Old timer

Douglas has been listing the 18-49 numbers for GSN lately along with the total viewer numbers. Just amazingly, the demo figures show that GSN skews very old, and the pre-1990 shows skew oldest of all. I might get slammed by the older-is-better bunch, but I posted a reality-check comment on the GSN schedule board...

The 18-49 numbers for the weekday morning block are embarrassing, barely measurable by Nielsen's sampling techniques. This should not surprise anybody. The pre-1990 shows have always skewed very old. They're the oldest-skewing shows in an old-skewing genre.

Improv-a-Ganza's relatively younger skew is also no surprise because comedy has always skewed younger than traditional game shows. That's why GSN tried the show in the first place. Too bad, the show got so few viewers of any age that even the 18-49 numbers were low.

It's easy for posters on this board to say GSN should just ignore the demos and program more old stuff. This board doesn't have to sell advertising time or convince cable/satellite operators to carry the network. But the demos make the network a much harder sell than younger numbers would. GSN can live off old demos, but it's a harder slog.

UPDATE: Sure enough, I got bashed by the older-is-better bunch. I give up on the production-date-fetish folks. As I said on the GSN board...

People are dug in on production dates, so I won't argue the subject any more. Anyhoo, prime time/total day viewership averages for the last several dates published by Douglas:

September 15 303K/211K
September 16 359K/200K
September 17 384K/218K
September 23 372K/231K
September 24 216K/158K
September 25 136K/182K

The latest weekend was obviously a disaster. Up till then the prime time averages had been holding up well, though total day was usually pretty poor. Don't know if Douglas will eventually go back and fill in the missing days.

Fridaygram: Dead Sea Scrolls online, monument climbing, dinosaur feathers

By Scott Knaster, Google Code Blog Editor

The Dead Sea Scrolls were lost in the Judean desert for more than 2000 years before being rediscovered in 1947. Now The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls project makes five of the ancient documents available online to everyone.



The online scrolls contain incredibly high-resolution photography (up to 1200 megapixels) and an English translation along with the original Hebrew text. Looking through the scrolls online is a remarkable mashup of ancient artifacts and modern technology.

Not everything can be done online: sometimes you need to be there. When a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck near Washington, D.C. last August, the Washington Monument suffered visible damage. This week the U. S. National Park Service sent its "difficult access team" to rappel up and down the monument to check for damage. Civil Engineer Emma Cardini seemed to enjoy the task and was quoted as saying "It’s really cool to see the planes flying under you". See, that’s why it’s great to be an engineer.

Birds fly, too – but dinosaurs with feathers? Check out this news from Canada about the discovery of amber-bound feathers that belonged to dinosaurs and birds from the late Cretaceous period.


Fridaygram is a weekly post containing a cool Google-related announcement and a couple of fun science-based tidbits. But no cake.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution [PC game review]

Over the past week I spent a some 25+ hours playing through this new and pretty hyped game called "Deus Ex:Human Revolution" which is supposed to be a prequel to the two other Deus Ex games released roughly 10 years ago. I remember playing the second one but have very faint memories of whether it was good or bad. So I pretty much base my judgment of this game as a standalone product rather than a part of the series.

First of all the game plays like a mix between Splinter Cell and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Games I really like. This is a RPG like game, though the number of quests is very limited. You don't create your character but you can upgrade him with something called "praxis kits" which are rewarded whenever you "level up". You can also find these praxis kits hidden in various spots in the city and during missions. Just like in Splinter Cell and VtM:B you have the option to complete a task using heads on guns blazing approach or stealth where you covertly take out the enemies with non lethal methods, hack computers and take control over cameras etc. The game rewards a sneaky non lethal "ninja" approach by awarding you with more experience points when you take down enemies.

The story of the game is that in the near future, humanity has found a way to merge human tissue with implants and cyborg limbs. "Much better prosthetic limbs" was the justification of the research but it has also been used to enhance military projects. In the game most of the people have some sort of "augmentation", be it a metal arm or some sort of implant to make them think faster or be more social. There are even so called "Limb clinics" where you can pop in and enhance yourself with additional augmentations, pretty much the plastic surgery of the future but much more useful and potent. You play as this guy Adam Jensen who is head of security at Sarif industries, one of the leading manufacturers of these augmentations and prosthetic limbs. Your wife is one of the head scientists working there as well and as the game begins the scientists are on their way to Washington to sway the politicians opinions about the new technology. The industry complex is attacked by an unknown force led by heavily augmented troops who kill lots of staff and blow shit up. Technology is lost, your wife is killed, you yourself become mortally injured and have to be augmented to stay alive.

After that the game plays like a conspiracy thriller movie, you are out for answers about the attack, "pro human" terrorists are attacking the augmentation industry, you are sent on missions and start to uncover some serious stuff about yourself and this new technology. Meanwhile the public opinion about augmentations is causing protests and riots. The game creates a great atmosphere that makes you really feel that you are at the boiling point of events unfolding. The quests are divided into the main quest and side quests, the main quest moves the story along while the side quests are very few in number but are often rewarding to complete as they often lead to a deeper understanding about the world and yourself. More importantly there are no basic "fetch" quests that just revolve around you going from point A to point B to grab an item and return it for a simple monetary reward. You often have to make a moral choice through interaction with key characters - and the interaction part of the game is pretty well made and clever. You are often assumed to convince people using their own personal traits in your favor to subdue their will, and it works really well.

Another RPG element to the game is the inventory which limits how much you can carry around based on inventory size rather than weight (I much prefer this), and the already mentioned upgrades to your own person which is quite accessible and easy to understand. You won't be able to pick all upgrades on the skill tree in one play through and it may be difficult to judge which augmentations are important to get in what order in the beginning. Augmentations will open up additional routes during your gameplay by making you jump higher, move heavy objects, drop from any height without being killed thanks to some sort of magnetic field, augmentation to your lungs preventing suffocation from gas, immunity to EMP and electrical damage, adding more slots to your inventory, enhancing your hacking possibilities and much more.

The voice acting is solid, but I should mention the music which is outstanding and really atmospheric. Check out the soundtrack on youtube!

The game is also similar to Vampire the Masquerade:Bloodlines in that the game world is divided into city "hubs". These are pretty open ended but at the same time these hubs are severely more limited than a free roaming game like GTA. In the end this is perhaps for the better as navigating in these hubs can be a bit disorienting at first.

Now there are sadly a couple of things that make this game a flawed gem. Some of these complaints are minor and won't affect the game itself but others can greatly impact your opinion about it.

The game, just like VtM:B has city hubs that are rather "static". By that I mean you have people wandering about and such - but you never see any cars in motion. Only parked ones. This takes away a bit of the realism in the game.

The game also features boss battles that you cannot resolve in any other way than through brutal firefights. They can be frustrating as hell, and feel out of place and very "old" compared to how the rest of the game plays. It is a satisfaction to actually get to take out the bad guys, but I wish there were other ways of doing so. There were boss battles in VtM:B as well but I had hoped the gaming industry would have progressed further in the years that had passed. Especially taking into consideration that this is NOT a FPS.

For a stealth game you would think you'd be able to put out the lights in rooms or shoot lamps to pieces to enhance your cover. This game does not use a "hide in the shadows" system like in Splinter Cell or the Thief games. Instead it relies on direct line of sight to and from your enemies. It would have been nice to enhance the stealth approach a bit more.

The ending(s). Oh my god.  There won't be any spoilers as to content only about how it is done. Anything up to this point I could live with. But the game starts to fall apart in the late part of act 3. In the end you are faced with 4 options, each resulting in a different ending. The good thing about these endings is that there are "no bad endings", meaning that whatever you choice is the outcome is highly philosophical and subjective. That I liked. However, none of these endings have to do with ANYTHING you did up to this point in the game which makes an ending with multiple choices completely useless. Furthermore you can save before making the choice, you should not really be able to do that with a game ending like this - but at least it gives you the chance to compare all the crappy endings without replaying the game. The ending cinematics themselves, are such a cheap ass ripoff that they could be best described as "youtube tribute videos". Instead of giving you a CGI cinematic, or even a game engine based cut scene you are fed with random clips of protests, famine, violence, forests and stuff from the real world that between the 4 ending videos have 5% to do with this game and what you have done up to this point! It completely ruins the entire ending and leaves you pretty much going "WTF!?".

Despite those flaws, and the complete bullshit ending, I still recommend this game based on a number of things.

Soundtrack is awesome.
World atmosphere is excellent. Be it snippets of news playing on a tv telling about the global situation, to character interaction, architecture, and a general "Blade Runner" feel to the game.
Quests feel important and are very varied.
Gameplay is solid and very satisfying no matter if you use the environment to your advantage, sneak around or shoot your way through the game. Though you will enjoy the stealth approach more.
Upgrades really feel rewarding and handy, there are but a few "increase %" upgrades thrown in the skill tree. Most of the upgrades actually give you a game altering enhancement. And that you cannot max out on everything is also good because it makes choosing  upgrades harder and the feeling of reward stronger once you get your "praxis kits".
Hacking minigame actually makes sense and feels innovative.

And your character looks absolutely badass, which is never a bad thing.

And despite the shitty ending and frustrating boss battles, I recently started a second game, this time on the hardest difficulty to try to make things differently. I probably won't stick around to the end of the 3rd act, but I will enjoy the game up till then.

New Blog Digitopoly

While this may not interest all readers here, I just thought I'd mention a new blog that I am a part of -- Digitopoly. It covers the economics of the digital world.

Wake Up With GTOG: Revisiting Our Civic Arena Plan

By Finesse

We go back in time this morning to a post that Poise* wrote back in August of 2010 in which he said that the Civic Arena site should be used for an outdoor ice rink (among other things).  David Morehouse must be a huge GTOG fan, because he announced yesterday that the outdoor ice arena from the Winter Classic will have a permanent home on the old Civic Arena site and it will be equipped to host high school hockey games (wish I was still in high school).

*For those who don't remember Poise, he's my brother.  So Smart. Not That Steady. So Prescient.

----

From August 2010:

The Issue:
Dialogue is beginning to intensify in the City of Pittsburgh regarding the future use of the Mellon Arena site. Since the Penguins ownership broke ground on the new Consol Energy Center, we all knew the day would eventually come when we would no longer need Mellon Arena. Not surprisingly, during the Consol Energy Center’s construction period, we were all too distracted with what was going on with the team to think much about the future of the building. Now that the last game has been played and all the championship banners have been taken down, we are now faced with an empty building and vacant parking lot.

City officials, residents and developers are asking questions regarding what to do next with what is undoubtedly the City’s most compelling and valuable piece of property. The land use battle has begun and the rest of us are left aligning sides in the debate: GTOG takes sides after the jump…

The Question:
Do we save the Igloo? If we save it, we keep a beautiful and historic city landmark filled with local sports history, and we maintain an iconic structure in the Pittsburgh landscape. However at what cost? How can we realistically reuse the Igloo to make anything functional or logical? How many economically sustainable things can you do with a giant, old, functionally obsolete hollow dome? Remember how rampantly unsuccessful East Liberty’s Motor Square Garden project was?

Or do we bulldoze? If we do we make way for an exciting new project that will create new jobs, increased commercial synergy with Downtown, the Consol Energy Center and the Hill District, and utilize a prime piece of Downtown real estate. Unfortunately, this too comes at a high price. Is it worth destroying one of Pittsburgh’s famed landmarks only to make way for some developer's generic retail concept equipped with a McFadden’s Saloon or Cheesecake factory restaurant? These only cater to the game day crowds at Consol and really serve no higher civic function. We already have this kind of development on the North Shore and at other stadium outposts in cities across America, and be honest, who actually cares about those places anyway? Something will eventually happen to this site whether you like it or not.

The Answer:
As much as it hurts me and other Penguins fans to say this…we have to tear down the Igloo, and we have to tear it down quickly. I say this because the Mellon Arena site is too valuable, and the opportunity to create something great is too exciting to be left on hold or squandered entirely. Taking the exact opposite stance as GTOG is State Senator Jim Ferlo, who has requested a two year “cooling off period” in which to consider alternative uses for the building. Can someone please tell Jim Ferlo that the people in the city out of work and looking of jobs, the developers looking to build and revitalize the Hill District, and the community residents looking for new places to live, work, and shop DO NOT want to stare at a massive empty building and parking lot for another two years?

That leaves the question of what do we build and why? There are a lot of people with different development agendas; however it is possible to think that the Mellon Arena site can be used to build something that embraces the best elements of all ideas in a very economically and socially stimulating way.

The Plan:
One of the Penguins organization’s most laudable efforts is its outreach to young people (ie. student rush tickets, youth hockey development programs, the outdoor screen, etc.). This has strongly promoted the game of hockey to young people throughout Western Pennsylvania. Surprisingly, for a city that has been so impacted by the “Mario Lemieux Effect” it seems we are only taking advantage of a fraction of the youth hockey playing population due to the lack of a centrally located and convenient city ice rink.

Step #1: We build a new, cutting edge, LEED certified Pittsburgh Penguins All City Ice Arena
Forget reusing Mellon Arena, its time has passed. Let’s build a beautiful new ice rink that will be the home to all City Public School teams. This will be the anchor of the new Mellon Arena site. If kids have a place to play, the more likely they will be to become involved in the sport, start teams, and promote Pittsburgh as a hockey hotbed in the US. Currently, Pittsburgh Public School’s hockey teams play outside the city, if even at all.

Additionally, the Penguins organization has done a great job in promoting their Hockey in the Hood Program as part of the NHL’s Hockey is for Everyone campaign. Ironically, all of Hockey in the Hood’s programs take place at ice rinks very much outside of the “Hood.” Imagine how much easier it would be for local Hill District kids and other local city kids to walk, or take easily accessible public transportation to a centrally located place to play in the heart of the city. This would strongly benefit the Pittsburgh Public School’s youth hockey programs and create numerous athletic, employment, and social opportunities for Pittsburgh’s inner city kids. All the while, it helps Pittsburgh promote hockey to an entirely untapped faction of its youth population.

Step #2: The Penguins move their practice facility to the new All City Ice Arena and create a “Hockey Neighborhood”
Let's move away from Southpointe. By making the Lower Hill district THE place for Penguins hockey with the All City Ice Arena and the Consol Energy Center, Pittsburgh can create an official “hockey neighborhood” in the city. Marketing crossover and national promotion of this hockey neighborhood concept would be a totally unique idea solely utilized by the Penguins. Local residents could come watch practices in a more central and commercially viable location.

Step #3: Actively recruit USA Hockey and other top national hockey organizations, trade groups, and associations to move their headquarters to the Lower Hill.
These headquarters can be built into a mixed use development project with (affordable) housing, retail and office space. This will provide a much needed commercial element to help sustain and compliment the high volume of traffic created by the All City Ice Arena and the Consol Energy Center. If the goal of the project is to create a massive neighborhood devoted to the commercialization and promotion of hockey, let’s incentivize the top hockey organizations to relocate here, making Pittsburgh the epicenter for hockey development in the US. Obviously various other office users and retailers would come to inhabit the project to make it more commercially viable; however the overall theme of the mixed use development would be geared towards the sport of hockey, athleticism, and competition.

Step #4: The Screen.
We all love it. Let’s build an outdoor amphitheater that broadcasts every Pens game on the big screen. Not only is watching a Pens game on the outdoor screen a spectacular fan experience, it is also an untapped market of consumers. This added influx of people would all shop at the nearby restaurants and stores in the hockey neighborhood and give even more people an excuse to visit the project and spend money on a semi nightly basis.

Step #5: The outside rink
Included as part of the All City Ice Arena and Town Center will be an outdoor rink, fully equipped with high tech lighting, heating, and seating for outdoor games in the winter. Imagine the allure of going to watch high school and college night games Winter Classic Style, with the creature comforts of an indoor rink and the supplemental restaurants and shopping to accompany a full night’s worth of social activity.

The Recap:
My intention here is to show how exciting a piece of property the Mellon Arena site is and what kind of creative potential it could have if redeveloped in a unique, fun and commercially viable way that engages all members of the community while promoting the Lower Hill's economy and Pittsburgh based hockey.

If Mayor Ravenstahl really wants to hijack the Hockeytown moniker from Detroit, now is the time we take it.

GTOG readers, what do you think?

Writer's Dice

[UPDATE: Writer's Dice are now available!]

Oh, you know, just an idea. Partly inspired by Mathematicians' Dice, Rory's Story Cubes, and this lesson on plots from Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

In that lesson, they talk about arranging the beats of a story. They emphatically recommend that you not join any beats with the words "and then." Instead use conjunctions like "therefore." These force you to explain consequences and examine motivations that enrich a story. Just watch the video, I'm not doing it justice.

But here's a humble proposal for you writers out there. A simple six-sided die with interesting clauses and conjunctions to help you figure out the plot of your story. When Protagonist A finds out Antagonist B is his father, roll a die to lead you to the next beat. This die can easily fit into any storytelling game, too. Heck, the pips let you use them as regular dice.

I've looked at Koplow's catalog (which really ought to be digitized) and not found anything like these. For example, here are all kinds of speech and language dice. Koplow even offers these shape dice, which obviously didn't discourage Rory's Story Cubes from going into production.

So, based on my past experience with custom dice, I'm seriously weighing the opportunity to release a Writer's Die via Kickstarter, in the same model and spirit as the Mathematicians' Dice.

What do you think?

Speed freaks

Blogged before about sports quizzers. Don't really mind them except they get a little specialized for me. Maybe sports trivia really is an acquired taste.

But Speed Channel is all about motor sports, so they don't much care about my quibbles. They've ordered twenty episodes of a new game show called Pumped, described as "an ambush-style quiz show set at gas stations where customers will compete for a cash prize by answering automotive and pop culture questions."

Ambushed by an automobile quizzer? Sounds like a game that would leave me for road kill. All I know about cars is how to drive them. And I'm not particularly good at it.

Speed has also ordered new eps of its long-running game show Pass Time, where contestants guess how long it will take for a car to run a quarter-mile. Nice simple premise, only I'd be pretty helpless at it, too. I'm just not a car guy.

Midweek Video: After Hours: 4 Commercial Alternate Universes

The arguments about the as-seen-on-tv ads are very persuasive I have to admit. Once again, Cracked hits one out of the park.

Coding with data from our Transparency Report

By Matt Braithwaite, Transparency Engineering Tech Lead

More than a year ago, we launched our Transparency Report, which is a site that shows the availability of Google services around the world and lists the number of requests we’ve received from governments to either hand over data or to remove content. We wanted to provide a snapshot of government actions on the Web — and in recent cases like Libya and Myanmar, we were glad to see users start to get back on our services.

Today, we’re releasing the raw data behind our Government Requests tool in CSV format. Interested developers and researchers can take this data and revisualize it in different ways, or mash it up with information from other organizations to test and draw up new hypotheses about government behaviors online. We’ll keep these files up-to-date with each biannual data release. We’ve already seen some pretty cool visualizations of this data, despite the lack of a machine-readable version, but we figure that easier access can only help others to find new trends and make new inferences.

The data has grown complex enough that we can no longer build a UI that anticipates every question you might want to ask. For example, the Transparency Report doesn’t allow you to ask the question, "Which Google products receive the greatest number of removal requests across all countries?" Using Google Fusion Tables you can answer that question easily. (The top four are Google Web Search, YouTube, orkut, and Blogger.)

We believe it’s important to keep providing data to anchor policy conversations about Internet access and censorship with real facts — and we’ll continue to add more raw data and APIs to the Transparency Report in the future. So much can be done when engineers and policy wonks come together to talk about the future of the Internet, and we’re psyched to see the graphs, mashups, apps, and other great designs people come up with.

To kick things off, we’re sponsoring a forum to demonstrate the power of what can happen when engineering and policy work together. If you're an EU-based hacker, we invite you to apply to join us for an all-expenses-paid hackathon using this data at the EU Parliament in Brussels on November 8-9, 2011.


Matt Braithwaite is the Tech Lead for Google's Chicago-based Transparency Engineering team. He has a beard (not shown).

Posted by Scott Knaster, Editor

Terrain pictures

Took a few pictures of the terrain thrown together and miniatures in place to give an idea of what things will look like towards the end. Bought more PVA glue, paint and thick plasticard today so that I can start working on a cemetary featuring the Renedra manufactured gravestones.

I will take pictures again towards next weekend when most of my stuff should be finished and ready.

Wake Up With GTOG: Is Jose Reyes For Real?

By Finesse

A few thoughts on last night's wild finish to the baseball season.

- The Rays' comeback on the Yankees, coupled with the Red Sox collapse, is what makes baseball so great, you know, so long as you forget the past 6 months of games.  Seriously though, it was exciting, and it reinforced an undeniable truth about baseball: If you want to come back from a 5+ run deficit, load the bases and then have the opposing pitcher walk/bean in the next 2 runs.  Floodgates city.

- If anyone deserved to blow a 9-game lead in September, it's the Red Sox.  Not necessarily because of their current players, but because of Curt Schilling.  I know he retired years ago, but the stench is still there.  He made nonsensical comments the other day about the collapse being "100 percent on the players" but also blaming the general manager.  He has a long history of obnoxiousness, highlighted by his railing against Yankees' players for being on steroids, as if Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz were just eating egg whites and doing burpees in 2004.

Went to Zumba class and Whole Foods together three times per week.

- Jose Reyes won the NL batting title, but not without sacrificing the integrity of the game in the process (first and last time GTOG will ever talk about "the integrity" of anything).  He got a bunt single in the first inning, taking his batting average to .337.  Then, because he's a team-first guy, he asked to be pulled from the game so that he'd end his season ahead of Ryan Braun in the race and put all the pressure on Braun to pass him (Braun went 0-4).  Let's let Reyes explain:

"I said, 'If I go 1-for-1, take me out of the game.  And I did that. If I went 0-for-1, maybe I'm still in the game until I get a hit. ... I wanted to stay in the game, but (Mets fans) have to understand, too, what's going on. They have to feel happy about it if I win the batting title. I do that for the team, for the fans too, because they've been supporting me all the way through. I've (had) throughout my career a lot of ups and downs here with a lot of injuries. One thing I do all the time is give 100 percent on the field."

You see, Mets' fans?  He did it for you, so that you can spend the next week getting teased at work by your friends because Reyes pulled himself from the game.

The only time it's acceptable to sit people in an attempt to reach specific milestones is if there is an organizational decision made to tank games to get the #1 pick.

Stupor Market: The Phonetic Food Game

Here's a fun game for groups at a restaurant, especially if the players have been imbibing a little bit before the game starts.


Stuff You Need
3 or more players at a restaurant or bar.

A pen and two pieces of paper for each player. Leave the first sheet of paper blank. On your second sheet, write each other player's name.

A 30sec timer.


How to Play
All players do these steps together at the same time.

1. On the blank piece of paper, write the name of a food served at this restaurant. Write the food as cryptically and phonetically as you can, in all capitals. This can be a basic ingredient, like fruits and vegetables; or more complex foods, like appetizers, entrees, or side dishes. For example, "lettuce" could be "LAYDUS." "Sweet potato" could be "SWOT PERDERDER." "Chicken noodle soup" could be "CHALKING OODLE SAP."

2. When everyone is done writing, hold your paper up so everyone can see it. You should probably hold it up with your non-writing hand, you'll need your writing hand in a sec.

3. Start the timer.

4. Look at the other players' misspelled foods and try to decipher what they actually are. Write down your guesses on the second sheet of paper as fast as you can, next to the name of the player holding that word.

5. When the timer runs out, put your pen down.


How to Win
One at a time, each player says the actual name of their chosen food.

You score one point for every food you guessed correctly.

Double those points if some of the players guessed your food correctly. Not all the players, not none of the players, just some of the players.

After three rounds of play, the player with the most points wins.


Stupor Market for Couples
For couples at a restaurant, the rules are a little different and much more casual.

1. Each player writes a list of five misspelled foods served at the restaurant.

2. Each player hands the paper to his or her opponent.

3. Try to decipher as many of those foods as possible. Write your guess next to each item.

4. When the waiter speaks to either player, that round is over and each player scores points.

You score one point for every food you guess correctly. Double that if your opponent guessed some of yours correctly. Play as many rounds as you like, or until the waiter kicks you out.


Design Notes
At first, I was thinking about making this a commercial game, with a deck of food cards, a timer, and so forth. I might still do that, but for now I just wanted to get the game out there in a playable form.
» Here's the initial inspiration
» Here was the first playtest
» Here's how I made the title graphic

Virgin Pacific Front

The fronts we experience in the interior of western Washington and Oregon, or east of the Cascades are generally pretty wimpy affairs, having been highly modified and weakened by the coastal mountains (including the Olympics) and then the higher Cascades.   Wind shifts are generally weak, precipitation intensity moderate, and the structures torn apart by the terrain.

But out over the Pacific, men are men, women are women, and fronts can be well-defined and far stronger.  Until the Langley Hill radar was installed, our knowledge of Pacific frontal features were mainly based on research work done by aircraft and coastal radars completed over relatively short periods during field experiments--Peter Hobb's group at the UW did the classic work on such systems.

Well now we have a wonderful operational radar looking offshore and we had a view of a beauty of a front.

Now we start with a visible satellite picture at 12:45 PM on Monday as the front approached the coast:

Nice looking frontal band, but exactly where is the front? How strong is it?   Well, we don't have to worry anymore folks...we have the Langley Hill radar.  You can see it offshore (below) --a band extending SSW to NNE crossing the NW tip of the Olympic Peninsula.  Notice the corrugations in the front?   Classic...there are cores of heavy precipitation and gaps between them.

Take a look at the observations at Destruction Island (just off the central WA coast) for the last few days--and take a special look on the 26th (times are in UTC-- 12 is 5 AM, 0 is 5 PM).  You can see the trough of low pressure with the front and winds gusting to 60 knots.

Impressive....and stronger than any of the winds that hit Long Island during Irene. 

The strength of such Pacific fronts are not uniform...they are much stronger in the core areas of heavy precipitation than the gaps in between.  Sometimes the frontal characteristics are INTENSE in the cores.  During the 90s we have field experiment called COAST in which we flew the NOAA P3 Hurricane Hunter aircraft into a Pacific front.  The scientists wanted to go out and cross one of the cores to see what it was like.  The NOAA P3 pilots agreed...they had been through many hurricanes, so they were not concerned.   Well, the passage through the core was very, very intense--with several g's up and down and even the coffee pot broke off in the rear of the aircraft.   Several scientist thought they were going to die. The pilots were shaken...no more flights through cores at low levels--this was a lot worse than going through hurricane eyewalls!

DOG Alert

We had a solid spotter report of my lost cockapoo in Mountlake Terrace near Terrace Creek Park...if any of you live or work up there can you keep an eye out?  For a picture of her, check the link on the right.  Thank you so much. 
http://misscockapoo.blogspot.com/2011/09/missing-black-female-cockapoo.html
Here is where she was seen:

Reminder:
Friday, September 30th 6-8pm
West Seattle Meet & Greet Happy Hour with Candidates Marty McLaren & Sharon Peaslee (and I will be there too!).   Refreshments, of course.
TOPIC: Improving Math, Science and STEM in SPS
7020 18th SW (north of SW Myrtle)
Donations appreciated. - all are welcome