IT Director for a non-profit in Washington, DC. Man About Internet.
I saw this posted over on Capital Weather Gang:
The YouTube video below shows a time lapse of all of the earthquakes that occurred between March 9 and March 14 off the coast of Japan. The action begins to increase after about 15 seconds and the “big one” occurs at one minute and 17 seconds into the animation. After that, the map lights up with activity through the end of the animation. The tectonic flurry is jaw-dropping.
I first saw this video posted on Saturday, March 12. This video made the rounds on sites like Reddit & Twitter due to is spectacular nature. Apparently the author managed to get access to a good internet connection since then and post an HD version of the video. This video illustrates just how powerful the Tsunami was and how quick it struck. As you can see, this town went from dry to almost completely destroyed in less than 5 minutes time.
It has come to my attention that not everyone has gotten the memo that Alan Taylor, creator of the fantastic The Big Picture photography blog over at Boston.com left the site several months ago. The Atlantic was smart enough to make him a good enough offer to bring him over to their site, making him a Senior Editor and allowing him to start a new photography blog there, called In Focus.
Alan has said previously that this move has allowed him full editorial control in a way that he never had at The Big Picture, doing things like increasing the resolution the end-user is allowed to select for the photos. In Focus allows the viewer to select either 1024px or 1280px width images.
In Focus has been a wonderful source for powerful images from Japan in the last week since the earthquake. This particular image, below, was particularly moving to me.
REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Dylan McCord
You should subscribe to In Focus. It's good.
Things Organized Neatly
Anyone who is a closed OCD or just general neat freak, will appreciate this site. I feel very calm and secure when I browse its pictures.
The fragility of free is a catchy term that describes what happens when the free money runs out. Or — perhaps more accurately — when the investors/founders/venture capitalists run out of cash, or patience, or both. Because at some point Twitter and all other companies have to make the move from ‘charity’ to ‘business’ — or, put another way, they have to make the move from spending tons of money to making slightly more money than they spend. Kyle Baxter wrote a follow-up to Ben Brooks' article: Twitter’s value lies in it being a communication utility, where anyone and everyone can quickly communicate information. That’s incredibly powerful, and it simply couldn’t exist if it wasn’t a free service. This doesn’t mean the strategy Twitter pursued is correct; rather, it means their error was in being so cavalier about a business model. They assumed if they reached a critical mass of users, turning it into a profitable business would be easy—and they’ve discovered that isn’t really true. It takes just as much thinking as building the actual product does. Read the first article, and then the second one. Done? Good. You may now resume your normal #dickbar bitching.
This MIT NSE Nuclear Information Hub blog has been the best, most accurate, resource that I've been able to find during the last few days to get accurate and fairly up-to-date information about the nuclear plant disaster going on in Japan. The quick blurb description on the blog bills itself as:
Information about the incident at the Fukushima Nuclear Plants in Japan hosted by http://web.mit.edu/nse/ :: Maintained by the students of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT.
Amazing.
Usually she just drinks out of Steffanie's water glasses whenever she spots them unguarded and sitting on the coffee table. Today she was perplexed because Steff had drank most of the water, but she came up with a way to drink it anyway.