Sunday, January 13, 2008
Creaking and groaning into the 21st century
I had to know what the deal was with widgets, so I went and got me one. It's "Earthquakes" by Greg Hewgill and it is cool in the extreme: it brings up a small map showing where earthquakes have happened in the last couple of weeks. Color coded for time, size coded for magnitude.
Turns out, they're going on absolutely all the time, relatively speaking. The US Geological Survey has an earthquake site (which the widget links to). It cheerfully offers a page with "Earthquakes in the last 7 days" and Mother of Mercy the map is just thick with dots!
And not just places you'd think, like the so-called "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific. There was a magnitude 3.1 near Cleveland on January 9th. I guess a 3.1 is no biggy in California, but Cleveland. Who'd a thunk?
Turns out, they're going on absolutely all the time, relatively speaking. The US Geological Survey has an earthquake site (which the widget links to). It cheerfully offers a page with "Earthquakes in the last 7 days" and Mother of Mercy the map is just thick with dots!
And not just places you'd think, like the so-called "Ring of Fire" around the Pacific. There was a magnitude 3.1 near Cleveland on January 9th. I guess a 3.1 is no biggy in California, but Cleveland. Who'd a thunk?
Sunday, January 06, 2008
You don't know Jack, Frost
It got wicked cold recently (0F/-18C) and, despite all my efforts at weatherstripping the windows, we got some truly dramatic frost. I guess this is a bad thing, because it indicates a lot of water vapor has leaked between the inside sash and the storm window, but it's hard to get too mad at something this beautiful.
