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Thursday, July 27, 2000
Much Less Snow Last Winter
This story includes a map of the March snow cover, with a line showing the average February/March snow cover. You can see that there was considerably less snow last winter.
NASA satellite sees a lot less snow in North America
NASA's Terra satellite saw less snow than usual over parts of North America during the winter of 1999-2000."
posted at 7/27/2000 03:43:35 PM
Sunday, July 23, 2000
What makes software developers tick ? Are they really much different from the general population ? Here is an interesting analysis of software developer personality from an MBTI perspective.
Gamasutra - Features - "Orphans Preferred" [12.22.99]
"USA Today reported that the techie nerd stereotype is so well entrenched that students in every grade ranked computer jobs near the bottom of their lists of career choices. The Wall Street Journal reported that film crews have difficulty presenting stories about leading-edge software companies in an interesting way because every story starts with "an office park, a cubicle, and a guy sitting there with a box on his desk."
posted at 7/23/2000 01:59:47 PM
Wednesday, July 19, 2000
Get seedlings that are direct descendants of historic trees. You can get seedlings from one of Johnny Appleseeds favorite trees, or from Thoreau's Walden Pond. Lots of interesting choices.
American Forests' Famous & Historic Trees - Home
"Each Famous & Historic Tree is the direct offspring of the "parent" historic tree. Seeds are collected from the original trees at historic sites across America; trees planted by Presidents, trees that went to the moon! Explore history through the unique perspective of America's oldest trees."
posted at 7/19/2000 03:26:52 PM
Tuesday, July 18, 2000
There is quite the contrast between this and my aerodynamically challanged Jeep.
Ars Technica: Honda Insight: Hybrid gasoline-electric car (7/2000)
"The whole package is so well balanced and so intelligently engineered that its main selling point - the incredible fuel economy - almost becomes an afterthought. So here I give my driving impressions and describe the Insight's fuel-saving technologies.
posted at 7/18/2000 09:57:14 AM
Saturday, July 15, 2000
A good guide to the seaweeds. There are excellent photographs and links to other seaweed sites.
Algae: The Forgotten Treasure of Tidepools
posted at 7/15/2000 10:04:16 AM
This is a webcam, updated once per minute, of the active Mexican Popocatépetl Volcano. It had a small eruption yesterday, but looks quiet now. You can often see steam venting from the peak. If you click on the Anterior button, you will go to the main page where there is a small movie of the eruption, plus a gallery of previous images. The site is in Spanish.
CENAPRED Popocatepetl Monitoring ( small image )
CENAPRED Popocatepetl Monitoring ( large image )
posted at 7/15/2000 09:49:05 AM
Friday, July 14, 2000
Written around 1884, this is a first hand account by W.W.Loring, a Confederate Officer who also served as a high ranking officer in the Egyptian Army. It has interesting observations of life in 19th century Egypt.
A Confederate Soldier in Egypt
"Late Colonel in U.S. Army, Major-General in the Confederate Service, and Féreek Pacha and General in the Army of the Khedive of Egypt."
posted at 7/14/2000 11:30:42 PM
Tuesday, July 11, 2000
New Scientist: Beware the birds
"The bird virus that killed seven New Yorkers last year has now spread all over the Americas, say US researchers."
"And the discovery of the virus in birds in New York, New Jersey and Delaware last month has dashed hopes that it would not survive the winter. "
More at the USGS West Nile Virus Links, and the CDC West Nile Virus page.
posted at 7/11/2000 09:30:41 PM
Monday, July 10, 2000
An interesting Science Hobbyist article on traffic dynamics. It shows, with animations, how traffic waves are produced, how they move and how you can personally affect their movement, growth or shrinkage. The site includes some traffic experiments you can perform while driving.
SCIENCE HOBBYIST: Traffic Waves, physics for bored commuters
"Boredom led me to fantasize about the traffic being like a flowing liquid, with cars acting as giant water molecules. Over many months I slowly realized that this was not just a fantasy. Why had I never noticed all the "traffic fluid dynamics" out there? Once my brain became sensitized to it, I started seeing quite a variety of interesting things occurring. Eventually I started using my car to poke at the flowing traffic. Observation eventually leads to experimentation, no? There are amazing things you can do as an "amateur traffic dynamicist.""
posted at 7/10/2000 11:44:38 PM
Sunday, July 09, 2000
The Jetsons age is almost upon us.
Moller International
"Moller has developed, built, and flown a two passenger prototype model of a volantor. This volantor is a new type of aircraft that combines the performance of airplanes and the VTOL capability of helicopters in a single vehicle without the limitations of either."
"Can any automobile give you this scenario? From your garage to your destination, the M400 Skycar cruises comfortably at 350+ MPH at 15 miles per gallon. No traffic, no red lights, no speeding tickets. Just quiet direct transportation from point A to point B in a fraction of the time. Three dimensional mobility for the same price as two dimensional mobility."
posted at 7/9/2000 12:09:01 AM
Saturday, July 08, 2000
Whoa, here is a powerful musical instrument the likes of which have never been seen before. Incredible photos of the thing in action, along with recordings ( RealAudio and MP3 ) of the decidedly different music it produces. Although portable, this is not a parlor organ. It weighs 11 metric tons and detonates around a half ton of propane per performance. According to the specs, a medium sized expresso machine and an endless supply of expresso beans are also required for each performance.
Large Hot Pipe Organ
"The Large Hot Pipe Organ is the world's only MIDI controlled, propane powered explosion organ. The LHPO's pyro-acoustic explodo-rhythmations will throbbatize your earholes and dance-ify your booty and make you realize what "Industrial Music" REALLY means!"
Here are the Technical Specs
"The organ can be clearly heard from at least 3km distance over open land or water, and at least 700m in a dense urban area."
posted at 7/8/2000 06:19:07 PM
A nice collection of tutorials on a large set of software and hardware topics.
TechTutorials: Free tutorials for the I.T. Professional.
"Welcome to TechTutorials.com - The directory of free computer and networking tutorials for the I.T. professional. The directory currently contains 1217 free tutorials!"
posted at 7/8/2000 11:04:31 AM
Friday, July 07, 2000
I always knew there was something different about New Jersey, here is the hard evidence. Read about the old Albino Village, or the Puddingstones of Yagoo's Road. Visit abandoned Nike Missile Bases and see the Jet in the Woods. For such a small place it has a high weirdness index.
WeirdNJ - Get Weird!
"Your travel giude to New jersey's local legends and best kept secrets.
posted at 7/7/2000 11:59:12 PM
Historical Armed Combat Association - Swords & Swordsmanship
"THE LEADING RESOURCE ON THE NET FOR HISTORICAL SWORDSMANSHIP AND MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE MARTIAL ARTS"
"HACA is an informal club of arms and armor enthusiasts and practitioners dedicated to exploring Medieval & Renaisance martial arts and reconstructing our Western martial heritage.
HACA was established to promote the study of historical European arms and armor from the perspective of their historic function and use."
posted at 7/7/2000 06:23:06 PM
A very interesting site, under continuing construction, detailing technology in ancient Rome.
Roman Technology Handbook (UNC-CH)
"Ancient Roman Technology (ART) is an electronic handbook of ancient Roman technology. It was created by, and is maintained by, students and faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill"
"The goal is to provide, over the course of several years, a comprehensive (and regularly updated) guide to Roman technology."
posted at 7/7/2000 12:35:20 AM
Thursday, July 06, 2000
What are all those odd packets showing up in your firewall logs? Some are trojan or exploit scans, some are innocuous. This is an excellent field guide to internet traffic.
FAQ: Firewall Forensics (What am I seeing?)
"This document explains what you see in firewall logs, especially what port numbers means. You can use this information to help figure out what hackers are up to.
This document is intended for both security-experts maintaining corporate firewalls as well as home users of personal firewalls."
posted at 7/6/2000 12:30:05 AM
Wednesday, July 05, 2000
A few years ago I bought a poster of a fantastic looking car, a work of art. All it said was "Cadillac, Hartmann 1937". Serendipitously, I found this web page detailing its full history. Built in Switzerland in 1937, it was lately acquired in 1990 for $1.4 million.
The Swiss Roadster
"Now HERE was a car of imposing proportions! Philippe could readily imagine how puny a Delahaye or a Hispano-Suiza would look parked next to it! He inquired of the Cadillac dealer if it might be possible to order only the chassis and then to have a body of his own choice built on it. He was told this would pose no problem whatsoever."
posted at 7/5/2000 12:00:00 AM
