Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Weather

Mother nature is a bitch at times

Good to hear from folks I know in Florida that they’re okay after the storm, but sad for those who have lost loved ones. The New York Times has both a video and photos posted that show the damage this type of storm can create.

This is going to be a cluttered year in the Atlantic, as Charley is now followed by Tropical Storm Danielle and Tropical Depression Five. The experts had predicted a busier than normal season this year — estimating 14 named storms will form in the Atlantic.

As the hurricane season ramps up with a vengeance along the east coast, the tornado season winds down for much of the Midwest. In fact, the record breaking cool weather continues here in St. Louis, giving almost perfect days for hikes. An amazing year of weather.

update

An AP Photo Slideshow, though I don’t know how long it will be accessible.

Categories
RDF

The RDF Glass Ceiling

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

After the book had been out for a while, I took a longish break from most RDF work, being both tired and more than a bit burned out re-writing the book through variations of the specs. Probably not as tired as the RDF specification authors, but tired.

When I started back up, I immediately went out to Dave Beckett’s RDF Resource page to see what new goodies have appeared based on the final release of the RDF specifications this last Spring. I was surprised to see that aside from a small flurry of activity related to RDF editors, there hasn’t been that many new projects associated with RDF.

I’ve also been following Danny Ayers weblog because if anyone keeps up with RDF work, it’s Danny. Of course, I also read his pages for the cat photos, too.

Danny has been making announcements of new work, such as the new version of RAP (RDF API for PHP). But other than some experimental stuff with RDF and groups, discussions about FOAF, Mozilla, and Edd Dumbill’s DOAP, there hasn’t been much applied use of RDF.

In fact, the earlier enthusiasm for RDF in 2001 and 2002 seems to have flickered in 2003, and is now drastically waning in 2004.

Where’s the real world use of RDF? Is it to be doomed to isolated proprietary applications, a few simple feeds, escoteric experimentation and endless debate, like so many other great ideas that started in R & D departments?

Categories
RDF

Start to a Redland compile

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Chris Pointon has created a working compile of Redland for Win32 and provided the directory and notes for this effort.

There is still work to do with this and Chris thought I might be able to take it from this point. I have downloaded the source, but I’m also limited in time, having to focus on another book or my kitty will soon be out of kibbles.

If you’re into C work in Win32, have the time to invest creating and maintaining the Win32 port and want to take a shot at it, download Chris’ material and go for it. You’d have the gratitude of the RDF community for this effort.

Categories
Political

Missouri: where to be this election

Sam Ruby pointed to the Electoral Vote Predictor making note that it may all come down to Missouri. Watch it closely.

Missouri is what’s known as the bellwether state, picking the winning President more than any other state in the Union – only missing once in the last 100+ years. This includes picking liberal presidents as well as conservative, surprising people who see Missouri as being ‘conservative’ – especially in light of the recent vote on the anti-gay marriage amendment.

Not surprising, though, when you consider that ‘gay’ marriage isn’t necessarily an issue split between liberal and conservative lines – a mistake the gay marriage proponents made when campaigning in this state.

At American Street and his own weblog, Chuck Currie wrote on the recent vote:

Bigotry and bad judgment won out in Missouri tonight.

If there’s anything we learn from the political processes in the United States this year, it’s that the choices we’re being asked to make are neither inherently good, nor inherently evil. Those in favor of gay marriage need to scratch beneath the surface of the vote here in Missouri in order to see what went wrong and what can be done in the future to bring about this significant social change.

I’ll have more to say on Missouri and US politics over the next few months. But note that, at this time, Missouri is split, equally, between Bush and Kerry.

Categories
Photography Weblogging

Port-a-bloggy

The issue of Missouri Life that featured my photo essay is out now, and the magazine did a wonderful job with the photo layout. I received two advance copies and it was difficult to part with these, but gave one to my Dad and one to my roommate. I have others on order for myself and a few friends and family members.

I haven’t been posting many photos lately because my digital camera has developed some interesting quirks. It’s not that it doesn’t work; it’s that it isn’t dependable, with lighting and focusing going in and out at the worst possible times. It’s a good camera, a great camera. But it’s been dropped on the ground at least twice, banged around in the car, and carried out into several major storms. I’m actually impressed it still works.

I took the following photograph of my Dad, after I visited in his new home last week. He finally agreed to move into assisted living, and now seems to love it. It’s a smaller place, with about 40-60 people, including several couples who have apartments together. It even allows cats, which surprised me. When I had a chance to glance at the menus for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I was even more impressed – this is not your typical cafeteria style food.

Dad

He has a one bedroom apartment, with a sitting room and kitchenette and nice bathroom. Strategically located throughout the apartment are intercom speakers and cords that Dad can pull if he needs help. He fell last week,and was able to pull the cord and get help immediately. I think this is reassuring to him, and he already looks much better than he has the last time I saw him – more alert, and involved in what’s going on around him. I’ll visit him again next Tuesday when the bookmobile visits the place and help him familiarize himself with how this works. He is a passionate reader, and since his hearing has been damaged by cancer treatments, reading is his main form of entertainment.

In addition to helping Dad get settled, I have resumed hiking. The following flower photo was from a recent walk, and I think, though I’m probably wrong that it might be a wild orchid. I don’t know enough horticulture to differentiate between flowers by characteristics.

The following photo was from another walk, and it demonstrates some of the lighting shift problems I’ve been having with the camera – going to the blue or to the yellow, rather than capturing the true colors. Even with a little help from Photoshop, I can’t quite correct it all the way.

As much as I like my Nikon 995, I need a new camera; one that can take images reliably (without interesting quirks) and at a resolution that publications prefer. Specifically, I’m aiming for the new Nikon D-70.

To raise money for my new camera, I’m starting a ‘port-a-bloggy’ business: helping people port to WordPress, move between tools, work with style settings, and even helping to customize people’s WordPress installation or other PHP/MySQL development work.

I recently helped Happy Tutor with some technical issues related to his site, and though he kept trying to get me to wear black leather and red lace, we managed quite nicely. I also helped American Street with stylesheet issues, as Kevin and the Street gang contemplate moving from MT to WordPress. This last weekend, I moved Doug’s site over from MT to WordPress, and added some customization to help him manage his comments.

If you’re interested in moving from MT to WordPress, want some customization of your WP weblog, or other PHP/MySQL or stylesheet help, let me know. And if you’ve been helped by my technical writings in the past and want to contribute a little to the camera fund, I would grateful. I’ve added links to both my Amazon and Paypal accounts in the sidebar.

Once I have the new camera in hand, I can resume filling my pages with bandwidth destroying images. Isn’t that something to look forward to?