Hurricane Maps and Help

Just wanted to be sure I kept this link (from ESRI with maps and stuff) and del.icio.us is down. Where i would normally keep it. There is also this one from geodata.gov with other maps and stuff.

No, this is my Favorite

I like this one best, but the other one will be on the Christmas Card. 

My Favorite Christmas Card Picture

 

Swimsuits and Sweatshirts

And Boots.

 

Its been a while

Been busy. I'm in Baton Rouge, the largest city in Louisiana. With the traffic to prove it. This has been such an odd time here. To be so close. To be so affected. I don't know what to make of it all. It is terrible. The Nawlineans break my heart. I can't imagine their situation really. Not even this close to the city. It seems so odd. There are so many changes. There were so many failures. I know many of these first hand. I used to work for the company that helped with Hurricane Pam. I'm sure they didn't do anything wrong. They just did the typical consultant thing. Consultants are perfectly captured by that commercial where the consultants say something like " . . . and that's what you should do." And the CEO/customer says, " then make it happen" or something to that effect. The consultants are like " we don't actually do any of this, we just tell you what you should do." I'm sure that is exactly what happened.

So it goes. Now we are busy blame storming. It ain't that complicated.

1. The levees failed. The levees are the responsibility of the Army Corps of Engineers. The federal gummint failed here.
2. No plan to evacuate those that were unable to evacuate. Blame them all. All the gummints.
3. The response. The city was non-functional, destroyed by the flood. The state lacked capacity. The feds were too slow and perfectly bureaucratic ("You can't save lives until you've had 2 days of training on sexual harassment." Genius.)
4. "What's the magic word?" I guess no one in NO or LA asked right for help. That seems to be the consensus when criticizing the city and the state. That works with my kids, but I'd hope that someone watching the 24 hour news coverage would have gotten a clue on their own and taken the Mayor's and Governor's request seriously, even if they didn't say please. Please!

My two cents. We definitely live in interesting times.

This used to be me

I love cruising blogs. It was a long time ago, but it is good to see some attitudes don't change.

Gallery of Computation | generative artifacts

So, this is just plain cool. In my past, I used to muck around with this stuff, but it was never as elegant as the Gallery of Computation generative artifacts. Interestingly, I used to look at generativity, but mostly looked at generativty as a feature of human language. A feature that separated it from other forms of communication, especially other animals. It is exactly this sort of synchronistic relationship that made me enjoy it so much.

The Nicsperiment

The Nicsperiment. this is just interesting because he be from BR too and I just happened across him "next blogging."

The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager

This is the COOLEST damn think I've seen in quite a while when it comes to dynamic visual display of inforamtion.

LSU! 

Long Live the KIng! 

Fifth Annual Weblog Awards

So, amazingly enough, it is time for the Fifth Annual Weblog Awards. You should vote. I might. I just enjoy the links to all of the interesting blogs. What could be better? There are certainly better ways to spend my time . . . or not.

Me and Puck

You Are the Investigator

5 You're independent - and a logical analytical thinker. You love learning and ideas... and know things no one else does. Bored by small talk, you refuse to participate in boring conversations. You are open minded. A visionary. You understand the world and may change it.

Social Network - Thefacebook

So I ran across this site when I was reading this article. I think this is tremendously interesting. I'm not sure exactly why, but I feel that the rapid adoption of the site somehow means something. Especially since most of the news about it mentions that it is a great way to procrastinate. If there is one thing that we can all use, it is another way to procrastinate.

A problem: you need to register. You need a university e-mail address. You can tell them you are an alumnus. If you are an alumnus, then you probably don't have a university e-mail address. Then you can't register. I may give them a bogus e-mail just to see if I can sneak in.

Another artifact

A presentation that I couldn't save, so I link it into my blog

Hello World

Hot Legs

So how cool is Hello. I'm afraid it is pretty damn cool!

A guy I know

We are a brooding sort. Excellent example of a personal blog.

Search for Public Schools - School Detail

Search for Public Schools - School Detail
I just wanted to be sure I remembered this site and this one when it comes time to put my site together. I hope that is soon.

A New and More Meaningful Existence

Maybe. I've started a new blog with a specific purpose. This one meanders and is for me. If you read it, I'd guess you wouldn't really come back. I wouldn't. The new one is all about Reading First. If you want to know what that is, go there. We'll see how it goes.

I'm going to miss this guy

I see no reason to get a Saturday paper anymore.

I love this, although I can do without the pathetic neener, flushing, I wanna be first like a 4 year old comments.

An Opinion on Open Source

Generally speaking, I am a fan of open source projects. Of course, this is most hypothetical since I really use next to no open source tools and or projects. I've just been OK with the tools that I have which have mostly been determined by where I work - I'm basically agnostic. Or perhaps, just so apathetic that I don't care to spend the time to push for change. I happened to run across this post that sort of captured a general feeling that many people who are not technology-phillic have about open source. People just want their technology to work, they don't want to work on their technology.