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Track Hurricanes, Past and Present

As summer begins winding to a close, hurricane season is just getting started. The folks at the Sarasota Herald Tribune have created a sweet map and data mashup for tracking hurricanes at Ibiseye.com. It uses Google Earth imagery and maps. You can even choose to overlay it with the latest satellite image. You can track Fay, or any other storm in the archives. All of the current weather advisories from NOAA are on the site as well. In addition to hurricanes and tropical storms, this site also keeps track of all current weather advisories like flood warnings, heat advisories, thunderstorms, etc.

The site gained it’s namesake from the Ibis, which is said to be the last bird to leave ahead of a storm and first to return; ibisEYE.com gives a similar view of all hurricanes to hit Florida from 1851 to today.

Read more

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Is riding the MBTA really a viable option?

Lately this summer I’ve been going into Boston a lot. The drive from Hingham isn’t too bad, but $4.00 gas is. This past year the Greenbush line of the MBTA’s Commuter Rail came into service in my area. I have a lot of friends who ride this to work, and really love it. After getting back from Washington DC a few weeks ago and seeing the DC Metro, I began looking more critically at the service offered by the MBTA. First off, The Metro is clean and efficient, something the MBTA is definitely not, but that’s really not what my complaint is. My main complaint about the MBTA is their hours of operation, at least on the main lines of the MBTA. Boston is a world class city, it seems inexcusable to me that the train closes by 1:00am every night. If Boston bars are open until 2:00am it would seem to me that something which would keep drunk drivers off the road should be open at least as late. I simply can’t come up with reason why this wouldn’t be the case. The only possible theory I can come up with is that DUI’s, while deadly, must just be too much of a revenue generator for the state.

Now, I’m not suggesting that the train should run every 15 minutes, but maybe every 30-45 minutes would be enough. Now that the Charlie Card is in place the staffing needs would be minimal. You would probably only need 1 operator per line, and some light security.
Just some food for thought. I know if the train were open that late, I’d take it. How about you?

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How To Watch Olympic Sailing

I’ve been watching NBC all week looking for Olympic Sailing coverage, but I’ve learned they don’t show it on TV. It’s available on the NBC website, and you should watch it there.

Here’s a Message From Dean Brenner, Head of the US Olympic Sailing Committee:

Hello everyone,
I’m heading to the west coast on Wednesday for three days of team processing and a send-off event in San Francisco. We leave for China from SFO on July 26, and the Games begin on August 8.

Here are the best ways to follow along during the Games: http://www.ussailing.org/olympics/blog/dean/index.asp. Our PR officer will be managing our own site with features and information specific to our team: http://olympics.ussailing.org/Olympics.htm. I’ll have a daily blog from the Games as well, starting on July 29: NBC Sports will be a great place for hard news and scores: http://www.nbcolympics.com/

NBC has decided to feature more than 20 sports on the web only. Sailing is one of them. You won’t see one minute of sailing on TV, but you’ll see tons on NBCOlympics.com . They will be paying attention to see which of these 20+ sports get the most hits. IF YOU WANT TO DO SOMETHING REALLY GOOD FOR SAILING, make this link one of your daily visits: http://www.nbcolympics.com/sailing/index.html

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD ON THIS. The more traffic we can drive to the sailing portion of NBC’s Olympic site, the more they will be willing to cover us in the future. Finally, if you want to get fired up, start here: http://www.amazingawaits.org/#/universe,video/

I’m about to test the theory that a person can’t be on an adrenaline high for 5 weeks straight. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Have a great day, sail fast, and GO USA!

Dean

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