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Hooligan Moment #5273

One Friday night up at RATT, R and M have disappeared from the table. Later they are spotted a couple tables over schmoozing on two members of the female persuasion. Stealthily, we observe (well, as stealthily as any table of drunk people can observe) the evil seductresses sinking their claws deeper and deeper into our inebriated friends. Finally, B decides to act. We must save our friends from the clutches of the evil temptresses. Our friends have been bewitched. They think they want to stay with the females, and keep schmoozing them.

B and I stumble over to the table to see if R and M can be saved. We’re almost too late. We need to resort to stronger tactics.

B says to M: M, your wife just called. You have to go home because Stephanie’s sick.

The sudden breaking of the spell sends a reverberating shock through everyone at the table.

Evil temptress 2 turns to R and says: So, are you married too?

We return to our table with R and M, still in shock, but rescued.

Another successful mission by the Paladins of the Penis.

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No, not another leash!

Lately my wife has been trying to convince me to get a cell phone. She knows I don’t want one, but she keeps insisting I need one. I keep insisting that I don’t need one. Heck, I don’t even like carrying a pager.
Now she’s telling me to pick out a cell phone that I’d want, or she’ll pick one out for me. Considering my pickiness for technology, it’ll probably be one that I’ll end up hating (if I can hate cell phones much more).

Continue reading “No, not another leash!”

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How I use MT

In the latest entry to SixLog, the question is asked: “How are you using the tool?“

If free isn’t an issue for you and you’re willing to pay for a version of Movable Type (say the $69 version) and the blog/author limits won’t work for your current use, write a non-emotional post explaining how you’re using Movable Type and TrackBack this entry.

I work in the Radiology department of a university hospital. When I first decided to install MovableType on my server, it was in response to one of our radiologists who wanted some software that our residents could use to log the procedures they perform. A place where they could leave notes, pictures, descriptions, details, whatever. Our program typically has anywhere from 4-8 residents per year, so there would potentially be as many as 40 weblogs and authors. A weblog would be perfect for this kind of application.

Unfortunately, they decided to go with a different system, so now this installation of MT hosts 1 active author and 4 weblogs.

  1. my personal weblog.
  2. a departmental weblog used to post announcements, activities and department news and the like.
  3. a private weblog used to track changes to the server and maintenance notes.
  4. a test weblog that I use to experiment with.

In the near future I plan on introducing MT to our Radiology Informatics group to see if they might find it useful as a group communication tool. This would involve adding 5 additional authors and at least that many more weblogs. I also plan on introducing MT to the rest of our faculty to see if our radiologists and residents might find it of any use. Thats maybe another 30 or 40 authors. Of course I don’t expect all of them to use it. If 10 of them decide it’s useful enough to use regularly, then I would be impressed.

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Hurricane Season 2004

We’re into the last half of May now, and that means Hurrican Season is coming soon and the National Hurricane Center’s hurricane predictions are in.
This year’s storm names:
Alex, Bonnie Charley, Danielle, Earl, Frances, Gaston, Hermine, Ivan, Jeanne, Karl, Lisa, Matthew, Nicole, Otto, Paula, Richard, Shary, Tomas, Virginie, Walter.
Some highlights from the NHC’s predictions:

The outlook calls for 12-15 tropical storms, with 6-8 becoming hurricanes, and 2-4 of these becoming major hurricanes. These numbers reflect a predicted ACE index in the range of 100%-160% of the median, and indicate a likely continuation of above-normal activity that began in 1995.

Many of the tropical storms and hurricanes in 2004 are likely to form during August-October over the tropical Atlantic and Caribbean Sea between 9°N-21.5°N (green box). These systems generally track westward toward the United States and Caribbean Sea as they strengthen.

Another factor known to significantly impact seasonal Atlantic hurricane activity is ENSO (Gray 1984, Monthly Weather Review), with El Niño favoring reduced activity and La Niña favoring increased activity. Based on the most recent ENSO outlook issued by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, ENSO-neutral conditions are expected to continue in the tropical Pacific through July, and most likely through August-October as well. However, there is considerable uncertainty in the statistical and coupled model ENSO forecasts after July, and the comparatively wide range in the predicted ACE values reflects this uncertainty.

There are two competing uncertainties in this outlook. The first is the possibility of an extremely active season similar to 2003, which resulted partly from near-record warmth across the deep tropical Atlantic, and partly from an amplified upper-level ridge across the western subtropical Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico in association with a persistent East Atlantic teleconnection pattern (Bell et al. 2004, Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., In press). In the event that the warmer tropical Atlantic SSTs and the subtropical ridge over the western Atlantic again become significantly enhanced, the ACE values could be at or even above the high end of the predicted range.
The second uncertainty involves the ENSO forecasts, which have exhibited low skill historically when issued at this time of the year and represent an ongoing source of uncertainty in the pre-season hurricane outlooks. There is currently considerably diversity in the statistical and coupled model forecasts of ENSO after July, which leads to a wider predicted ACE range in this outlook.

Continue reading “Hurricane Season 2004”

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Clarifications from SixApart

Plenty already logged to the blogoverse about 6A’s clarifications to the MT 3.0D release. There still continues to be some vitriol expressed by people who insist on remaining offended by 6A’s release and license changes though. Even a troll has emerged to muddy things up and do all the nasty things trolls do.

6A’s clarifications on the licensing terms and definitions as well as changes to the number of allowed users/weblogs does make things easier, and I think goes a long way to placating the majority of people. Now what I’d like to see is some statement about where 3.0D fits in with what 6A has in store.

3.0D is clearly a developer’s release intended primarily for plugin developers to create new plugins and rework existing plugins to fit into the new framework.

It will be available to everyone, not just developers; we’re calling it a Developer Release to emphasize the fact that 3.0 itself is not a feature release in the traditional sense. With this release we hope that the developer community will implement some great extensions for 3.0.
Since many of Six Apart’s employees are Apple fanboys/girls, we make the analogy to the first releases of OS X: the first releases did not offer that many new features themselves, only a more stable and robust platform for developers to build upon.

This clearly implies that unless you want to be active in developing and testing plugins, there’s no need to jump in and upgrade. I think a lot of people missed this part and focused primarily on the licensing issues (which I think still could use some reworking).

In any case, I’m starting to feel comfortable enough with using the beta I’ve been testing to move over to the free version of 3.0D (at least start testing it). I think I still have Typekey issues to work out, but no blocking issues. And once my CSS book arrives, I’ll be looking forward to having some fun messing with the look of my weblog.

And with that I think I have blogged enough about 6A and MT 3.0D and the release. Back to our regularly scheduled programming.