Jeff Duntemann's Contrapositive Diary Rotating Header Image

Odd Lots

  • It keeps a very low profile somehow, but this NOAA site is the first place I go when I want to see what a hurricane is doing. We’re a little short of hurricanes this year, but I’m good with that.
  • This is what a pharmacy sign looks like in some parts of Europe. Thanks to Terry Dullmaier (in Germany) for the link. Terry didn’t know if the middle neon part goes off to indicate that the pharmacy is closed. Anybody?
  • I’ve discovered a great little free clock app for Linux, called the Cairo Clock. It can run in 24-hour mode and is skinnable, with about two dozen different skins available, some of them pretty weird. The skin I like is called Radium, and it (by choice) has a negative weirdness factor: It looks like an old wristwatch I got from my grandfather when I was a kid, which had radium paint on the hands and hour points. The second hand actually ticks forward and then falls back a little, as second hands driven by mechanical escapements used to do. I’d run it on Windows if I could.
  • From the No-Models-Were-X-Rayed-To-Produce-This-Calendar Department: The now-famous X-Ray pinup calendar floated as a promo by EIZO was a fake, albeit a mighty impressive one.
  • Bill Higgins put me on to NNDB, which is a biography site and useful for that alone…but take some time to poke at their mapping mechanism, which plots connections between significant people both living and dead. Cool factor 11 out of 10; making the maps useful probably takes more practice than I’ve been able to give it so far–and you must keep in mind that every relationship charted is somebody’s opinion of something.
  • There is a natural bridge on the Moon. (And I thought Straight Wall was impressive!) Thanks to Darrin Chandler for the link.
  • Numbers may be hard to grasp; precision and scale are even harder. This animation may help a little. (Thanks to Chuck Ott for the link.)
  • I don’t care how silly an idea it is. These guys get points for…something.

2 Comments

  1. Jonathan O'Neal says:

    re: Hurricanes

    The root-level NHC site (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/) is where I go to look at hurricane activity; the static and dynamic cone views usually provide the information I’m looking for (generally, “where’s it going to be in the next N days?”). Another good hurricane site is the spaghetti map at BoatUS (http://www.boatus.com/hurricanes/hurricane_spaghetti.asp), which shows path and strength projections from up to 20 weather models (none visible right now, of course).

  2. Mike Huffman says:

    In the “Numbers may be hard to grasp” department:
    http://www.good.is/post/putting-events-in-context-by-putting-them-on-your-house/

    The Pakistan floods, using the zip code for Colorado College:
    http://howbigreally.com/#80903

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