let developers know which APIs and products are cutting edge labs "experiments" and which we are committed to supporting for the long term.

It is a very exciting time to be a developer...we are just starting to see what is possible with the web as the platform. It will be a lot of fun to see where all of us, together, can take the web in 2010!

Happy Holidays from the Google Developer Team!

By Mike Marchak, on behalf of the Google Developer Team

Sunday Video: A Pack of Gifts Now

First it was a spoof of Goodfellas... and then The Godfather, but for Mad TV's final Rudolph spoof, they went a little more surreal.

I am of course talking about take the action into the late 1970's with a parody of Apocalypse Now! and boy, does it get trippy.

Of course, I don't think it is as good as the two earlier productions, but the set wouldn't be complete without it.

Tags: mad tv, godfather, goodfellas, apocalypse now, a pack of gifts now, santa, rudolph the red nosed reindeer, christmas

Coastal Storms

Here is the six hour forecast valid 10 PM tonight (Saturday) with sea level pressure (the solid lines) and precipitation. Two coasts, two storms. For us, a warm front is now moving through the region, and you can see the band of precipitation associated with it on a recent radar image (graphic). Temps will warm up as the warm front pushes north. Then late tomorrow the cold front front will hit us, with substantially increasing precipitation (see 24-h amounts ending 4 am on Monday). Unfortunately, it has been warm enough to rain in the mountains...not very good for the snowpack. More Cascade-concrete in the making!
In contrast, the east coast is getting a powerful, but tightly wound, Noreaster. Strong winds and heavy precipitation along the coast areas..with temps cold enough for snow. What does that spell? Blizzard. DC has already gotten over a foot and some locations are getting as much as two feet. Eastern LI should really get it. Here is the current radar for the New York area...see how nice it is to have a coastal radar to see precipitation moving in from offshore...or seeing approaching low centers?....in a few years, we will have it to.

Dining in Education Next

I have an article in Education Next recounting some dinner table conversation. Click here to read it.

Week 32: Pageant of the Transmundane

A doctor at an Australian university is admonishing Santa Claus as being a bad influence on children by encouraging obesity and drunk driving. So, what, he wants Santa to go on a diet and to start doing pilates? OK... I guess that could happen...

This week's winning entry comes from the blog Please Simplify, a blog with a mission statement that is evident in their title... they want to see simplified things... logos and such.

In the winning entry this week, the crew over at that blog put together two very succinct versions of two films, and as you know, doing the legwork yourself nets a lot of points when it comes to making these decisions.

The two movies they shrunk down like Reducto were The Sixth Sense and Mars Attacks!, and I was impressed by how well they managed to keep the general themes together.

And since this week's winning entry has to do with humans fighting aliens, well, Homer fighting Kang on Jerry Springer seemed to be well in keeping with the spirit of this week's award.



Congrats to both Jarrod Barretto and Paul Sahre for this stellar effort.



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, pageant of the transmundane, the sixth sense, mars attacks, please simplify, santa claus, australia, drunk driving, obesity

Let's talk about the weather

When you are outside of the US and watch CNN, the impression is that it is a tad weather obsessed. It is all about storm front this, high pressure system that, category 5 hurricane the other. Surely, there are other things to interest people.

We have been here just over a week and we, it isn't going to surprise you, have bought in to the weather obsession. Part of the obsession is, of course, trying to reconcile what the 'written' weather is saying with the 'actual' weather that is outside. The major issue is that the weather is, for intents and purposes, invisible. You can't just go a window and see what it is. Moreover, you do not want to open the window, lest you find out while wearing inappropriate attire. And the open of actually going out and seeing seems costly again given the attire issue.

So what happens when I look it up on the Internet? In that case, it tells me it is currently 20 degrees outside. That is, of course, 20 degrees Fahrenheit but with my brain circuitry wired for Celsius it is hard for me to accept that it is really the -7 the 'conversion' algorithms tell me it is. In any case, what the heck is -7 degrees anyway? Remember, the lowest we ever get in Melbourne is around 5 degrees. So the best I have it is 12 degrees colder than really cold. But it is an abstract notion.

One indication that we have regarding what -7 degrees is, is what it does to an iPhone left in a car outside. For your information, it freezes, rock solid. The only application that works is that one where you use your fingers to wipe the condensation off the screen. By the way, an iPhone takes about 2 hours to thaw at 'room' temperature.

And it gets worse because the -7 degrees is just the temperature. There is another temperature that seems more relevant to me and that is the 'feels like' temperature. At the moment, that is 8 degrees F or -13 degrees C. So I lose another 6 degrees just for being a human with feelings! Who knows what it feels like to an iPhone. Near as I can tell, this is a big fat warning to not go out.

Sadly, that can't always been avoided. Now I know that this next thought is hardly original: what I want is the Weather Channel to tell me what I should wear. Helpful readers told me what to buy (and I am grateful and happy to report we haven't lost anyone, yet) but with a full closet, the whole, what to wear issue is looming large. If the Weather Channel can tell me what it feels like, why can't it tell me what it feels like as I add and remove various bits of apparel? One could imagine even specifying it by particular coat, jump, thermals and brand. Consider the advertising possibilities: "if you just had an LL Bean ridiculously large and puffy parker, it would feel like 17 degrees to you now, instead with what you have got it will feel like -3 degrees. Would you like the nearest directions to LL Bean?" To my economist's mind, there seems to be missing markets all over the place.

For us, the issue is that the weather changes. It can do so from minute to minute making it impossible to optimise clothes. We can be cold and all of the children have ample incentive to keep various layers, scarves and gloves on. Then it gets warmer and the extremities get exposed. Then it gets colder, and we engage in a freezing search for lost gloves. Now I know that we need to sow them on but just haven't had the time. That will happen because for the moment, our entire Boston experience is a continual concern about losing gloves. Why they can't put an RF chip in these things with a location finder, I don't know.

We are told it is unseasonably cold at the moment. That is all very well at the moment but it is the word 'unseasonably' that has me worried. That means there is a season for this cold and it is coming. And it will come with snow which our children are yet to really see. My only hope is that it doesn't come with 'unprecedented' cold.

Update: some of my wish has just come through. This site translates your weather into Star Wars terms. The snap shot below is what I am facing. Where is a dead tauntan when you need one.

The Coastal Radar is Real!

Today, President Obama signed the 2010 Appropriation Bill with 7 million dollars for a coastal radar for the central Washington Coast. That plus the funds already made available in the stimulus funding earlier this year (2 million dollars) will completely fund all costs for purchasing and installing a high-powered, state-of-the-art radar that will greatly improve our ability to see weather systems approaching our state. It will allow us to clearly determine the amount of precipitation falling on the southwest side of the Olympics and over the mountains of SW Washington. Its view will extend to the entrance of the Strait of Juan De Fuca and the Columbia River. By defining the weather coming in from the west, it will result in improved prediction over the entire state.

A great deal of credit is owed to Senator Maria Cantwell, who did the heavy lifting in securing the funding for this critical piece of meteorological infrastructure. And the rest of our state delegation was highly supportive. Her press release is found at:
http://cantwell.senate.gov/news/record.cfm?id=320986

Using the earlier stimulus funding, a National Weather Service site survey team has been hard at work evaluating potential sites, and a public report is due very soon, with three possible sites. I have seen draft documents and the locations look very good.

The radar will be a powerful "S-band" radar like the Camano Island radar, but it will be a modern device that has the polarization option that will be added to the current radars. This option allows much better determination of precipitation rate and the type of precipitation. The radar will become part of the National Weather Service network, and many of hope its configuration will be optimized for use in our area. That includes zero degree elevation angle scans to see further and up and down scans (RHI scans) to provide more information of atmospheric structure and freezing level.

The current timelines for the radar is for installation in late 2012. A number of us believe that a more aggressive schedule would allow the radar to be installed 6 months to a year earlier.

This is a major advance for my profession and the safety/protection of our region.

For more information, check out my coastal weather radar web page:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~cliff/coastalradar.html

Google Analytics API v2 Python Client Library

We know it's easier for developers to program in the languages they know. So we updated the Google Analytics API Python Client library with all the new API version 2 features and added reference exampels for both the Account Feed and Data Feed. Now it's easier than ever to automate your analysis workflow using our API.

Taking The Library For a Spin

With the updated library, we thought it would be a great time to highlight the power of the new v2 features. So we created a sample application to do just that. The application uses the new Google Analytics Python client library to retrieve metrics for a series of segments. It then performs some calculations on the data and creates bar charts using the GChartWrapper package, an open source Python wrapper for the Google Charts API. Finally, it uses the Python Imaging Library to add a title and legend, and stitches all the charts together into a single image. We decided to release this application as open source so you can create visualizations with your own data.

Solving Business Problems

With social media all the rage, we wanted to use this new application to help Avinash Kaushik, our Analytics Evangelist, to measure "engagement" on his popular Occam's Razor blog. We also wanted to determine if the time he spends participating in social media sites is valuable and sends new readers to his blog.

First we created segments to pull all the referrals from Facebook and Twitter. Second, we chose five calculations and corresponding metrics to compare the performance of thee two segments. We then compared the segments to each other and, for context, to all the visits to the site as a control.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, here are the results:



Let's Analyze

Some interesting observations become apparent.

• Far more visits originate from Twitter (3.6x) when compared to Facebook, perhaps not surprising given Avinash's Twitter followers (~16,120)
• Visitors from Twitter tend to be new visitors, a good thing, but they view fewer pages and spend significantly less time on the blog.
• On the other hand Facebook delivers an audience that is loyal. These visitors come back to the site more often and spend a significant time on the blog (compared to Twitter and all other visitors).

The bottom line? Even though social networking sites are all the rage, they actually contribute very little to Avinash's blog. If this blog were a company, it would be wise to ensure the time and effort put into driving traffic from social media is proportionate to the actual volume of traffic and goal conversions from those sites.

Hopefully this example shows how powerful our new features can be.

If you're interested in running this report against your own data, the application is free and open sourced. Additionally, we made it really easy to change the metrics, segments, calculations and all the other visual properties to power your own visualizations. So please download it here and give it a whirl, we would love to hear your feedback.

By Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

A Note on Tiger Woods

Now that Tiger Woods is getting a divorce and potentially moving to France, can we are a society please stop talking about his repeated acts of infidelity. I don't care. I know a lot of people don't care. So just shut up about it already. (And this is the first and last time I am going to discuss this, barring some huge explosion where Woods beats every reporter camped outside his new home with a golf club because they just won't stop).

Tags: tiger woods, france, apathy

Introducing Google Browser Size

When I started work at Google, I visited the Google Earth team, hoping to find a 20% project on my favorite Google product. There I met Bruno Bowden, who introduced me to a problem I had never thought much about: how to take browser sizes into account when designing a page.

Bruno had noticed that many people who visit the “Download Google Earth” page never actually download, even though, as you can see, the button is pretty hard to miss:



He wondered if a significant number of users might have their browser windows too small to see the button:



To analyze this, Bruno looked at how large people's browser windows were when they visited this page. His first key idea was to measure not the entire browser window, but just the client area -- no toolbars, status bars, or other chrome.

Bruno's second key idea was to render several weeks' worth of page visitor browser sizes in a contour visualization:



Using this visualization, Bruno confirmed that about 10% of users couldn't see the download button without scrolling, and thus never noticed it. 10% may not sound like a lot, but in this context it turns out to mean a significant number of people weren't downloading Google Earth. Using this data, the team was able to redesign the page to good effect.

Bruno and I realized that Web designers might benefit from this information if it could be made more generally available. We constructed a page that could overlay a DIV containing the contour visualization atop an IFRAME containing any other Web page:



This turned out to be a good way to see which controls were and weren't visible at typical browser sizes. The only problem was, the overlay DIV prevented mouse events from getting to the page IFRAME, so it wasn't possible to interact with the page.

To solve this, we split the overlay DIV into four:



Each of the outlines above (red, yellow, blue, green) represents a separate DIV. As the mouse pointer moves, we resize and reposition the DIVs to leave a small window of blank space around the pointer, and adjust background offsets for each DIV to make the overlay look like one seamless graphic. (We originally did this on a timer, but we found a simpler way: when the mouse touches any of the DIVs, resize/reposition all of the DIVs.) End result: a designer can click and otherwise interact with the page with the mouse, and thus interact with the site normally instead of repeatedly typing in URLs.

We are now making this tool available to the public on Google Labs. To try it, simply visit browsersize.googlelabs.com and enter the URL of a page you'd like to examine. The size overlay you see is using latest data from visitors to google.com, so this should give you a pretty good indication of what parts of your UI are generally visible and what aren't.

We look forward to receiving your comments at browser-size-external-feedback!

By Arthur Blume on behalf of the Google Browser Size team