ibenez wrote:
(( Do you really need instructions? It's like, get family; leave town; go a direction away from hurricane. Bring cash. ))

For someone who's financially well-off, has a working car, plenty of gas, and a place to go, sure. For others though, it's not so simple. Like check this article.

Evacuees stranded again
Traffic, lack of money force many to stay put

HOUSTON, Texas (AP) -- Wilma Skinner would like to scream at the officials of this city. If only they would pick up their phones.

"I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain't none. No one answers," she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity. "Everyone just says, 'Get out, get out.' I've got no way of getting out. And now I've got no money."
 . . .
Census figures show Harris County had 3.6 million people in 2004, of whom 14.7 percent lived below the poverty level while 8.7 percent of households lacked a vehicle, both percentages slightly higher than national figures. More than one-third spoke a language other than English at home.

For the poor and the disenfranchised, the mighty evacuation orders that preceded Rita were something they could only ignore.

RE: Evacuation Instructions (or lack thereof)

The country's most powerful Shiite cleric endorsed the draft constitution Thursday, rejecting opposition voiced by two popular leaders of Iraq's majority sect and underlining a rift also on display in anti-British violence in the southern city of Basra.

Two officials in the Shiite Muslim hierarchy in Najaf said Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani called senior aides together and told them to promote a "yes" vote among the faithful during the Oct. 15 national referendum on the constitution.

al-Sistani is on board, that's great news. :) I've always been very impressed by his thoughtfulness and charisma, and I'm glad that he seems to have recovered well from his heart surgery last year.

He's got a nice website too, available in five different languages.

Powerful Shiite Cleric Backs New Iraq Constitution

Okay, this is a rant...

[rant]
I was really identifying with the people of Galveston and NOLA, and thinking to myself, "What if I had to evacuate from my home? Where would I get information on what to do, where to go, what to pack?" So I decided I'd meme a webpage with a list of Evacuation Instructions.

And that's where I started a descent into hell.

First of all, there are very few "webpages" out there with such info. Mostly they just link to PDFs, which are useless to anyone without the plugins. And even then, the stuff out there is often appalling. For example, this Louisiana Government page: http://www.ohsep.louisiana.gov/evacinfo/stateevacrtes.htm

Now, it's already annoying because of the PDFs. But it adds insult to injury, since the PDF files are enormous 7 Megabyte clunkers *per page*. And to add the cherry on top, the diagrams require non-standard paper, 11x17!

I made an attempt to download the PDF, and was further horrified by how unwieldy it was. It was huge, it was slow, it was displayed sideways, and was so large and zoomed out that my system kept trying to redraw it every time I tried to read it. I finally just gave up in disgust. And keep in mind, this is a situation where I'm sitting here safely in St. Louis, in a nice comfy office with a high-end computer and plenty of bandwidth. For someone who's in an emergency situation, with a low-end computer and a slow dial-up, those files would be completely inaccessible and useless.

I kept looking, and there is *some* useful information out there, but it's difficult to find, and often in a very rough format. For example, this PDF (again, with the PDFs!) from the Houston Red Cross. It has a packing checklist, along with some solid advice about dealing with an emergency situation such as a hurricane or tornado. But it still has typos, gives conflicting information (like about how much water to store), and doesn't have any specific advice like *where* to go or how to find transportation. Even at the FEMA site, it just says, "Contact the local red cross for evacuation information," but without saying *how* to contact them. And www.houstonredcross.org has got nothing on their main page about Rita.

My ranting aside, what is my "constructive criticism" advice?
 - Some of our government resources *must* be devoted to providing basic and easily-accessible emergency information on the web.
  - This information needs to be searchable by common-sense terms such as "evacuation information" or "How to evacuate".
  - The information needs to be available in *non-PDF* format, like a straightforward quick-to-load HTML page with a checklist of what to pack, loca... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

This animation was created to show the prediction of water level in Galveston, Texas, assuming a storm surge of up to 20 feet. Terrain data was 1/3rd Arcsecond NED DEM. Imagery was 30m Landsat, processed with PixelSense LS combined with 1m Color Infrared DOQQ, processed with PixelSense CIR. The NED terrain surface is made from contour maps, and does NOT include building heights, so it is not indicative of how much the buildings themselves would be submerged.

A cartographer friend of mine put together this well-researched Quicktime animation about what would happen to Galveston under a 20' storm surge. Not pretty. :/

Galveston Storm Surge Animation

For fans of "The Family Guy", an interactive app by one of my game industry associates, with the ever (not) charming "Stewie".

I was testing this earlier today, and there's a *lot* of stuff buried in there. Type in a word or phrase, and see how the character reacts. "Hello," "sleep", etc. Fun terms to type in: Lotion, hacker, porn, world domination. And every so often, something unusual like the "kill" button might become active...

Elonka :)

Stewie Live

I started this blog because I was accumulating a lot of interesting and amusing links and I love to share them. I was sending out too many emails to various friends and thought it would be easier just to create a blog where they could come to and perhaps find something amusing that would help the hours at work go by a little bit faster.

Every so often someone mentions one of my pages in their blog, and it's not just a "them and their friends" spike in my traffic, but I instead find my site getting deluged with hundreds (or thousands) of new visitors. This is one of those blogs. The guy gave me one mention, and my daily traffic jumped about 50%. Looks like this guy has thousands of daily readers. And I have to admit, he's got a knack for blogging a lot of interesting stuff!

Elonka :)

Cynical-C Blog

Jim Sanborn and The Da Vinci Code
September 23, 2005 at 12:30 pm
Since the publication of The Da Vinci Code readers and art enthusiasts have attempted to decipher the work of artist Jim Sanborn, whose Kryptos sculpture installed at CIA Headquarters was featured in the novel. Sanborn will reveal some of the secrets behind his enigmatic sculptures, in particular Antipodes, 1997, which stands in the Hirshhorn Plaza. Meet at the Information Desk.

Friday, day after tomorrow, Sanborn will be giving a talk about Kryptos, Antipodes, and The Da Vinci Code at the Hirshhorn Museum (the big round museum near the Capitol).

As yet though, I have been unable to find anyone in my crypto group who's able to attend. :/

Is there anyone within reach of this blog who's in the DC area, and could go to this talk on Friday? I'd really appreciate being able to hear a first-hand account of what Sanborn says. Even better, I'd love a recording or transcript!

Thanks,

Elonka :)

Kryptos Sculptor Speaks in DC on Friday

Getting started, you'll need:
- A hampster
- Tape
- A knife

Heh.

Turn Your Hamster into a Fighting Machine

This is a weblog of my current battle against stage IV (metastatic) melanoma. I'm John Hall, a 24 year old hacker/geek/pilot . . .
 
One of my main purposes in blogging this is to alarm people into getting suspicious moles checked out by a doctor immediately. If you are even remotely concerned about anything on your skin, please make an appointment with a doctor today. You definitely won't regret it.

And remember that there is still a very good chance that I will recover from this. Melanoma is bad news, but it is not a death sentence. (Update: my case is currently in a partial remission.) (Update: no, actually it's not.) I have a strong feeling that this will be a monumental hassle but that I'll make it through in the end. Either way, though, I want to make as much noise about the experience as possible so that others can learn from my mistakes.

Overcode is a guy who's probably like a lot of you reading this. He's in his early 20s, is highly intelligent, very computer-literate, attends Georgia Tech University, and has been to Def Con a couple times.

Up until recently, he led an active lifestyle -- competing in marathons, flying a small plane, and hanging out with friends. In late 2004 though, it was discovered that an unusual mole on his shoulder was actually a signal that he had developed cancer.

His condition has had its ups and downs over the last several months. Overcode has a gift for writing though, and has documented the entire journey thus far, including his emotions throughout the diagnosis process, and pictures of his CAT scans. The folks at the yak.net site have been kind enough to host this information (since he's a fellow Georgia Tech student), and it's a fascinating and alarming read.

I don't know Overcode personally (he's a friend of a friend), but I offer him my best wishes for a recovery.

Overcode's War

This report is intended to provide reliable national estimates of some basic statistics on certain types of sexual behavior, sexual orientation, and sexual attraction for men and women 15-44 years of age, based on data collected in the United States in 2002.
 . . .
The data are from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), and are based on 12,571 in-person interviews with men and women 15-44 years of age.

Always interesting to get some hard data on the subject of sex. :)

2002 National Survey on Sexual Behavior in the U.S.