New Google Web Elements released

Today we've added four new Google Web Elements: Sidewiki, Checkout, Wave and Virtual Keyboard. These are all designed to help you quickly and easily integrate Google products into your website.

Sidewiki element

Google Sidewiki makes it easy for visitors of your website to share helpful information with each other. Unlike regular comments, all Sidewiki entries are ranked by usefulness so that the best ones are shown first. The element was built entirely on the Sidewiki API and can be customized in many ways to fit into your site. Sidewiki originally launched as a feature of Google Toolbar and as a Chrome extension - this element is our newest step in making Sidewiki more open and accessible across the web. If you'll be using the element on your site, let us know via @googlesidewiki on Twitter!

If you're looking for a way to add commenting to an otherwise static page, the Google Sidewiki element gives you an easy and simple way to collect and display comments about a page. One of the new and exciting features of the Sidewiki element is that it allows visitors to leave a comment even if they do not have Sidewiki or Google Toolbar installed. Like all Sidewiki entries, the comments in the element will be ranked to show the most useful items more prominently.

Checkout element

The Google Checkout element allows you to quickly and easily create an online store using a spreadsheet. Once you have a Google Checkout merchant account, you just have to add details for each item you're selling into a Google Spreadsheet, then use the wizard and copy/paste the code into your website. The element is compatible with Blogger, Google Sites, iGoogle, and personal websites where HTML can be modified, but doesn't require any programming skills or experience. In fact, you can get your first online store up and running in under five minutes.




Wave element

The Google Wave element enables you to quickly drop a wave -- a shared workspace -- onto your own website. The wave could be used for many different things, including: encouraging collaborative discussion among the visitors, or as a means of publishing content on the page. For deeper integrations of waves onto your own site, please check out the recently improved Wave Embed API. For more information on embedding waves, see the Google Wave Developer Blog post.

Virtual Keyboard element

Adding a virtual keyboard to your site just got easier with the Google Virtual Keyboard element. After choosing a keyboard layout, copy and paste the HTML into your page and voila, a virtual keyboard will be able to enter characters into any text input or text area on your page. If you've never heard a virtual keyboard, it's an on screen keyboard which translates the input from one keyboard layout to another and it allows users to type their own languages on foreign keyboards or by clicking the on screen display.





Google Web Elements are great for folks who don't have much time or experience. However, even for advanced developers, elements are a great starting point, as most are backed by an underlying API to give you even more control over the content or look and feel. Take a look at all of the elements at http://www.google.com/webelements and stop by our help forum if you have any questions.

By Jeff Scudder and Adam Feldman, Google Web Elements Team

Great Commentary Tracks?

I know this isn't really a post, but I am always on the look out for great commentary tracks on DVDs. I recently got through an excellent one on Hot Fuzz between Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino which was sort of like a podcast broke out, with the movie being incidental.

I also liked the commentary track for Dude, Where's My Car which saves that crappy movie.

So are there any other epic (in terms of being entertaining) commentary tracks that you think I should be looking out for?

Tags: commentary tracks, hot fuzz, epic commentary, edgar wright, danny leiner, quentin tarantino

Latest Oil Pics: Oil Spill Reaches the Coast and Bad Meteorology

The latest MODIS satellite picture shows the oil making landfall on the far SE Louisiana coast. Not good. I made a blow-up below so you can see the detail. On the meteorological side, you can see nice rows of cloud streets over land in the first picture.

The weather is not cooperating I am afraid. Below are the surface winds predicted for tonight and tomorrow night . Moderate southeasterly winds blowing the oil directly to the coast.
10 PM Thursday

10 PM Friday

And here are some recent surface observations over the Gulf of Mexico...SE winds are clearly evident.

This is all very serious. The persistent southeasterly winds are pushing water up against the coast, where the general water levels will be several feet above normal. On top of that there is substantial wave action--roughly 5-7 feet. The only good aspect of all this...and good is a bad word, is that it is moving the spill away from Florida. There is a loop current in the Gulf and if the spill went south, the oil could move along the western side of Florida, into the Keys and the Everglades, and around the peninsula towards Miami. This is the last place in the U.S. you want a major spill.

Remakes, Sequels and Prequels: Oh My

So there are going to be a film prequel to The Wizard of Oz and two for Alien, but somehow we can't get a sequel with all the main participants for Anchorman, even though a lot of people are willing to take pay cuts to be a part of it? For shame, shame.

Oh, and I should quote myself here from an entry I did a few weeks ago called Hollywood is Developmentally Challenged.

Seriously, there should be a position on every Hollywood executives staff for someone who sole job is to smack them upside the head when they suggest something like "Let's remake Commando!" And not a light slap either.... that person should have to put some weight behind it. I am sure there are a lot of unemployed former college athletes who would jump at the chance to pop someone in the back of the head every time they suggested a meritless remake.

Why did I go back to that entry? Well, they are indeed remaking Commando.

You know, when I say that someone shouldn't remake something, I am not using reverse psychology. I really mean that someone should get hit very hard in the back of the head when they make suggestions like that.



I mean, if it was The Running Man, I could see that one getting a remake because that one aged really badly and it is different from the source material, but come on, Commando still holds up remarkably well.

BAH!

Tags: commando, alien, wizard of oz, anchorman, will ferrell, prequel, sequel, arnold, arnie, schwartzenegger, running man, remake

Google APIs + HTML5 = A New Era of Mobile Apps

This post is part of the Who's @ Google I/O, a series of blog posts that give a closer look at developers who'll be speaking or demoing at Google I/O. This guest post is written by Adrian Graham, co-founder of nextstop.com who will give us a demo inside the Developer Sandbox.

When building nextstop's HTML5 mobile app, we were able to leverage a powerful combination of HTML5 and Google API's to build a mobile web experience that we believe rivals what we could have built natively. For more on our mobile app, check out this post -- here we will just focus on the technologies that made this experience possible.

Lately HTML5's video features have gotten a lot of attention, but it's three other HTML5 features that we've found most useful for mobile web development.

1. Prefetching using LocalStorage: It's no secret that mobile data networks are slow but by putting a bit of thought into what users will tap on next, and prefetching that data in the background you can build a dramatically faster user experience. It's possible to do limited forms of prefetching using plain old JavaScript, but using the localStorage key/value storage built into HTML5, we're able to store much more data and therefore prefetch more aggressively.

If you're using a recent version of Chrome or Safari or on an iPhone 3 or Android 2 phone and want a sense of what prefetching feels like, try clicking the left and right arrows here (you can ignore the warning you will see in Chrome and Safari).

2. Geolocation: Using the geolocation features built into HTML5 (and available on iPhone 3 and Android 2), we're able to connect you with local information based on the GPS in your phone, so all you have to do is launch the app to see nearby recommendations. I wish it were a bit faster, but it sure beats entering an address or zip code -- and it's super easy to hook into as a developer.

3. App Caching: The last HTML5 feature that we heavily rely on is the application cache. If a cache manifest file is specified, the browser won't re-download files unless the content of the manifest file has been updated. This may not sound like a big deal, but the latency of cellular networks can be long enough that requesting multiple files at startup can slow down your app by 10 or 20 seconds. Ideally, you'd put all your static JavaScript, CSS, and image files in the manifest file, so users never have to wait for them to be downloaded more than once.

As excited as we are about HTML5, things get even more interesting when you combine these technologies with Google APIs.

1. Google Maps API V3: Google Maps V3 has been rewritten from the ground up to better support modern mobile web browsers, and it shows. We were able to build a map interface into our mobile app that is nearly as full featured as our main site, including support for dynamic updates when the user pans and gestures like pinch to zoom on the iPhone. Coupled with the Geolocation support in HTML5, we can easily show users where they are in relation to the recommendations on the map. A year ago, this would have required writing a fair amount of native code. Today it can be done in the browser and works on both Android 2 and iPhone 3 devices.

2. Google Analytics: Since we prefetch most of our content, we end up rendering mobile pages using JavaScript. This makes tracking things like page views a little more tricky than a typical website, since we're not requesting an HTML file for each page view (and the App Cache can further complicate matters). We planned on building a custom mobile analytics system, but we decided to try running Google Analytics in the mobile web browser instead. Using the _trackPageview method (with a URL corresponding to each mobile "page" generated by Javascript) has worked surprisingly well and has had minimal performance impact. Best of all, if you're already using Google Analytics on your main site, you see all your mobile analytics in the same place. This lets you do things like easily compare the time on site for a mobile visitor and a desktop visitor. (Here's one data point if you're wondering whether or not to build a mobile web version of your site: visitors spend over twice as long using our mobile HTML5 app as they do on our website.)

3. Google Local Search API: Coupled with HTML5 geolocation, the Google Local Search API becomes even easier to use. For instance, the nextstop app lets users add places that they like to nextstop's database. In a desktop browser, we have no choice but to ask the user to type in some words and do a local search. However, on the phone, we can show users a list of nearby places by passing the local search api the user's current position. More often than not, no typing is required to locate the place you'd like to add.

If you can't already tell, we're pretty excited about the future mobile apps running inside a browser. As mobile web browsers and web APIs continue to evolve, we expect more and more people to hop on the HTML5 bandwagon as a cross-platform way to build powerful mobile apps.

We'll be at Google I/O in May and would love for you to stop by our demo station in the Developer Sandbox and share any questions, tips, or tricks you have related to HTML5 mobile development. And in the meantime, if you have a great idea for an HTML5 app based on nextstop's data, we encourage you to check out our API.

By Adrian Graham, co-founder of nextstop.com

Gulf Oil Slick Image and Local Weather

The NASA AQUA satellite got a a great view of the oil slick off Louisiana a few days ago (April 25)-- you can see it above. The oil is the white-looking stuff, reminiscent of an ink blob in some water. The MODIS sensor has amazing resolution (250 meters)--compare that to visible satellite imagery, which tops at at 1-km resolution. You can also see the particle-laden water exiting the Mississippi delta.
The next picture is for yesterday, April 27th, is a close up and in this case the oil has a darker color.

Finally, the image today is not as helpful, since there were lots of clouds overhead.

Talking about today, here in the NW we had another classic spring day with cool air aloft and destabilization of the atmosphere during the day as the surface heated up.
In addition, we had a weak convergence zone situation, with winds shifting from north to south. A wonderful view of the action is available from Dale Irelands HD webcam:
http://www.drdale.com/lapse/lapse100428.mov

Watch as the clouds are relatively layered (we call that stratiform in the biz) during the morning, but switch to bubbling cumulus during the morning and afternoon. You can see multiple wind shifts.

Finally, there was some talk about the warm temps and strong winds on Monday. In some places like Arlington the temps rose into the low 70s as strong to moderate southeasterly and easterly winds descended the Cascades, warming by compression as it did so. Look at the weather obs at the UW for Monday (click on the image to expand. SE winds gusting to roughly 25-30 kts accompanied the jump in air temp to the upper 60s. At the same time, the relative humidity plummeted to around 30%--classic drying with downslope flow.

Hobo With a Shotgun: Full Length Movie being Filmed

I love Hobo with a Shotgun with a white hot intensity, and after I saw that trailer, I kept saying to myself and anyone who would listen that they had to make it. It was something that the world needed. It was an entry into the SXSW Grindhouse contest, and it was one of the winners.

As a Canadian, I could tell that trailer was made in this country from the accents alone.

And now they've started filming it with Rutger Hauer in the lead! I'm so excited. I think I am more excited about this movie than I am about the upcoming Machete movie.

Put it this way, I actually cheered when he shot the child predator in the Santa suit. I mean really, who objects to child molestors and such getting killed in movies. It is like seeing Nazis and zombies getting shot... you don't feel really bad seeing it happen most of the time.

That being said, I am wondering if some of the really insane stuff for near the end of the trailer is going to make the final cut of the real movie, because that is where it seems to get a lot more interesting. I admit the chiselling of the teeth is really hard to watch, and I wonder in what context that would happen in the finished product.

Well, truth be told, I have a lot of questions, and I want the answers to them, so perhaps that is the reason I want to see that trailer become a movie.

Or it could be that I just like seeing vigilante action against bad people.

Yeah, I think it's that.

Tags: hobo with a shotgun, rutger hauer, nazis, zombies, vigilante, trailer, grind house, sxsw

Smartsheet’s Success on the Google Apps Marketplace

A couple weeks ago I was up in Seattle talking about the Google Apps Marketplace with local SaaS companies. I was happy to be joined by Smartsheet, Concur and Skytap and even more excited when they all talked about their success on the Marketplace.

We’ve invited Smartsheet to talk about their success on the Google Apps Developer Blog and their founder, Brent Frei, has written an excellent post which I hope you’ll all take the time to read. He talks about how they decided to launch on the Marketplace, their technical evaluation, development process and the results they’ve achieved.

Here’s a graph that tells much of the story-- it shows their new customer leads (excluding pay-per-click-ads):

Here’s the post with their full story on the Google Apps Developer Blog:
Smartsheet - Inside Google Apps Marketplace

For more details on launching your app on the Marketplace, see our
developer site.

By Ryan Boyd, Google Apps Marketplace Team

Google acquires Labpixies

Not everyone likes to start their day with just a search box and logo (no matter how cool it is!). Many users want email, videos, news, weather, games, and other information to be at their fingertips each time they open up a browser window. We launched iGoogle in 2005 to address this need by providing a truly personalized homepage with access to any RSS feed and well over a hundred thousand gadgets.

One of the first developers to create gadgets for iGoogle was Labpixies. Over the years, we worked closely together on a variety of projects, including the launch of a number of global OpenSocial based gadgets. Recently, we decided that we could do more if we were part of the same team, and as such, we're thrilled to announce the acquisition of Labpixies.

The team will be based in our ever-growing Tel Aviv office and will anchor our iGoogle efforts across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. We are looking forward to working with Labpixies to develop great web apps and leverage their knowledge and expertise to help developers and improve the ecosystem overall.

In the meantime, have fun trying to beat me at Flood-It!

By Don Loeb, iGoogle Team

Rainshadow Land

Living here in the Northwest we often think about how much it rains, but to truly understand our weather, you have to appreciate our rainshadows. We have world-class rain, but we also have world-class rainshadows. Take a look at the radar image above (from the Camano Island radar). Precipitation (indicated by the colors) all around the place, but there is a rain-free zone downstream of the Olympics...stretching from Sequim to the San Juans. Or take a look at the precipitation over the last six hours from the SPU Rainwatch System (see graphic). You can see that the dry-zone ground zero is just offshore from Sequim. That is why so many people retire there and cacti are native species. As air approaches a barrier it rises, producing precipitation, but on the opposite side there is sinking, drying, and rain shadow creation. You can look at the rainshadow above and immediately know the wind direction near the Olympics--from the south-southwest. To prove this, here is the latest radiosonde sounding at Forks, on the Olympic Peninsula. The general crest level of the Olympics is roughly 5000 ft--approximately 850 mb, with higher terrain above that to roughly 8000 ft. So look at 850-800 on the sounding chart. If you can read the wind barbs, you will see the southerly flow.

An important thing to know about rainshadows is that they can move since their position is controlled by large scale wind direction interaction with terrain barriers. So Sequim being dry is not religion. It is just the wind here in the winter is typically from the south to southwest. If the large scale wind shifts direction, so will the rainshadow. So if the wind switches to westerly or northwesterly, Sequim is no longer effectively shadowed, but Seattle and central Puget Sound is! That will give the retirees and golfers in Sequim something to think about! Such Puget Sound rainshadowing is really quite frequent and helps explain why Seattle is really quite dry (only 37 inches a year), receiving far less than the east coast of the U.S., and WAY less than the Washington Coast. That is why vampires live in Forks but keep away from the Puget Sound lowlands.

But there is one ironic complication to our rainshadow under westerly flow....something that literally rains on our parade: the Puget Sound convergence zone, which produces a band of rain IN THE MIDDLE OF A PROFOUND RAINSHADOW. That is why north and south of a convergence zone it can be profoundly clear.

Finally, not only can rainshadows move, but we have lots of them due to our complex mountains. Big rainshadows in the lee of the mountains of Vancouver Island, the Cascades, the Blue Mountains. Smaller ones in the lee of Mt. Rainier and the other volcanoes. Even rainshadows int the lee of Queen Anne Hill and Tiger Mountains. Yes, this is really rainshadow land here.

A Culture Kills Comics experiment

Last week, I was visiting Popped Culture where there was an entry about a little movement (spurred on by a New Yorker-based experiment) that you could replace the punchline of a comic with the phrase "Christ, What an asshole" and it would still work.

I thought it would be interesting to see if I could randomly pick some of my own comics and see if the principle works.

Before:


After:


Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Well, for an unscientific poll, those aren't bad results. Granted, not every comic punch line can so easily be substituted. Hard to believe there was actually a time when I could write occasionally funny comics.

Tags: culture kills comics, strip generator, flickr, christ, punchline, popped culture, new yorker, thought experiment, comic strip

Now available: Schedule for Google I/O sessions & office hours

If you’re attending Google I/O next month, you’ve likely taken a gander at this year’s sessions and made a mental note of ones you’d like to attend. (Or if you’re like Julio Menendez, you’ve already made a list)

We’ve just posted our session schedule so you can now start planning out your two days at I/O. We’ve also got a few more things in the works to help you plan your agenda, including:

• Session agenda builder to create a customized agenda you can port to your personal calendar. (Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook)

• Google I/O Android app you can download to your Android device so you can easily reference the I/O schedule, star sessions, look at a map of the venue, and find other event info while you’re walking around Moscone West.

• Google Wave will be in full force at I/O as a channel for discussion and live notes during I/O. Stay tuned for more information on how to use Wave at the event.

We’ll let you know as these agenda planning features go live. Be sure to check @googleio for the latest updates.

In addition, we’ve also posted our Office Hours schedule. Google engineers will be on hand to answer any questions you may have about the products and technologies featured at I/O. We’ll be holding office hours for Android, App Engine, Chrome, Closure Compiler / Closure Library, Enterprise, Developer Docs, Geo, Go, Google APIs, Google Project Hosting, GWT, Social Web, and Wave.

24 days left until I/O - let the countdown begin!

Posted by Christine Tsai, Google Developer Team

Sunday Video: MST3K and the Many Names of David Ryder

On Wednesday, I posted a voiceover clip which I said should get the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment, and it got me to thinking about that show, and one of my favorite episodes, the one they did on a little 1988 movie called Space Mutiny.

I was just going to pick a random clip, but someone has done something interesting... they've gathered all the various names the MST3K crew gave the movie's character throughout the movie, and it works spectacularly.

I literally laughed so hard, I was tearing up.

Tags: space mutiny, bad voiceover, chaos wars, mystery science theater 3000, mst3k, david ryder

Some brief tourist notes

So with school holidays on, we have been doing a few touristy things of late:

• Boston Segway Gliders: I took Child No.1 on a Segway tour of Boston. We had a groupon which made it cost effective. The main skill appeared to be the possession of weight and its application front and back. It took about five minutes to get used to the Segway before we were road worthy. The tour we took lasted an hour. When it comes down to it, it was a less of a 'tour' and more of a ride. Nonetheless, it was a fun way to spend a morning.
• Mount Vernon: we visited George Washington's home in Virginia. This is a first class tourist and educational experience. His estate is very well preserved and the museum is spectacular. It included a 4D movie experience about Washington's American War of Independence Revolutionary War battles. Not surprisingly, the undisputed thesis was that without Washington the course of US history and the possibilities for democracy and freedom in the rest of the world would have vanished.
• National Aquarium: this is located in Baltimore and is overpriced. Not that it was bad and they had replicated a good portion of the Northern Territory of Australia in there which was very well done. But at $30 a person, this isn't the aquarium to see.
• International Spy Museum: this was in Washington DC. It is really for older kids who can experience an interactive spy situation while the museum does its best to make you very suspicious of anyone with a camera who is either doing something that is out of the ordinary or something very ordinary. Message: if you don't want to be tagged as a spy be slightly less than ordinary.

And a final note on a Guggenheim museum experience in New York that you will not want to repeat.  Our 5 year old daughter decided that that was the place to assert her divine right to be able to take off her coat and swing it around her head near expensive Piccasos. This prompted a removal request which she disputed forcefully. Suffice it to say, for all Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural genius he had not factored the acoustic effects of a parent carrying a screaming five year old down round the long, continuous, spiral, viewing platform. This is not a parenting situation that I would care to repeat.

Week 50: Pageant of the Transmundane

Apparently there is going to be an openly gay character in Archie comics. Somehow I think we all have a good idea of which character is coming out of the closet... he already wears a crown and has little interest in the gals, so... wait, they are introducing a new character to be the gay guy? But all the pieces fit together... DOH! I wonder how long that character is going to last.

This week's winning entry comes to us from the blog Forces of Geek.

This time around, it is a group of amazing Lego creations, some from pop culture. They all look like they were all so time consuming to make.

And strangely enough, the most appropriate image this week comes from the very entry I am celebrating. How very meta.



Congrats to the staff of Forces of Geek (as I can't readily identify who the submitting party is).



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.

This is not a meme. This is an award that I give out, and thus, I am not "tagging" you.

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: archie comics, homer simpson, pageant of the transmundane, jughead, lego, forces of geek, homosexuality, gay

Why are our fronts different?

Friday Afternoon Visible Satellite Image: Front Approaching

Update: Here is Saturday Morning's Visible Photo--you can see all the showers offshore

It is now 7:30 PM on Friday and a modest Pacific front is moving through western Washington . The above (top one) high-resolution satellite image at 5 PM shows the story. At that time most of eastern Washington was clear and wave clouds induced by the mountains was found over and immediately to the lee of the Cascades (they are those periodic lines of clouds in the image). The front will be through by midnight and the continuous showers will end. If we were living over the eastern two-thirds of the U.S. it would then be all over. Fronts bring rain. After the fronts move past the skies clear and the precipitation is over. Here is an example of the lack of clouds and precipitation after a midwest front.



But that is NOT what is typical here. After the front passes in the Northwest the weather show is just beginning, because we typically see postfrontal convective showers in the 24-h after a front moves through during winter and spring. You know what I mean--the typical showers and sunbreaks. The media tends to call this wacky and strange...but those that make such remarks don't understand our weather.

Here is an interesting fact: in the winter much of our mountain snow does NOT come from frontal precipitation, but from the showers after the fronts in the cold, unstable air that follows. Tomorrow will be no exception. A field of postfrontal convective showers are out there waiting to come into our area, and the forecast is for showery precipitation on Saturday. Don't believe me? Take a look at the larger view satellite image at 5 PM today (Friday). You see the front? Then you see a narrow zone of clearing (this is due to sinking motion immediately behind the surface front) and then a thousand kilometers of more of convective showers, which look like a field of cotton balls surround by dark (clear) areas. Our number is on those clouds. In the business we call them "open cellular convection" because generally there are more clear areas than precipitating areas.

Why do we get these showers AFTER the front? Because there is plenty of moisture (not surprising) and the atmosphere is relatively unstable there. The ocean surface is "relatively" warm--roughly 50F year-round off our coast, and the air behind the front (cold or occluded front) is even colder, coming off of Alaska or Siberia. Cold air over warmer water is an unstable situation, with temperature decreasing rapidly with height. Cold air is dense and wants to sink, warm air is less dense and wants to rise. Put them cold air over warm air and they want to switch places. Or think about your hot cereal, which convects when you create a large change of temperature in the vertical when you turn on the burner. (My book has much more on this if you are interested in learning more).

So why doesn't this happen over the eastern U.S.? First, there is less moisture. But more importantly, the land surface is cool or cold in the winter, so you have cold air over cold land. No good.

But wait! We have more special weather here! The coastal winds often switch to the west here after frontal passage, particularly during the spring. Such a wind direction leads to the formation of Puget Sound convergence zone, a zone of clouds and precipitation over Puget Sound...generally from Everett to north Seattle, with clear zones to the north and south. And guess what, the computer models indicate a good chance of this happening tomorrow (see forecast of the 3-hr precip ending 8 PM on Saturday). And there will be plenty of showers in the mountains, including snow showers at higher elevations (see graphic). Typical spring in Seattle!

Roger Ebert Again Claims Games Can Never Be Art

Back in 2007, when Roger Ebert and Clive Barker were having a discussion about the merits of video games as a potential art form, I started writing a very detailed passionate defense of games as art as an open letter, but as it kept building and time continued to pass, it seemed like it really was beating a dead horse.

Recently Roger Ebert revisited the topic, and he hasn't changed his mind and I opened that long-lost blog post, and started writing it anew. But in the process, I came to a realization: there is nothing I can say that will change Roger Ebert's mind, even if he were to read my words. His mind is made up.

Because frankly, how can you have an open discussion with someone about the present and future merits of a something as an art form if they refuse to take the time to experience that medium.

As long as there is a great movie unseen or a great book unread, I will continue to be unable to find the time to play video games.

And it is his prerogative not to play games. However, commenting on their merit as artistic creations without playing any, well, that is where I think the problem with his entries on the subject lies.

For instance, if I stated that film could never be art, and I refused to watch any, and I took any suggestions you might make for films to watch to try to change my opinion and I just continue to stonewall you and make the same claim, well, clearly I don't want to change my mind. And you would probably discount anything I said about that particular topic.

Clive Barker had called Ebert prejudiced because of his opinion back in 2007, which the elder critic took to mean they were just disagreeing, but that is clearly not the case. It really is a prejudice.

a. An adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts.
b. A preconceived preference or idea.

And again, that is ok. He is allowed to have that opinion. But it is admittedly biased and it is right to call him out on it based on those grounds.

I haven't appreciated the tone that has continued to pop up whenever he discusses this topic either. True, I am sure Roger Ebert has received a lot of angry emails and many horrific insults based on his opinions, but I don't think in general, people who have the opposing opinion as a whole deserved the increasingly condescending attitude that he has consistently shown the issue.

However, something wonderful keeps happening every time Roger Ebert proclaims that games can never be art. People who are more familiar with the breadth of medium push back and we end up discussing the matter not only with him, but with each other, sometimes in insulting ways, but often times, there is respectful conversation.

The strange thing is, in the midst of all that discussion, somehow a group of people who have trouble agreeing on anything time and time again keep coming to the same conclusions about which titles should be considered the artistic triumphs of the medium. And the funny thing is, they aren't all blockbuster games that everyone has played, and yet they keep coming up. So, in repeatedly coming out against games as an art form, he is causing those that do believe they are to become more vocal about their beliefs and in some small way, helping the community and a canon to develop.

I have a strange feeling that every one of the games that is slowly becoming the canon was at one point suggested numerous times to Ebert by those who wanted to show him an experience that he might understand as "art".

So even though many of us are upset by Roger Ebert's stance, in a way, he has ended up helping us all by giving us something to rally against together as a community.

But I think Charlie Brooker has really gotten a good bead on this whole issue... and he wasn't even directly addressing Roger Ebert:

And games are the equivalent of Esperanto-language movies – except they're better than movies. They're engrossing and exciting, playful and challenging, constantly evolving, constantly surprising. They're interactive and, thanks to the rise of modern multiplayer, infinitely more social than mere television. But because they're in Esperanto, it's hard for non-speakers to appreciate them.

If you don't play games, you're not just missing out, you're wilfully ignoring the most rapidly evolving creative medium in human history.

I think that is better than any parting shot I could think of.

Tags: roger ebert, charlie brooker, clive barker, video games, art, esperanto, canon

Some sanity in family air travel

After years of reporting on air travel woes, I am please to report that some sanity is emerging. I have written elsewhere about the wonders of Virgin America. It is currently the gold standard in family air travel. But not far behind is JetBlue. JetBlue is cheap and flies to a ton of destinations in the US. It doesn't have WiFi nor Virgin's magical food ordering system but it has TV screens at each set with live TV channels that can be used on take off and landing. It makes you wonder why these are OK for electronics but a Kindle will cause planes to crash. Actually, it doesn't. The ban is plain stupid. 

Finally, a quick endorsement for their customer service. I made an error and booked a pm rather than am flight for the family. It look as if those tickets would be lost but within a day, those penalities were reversed and everything was fine. Very nice.

Harry Wappler (1936-2010)

It is with great sadness that I note the passing of Harry Wappler, the dean of Northwest weathercasters for over a quarter century. As many of you remember, Harry was the lead meteorologist on KIRO-TV during the 70s, 80s, and 90s. He was one of the most genuine, kind, warm-hearted individuals I have ever met, and a passionate, enthusiastic member of the local weather community.

I got to know him quite well when I returned to UW to join the atmospheric sciences faculty. Although Harry did not have a degree in atmospheric sciences (he had a B.A. in speech from Northwestern and a graduate degree from Yale Divinity School!), he was an avid student of Northwest weather and I learned a great deal from him about the convergence zone and other local weather features. Harry was the TV weathercaster that I would watch. He was a mainstay of the local weather community and secured substantial funding from KIRO to invite a distinguished meteorologist to town each year. The local chapter of the American Meteorological Society would meet at KIRO once a year and Harry always supplied a nice carrot cake. I still remember that carrot cake fondly.

To give you an idea of Harry's involvement with the community, on November 13, 1981 a major storm was offshore. The numerical prediction technology at that time was fairly primitive and without much skill for such events. Harry had a new-fangled invention that the National Weather Service did not possess: a device that could animate satellite imagery, something we take for granted today. An intense storm was obvious in the animation and headed our way. Harry made a tape of the satellite loop and rushed it to the National Weather Service folks who put out a timely and accurate warning. He could have kept it to himself and smoked the other stations, but that was not Harry's way.

The only time there was a slight bit of tension between me and Harry was when I had my 101 students write down the forecasts of all the local TV stations and scored them compared to the Weather Service. None of the stations were statistically better than the Weather Service, but another station had beaten KIRO. He called my chairman asking about this investigation (probably pushed on by his management). But next time we met, he smiled, told me it was water under the bridge, and we remained very friendly for the rest of his career.

A few times I went out with him in public. Everyone knew him and treated him as a member of the family. They would come up to him and tell their weather tales, and he would listen so intently and with obvious warmth, without ego or pretense. They went away feeling special.

I wish I had talked to him more often after he retired, but I have very fond memories of him, as as I suspect many of you do as well. Harry was a remarkable individual and we are all lucky to have shared some time with him.

Midweek Video: Bad Voice Acting *shudder*

OK, picking on video game voice over work is like shooting fish in a barrel, because there is a lot of terrible work in that field.

And then you see/hear something that gives you a lot of perspective about how bad it can be.

I saw some of the English voice work for a PS2 game called Chaos Wars.

The voice work (and let's be frank, the translated script) are so bad, it boggles the mind how anyone involved could have heard what was being produced and thought "You know, this sounds great!"

For those of you who don't play games, this is even worth your attention, because it is so bad it deserves a Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment.

I mean, the above voice acting makes Troll 2 look like Citizen Kane.

See, the problem is, the people who did the voice over work, were friends and family of the CEO of the company doing the localization. I don't know how they could have put the game together, listened to that and thought it was acceptable.

I mean, were their no colleges around their offices... because I am sure they could have put up some flyers in a couple of drama departments to get some people who would have loved to have a credit for their resume to open some doors after graduation.

You know things are bad when even I am listening to the caliber of work that was produced and saying that I could do a better job.

I couldn't even get through it in one go... so I can't imagine trying to tackle the game itself with the English Voice Acting if I owned it. Though, I heard that it comes with the Japanese VA with English subs, so that would probably work out a lot better. At the very least, if you didn't understand Japanese, you probably couldn't tell if the acting was good or not. From what I understand, on that side of the Pacific, they actually gave a shit about the voice work.

Tags: chaos wars, mystery science theater 3000, bad voice acting, citizen kane, troll 2

You Know Things Are Bad When Even Your Dreams Have In-Jokes

The whole dream isn't important to this story... just one small aspect which stuck with me.

In the dream, me and my friend were in a book store, and my friend was listening to an audio book called "The Simpsons with Descriptions for the Visually Impaired by Charlton Heston", and I asked them if I could listen to it, and it was the scene from the episode Last Exit to Springfield which leads up to Homer punching Lenny in the back of the head. The audio is the 12th entry on that page.



So I heard that clip and then Charlton Heston saying "Homer got the Comeuppance he sought".

Upon waking and thinking about the dream, I realized that it was in fact Phil Hartman doing his impression of Charlton Heston, one which he had done on The Simpsons, including an episode called "A Star is Burns".

Why do I mention that particular episode? Well, one of the last things I watched last night was The Critic, and Jay Sherman happened to be a guest character on that episode of The Simpsons.

And it in general, the above dream sequence was very much like a joke that someone would have written for an episode of The Simpsons.

At least the Comic Book Guy didn't show up and tell me "Worst Dream Ever".

Tags: comic book guy, the simpsons, charlton heston, a star is burns, the critic, jay sherman, last exit to springfield, phil hartman, worst dream ever, descriptive video, visual impaired

Gene preferences

Last week, I met Bryan Caplan. He's writing a book that advocates that parents might think about having more kids. I've read a draft and it is thought provoking but not everyone (including myself) is going to agree with his conclusions. That said, for the most part, he is careful to accumulate evidence (certainly more careful than I have been). Nonetheless, he is a nice fellow which is not what you would gather if you looked on the Internet today.

Bryan appears to have got himself into a blogging pickle of late and attracted the ire of Brad de Long. The reason is that he has been doing what bloggers often like to do and put forward naked, provocative thoughts that cause them to be tainted with a stereotype or prejudice. Again, they are thoughts that people will disagree with and, in many respects, that is the point. But I've been there with some tough backlash and I have to wonder if all that is helping debate and discussion of the kind that the blogosphere should be about. I think about the fire thrown on the Lenore Skenazy's Free-Range Kids movement in the same light. I guess people have a right to vent but it does have the effect of stifling free discussion. 

Anyhow, Bryan's latest apparent affront to humanity was this statement: 

I confess that I take anti-cloning arguments personally.  Not only do they insult the identical twin sons I already have; they insult a son I hope I live to meet.  Yes, I wish to clone myself and raise the baby as my son.  Seriously.  I want to experience the sublime bond I'm sure we'd share.  I'm confident that he'd be delighted, too, because I would love to be raised by me.  I'm not pushing others to clone themselves.  I'm not asking anyone else to pay for my dream.  I just want government to leave me and the cloning business alone.  Is that too much to ask?

It's a view. I am pretty sure that Bryan is far from alone in actually wanting a child that is a replica rather than a hybrid and I am also pretty sure that his spouse already knows what she married. Tyler Cowen is similarly right that 50% is not necessarily the optimal gene mix. How many of us want various features of a child to take after one parent or the other? For me, there are so many areas where I think a less than 50% pass through of my traits is what I (and society for that matter!) would want. I definitely don't want a clone but I can understand that others might. Indeed, when we were having a second child, I quite like the first, and wouldn't have minded a clone of her. As she moves towards teenagerhood, I guess I am happy for our diversity.

To me the arguments against cloning have more to do with externalities and similar arguments against gender selection than with a problem with individual preferences. To my mind, this pushes us toward caution and restrictions at a first instance and that the cost to individuals from a delayed ability (maybe over a generation or more) to exercise choice is a worthwhile price for caution. That said, I haven't stated what all these are and will have to leave that for another day.

The Elmo Effect

Lots of discussion about this study:

Findings from Sesame Workshop’s initial “Elmo/ Broccoli” study indicated that intake of a particular food increased if it carried a sticker of a Sesame Street character. For example, in the control group (no characters on either food) 78 percent of children participating in the study chose a chocolate bar over broccoli, whereas 22 percent chose the broccoli. However, when an Elmo sticker was placed on the broccoli and an unknown character was placed on the chocolate bar, 50 percent chose the chocolate bar and 50 percent chose the broccoli. Such outcomes suggest that the Sesame Street characters could play a strong role in increasing the appeal of healthy foods.

So put an Elmo sticker on good food and apparently demand goes up. Of course, one wonders what sort of chocolate bar it was that caused 22 percent of children exercising free will to choose broccoli over it. On the other hand that could be some broccoli. Apparently, further investigation is needed.

What I would like to see is the impact on the quantity consumed and not necessarily the type of food. For instance, does a 'large' packet of broccoli with Elmo get chosen over a 'small' packet without it? And does it get eaten. Similarly, does a 'small' packet of chocolate with Elmo get chosen over a 'large' one without it? And can you actually repeat this on a daily basis rather than just a once off? Surely, there are diminishing returns to Elmo.

Its 2040!

Congratulations!

For those of you living in western Washington, you have experienced a typical winter of roughly 2040.

Now how can I say this?

Looking at the average temperatures from November through March at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, the last winter was 1.8F above normal, including the remarkable warmth of January. Examining the temperature predictions using high-resolution models embedded in global climate models, driven by an aggressive increase of greenhouse gases, one find that this corresponds to the expected changes around 2040. (For the hard core climate types, this is based on the MM5 runs forced by the ECHAM-5 GCM, check out:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~salathe/reg_climate_mod/ECHAM-MM5/seadiffs)

The April 1 snowpack this year was roughly 70% of normal in the Cascades and this corresponds to the amounts in the models for roughly the same time--2040.

Time travel without traveling!

Now I am not saying this to downplay global warming, but to just add some perspective. Thirty years from now it will be warmer and the snowpack will be less, but here in the Northwest no panic is required. Even our current infrastructure can handle water supplies for such a situation.

This week I had a very interesting meeting with managers from Seattle Public Utilities, who are actively thinking about the implications of global warming on Seattle's water supply. It appears that with some changes in management of the reservoirs (storing more water in the spring and letting the level come down a little farther in the fall) and some modest improvements to the system, Seattle will easily weather climate changes well into mid-century.

In our discussions something came up that should have been obvious to me: the amount of rainfall during the winter and the snowpack at the beginning of summer are both very important, but so is something else--when the winter rains begin in the fall. How will this change under global warming? This is something I am going to investigate in the simulations we are running right now. Several simulations I know of suggest somewhat heavier fall precipitation, which if true, could help mitigate the water situation further.

Another factor this is helping immensely is that even with all the local population growth, water demand has stagnated or even decreased. An amazing accomplishment. Give credit to better plumbing--those water conserving toilets and shower heads--coupled with reduced usage of water during the summer.