The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Really wish they'd finished in October

Guys are installing new windows at IDTWHQ, completing the project begun in March 2009. (I split it into two phases to spread the cost over two years.) I ordered this set mid-August. We thought they'd be done in October, but no such luck.

Here's the effect, according to the Inner Drive Technology International Data Center Monitor:

The bottom axis shows local time, the vertical shows degrees Celsius. Also keep in mind that servers produce heat, so the server rack usually runs about 2°C warmer than the rest of the apar—World Headquarters. And for those keeping score at home, right now it's -1°C outside.

I'll have more art later in the day.

The threat condition level is colorless

Via Schneier, the Department of Homeland Security will soon get rid of color-coded warnings:

In an interview on “The Daily Show” last year, the homeland security chief, Janet Napolitano, said the department was “revisiting the whole issue of color codes and schemes as to whether, you know, these things really communicate anything to the American people any more.”

The answer, apparently, is no.

The Homeland Security Department said the colors would be replaced with a new system — recommendations are still under review — that should provide more clarity and guidance. The change was first reported by The Associated Press.

I wonder what that guy at O'Hare—the one who says "The current threat advisory level is orange" all day—I wonder what he'll do now?

wx-now.com in the news

My demo site, Weather Now, has a feature showing weather extremes for the world. Northwest Canada right now is having unusually cold weather. What's the connection? The Calgary Herald published a story about the website yesterday and syndicated it across Canada. Jenna McMurray of the Calgary Sun also picked up the story, and called me for a quick interview.

As a result, Weather Now went from a daily average 4,000 page views up to a server-smashing 337,000 yesterday. It seems traffic has tapered off a bit today, but I'm still getting enormously more hits than usual.

I'm also getting a lot more feedback, like this note from Judy C., who had a Canadian IP address:

Get your facts straight. You and others in your country love to make statements based on minimum research and not double checking what you "think" is correct! Calgary: 2nd coldest place on earth is just as stupid a comment as other comments on your home page: the world (just the US)! Good grief, no wonder the rest of world laughs at you behind your back.

It took me a few seconds to work out the "just the US" part, but apparently she referred to the link of "coldest places" that filters for just U.S.-based weather reports.

Otherwise, here follows my reply:

Judy,

Thanks for writing.

The site is a programming demo, not a commercial website. As such we only get free information from U.S. government computers. We have no control over the quality or quantity of information that foreign governments make available to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, nor do we have any control over what NOAA makes available to us.

The difficulty our site faces is that Environment Canada and similar agencies in other Commonweath nations retain Crown copyright over most of the data that we would want on our site. EC only makes data available for about 100 stations in Canada. So even though it got down to -35C in parts of Alberta Monday night, the only stations we had available in the affected region were two near Calgary, which only got to -30C. As it turns out, northern Alberta briefly got colder (-39C) than Antarctica (-38C), and was, as far as anyone knows, the coldest place on earth.

The site automatically produces the lists of hottest and coldest places every 20 mintues without human intervention. All these facts conspire to produce some odd results from time to time, particularly during severe weather events such as the one Canada is experiencing in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and the Northwest Territories right now.

As for the rest, I assure you the world laughs at us to our faces, not behind out backs. We have a reputation for being rude, thoughtless, and belligerent that other people--for example, Canadians--do not. It occasionally makes polite discourse difficult, as people sometimes assume the worst motivations on the basis of the most banal facts.

Thank you again for your note.

She thanked me for my considered reply. Aww.

Crickets

With fewer than 21 days until the end of school forever (or at least until I get the loans paid off), I've spent all my non-work time thinking about entrepreneurship management, emerging market strategy, technology strategy, and environmental economics. Between them I have three papers and one pricing project to complete.

The first paper is almost done, pending comments from one of my sources. I'd go celebrate but I have the other three assignments, you see.

Someday, I'll look back upon this time, laugh nervously, and change the subject.

The red-blue divide in time lapse

Via TPM, this Duke project is cool:

This animated interpretation accentuates certain phenomena: the breadth and duration of support for Roosevelt, the shift from a Democratic to a Republican South, the move from an ostensibly east-west division to the contemporary coasts-versus-heartland division, and the stability of the latter.

More broadly, this video is a reminder that what constitutes “politics as usual” is always in flux, shifting sometimes abruptly. The landscape of American politics is constantly evolving, as members of the two great parties battle for electoral supremacy.

When to change passwords

Security guru Bruce Schneier has great advice about when to change your passwords:

The primary reason to give an authentication credential -- not just a password, but any authentication credential -- an expiration date is to limit the amount of time a lost, stolen, or forged credential can be used by someone else. If a membership card expires after a year, then if someone steals that card he can at most get a year's worth of benefit out of it. After that, it's useless.

... An attacker who gets the password to your bank account by guessing or stealing it isn't going to eavesdrop. He's going to transfer money out of your account -- and then you're going to notice. In this case, it doesn't make a lot of sense to change your password regularly -- but it's vital to change it immediately after the fraud occurs.

... So in general: you don't need to regularly change the password to your computer or online financial accounts (including the accounts at retail sites); definitely not for low-security accounts. You should change your corporate login password occasionally, and you need to take a good hard look at your friends, relatives, and paparazzi before deciding how often to change your Facebook password. But if you break up with someone you've shared a computer with, change them all.

Truly impressive customer service...and product

My new Kindle arrived just now, only (let's see) about 30 hours after I ordered it. Amazon pre-registered it, so from opening the box to reading a book I'd previously purchased took less than two minutes. Add five minutes to hook it up to my home WiFi (complete with 26-byte WPA password), two minutes to go to amazon.com to change the thing's email address, fifteen seconds to buy the next book I want to read, and—I am not kidding—fifteen seconds to download it to the device.

What does that come to? Less than 10 minutes after UPS left, I've got my next book ready to go.

Oh, and: it remembered all the books I've already bought, not counting the ones I'd saved to my local hard drive, so replacing them took just a minute or two longer.

Clearly, Amazon understands the cardinal rule of new technology: If you make it easy, they will buy it.

Update: Add another 30 seconds to find and download the $4.99 Scrabble Kindle edition.

Amazing customer service

My Kindle 2 died last week. Its battery, drained of every last electron, could no longer provide even enough power to recharge.

Two calls to Amazon customer service later, and I got an $89 credit towards the purchase of a Kindle 3, applied instantly to my account. I'll have the new one tomorrow, for about 1/4 what I paid for the original.

Everybody wins: I get a good deal, they sell a new item. They even refunded the last Kindle book I bought, since I discovered the Kindle-bricking when I tried to download it.

Another stick in the wall

This is cool:

Across New York, there are USB drives embedded in walls, buildings and curbs. The idea is to create an anonymous, offline file-sharing network in public space. The drives are completely public and anyone can plug in to drop and download files.

Seriously, you can plug the USB drive into your laptop. ...

It's part of an art project called "Dead Drops" by Aram Bartholl and I have to say, it's pretty awesomely creative. I mean, if I saw a USB stick stick out of a random wall, I'd be dying to know what's in there. I'd have to plug in. It'd also be interesting to see what people would anonymously share on the public drive, well, until some jackass decides to upload a virus to screw up everybody's computer.