Weather
Posted on May 31, 2004
The storms that came through the area last night were part of a huge front that reached from Texas to Minnesota. According to this story at CNN, the storm spawned over 80 tornados yesterday, which bings the total to about 170 tornados over the weekend. Seven tornadoes were reported in the Indianapolis area, but they were on the southside and eastside. When I was listening to the radio yeaterday, the meteorologists were commenting on how this storm followed a nearly identical track to the one that hit in September 2002.
The storm claimed three lives, including one in southern Indiana. The storm also ripped the roof off of a nursing home here in Indy, though luckily the injuries were minor.I heard they had evacuated all passengers and employees at the Indianapolis airport to the lower levels for about two hours. Early on in the storm, a tornado or a bolt of lightning took out the National Weather Service radar, so most people (probably including the NWS) relied on the radars from the TV stations. In hindsight, it is probably a good idea to have a backup radar separated by some distance. If a radar gets hit in a storm or tornado, and there is no backup, the potential for loss of life is huge, especially in an urban area. IIRC, in Denver most of the stations rely on radar from DIA (Denver International Airport) and another on Lookout Mountain, which is a few dozen miles away from Denver and the airport. This way, Denver is covered by radar from the east (airport) and the west (Lookout Mountain).
Today is sunny, though a bit windy. I took a walk earlier and noticed some downed tree limbs, but I didn’t see any signifcant damage. Overall, it was an interesting night.
Downloads
Posted on May 31, 2004
I posted/reposted a bunch of downloads, which is something I had been meaning to do for a while. I think part of it has to with my finding out about blenderman.org and part of it has to do with the website redesign I am planning. I have some other stuff to put up as well, but is very late at the moment, and I am a bit tired.
Check it out.
Respect the weather
Posted on May 30, 2004
At the moment, the whole of Marion county (including Indianapolis) is under a Tornado Warning. Downtown, aside from rain and the occassional thunder/lightning combo, the weather isn’t too bad. It is slightly dark outside, but it is also past 7:00 pm. However, for about the past half-hour, I have been hearing the tornado sirens going off every 5 – 10 minutes. I keep checking the local weather sites, and it looks like this is a small cell that is working its way towards Indy. if the fact that this small cell has spawned some tornados wasn’t worrisome enough, there are a whole bunch of larger storms in Illinois also making their way to Indiana.
I’ve been updating the categories in the downloads section, and I will upload some files, but I will probably wait until the weather clears a bit, as my computer is rather close to the bay window of my apartment.
(keeps fingers crossed…knocks on wood)
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I just left the apartment to go to the store. I stepped out of the building and into a small river where the alley was. I’ve been listening to the tornado warnings (now extneded due to the coming storms), but I haven’t heard anything about flooding.
Anyway, last week, we had a huge windstorm (not tornadic) that knocked over a bunch of trees in my neighborhood and did various damage elsewhere in the city. Some of the trees it damaged didn’t actually fall completely over, but inherited a list (tilt). It wasn’t enough wind to knock them down, but just enough that they’re no longer perpendicular to the ground. On the way to the store, there is a tree that overhangs the sidewalk, and (in good weather) I normally have to duck my head a bit to walk under it. This past week, it seemed like it was hanging down a bit lower, but I couldn’t decide if it was my imagination, or if it was real. Today, when I went to the store, I am fairly certain it is not my imagination. I had to duck quite a bit to walk under this tree. However, I can’t decide if it is damage from the windstorm or if the limbs are lower due to the rain we’ve been getting today.
BTW, there are hundreds of thousands of visitors in Indy today because of the Indy 500 and the Game 5 of the Pacers/Pistons playoff series (The Speedway seats 250,000+). I bet the hotels are having an interesting time, not to mention the airport.
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I’m listening to WIBC on my TV – my TV has an FM radio tuner in it. Actually, IIRC, WIBC is an AM station, so some of the stations are playing feeds off of the news radio stations. Tornado warnings and watches are going off all over the state. In good news, it looks like Indianapolis is only under a watch at the moment. In the bad news, a town hit by a tornado earlier is under a tornado warning once again. I don’t know what this means for Indy.
I decided to get out a flashlight and a candle…just in case :-)
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I was just checking the web and found out something interesting. According to this site, the record for the most tornados from one outbreak is – 148!!! That was from “The Super Outbreak” in 1974. That ranked #2 on The Weather Channel’s Storms of the Century. Of course, we are in a new century, so I guess we have to start off fresh. I wonder what the count for this outbreak will be.
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8:50 pm
I think we are starting to get the next in the wave of storms. For the moment, there are no sirens.
Blenderman
Posted on May 29, 2004
I was checking out the MakeHuman site earlier and noticed a link to Blenderman. I had heard of Blenderman before, but I never actually went there. However I went there today and was surprised to see they have an area for free Blender model downloads. People make the models and submit them to the site for other people to download. Pretty much like what I do with the downloads section here, except that the ones I have here are just my models. I will probably be submitting some of my models to their site shortly. Maybe it will even drive some traffic here :-)
Blue Mocha
Posted on May 23, 2004
In the previous post, I noted that I was working a bit on a redesign of the site. I have it planned out, so it’s just a matter of implementing it (easier said than done). If you want an idea of what it will look like, you can check out the image I put in the gallery here or you can check out the test page I created here.
The images at the top of the page are rollovers, so if you put your mouse on top of them, they should change color. Since it is just a test page, the links don’t actually go anywhere. When the actual theme is done, the pages will have a footer much like the one I have now, but I still haven’t decided what to do about the header. I might create a banner or something that says gottahavacupamocha to place over the top of the buttons, or I might just have something on each page that is specific to that page (i.e. gottahavacuppamocha gallery or gottahavacuppamocha tutorials). Another possibility is to just leave it out of the altogether and just let it be in the browser title and in the address bar.
[Note: I was just checking my links and for some reason the images on the test page aren't showing up. They are transparent PNG's, and when I test the page on my machine, they all show up fine on the page. However, when I look at the page on the website, they aren't showing up. As a test, I converted one of the images to a jpg (which isn't recommended because JPG doesn't do transparency) and was able to see that, so I think it may have to do with with some of the host's server settings. I mean, it doesn't seem to be a problem in viewing the gallery, or images elsewhere, but on this specific page it just ain't working. :-( I even double checked with a different browser. I guess I will work on it a bit and see what's up.]
[Just converted all of the png's to jpg's. Corrected the link above, also.]
Been awhile…redux
Posted on May 22, 2004
Once again, it’s been a while since I’ve been here. I’ve still been having problems with SBC and my DSL. Instead of ranting, however, I actually kept myself fairly productive. I’ve been fooling around some more with Sodipodi and with MakeHuman and actually started doing some projects.
In Sodipodi, I started making some icons. They are mainly for different MIME-types, and at the moment they are mostly 128×128 in size. A bit big, but they can be resized. The problem is when they get resized, they are also harder to discern. Oh well. Yet more stuff to work on. I started resizing some them, but I still have a long way to go, especially since there are over 100 different icons, and there are 5 standard icon sizes in KDE and Gnome has its own standard sizes. I did figure out how to make an icon theme though, so that’s pretty cool. It will be even cooler when I get them all done…plus the icons for actions, devices, etc.
In MakeHuman, I’ve mainly been fooling around with creating characters and using it to design clothes. Long way to go in that regard, but both Blender and MakeHuman have been getting more and more sophisticated lately.
And finally, I scarcely want to mention it, but I am also working on a redesign of the site. It’s still a clean look, but…well, it’s more of an idea at this point, but something I’m going to experiment with to see if I can get it going.
