Fall and Low Clouds

We are in for a stretch of beautiful fall weather, but many of our days will start off with low clouds and fog. And that is absolutely typical for this time of the year. In fact, we are now in the foggiest time of the year for central Puget Sound.

Why?

Night is getting fairly long, giving a good opportunity for the surface to cool off by emitting infrared radiation. And with a lack of clouds aloft, that radiation has a good shot at leaving our planet. Cooling the lowest layer of the atmosphere often produces saturation..and clouds or fog.

Take a look at the visible satellite imagery this morning at roughly 8:30 AM--lots of low clouds over the lowest elevations: Puget Sound and the Willamette Valley. You can also see some fog-filled valleys in BC.


One of the interesting things we learned when satellite imagery became available is that fog and low clouds tend to burn in from the sides towards the center. Watch it happen today in the images below:


11 AM...you can also see the arid areas of eastern WA and Oregon (lighter colors)

2 PM...almost all gone.

The low-level cool air associated with clouds is quite apparent on the Seattle profiler (see below). This figure shows you the temperature variation with height from 5 AM (yellow) through 11 AM (black). Height is in meters. The cold air is about 400 m (1300ft) deep, with a strong inversion (temp increasing with height) above.

If you had hiked up Tiger Mountain or some other lowland peak this morning, the temperatures would have warmed by nearly 10C (18F) in 200 m (650 ft)--something you would have noticed. Such inversion conditions are often evident in fall. So if it is cloudy in the lowlands, don't give up on your hike. Check the satellite picture and it may be clear and warm above.

Ken Burns' Baseball: The Tenth Inning

Now I've mentioned my dislike for the game of baseball many times on this blog. I mean, I can't even get into baseball as a video game, and you can get me into almost any sport after I've played it in video game form. I just find it boring and there are way too many games in a season for any one game to have any meaning until near the end of the season, like the 130 games in the middle are almost garbage time.

I know saying that will likely make some fans of the game get angry, or tell me that I just don't understand, and they have that right. I am merely stating my opinion on the matter because I have to be clear, because it is relevant for the rest of this discussion.

Given those feelings, you would naturally assume that I would absolutely loathe The Tenth Inning, Ken Burns' continuation of 1994's epic documentary series Baseball, but somehow he manages to suck me in once again. I wasn't a fan of the sport in 1994, but I still watched the entire documentary back during the strike.

Granted, the update probably could have had another subtitle, like "Bonds, Boston, The Immigrant Experience and The Strike" because in those four items, I have encapsulated the entire 4 hour examination of the sport of baseball that Ken Burns presented. For those of you who watched it, did I miss something.

The thing that I found amazing about the whole thing is at least in the first half, Barry Bonds actually comes off sympathetically, and I never thought I would find myself feeling sympathy for him. And as always, it was very well put together, although it did showcase something which I hadn't thought of but should have been obvious from a historical perspective (and it was something the filmmaker didn't have control over).

I am talking about using the voiceovers from Fox for their World Series coverage, because now all those historic moments, like Boston finally winning it all are tainted by the silly sound effects that network uses when it is showing the score. It is a minor quibble, but it is something I hope other networks think about with their own broadcasts in the future... that someday someone might pay to use that narration and it would be nice if it wasn't filled with obnoxious flavor of the month sounds.

But overall, it was a wholly enjoyable experience, even for someone who hates the subject matter.

Ultimately, I hope that this whole thing ends up giving PBS some ideas... like maybe they will bring Rock & Roll back with a couple of new episodes to fill in the past decade and a half too.

WebP, a new image format for the Web

Cross-posted from the Chromium Blog

As part of Google’s initiative to make the web faster, over the past few months we have released a number of tools to help site owners speed up their websites. We launched the Page Speed Firefox extension to evaluate the performance of web pages and to get suggestions on how to improve them, we introduced the Speed Tracer Chrome extension to help identify and fix performance problems in web applications, and we released a set of closure tools to help build rich web applications with fully optimized JavaScript code. While these tools have been incredibly successful in helping developers optimize their sites, as we’ve evaluated our progress, we continue to notice a single component of web pages is consistently responsible for the majority of the latency on pages across the web: images.

Most of the common image formats on the web today were established over a decade ago and are based on technology from around that time. Some engineers at Google decided to figure out if there was a way to further compress lossy images like JPEG to make them load faster, while still preserving quality and resolution. As part of this effort, we are releasing a developer preview of a new image format, WebP, that promises to significantly reduce the byte size of photos on the web, allowing web sites to load faster than before.

Images and photos make up about 65% of the bytes transmitted per web page today. They can significantly slow down a user’s web experience, especially on bandwidth-constrained networks such as a mobile network. Images on the web consist primarily of lossy formats such as JPEG, and to a lesser extent lossless formats such as PNG and GIF. Our team focused on improving compression of the lossy images, which constitute the larger percentage of images on the web today.

To improve on the compression that JPEG provides, we used an image compressor based on the VP8 codec that Google open-sourced in May 2010. We applied the techniques from VP8 video intra frame coding to push the envelope in still image coding. We also adapted a very lightweight container based on RIFF. While this container format contributes a minimal overhead of only 20 bytes per image, it is extensible to allow authors to save meta-data they would like to store.

While the benefits of a VP8 based image format were clear in theory, we needed to test them in the real world. In order to gauge the effectiveness of our efforts, we randomly picked about 1,000,000 images from the web (mostly JPEGs and some PNGs and GIFs) and re-encoded them to WebP without perceptibly compromising visual quality. This resulted in an average 39% reduction in file size. We expect that developers will achieve in practice even better file size reduction with WebP when starting from an uncompressed image.

To help you assess WebP’s performance with other formats, we have shared a selection of open-source and classic images along with file sizes so you can visually compare them on this site. We are also releasing a conversion tool that you can use to convert images to the WebP format. We’re looking forward to working with the browser and web developer community on the WebP spec and on adding native support for WebP. While WebP images can’t be viewed until browsers support the format, we are developing a patch for WebKit to provide native support for WebP in an upcoming release of Google Chrome. We plan to add support for a transparency layer, also known as alpha channel in a future update.

We’re excited to hear feedback from the developer community on our discussion group, so download the conversion tool, try it out on your favorite set of images, and let us know what you think.

By Richard Rabbat, WebP Team

Simon Pegg, You Are My Hero

On the upcoming 3D versions of the 6 Star Wars movies, Simon Pegg had the following to say:

Watching TPM (The Phantom Menace) in 3D would be like the car actually crashing into your face as opposed to just unfolding before your eyes

Thank you for coming out against this super jumped-up firework display of a toy advert.

Midweek Video: Don't Sweat The Technique (Bruce Lee Edition)

A wonderful blend of an excellent song by Eric B and Rakim combined with Bruce Lee movie footage.

Do I need to say more?

Lone Star Canned

I almost got into Lone Star... but something told me not to.

Now that it has just been cancelled, I feel lucky I held off. I guess I've been burned before by too many shows, especially on Fox (and honestly, Monday nights in general).

It is still a shame really. In the past, I've discussed my love of plots based on cons and such, and Lone Star seemed to have some of that same kind of setup. But it still wasn't the show I desperately want to see.

I always wanted to see a show where a really exceptional conman who, in reflecting on his life and his past misdeeds,decides that he was going to help people by using his bag of tricks to toast some people who truly deserved it. Sort of like a Robin Hood meets the Equalizer/A-Team thing, and the short lived Eyes had a little bit of that.

But in the end, it just makes me wonder if people upon seeing the previews for this series made the assumption that I did that it wouldn't succeed, so they didn't watch it, and thus helped make their assumption a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Oh well. I guess there is always next season.

A Timeless Comic and an Iconic Catchphrase Together At Last

 

Via: Jaz Jaz

A Good Reason to End a Gig

I've heard a lot of reasons for a band ending a gig early, most of which are admittedly lame, but I just read about one which is just stellar and totally understandable.

Someone threw a glass of urine at the drummer of MGMT during a performance, which hit him in the torso and he walked off stage.

Yeah, I think getting hit by a) a glass or b) urine when you are on stage would be a good reason to stop performing. The two together, well, that is certainly a deal breaker.

Of course, they could have tried the L7 method for dealing with that.

Incredible Humidity

Today the humidity has been extraordinary around western Washington and Oregon. I mean sticky. Feels like the southeast U.S. during the summer--and for good reason: we are experiencing very, very high humidities with dew points in the mid to upper 60s in many locations.

(Remember dew point is a very good measure of humidity...high dew points mean lots of water vapor in the atmosphere. Typically this time of the year dew points would be around 50F. )

Here are some dew point values at 5 PM:

UW 67F
Olympia 69F
Tacoma 67F
Portland 63F
Cascade Locks 72F

There is a satellite that senses water vapor from space...take a look below:

Pretty amazing...there is a plume of moisture streaming out of the subtropics from just north of Hawaii....an atmospheric river. You can call it a pineapple express--but it is missing one thing...enough upward motion to give us heavy rain. Want to see a great video of this moisture plume? Check this out:

http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/tropic/real-time/tpw2/epac/main.html

Here is a simulation of vertically integrated water vapor from the UW forecasting system valid 11 PM...the blues are the highest values and you can see it streaming from the southwest.

The humidity is so large that there has been some condensation in the form of shallow fog over parts of the Sound...which is cold enough to cause this moisture to condense. Some wind was also helpful, since it mixed the water vapor towards the cold surface. Look at this picture sent to me today by Greg Johnson of SkunkBayWeather.com. You see the grey haze near the surface? That is the shallow fog I was talking about.

Now I know for sure that this was the most humid day over the past year so far in terms of dew point ---and here is the proof for Sea Tac:

At Sea Tac the highest dew point of the day was 66F...one degree shy of the ALL TIME RECORD HIGHEST SEPTEMBER DEWPOINT for that location.

And want more extreme weather...head to the LA basin for heat. A number of locations have had their ALL TIME RECORD TEMPERATURES, with observations in the LA area of 113-119F!! Be thankful you are living in the Northwest.

Shenanigans on Katy Perry and Sesame Street

You know, from the moment I heard about that whole Katy Perry/Sesame Street thing, it seemed like a publicity stunt for both entities and a manufactured outrage.

I mean, think about how many different stages of oversight this whole thing had where a change could have been made. There was waredrobe, coverage, editing both for content and to add the backdrop (so if they wanted to make a change at that point, I am sure they could have changed the line of Perry's cleavage rather easily), and there was a moment where they could have just not put it online and not mention the segment.

But none of that happened, so now Katy Perry gets to be the woman who was just too hot for Sesame Street (which, let's be honest, it was a little cleavage, not the end of Western Civilization), while Sesame Street got mentioned a lot on a variety of programs and on twitter and blogs (ahem). And let's not forget, the segment that was filmed got a lot more views than it likely would have without the manufactured controversy.

It was win-win for both sides in this, because how many people watched Katy Perry on that show that would have never watched it in the first place.

New OAuth support for Google Apps APIs

Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog

Google Apps is designed to provide a secure and reliable platform for your data. Until today, Google Apps administrators had to sign requests for calls to Google Apps APIs using their username and password (this is called ClientLogin Authorization).

Yet sharing passwords across sites can pose security risks. Furthering our commitment to make the cloud more secure for our users, today we are pleased to announce support for OAuth authorization on Google Apps APIs.

There are several advantages to using OAuth instead of the username/password model:

• OAuth is more secure: OAuth tokens can be scoped and set to expire by a certain date, making them more secure than using the ClientLogin mechanism.
• OAuth is customizable: Using OAuth, you can create tokens that scripts may only use to access data of a particular scope when calling Google Apps APIs. For instance, a token set to call the Email Migration API would not be able to use your login credentials to access the Google Apps Provisioning API.
• OAuth is an open standard: OAuth is an open source standard, making it a familiar choice for developers to work with.

The Google Apps APIs that support the OAuth signing mechanism are:

1. Provisioning API
2. Email Migration API
3. Admin Settings API
4. Calendar Resource API
5. Email Settings API
6. Audit API

OAuth support for Google Apps APIs is another step towards making Google Apps the most secure, reliable cloud based computing environment for organizations. To learn more about OAuth support and other administrative capacities launched in Google Apps this quarter, join us for a live webinar on Wednesday, September 29th at 9am PT / 12pm EST / 5pm GMT.

Administrators for Google Apps Premier, Education, and Government Editions can use OAuth authorization for Google Apps APIs starting today.For more information about the OAuth standard, visit http://oauth.net.

By Ankur Jain, Google Apps Team

American Girl Place

A few years back, I was in Chicago looking for gifts for the children while on a business trip and walked into American Girl Place. The first thing that was clear to me was that it was not the sort of place you should go to without a child. The second thing that was clear was you should not go to that place with a child. Otherwise you will not leave without anything other than an empty wallet. I vowed to stay clear of it.

I have kept that pledge but, sadly, Child No.3 managed to successfully lobby her mother to take her there today (the one in Boston that is). The stated aim was to attempt to allow Child No.3 to rid herself of her savings and experience an allowance budget constraint. Suffice it to say: goal achieved. But the scars may stay around much longer.

As an economist, I am in two minds about American Girl Place. I have never heard of a place so shamelessly tailored towards extracting money from people. The day began with a booking at the American Girl Bistro. But apparently, before getting there you needed to purchase an American Girl doll. Why? Because otherwise your child will be the only one sitting there having macaroni and cheese with an empty doll seat beside her. 

American Girl dolls are ordinary dolls; unlike say Barbie. But there many varieties so you can find one that looks just like your daughter. From the picture you now know exactly what our six year old daughter looks like -- fully accessorised. So a doll was purchased, another outfit, sunglasses, a necklace, shoes to match the new dress and a dog. All that completely eliminated our daughter's savings with a debt that will take three months for her (or several teeth as she pointed out to me) to put her back in the black. That meant, of course, that there wasn't enough money left over to:get the doll and my daughters matching hair styling (yes, the doll could have her hair styled at a price that exceeded the cost of my own haircuts!). It also meant that there would be no matching dress for my daughter. Nonetheless, now in her new poverty, she and her brother set about expropriating American Girl Place's business by making her new doll's furniture themselves out of discarded stuff around the house. Take that!

As a business, American Girl Place is fantastic in a Dr Evil type of way. But it is for this same reason that I have my second mind: it panders to every awful stereotype about girls that there is. It does so relentlessly and makes no attempt whatsoever to do anything other than exclude boys. There is pink everywhere and other horrors that Child No.3's mother cannot bring herself to speak about.

You know there are times when people ask me what I do for a living and I say sheepishly, "economist." But it could be worse, I could be an American Girl Place 'doll hairstylist.'

Sunday Video: Time Lapse Walk Across America

Awesome stuff. Just awesome.

You can certainly tell that took a lot of work and planning. I just wish they would have kept the stars clothes consistent. I think that is my only real issue with this production.

The Rain Cometh

Today was as close to perfect as weather can get around here. In Seattle: no clouds, high in the mid-70s, nice breeze. The air was clean and visibility was excellent.

But this will be a weekend with a different ending and the change is moving in right now.

Here is the latest radar image from the NWS Camano Is. radar. You see all those greens and yellows in the upper left-hand portion of the image...that is moderate rain associated with a well-defined frontal band that is now moving into western Washington. The echos over the Puget Sound region are probably birds.


The frontal band that is moving in is quite clear in the latest infrared satellite image (see below). You will also note there isn't much immediately behind it...a different story from our normal wintertime frontal passages, which are followed by cold air showers.


One amazing thing about today were the clear skies....I mean NO clouds at all and great transparency to the atmosphere. You want to see the proof? Below are the observations taken on the roof of my building at the UW for the past 72 h (click to expand). The lowest panel shows solar radiation. Thursday and Friday the amount of solar radiation was greatly lessened by clouds....but look at today. Amazing. Almost a perfect sinusoidal shape--could have been from a textbook.


OK, time to stop raving about today.

The front is moving in quickly and rain should hit the interior lowlands overnight and spread over the Cascades in the morning. Here is the forecast 24-h rainfall ending 5 PM tomorrow. Fairly heavy rain (up to 2.5 inches) for the western side of the Olympics, the mountains of Vancouver Is and the north Cascades. The WA coast will be wet. And a general decline to the south and east. Head to the Tri-cities and Hood River if you want to stay completely dry. The front will weaken as it makes landfall.


Many of us are hoping for lots of rain from this event. The all-time wettest Sept for Sea Tac is 5.95 inches and we have nearly 4.4 inches now...a big hit tomorrow could make up half the gap! But we don't have much time.

Some notes:

On Wednesday night there will be a meeting of the Puget Sound Chapter of the American Meteorological Society here in Seattle (see info to the right). This gathering is open to all and it will be a great opportunity to hear the latest on the upcoming winter from a national expert from the National Climatic Center.

On Saturday, Oct 2, I will be doing two events---that night I will be giving a lecture in Bellingham at 7 PM on the extreme weather of NW Washington...and believe me they have a lot to brag about (see info to the right).

That morning I will be doing a book event (e.g., signing books and talking to people) at the south Seattle Costco from 9:30-11:30 AM (http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/calendar/cal_event.php?id=265). Other UW Press authors will be there as well.

Week 20: Pageant of the Transmundane

Saudis may soon need a license if they wish to blog. There is nothing funny about that, but it is weird, and thus, why I thought it was fitting for the opener this week.

This time out, we are returning the hardware to a blogger that has had their fair share of recognition in terms of transmundanity.

Yes, once again, Peter Lynn of Man Vs Clown fame (or is it infamy by now... hmmm).

In this case, he has mashed together an anti-drinking and driving commercial with the similarly-themed music from an old Kraft BBQ sauce ad. It is oddly compelling.

And since this week's winning entry has to do with barbeque (sauce), this Parade Magazine cover seemed to be appropriate.

Congrats Peter! 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.

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.

Don't Let the Door Hit Your Ass on the Way Out

Jeff Zucker fired

Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey-ey, goodbye

(a recent Blogger change broke my Technorati tag functionality, and I am too lazy to do it by hand, so blah... not going to bother).

Marvel Superhero Movies: Heading for an Overload

A few minutes ago, I read an article about the development of a film based on the Marvel character Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson in Iron Man 2, which would be the latest movie announced based on those properties.

But I don't think this is going to turn out well for anyone.

I know it seems like a good idea to strike while the iron is hot, but I could see releasing so many movies based on Marvel properties together turning into a huge problem, especially since most of these movies are supposed to tie together in one way or another.

This trend could lead to a great deal of audience fatigue, and the law of diminishing returns is likely to take effect, because there is indeed times when you can get too much of a good thing.

I mean, think about it, so far in 2011 and 2012, we are expecting X-men: First Class, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, the sequel to Ghost Rider, The Avengers and the Spiderman reboot, Iron Man 3, Deadpool, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2. And now there might be another one on top of that.

And that isn't even taking into account superhero movies that DC might be putting out at around the same time, or new Marvel projects that may be announced. When you look at previous years, there were at most 3 Marvel movies in a year, but the average for the next two years is approaching 5, or one nearly every two months.

I think ever die-hard Marvel fans would have to admit, that is a lot of films being crammed together in a relatively short amount of time.

What I think is really going on here is basically the companies that were making these movies in the past got caught flatfooted when Disney acquired Marvel, so they are trying to just make as many movies with the characters they have the rights to before their agreements expire as they possibly can.

From that perspective, it makes sense, but from any other angle, it is too much in too little time. And you know at least one of the above movies is going to absolutely tank because there just isn't enough money on its opening weekend to support both the new release and a previous Marvel movie that is still making money.

Tags: black widow, the avengers, x-men first class, iron man 3, wolverine 2, deadpool, thor, captain america, spiderman, ghost rider, marveldisney

The First Atmospheric River of the Season

Some of the most important wintertime weather features of our region are the plumes of moisture that stream northeastward out of the tropics and subtropics. In the discipline these plumes are often called "atmospheric rivers" and the atmospheric river that is often discussed in the media is the "pineapple express." This weekend the first major atmospheric river of the season will strike our region, specifically central and northern Vancouver Island and adjacent portions of British Columbia.

Here is a recent computer forecast of the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere (the fancy name is "column-integrated water vapor"--throw that around and you will impress your friends!) for 11 AM on Saturday. The blues are high values-see the atmospheric river?



The plumes of atmospheric moisture associated with these rivers is usually associated with warm temperatures--in fact it HAS to be that way, because only warm air can hold large amounts of water vapor. When this warm juicy air strikes our mountains it is forced to rise--the result being large amounts of precipitation. Want to see what the models are going for? Here is the forecast 24-h rainfall ending 5 PM on Sunday. The reds are FIVE TO TEN INCHES OF RAIN! There is even a white area, where more than 10 inches is predicted.


Fortunately for us, the U.S. side of the border will only get a weakened share of this wet bounty--after a generally dry Saturday the front that is associated with this precipitation will move through rapidly, with only modest showers over western Washington.

Do we expect a lot of strong atmospheric rivers this year? Will one hit the weakened Howard Hanson Dam? What I can tell you is that the upcoming winter will be a La Nina period and generally the strongest atmospheric rivers and floods are during neutral years (neither La Nina or El Nino). So although we expect this fall and winter to be wetter than normal (due to La Nina), there is less chance for a mega-rain/flooding event. Yes, it could happen, but it is less likely.

Our first ever G-days in Egypt and Jordan

Google is dedicated to making the Internet relevant and useful to Arabic speakers, and to developing meaningful and local products for the Middle East. We fully realise that we cannot foster this growing Internet ecosystem alone, and we therefore believe that tech entrepreneurs and developers have the opportunity to transform the Web for the world and for the Middle East.

So for the first time ever in Egypt and Jordan, Google is very excited to host its G-days, in Cairo between December 8th and 10th for G-Egypt, and Amman between December 12th and 14th for G-Jordan.

Each day of the 3-day conference will cater to a different audience, spanning computer science students and professors, professional developers, webmasters, entrepreneurs, small businesses and tech marketers. Take a look at our sites (G-Egypt and G-Jordan) to learn more about the G-day that might fit your appetite. You must pre-register on the websites as space is limited - you will then be fully registered as soon as we send you a confirmation.

Some of Google’s best and most engaging engineers, product managers, business managers and leadership will be speaking about Google’s open web and mobile technologies. Attendees will have the chance to interact with Googlers and explore Google’s technologies through a combination of tech talks and breakout sessions. We’re getting ready to make these events fun, insightful and interesting so we hope to see you there !

On Twitter : #gegypt #gjordan @GoogleDevMENA

By Sebastian Trzcinski-Clément, Developer Relations for the Middle East and Northern Africa

My Social Networking Confession

With the upcoming movie The Social Network opening at the beginning of October, it got me thinking about something I was involved with.

Confession time. I worked for a social network in late 2005-early 2006. It was one aimed at college students. But the one I was working at didn't start at Harvard.

Here is a bit of information about that, without getting into any specific detail.

I started working at the social network that shall not be named in October 2005, around the same time Newscorp had paid over half a billion dollars for Myspace, so it seemed like a wonderful time to be working in that particular sector of the industry.

I was the content developer for that particular enterprise, which meant that I wrote a lot of articles geared towards college students in a short amount of time. I mean, a lot, but I enjoyed the challenge, because we needed content, and I had to write them about so many different topics in a day, so it was easy to get mental whiplash.

It was also the first time I saw a Smart car in person, as they had leased one to use promotionally. That was pretty cool.

But since I am no longer working there, you can tell things didn't work out for this particular enterprise, and I am sure there are a lot of people who worked during the dotcom boom of the late 1990's who have some tales similar to mine.

I have to say that working there gave me a little bit of insight into how social networks are run, and it is only now that I understand why the company I worked for failed. The major reason was, a social network is a money sponge. It takes a lot of funds to get one going, and it takes a long time to even start approaching profitability, so if the finances are not in place, it is a proposition doomed to failure.

And since I didn't have a financial stake in the company aside from the paycheck, I can look on the situation philosophically.

When I play fantasy football, I sort of prefer to get blown out rather than lose by a few points, because knowing that I could have changed the outcome, that would just bug me, or when you are playing or rooting for a person/team in a tournament, and you/they lose, you sort of want the victor of that match to So getting beaten by Facebook, well, there wasn't really anything you could do at that point. It wasn't the juggernaut then that it is now, but when you look at the timeline, it was still a force to be reckoned with, and even if the finances were in place, I still think it would have been a losing battle. Facebook had the market position at that point, and they were going to open their registration to everyone, not just college and high school students within a few months of me being let go from my position.

In retrospect, it was an almost unwinnable situation. But it was fun while it lasted. And after looking into it, it seems that my boss landed on his feet as well, so I think it likely ended up being a huge learning experience for him as well, and I hope he is doing very well.

Tags: myspace, facebook, the social network, social networking, content developer

Google Developer Day registration open for Munich, Moscow and Prague

Registration opens today for Google Developer Day in Europe and Russia! As you saw from our agenda announcement, they promise to be jam-packed with great speakers and fantastic content.

Register to attend on the following dates, in the following places:

• November 9 - Munich, Germany
• November 12 - Moscow, Russia
• November 16 - Prague, Czech Republic

Stay updated on Developer Day news by following us at:

• Germany: Google Produkt Compass blog
• Russia: Developer blog and @gddru
• Czech Republic: Google Česká republika blog and @gddcz

Our official hashtags are #gddde, #gddru and #gddcz.

Look forward to seeing you there!

By Ben Wallace, Developer Marketing EMEA

Happy Birthday 60th Bill Murray

It has been a brilliant career, Bill Murray. Happy 60th Birthday.

I just read the following on the IMDB:

Was considered for the role of Han Solo in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).

That would have been absolutely brilliant. Of course, I think even then he would have cracked George Lucas over his knee, but it would have been worth it.

So even those there have been missteps (you almost made Garfield watchable... almost), your life and career have given joy to millions of people, and you should be applauded for your style and grace.



Let's hope you have many more birthdays after this. Huzzah!

Tags: bill murray, birthday, han solo, george lucas, garfield

Comedy Gold: Electric Boogaloo

I haven't done a comedy gold post in a long, long time, and I was thinking about a particular two word phrase that I've always loved.

It isn't so much a movie or television phenomenon, but a blogging/journalism running gag.

I am of course, talking about the use of the phrase "Electric Boogaloo".

As Wikipedia describes this particular kind of usage.

"X 2: Electric Boogaloo." Where X is a film, and is used to describe an unnecessary, ridiculous, or generally unwanted sequel. Originated from the sequel of the movie Breakin', Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo.

I think the reason this all came about was due to the fact that Electric Boogaloo just sounds so ridiculous, and it is fun to say and type. If you've never done it, try it.

See what I mean?

It is in the same realm of the or NAMBLA jokes on The Daily Show... it works so well for what it does.

Of course, there is always another level with these kinds of jokes as well. I mean, you could always take a third element from another line of sequels/bad movies to make your displeasure with a potential sequel really apparent.

I've even have a list of subtitles for you to use for your convenience:

Electric Boogaloo in Space
Electric Boogaloo vs Godzilla
Electric Boogaloo takes Manhattan
Electric Boogaloo Scared Stupid
Electric Boogaloo: Mission to Moscow
Electric Boogaloo: The Revenge
Electric Boogaloo 3D
The Next Electric Boogaloo
Electric Boogaloo: The Quickening
Electric Boogaloo: The Marsupials

I just hope the phrase doesn't become so ubiquitous that it loses its humor. That would be a shame.

Tags: breakin, electric boogaloo, the revenge, daily show, mission to moscow, 3d, godzilla, scared stupid, takes manhattan, the quickening, the marsupials, comedy gold, watchmen 2, unnecessary sequel

Northwest Monsoon

I have been amazed by the amount of rainfall falling around here over the past two days, with a number of locations getting the equivalent of an entire September's rainfall in 48hr! Warm, humid, and tropical. At my home in north Seattle I had 1.1 inches the first day and 1.05 inches the second! The ground is saturated.

Take a look at the 48-h rainfall analysis from the Seattle Rainwatch web sight (built by the UW and sponsored by the City--Seattle Public Utilities--to allow them to deal with heavy rainfall situations, http://www.atmos.washington.edu/SPU/). Areas from Seattle extending back to Tahoma had over two inches.Here is a wide view...keep in mind Rainwatch is based on calibrating radar imagery using rain gauges and thus is not useful where terrain blockage is significant (over the Cascades, WA Coast for example). The heaviest rain was apparently near Olympia.Olympia has accumulated 4.1 inches of rain in just the past 4 days and 5.3 inches over the past 31 days. September normal at Olympia is 2.0 inches for the entire month.

Over the past 4 days SeaTac has recorded 3.2 inches of rain, normal for the entire month is 1.7 inches. Want more? For the calendar day yesterday Seattle set a new daily record (.78 inches) ...old record .57 inches in 1983. Want even more? So far this month (ending midnight) Sea Tac has received 3.74 inches, which IS THE WETTEST
18 days on record for September at that location. Olympia has the same claim. The all-time wettest Sept for Sea Tac is 5.95 inches and 7.59 inches for Olympia. A really good chance we will break these records.

If you have a sprinkler system, better turn it off.

I was planning on getting my house painted this fall...I have had second thoughts with all this rain!

Why has it been so wet? For several days we have had a persistent configuration of the upper level flow with a low offshore and southwesterly flow over us and Oregon (it has been even worse down there!). With strong SW flow we have had a warm, moist, unstable air streaming over us for days.


Latest NWS Statement released Monday AM:

835 NOUS46 KSEW 201154

PNSSEW

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT

NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SEATTLE WA

450 AM PDT MON SEP 20 2010

..WET LAST FEW DAYS FOR WESTERN WASHINGTON ESPECIALLY THE PUGET SOUND REGION...

NUMEROUS PRECIPITATION RECORDS WERE SET DURING THE LAST FEW DAYS OVER THE INTERIOR OF WESTERN WASHINGTON.

SEATTLE

THE SEATTLE-TACOMA AIRPORT RAIN TOTAL FOR THE LAST FOUR DAYS WAS 3.23 INCHES ( 0.60 ON THE 16TH...1.49 INCHES ON THE 17TH...0.78 INCHES ON THE 18TH AND 0.36 INCHES ON THE 19TH ). NORMAL FOR THE ENTIRE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER IS 1.63 INCHES SO NEARLY 200 PERCENT OF THE MONTHLY NORMAL WAS RECORDED IN THE LAST FOUR DAYS. 3.23 INCHES WOULD BE THE 12TH WETTEST SEPTEMBER ON RECORD AT SEATTLE-TACOMA AIRPORT IN THE 66 YEARS RECORDS HAVE BEEN KEPT AT THE AIRPORT

( RECORDS STARTED IN 1945 ).

DAILY RAINFALL RECORDS WERE SET ON THE 17TH AND 18TH

17TH 1.49 INCHES...OLD RECORD 1.26 INCHES SET IN 1969

18TH 0.78 INCHES...OLD RECORD 0.57 INCHES SET IN 1983

RECORD ONE HOUR AND TWO HOUR RAINFALL FOR SEPTEMBER WERE SET.

11 PM TO MIDNIGHT ON THE 17TH 0.63 INCHES (OLD RECORD 0.54 9/8/79)

11 PM 17TH TO 1 AM ON THE 18TH 0.94 INCHES (OLD RECORD 0.60 9/22/78)

RECORD THREE DAY SEPTEMBER RAINFALL RECORD WAS SET 16TH THROUGH THE 18TH

2.87 INCHES...OLD RECORD 2.82 INCHES SEPTEMBER 20-22 1972.

RECORD FOUR DAY SEPTEMBER RAINFALL RECORD WAS SET 16TH THROUGH THE 19TH

3.23 INCHES...OLD RECORD 3.10 INCHES SEPTEMBER 19-22 1972

IT WAS THE SECOND WETTEST TWO DAY TOTAL ON THE 17TH AND 18TH...

2.27 INCHES. RECORD 2.36 INCHES SEPTEMBER 22 AND 23 1978.

THE 1.49 INCHES ON SEPTEMBER 17TH WAS THE FOURTH WETTEST SEPTEMBER DAY ON RECORD AT SEATTLE-TACOMA AIRPORT SURPASSED ONLY BY 1.65 INCHES ON SEPTEMBER 22ND 1978 AND SEPTEMBER 30TH 1953 AND 1.51 INCHES ON SEPTEMBER 26TH 1948.

MONTHLY RAINFALL TOTAL THROUGH THE 19TH AT SEATTLE-TACOMA AIRPORT IS 4.10 INCHES. THIS IS CURRENTLY TIED FOR THE FOURTH WETTEST SEPTEMBER ON RECORD. THE RECORD IS 5.95 INCHES SET IN 1978.

TOP 5 WETTEST SEPTEMBERS AT SEATTLE-TACOMA AIRPORT

1. 5.95 INCHES (1978)

2. 5.57 INCHES (1969)

3. 4.60 INCHES (1959)

4. 4.10 INCHES (1972) AND 2010.

THE 4.10 INCHES THROUGH THE 19TH IS THE WETTEST FIRST 19 DAYS OF THE MONTH ON RECORD SURPASSING THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 3.10 INCHES SET IN 1959.

OLYMPIA

THE OLYMPIA AIRPORT RAIN TOTAL FROM THE 15TH THROUGH THE 18TH WAS 4.09 INCHES ( 0.66 ON THE 15TH...0.91 INCHES ON THE 16TH...1.67 INCHES ON THE 17TH AND 0.85 INCHES ON THE 18TH ). NORMAL FOR THE ENTIRE MONTH OF SEPTEMBER IS 2.03 INCHES SO OVER 200 PERCENT OF THE MONTHLY NORMAL WAS RECORDED BETWEEN THE 15TH AND 18TH. 4.09 INCHES WOULD BE THE 8TH WETTEST SEPTEMBER ON RECORD AT OLYMPIA AIRPORT IN THE 63 YEARS RECORDS HAVE BEEN KEPT AT THE AIRPORT ( RECORDS STARTED IN 1948 ).

DAILY RAINFALL RECORDS WERE SET ON THE 17TH AND 18TH

17TH 1.67 INCHES...OLD RECORD 1.13 INCHES SET IN 1969

18TH 0.85 INCHES...OLD RECORD 0.75 INCHES SET IN 1983

THE 17TH WAS THE WETTEST SEPTEMBER DAY ON RECORD AT OLYMPIA AIRPORT BREAKING THE RECORD OF 1.54 INCHES SET SEPTEMBER 6TH 2009.

RECORD THREE DAY SEPTEMBER RAINFALL RECORD WAS SET 16TH THROUGH THE 18TH

3.43 INCHES...OLD RECORD 3.24 INCHES SEPTEMBER 15TH-17TH 2010. OLD RECORD BEFORE THAT 3.14 INCHES SEPTEMBER 20-22 1972.

RECORD FOUR DAY SEPTEMBER RAINFALL RECORD WAS SET 15TH THROUGH THE 18TH

4.09 INCHES...OLD RECORD 3.54 INCHES SEPTEMBER 20-23 1972

IT WAS THE THIRD WETTEST TWO DAY TOTAL ON THE 16TH AND 17TH...2.58 INCHES. RECORD 2.66 INCHES SEPTEMBER 22 AND 23 1978...SECOND

2.62 INCHES SEPTEMBER 20TH AND 21ST 1972.

MONTHLY RAINFALL TOTAL THROUGH THE 19TH AT OLYMPIA AIRPORT IS 4.95 INCHES. THIS IS CURRENTLY THE FOURTH WETTEST SEPTEMBER ON RECORD. THE RECORD IS 7.95 INCHES SET IN 1978.

TOP 5 WETTEST SEPTEMBERS AT OLYMPIA AIRPORT

1. 7.59 INCHES (1978)

2. 5.23 INCHES (1969)

3. 5.04 INCHES (1972)

4. 4.95 INCHES 2010

5. 4.58 INCHES (1977)

THE 4.10 INCHES THROUGH THE 19TH IS THE WETTEST FIRST 19 DAYS OF THE MONTH ON RECORD SURPASSING THE PREVIOUS RECORD OF 4.00 INCHES SET IN 1978.

$$

FELTON

Sunday Video: Damn You Stephen Hawking

The audio on this, especially at the beginning is not safe for work, but it ends up going into some weird, funny places as it goes on.

Might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I liked it.

Tags: stephen hawking, revenge, katie walder, eugene byrd, poker, ted, brief history of time

Week 19: Pageant of the Transmundane

Someone has invented spray on fiber clothing in a can. I can see it now... people with a closet full of aerosol cans and still nothing to wear.

This week's winning entry comes to us from the blog Competitive Awesome.

In this case, it is an album cover that is truly epic. Epic in what way, I am not going to speculate, but it is epic nonetheless.

And since this week's winning entry has to do with record covers, well, a couple of Simpsons-based covers seemed the most appropriate.



Congrats Mychal and Aaron. 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.

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: homer simpson, pageant of the transmundane, competitive awesome, spray on clothes, album cover, be sharps

Forecasting's Achilles Heel

Today we are experiencing a noticeable forecast failure and one that in some sense is self-inflicted.

Here is Puget Sound country it is going to be a beautiful day...lots of sun and temps rising into the 70s. Look outside or view the latest visible satellite picture.


On the other hand the National Weather Service forecast RELEASED THIS MORNING paints a less optimistic picture.


And yesterday's forecast was even more pessimistic.


The computer forecasts yesterday showed the break between systems (see example) and certainly this morning it was clear.


Why didn't the message about a spectacular break on Saturday get out?

I think there are three main reasons:

1. The National Weather Service forecast cycle is only updated every 6 hr in most cases and there is a lack of emphasis on nowcasting--describing what is happening now and during the next few hours.

2. There is a distinct tendency for the National Weather Service to broadbrush their forecasts--smear out clouds and weather over an extended period and not to put emphasis on breaks in the weather...even when they are pretty obvious.

3. Finally, there is the tendency in the NWS to maintain forecast consistency--staying with the same story--even when new guidance suggests otherwise. This is based on an internal philosophy not to jerk the forecast around as numerical guidance changes.

Personally, I think this all has to change...and in fact this blog is partially a reaction my feelings.

I believe that that providing frequent updates on current and expected weather is a hugely important area for development and that society has much to gain from this direction. For many of us, knowing what is happening and what will happen in the next 6 hrs is hugely important...and has great value for saving property and lives. To be fair, when severe weather is occurring the NWS does do more nowcasting, but I think they need to do so on a more regular basis.

In a day with smartphones, internet-capable cell phones, and computers on the internet everywhere, the ability to deliver real-time weather information exists. New software applications, better computer modeling, and a huge increase in observations will make the information available. We just have to put the package together--and society has much to gain from it.

The nightly weather on the local news is great, but people need weather information all the time...and we have to find a way of delivering it. An idea: every major city could have a nowcasting weather broadcast on the internet, updating the current weather situation every 15 minutes.

How Bad Has It Been?

Another round of rain struck today and the grumbling has increased...

"The worst summer I can remember"
"I thought Septembers were good around here"

and other comments that cannot be repeated on a family friendly blog.

Looking at the temperature versus normal for the past four weeks, tells the recent tale (see below). Except for a few brief warm periods, most days have been below normal.
Today was particularly noteworthy: the temperatures hardly fell last night and the humidity was palpable.
Dewpoints were in the low to mid 60s today...which is very, very unusual around here. It felt like the East Coast during the summer! Here is a plot of dewpoint for the past six months (click to expand). Remember, dewpoint is a measure of the amount of moisture in the air...the temperature to which you have to cool it to get saturation. Yesterday, was the highest dewpoint in SIX MONTHS.



I asked UW staff member Neal Johnson to plot up the number of days equal to or greater than 70F from January 1 through September 15th for this year and all other years since 1948 (see below). The results?

(click to expand)

We had far fewer 70F days (55) than normal (72) and in fact this has been the worst year by this measure since 1980! Yes, the worst summer for three decades! No one younger than 35 can remember anything worse! 1980 was comparable, and then you would have to go back to 1954 and 1955, which were even cooler, believe it not.


Tomorrow (Friday's) forecast? Rain coming in during the afternoon. You don't want to know about the weekend--even eastern WA will get wet.

One final thing...I will be giving a talk in Bellingham on the fascinating, and often extreme, weather of Northwest Washington on October 2 at 7 PM. See details in the upper right hand corner of this blog.

James Bond 23 and The Hobbit back on.

Well, I've just read that both the 23rd James Bond and The Hobbit are tenatively scheduled to start filming in 2011. It seems that MGM mighy be getting out of the dire financial straits they found themselves in and can get on with the process of making movies.

It isn't solid, mind you, but this information seems to be coming out from multiple sources, including Ian McKellen regarding The Hobbit, so it does seem to be a little more substantial than some petty rumors.

Bond is supposed to start shooting next fall, while The Hobbit is reportedly starting principle photography this coming January.

The best part is, I haven't heard anything about a Robocop remake cropping up, so this really is the best of both worlds.

Tags: james bond 23, sam mendes, ian mckellen, the hobbit, mgm, peter jackson, robocop

Google Relaunches Instantiations Developer Tools - Now Available for Free

(Cross-posted from the Google Web Toolkit blog)

In early August, Google acquired Instantiations, a company known for its focus on Eclipse Java developer tools, including GWT Designer. We're happy to announce today that we're relaunching the following former Instantiations products under the Google name and making them available to all developers at no charge:

• GWT Designer
  Powerful Eclipse-based development tools that enable Java developers to quickly create Ajax user interfaces using Google Web Toolkit (GWT)


• CodePro AnalytiX
  Comprehensive automated software code quality and security analysis tools to improve software quality, reliability, and maintainability


• WindowBuilder Pro
  Java graphical user interface designer for Swing, SWT, GWT, RCP, and XWT UI frameworks


• WindowTester Pro
  Test GUI interactions within Java client rich applications for the SWT and Swing UI frameworks

Now that these products are available again, we hope you’ll start using them within your GWT projects. Meanwhile, our next step is to more deeply unify them into the GWT family of tools by blending the fantastic Instantiations technology into the Google Plugin for Eclipse (GPE). So, there’s much more to come, including things we’re pretty sure you’ll like, such as UiBinder support in GWT Designer.

You can download any of the tools from the GWT download page. If you have questions or comments we’d love to hear from you. The best place to discuss the tools above is at http://forums.instantiations.com. As always, continue to discuss GWT and GPE at the main GWT Group.

We would love to stay in better touch with you as we have more news about how we are integrating the Instantiations products into the Google Web Toolkit suite. Sign up if you’d like to receive email updates on these products and other developer tools.

By Bruce Johnson, Google Developer Team

Midweek Video: Hobo with a Shotgun (Trailer for the Real Movie)

I can't wait. Looks like super bloody fun. Totally over the top.

I really hope he says he is going to sleep in someone's bloody carcass tonight like the character does in the original fake trailer.

And that dumpster firebombing still haunts me.

Tags: rutger hauer, hobo with a shotgun, grindhouse, gore, blood, action, violence, firebombing

I Am Always A Late Arrival for Parties

I've been playing a lot of fighting games as of late, and the I made this little entry in the whole I'mma Let You Finish meme for a game trading site I am on.



Seth refers to the final boss from Street Fighter IV

And for those of you who aren't familiar with what an SNK Boss is, they are the most horrible creatures ever devised by video game creators, designed to really make you angry and to get you to throw a lot more quarters in an arcade machine. They are all dirty bastards.

I mean I don't get mad at games these days, but after I met this boss, I was ready to throw a 7 pound joystick at my TV, and I hate him so much, I revel in watching another super boss character, Shin Akuma/Gouki, beat his ass in MUGEN.

And then I met Magaki. There are childhood bullies and exes I hate less than this guy. I could possibly hate Scientology less than I hate him.

And those two are just the tip of the iceberg. I still have to meet Rugal and Geese and so many other frustrating bosses, and I know I am going to hate them all and wish fervently that they burn in hell. Because they deserve it.

If I had to pick between seeing a child molester or an SNK Boss get shot in a movie, I'd really have to think about what I would prefer to see.

I think this may be one of my geekiest posts ever.

Tags: kanye west, king of fighters, snk boss, seth, street fighter iv, magaki, rugal, geese, mizuchi, orochi, shin akuma, gouki, scientology, bullies, ex

Google Developer Day Registration Now Open for Brazil

As promised, registration for our Sao Paulo Google Developer Day is now open. Developer Day in Brazil takes place on October 29, 2010. More details on sessions and speaker bios are now available on the site.

Follow @googledevbr (hashtag: #gddbr) to stay updated on developer news in Brazil.

UPDATE: Registration closes on Sep 28, 2010.

By Susan Taing, Google Developer Team