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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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Sharing Pictures Over the Web

Lately I’ve been doing rather large events over the weekend where lots of pictures are taken. So what I’ve been doing is getting pictures from everyone present, sorting them by time taken, then putting them into one album. I find that one tool that works great for this is Google’s “Picasa.” Picasa is a great photo management tool that displays your photos chronologically and even offers some basic fixes to your photos. Photoshop is great for editing photos too, but when you’re working with over a hundred photos, something quick and easy is best. Perhaps Picasa’s best feature is it’s auto resizing. If I tried to send someone a dozen pictures the email would be huge. Picasa resizes them down to a manageable size enabling me to email lots of photos to people with only the click of a button. It’s prety cool. The program is free and I’d definitely recommenced checking it out.

I took some photos from Washington DC and the weekend of the 4th, and that’s how I post all that stuff. Check it out here. If you were there, and you haven’t sent me your pictures yet; get with it and send them to me. Picasa makes it simple.

Link: Download Picasa
Link: Some Pictures From July

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Whitewater Rafting in ME on the Dead River

Last weekend I went on an awesome whitewater rafting trip to The Forks, Maine, home of the Dead and Kennebec rivers. Our destination was 5.5 hours away but was totally worth it. Sure the drive was arduous, but once we got up there the times we had were amazing. Taking my father’s Prius ended up being a great choice since I averaged about 48 miles per gallon for the weekend. We were a little concerned about the weather as is was potentially supposed to be rainy, but in the end all was ok and I even got a sunburn. We ordered some pictures and a DVD, but don’t expect to see them for a few weeks. When they do come in I will link them from this post. The camping part was just as fun as the rafting, so in the meantime, check out some of the other non rafting pictures from the weekend.

Link: Pictures I took.
Link: All pictures from the weekend.

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Buyer Beware: HP’s Terrible Customer Service

For about a year or two now I have been using my HP DVD940 and been pretty happy with it. Then all of a sudden it decides; no more. You forget how much you rely on a CD/DVD drive. Problem with a program, try to reinstall. Oh wait, broken drive. Want to access that back up of pictures from a few years ago. Nope sorry, find another way. Well today I write this blog not to complain about my drive, but rather about the company who makes it. HP. Again, I really liked the drive, but now that it’s broken, I’d like to try and update the drivers. That shouldn’t be hard, I’ll just check the HP website.

Ok, there’s the drivers section, this shouldn’t be too difficult. Let me just search for my drive. What’s this? Apparently they never made my drive. No, wait, here it is… no, that drive is external, that’s not it. So I figure, I’ll just give HP a call and explain the situation. It’s 11:00pm, and I’m feeling really productive. It looks like the cal center is open 24 hours a day, so I figure I’ll give them a try. After waiting on hold briefly, I give my name, email, phone number, model number, story, and the representative tells me I should call this other number. I write it down and call them after hanging up. They’re closed, and why not. It’s 11:30pm by now, and I was lucky to even get anyone in the first place.
The next day I call the number I was given the previous night and go though all the same standard stuff. Hold, give my name, email, phone number, ticket number, etc. Then I find out that the number I was given wasn’t even HP. It was some company they did business with like 5 years ago who makes mice and keyboards. They basically tell me that HP customer support is a bunch of morons, and I should call them back at the original number and make sure to get connected to the right place (carefully checking against the wrong number had dialed.) I call back HP, to make a long story short I repeated the entire story I just told, and ended up connected to a different number, but with the same mouse/keyboard company. Back to start again. Call HP, give all the info, they ask me for my serial number, I start to give it, but they want the one off the computer. The problem is, I built my own computer, there is no serial number. So the operator says she’ll connect me with their DVD specialists. I say “wait a minute, you keep connecting me to a company you used to do business with and it’s a wrong number.” So then what do I hear? “Well, what do you want me to do about it?” Are you serious?!? How about support your product. How about acknowledge that the product I am holding bearing your brand even exists, how about even knowing how to get in touch with the departments in your own company? Here’s a better question; “what do you expect me to do?” I hang up in a fit of rage. This person is useless. I figure I’ll call back after after cooling down.
Finally I give HP a call back. I’ve calmed down a bit, and I’ve decided not to solve the the problem any more, but rather just speak immediately with a supervisor. I don’t want to discuss the issue, or how to fix it. instead, I just want to complain about the quality of service I have received. Impossible. As soon as you ask to speak to the supervisor, the rep immediately commandeers the conversation and tries to solve your problem again (which they lack the ability to do.) Eventually he says “I cannot put you through to a supervisor because your product is more then a year old.” I explain I am not complaining about a product, rather it’s a customer service issue; but he assures me he can not, and will not put me through to a supervisor.
So there you have it. It’s a long post, but buyer beware. If you buy a HP product you might as well move to a desert island, because your going to be on your own. I would recommend avoiding this company and their terrible customer service at all costs.
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Computer Repair Software

People always seem to ask me for help fixing their computers. Most of the time these “fixes” aren’t much more then simple scans of your system or a de-fragmentation of you hard drive. There’s a lot of programs out there for de-fragmenting your computer, but I don’t really recommend any because window does come with a default de-fragmentation tool. Here’s a little more information on that in case you need it.

There’s a lots of software out there which you can use to clean up your computer, but who knows which you need and which ones are the best. The short answer to that question is… me. At least for today’s purposes. So I hope this helps. I’ve made a short list of programs that I think all people should keep on their computers and make a point to run at least once a month. It’s not that I’m an authority on this topic, but I figure enough people ask me what I use, that I can now just as easily direct people to this site to read and be linked for themselves. It seems in my opinion, that these programs seem to be the industry’s standard for the most part.

Link: How to Defrag in Windows XP
Link: Eric’s Recommended Software for Computer Repair

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Well, ski season is officially over…

Well, ski season is officially over. It’s really hard for me, but what a season it was. For the first time ever I hiked Tuckerman’s ravine and made a pretty nice run down. It was definitely exhausting, but it was honestly the experience of a lifetime. I will absolutely do it again. I highly recommends looking at the pictures. Apparently the day I went was one of the most popular weekends in recent history up there, and there were thousands of people up there. It was almost like a beach party. Te trip down was way better the the trip up. We took the Sherborne trail down and it might actually have been my favorite part of the day. What a beautiful and rhythmic ride down. So now that the weather is getting nicer it’s time to start thinking about summer sports. I’ve begun working on my boats and can’t wait until they’re in the water. I also bought a new bike with plans to do a lot more bike riding this year. While searching for good bike routs nearby I came across a great website for mapping your bike rides, as well as searching through rides cataloged by other people nearby. I’ve posted a few of the routes I like on my page, but all of MapMyRide.com is pretty cool to check out. I’d recommend it. Read more

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Smartphone Review , Tips & Tricks.

A while back, as most people know, the iPhone came out. You just can’t deny it, it’s pretty slick. It is ease to use, it’s pretty looking, and oh so streamlined. Around the same time as the iPhone was coming out my 4th Treo was dying. It was time to get a new phone. I began the arduous task of shopping around to see what was out there. I had a short list of features I wanted in a phone, and wanted to see how many of them I could find in one handset. As I researched and shopped around, I became very impressed with the Verizon branded “XV-6800.” The name isn’t very impressive and was kind of hard to remember, but the phone looked pretty good. Made by HTC (High Technology Corporation) a company specializing in smartphones; the 6800 features a slick easy to use slider design, Windows Mobile 6, and a USB charger. These features were all things I really wanted to get in my new phone. I was able to convince the customer service representative to swap put my 3rd non-working Treo with this XV-6800. (I just had to resign my contract, which was actually just resigned the day before….um, ok…. no-brainer!)

I’ve been using the phone for about six months now, and must say I really love the device. Recently I’ve also realized why I prefer this more utilitarian phone over the beautiful, easy to use iPhone. Apple products seem to play to certain types of consumers. As I have said again and again; the iPhone is easy to use & very stylish, but it does lack in other areas. Apple is just now starting to allow 3rd party developed software, (but you know you’re going to have to pay for it.) It’s good to see Apple is starting to see the light here, because one of the best features of Windows Mobile phones is that there is a ton of software available from all sorts of places to improve the functionality & ease of use of the phones. I’m not saying it’s easy, but if you’re willing to do some research these Windows Mobile Smartphones have some great capabilities. Take a look at some of the modifications I have made to my phone in the link included below.

Link: My HTC XV6800

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Internet TV and my new station

I’ve been wanting to integrate a video player into my website for a while now. I have a number of shows that I produced while at WETC and would like to try and post more of them on my website once I find a good codec that squeezes them down to a reasonable size and preserves some of the quality I worked so hard to create in my shots. About a year ago I went to a seminar about an emerging technology and company called Brightcove. It’s a lot like YouTube, but you can create your own channel and manage the content displayed there. For example just because I post a video about rock climbing on my player, you wont see a video on my player that someone else made a bout rock climbing. You will only see content that I post there. Like I said the task of capturing, converting, posting, and managing all of those shows is quite daunting, but I have wanted to experiment for a while now. Recently I finally found some media that I could post to experiment with this.

For Christmas my father gave me a helmet cam. It’s great, I have shot a lot of great short video clips, and I started posting them onto my player as a way to share them with the people who I took video of. It’s pretty cool, so I thought I’d post it here and create a link to that player so more people can find and enjoy it. The player is pretty stripped down at the moment, and is very utilitarian, simply accomplishing the goal of sharing the videos, not really making them look too pretty, perhaps eventually I will find a chance to make this player a little nicer looking. In the meantime check it out.

Link: Brightcove
Link: SkiCam

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