Travel
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Higher education adrift
In Your favorite cruise ship may never come back: 23 classic vessels that could be laid-up, sold or scrapped, Gene Sloan (aka @ThePointsGuy) named the Carnival Fantasy as one those that might be headed for the heap. Now, sure enough, there it is, in the midst of being torn to bits (HT 7News, above) in Aliağa, Turkey. Other stories in the Continue reading
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New York lights
I had a bunch of errands to run today, but also a lot of calls. And, when I finally got up from my desk around 4pm with plans to head out in the car, I found five inches of snow already on the apartment deck. Another five would come after that. So driving was clearly Continue reading
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An evacuated view on the #ThomasFire
Here’s the latest satellite fire detection data, restricted to just the last twelve hours of the Thomas Fire, mapped on Google Earth Pro:That’s labeled 1830 Mountain Standard Time (MST), or 5:30pm Pacific, about half an hour ago as I write this. And here are the evacuation areas: Our home is in the orange Voluntary Evacuation Continue reading
Broadcasting, data, Family, Geography, Life, Photography, problems, ThomasFire, Travel, tv, weather, wildfire -
A miracle of flight
That was the view to the south from 31,000 feet above the center of Greenland a few hours ago: a late afternoon aurora over a blue dusk. According to my little hand-held GPS, we were around here: “11/10/17, 11:48:32 AM” “2.4 mi” “0:00:16” “538 mph” “30072 ft” “283° true” “N70° 56′ 10.4″ W38° 52′ 59.1″”. That’s about four Continue reading
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A dark review for United’s Boeing 787
An update on 1 May 2024: Read what Cory Doctorow published today. Pro tip: avoid 787s if you can. On top of what Cory says in that piece, what I wrote here when the 787s were new is secondary stuff, but somehow consistent with how things are done at that company. I had wanted to Continue reading
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Some new ways to look at infrastructure
Nothing challenges our understanding of infrastructure better than a crisis, and we have a big one now in Houston. We do with every giant storm, of course. New York is still recovering from Sandy and New Orleans from Katrina. Reforms and adaptations always follow, as civilization learns from experience. Look at aviation, for example. Houston is the Continue reading
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Heavy (but brief) weather
Here’s what flying in and out of Newark looks like right now: That storm is very heavy, but narrow. It’s going to wash over New York like a big wave. Hat tip to Flightaware. Continue reading
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Desert warfare training in live ghost towns, seen from the sky
I’ve been fascinated for years by what comes and goes at the Fort Irwin National Training Center— —in the Mojave Desert, amidst the dark and colorful Calico Mountains of California, situated in the forbidding nowhere that stretches between Barstow and Death Valley. Here and there, amidst the webwork of trails in the dirt left by Continue reading
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BYSMD
Once, in the early ’80s, on a trip from Durham to some beach in North Carolina, we stopped to use the toilets at a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere. In the stall where I sat was a long conversation, in writing, between two squatters debating some major issue of the time. Think of the Continue reading
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Speeding on the Subway
At the uptown end of the 59th Street/Columbus Circle subway platform there hangs from the ceiling a box with three disks on fat stalks, connected by thick black cables that run to something unseen in the downtown direction. Knowing a few things about radio and how it works, I saw that and thought, Hmm… That Continue reading
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A fine suburban #sunrise and a vexing #CS6 issue
Made a dawn run to the nearby Peets for some dry cappuccinos, and was bathed in glow on my return by one of the most spectacular sunrises I have ever seen. It was post-peak when I got back (to the place where I’m staying in Gold River, California), but with some underexposure and white balance tweaking, Continue reading
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What are the balls on Prague’s spires called??
One of the things that fascinates me about Prague are the skewers atop the spires of its many iconic buildings, each of which pierces a shiny ball. It’s a great look. I am sure there’s a reason for those things, other than the look itself. I am also sure there is a word for the Continue reading
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Newsstands are à la carte. How about online as well?
I travel a lot, and buy newspapers wherever I happen to be. That would be true online as well, if I could do it. But I can’t, because that’s not an option. For example, my butt is in California right now, but my nose is in Boston, where I’m reading the Globe. I don’t want a Continue reading
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Figuring @Flickr
Here’s a hunk of what one set (aka Album) in my Flickr stream looks like: And here are what my stats on Flickr looked like earlier today (or yesterday, since Flickr is on GMT and it’s tomorrow there): I ended up with 32,954 views, with no one of my 49,000+ photos getting more than 56 views. Continue reading
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Let’s bring the cortado / piccolo to America
There are ideal ratios of coffee and milk, if you don’t want the flavor of either to fully prevail. To me the closest to the ideal ratio is what in Spain and Peets they call a cortado, some elsewhere call a gibraltar, and Australians and Kiwis call a piccolo (short for piccolo latte). This is a Continue reading