Marine Traffic Viewer

9:47 am on Monday, December 23, 2013

Edith MaerskGeeking out over this site: Marine Traffic – Live Ships Map

When I traveled a lot I used to love getting a hotel room overlooking the harbors. San Francisco being a favorite. I’d sit in my room working on my laptop overlooking San Francisco Bay and watch the shipping vessels come in and out through the Golden Gate. Maersk, Hanjin, and other shipping lines. I would wonder where they came from or where they were headed to next, dreaming I was going along.

This site shows all the ships in an area for almost all major ports in the world. This info was available before but took a while to dig up. Now you just point and click your way in real time. Wish I’d had it back then. Shannon and I have talked about booking passage on a cargo ship across the Atlantic some day. It sounds like something up our alley. We don’t need cruise directors, dance clubs, bingo, or other planned activities. Just let us sit on the deck where we can watch the ocean and read a book or talk about nothing in particular. We’d be happy. Some day.

New weather station at the house

3:58 pm on Friday, November 29, 2013
Ambient Weather WS-2080

Ambient Weather WS-2080

Last week I put up a new weather station at home. I’ve wanted a full-featured one for a while and our old small one died so it was time for a replacement. I ended up going with this inexpensive Ambient Weather WS-2080 from Amazon. It’s pretty packed with sensors: Temp, wind speed and direction, rain fall rate and totals, humidity, and air pressure. It also has USB out to hook to a computer for uploading data. I have a link in the upper-right corner of the page here to WeatherUnderground. It also uploads current weather and graphs to http://fann.in/weather.

Stop me before I do something stupid

9:03 pm on Saturday, June 8, 2013

Multi 1250

Was lazily surfing the net and came across some old printing presses. Thought to myself ‘hey, I wonder how much that old Multi 1250 you learned to print on would costs these days.‘ I figured in the $1-2K range. I was only off by a little bit. Looking around I’ve found several public auctions where they’ve sold for as little as $10. Yeah, shipping and all the other gear you need to get it operational would add quite a bit but it’s now well down into the hobbyist price range. Hmmmm.

Public Surplus: Auction #636270.

Mom’s dogs love the hose.

11:27 am on Saturday, June 8, 2013

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Bring out the hose and mom’s dogs go nuts.

Life ain’t so bad.

3:40 pm on Friday, June 7, 2013

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Dealing with insurance companies sucks but being ‘forced’ to drive the Thunderbird isn’t that bad.

No more illegal wiretapping? Thanks, Obama!

9:24 am on Friday, June 7, 2013

“No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient.” – Obama 2007

[embedplusvideo height=”281″ width=”450″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/WAQlsS9diBs?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=WAQlsS9diBs&width=450&height=281&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep7280″ /]

Dianne Feinstein on NSA: ‘It’s called protecting America’ – POLITICO.com

9:36 pm on Thursday, June 6, 2013

No one has complained about the privacy violations they didn’t know about? Huh. Weird.

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/dianne-feinstein-on-nsa-its-called-protecting-america-92340.html

Having a banner day

3:37 pm on Thursday, June 6, 2013

Snowball has been violated

Walked out to go to work this morning and was rudely surprised by a pile of plastic and glass all over the road. Someone hit Snowball, my 1991 Range Rover Classic – Great Divide Edition – #101 of 400. There was no note on the truck and no dead cars nearby.

Damnit.

We started to look closer and found parts of a Toyota Tundra lying in the mess. Well, now we had something to go on. My wife got on the phone to insurance while I dialed 311 to get a report started. 311 was busy and took a message to call back.

While I sat there looking at the mess Dakota rode off on his bike following the trail of parts. A few minutes later we get a frantic call, “I found it! I found the truck that hit yours!” He gave the address and I told him to book it home. I grabbed a camera and keys to Shannon’s car and we drove over there to take pics. I called 911 from their front yard to say we’d found the driver.

About 10 minutes later a cruiser pulls up and asked what the issue was and I ran down the story. He explained that there was likely nothing to be done legally as we had no eye-witness to who was driving but we probably had enough to get him in civil court if we wanted to go that way. He said he’d look at their car and grab some info and meet me back at my place.

About 15 minutes later the officer finally comes over to talk to us. He’s smiling and hands me paperwork with all the guy’s info. while he was there the guy came outside. He admitted to hitting the truck ‘something small‘ about 2AM this morning. He said he planned on going back later today. The officer implied that he could take the guy to jail right there. I know and the cop know the guy was almost surely drunk but there’s no way to prosecute on that. Only for the hit and run. The officer asked if I wanted to prosecute and I told him that I just wanted my truck fixed. He agreed that prosecuting would really just be a waste of time and probably end up in just probation for the driver.

The damage while ugly is all cosmetic. The frame is untouched as is the drivetrain. I hope. He launched the truck forward a couple feet. I hope that didn’t damage the transfer case or anything. We’ll see. I will have it looked over closely.

So, I have his insurance company info and I won’t be out of pocket. I’m just hoping the insurance doesn’t want to total her. Looking at costs to repair it could be a close call. Either way I will get her fixed and will continue to love my Snowball.

More pics of my and his truck can be found here: http://fann.in/gallery3/index.php/Snowballs-accident

I even got video from our security camera here: [embedplusvideo height=”365″ width=”450″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/mgdTqfrcu7k?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=mgdTqfrcu7k&width=450&height=365&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep5335″ /]

The rest of the day wasn’t great either. Broke the zipper on a favorite sweat shirt at work and one of my servers got hacked so I got to clean that up too.

Comcast executive Google Fiber criticism: Americans don’t need speeds

9:29 pm on Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Why do big business executives do this same song and dance with every new technology?

“People will never need more than so much RAM” “Smart numberswiki.com

phones are a fad” “There’s no demand for one price steaming video”

Get over yourself. Your business model sucks. Innovate or die.

http://bgr.com/2013/06/05/comcast-executive-google-fiber-criticism/

These vintage Dutch safety posters are stunning, completely terrifying

11:37 am on Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Hazard shielding

 

These vintage Dutch safety posters are stunning, completely more info

terrifying.

 

I would totally display these in my living room. The last one is now my phone’s background images.

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