Courtesy Attaturk on Firedoglake:
As the oil gusher that began in early Spring continues to spew into the start of Summer I suppose I could come up with something creative and novel. But instead I’ll just note yet another lie from BP.
- A BP estimate made after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon noted that as much as 100,000 barrels per day could leak into the ocean if the blowout preventer and wellhead were removed, a higher worst-case scenario than previously reported.
Which leads to the question of what were they lying about before? (more at the link)
via Another lie another dollar | Firedoglake.
Remember when, at the very beginning, they tried to claim the leak was only 1000 barrels a day? Then 5000. Then ten. Then 20-30k. Then 40k. Then 60k (at which point BP’s CEO Tony Haworth skedaddled off to his yacht races). The illustration with the FDL post by Sandy Sanders seems exceedingly appropriate.
BP CEO Tony Hayward has faced fresh criticism for taking time off to go sailing with his son instead of dealing with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The White House said the move was one of a “long line of PR gaffes and mistakes” by Mr Hayward.
Environmental groups said the Isle of Wight outing was “insulting” to those affected by the environmental disaster
via BBC News – BP CEO Tony Hayward criticised for yacht trip.
Actually the word I would have used to describe this arrogant boorishness would be, “Unsurprising.”
I’m also pretty sure lots of people all over the web are busy Photoshopping Hayward’s face onto pictures of Thurston Howell the Third.
I’ve been on a roll here and have posted not only a bunch of my previously posted fiction, but a bit more than before. A newly posted story, ‘Surreal,’ is one I recovered from some ancient files, fixed up a bit and just put out there.
In the novels section, there are the first three chapters of a complete book manuscript (Prophecy’s Door: The Wilder), the prologue of another (The Gandhi Gene), and the first three chapters of my most active work-in-progress, Indistinguishable (previously, I had posted only the first chapter).
I’ll get to the poetry soon. Then once it’s all done, I’ll go back to the main site and probably take ‘em down from there.
Oh and yes — the ‘Random Quote’ widget over on the right will randomly pick among a hundred or so quotes I’ve fed into it.
While the new WordPress ‘Twenty-Ten’ default theme is really nice with a lot of great customization features built-in, it does lack yet in some areas. Some of these, however, can be futzed with, and others just aren’t obvious. I’ll recount here some of what I’ve learned. (Join me after the break…)
Continue reading →
WordPress just came out with a new release — and I actually really like their new default theme. It seems far more customizable than my previous one, so I’m going to give it a shot.
As I fill this all in and muck with the customizations, the site overall may undergo some drastic changes in appearance over the short haul… For one, it’ll take me a while to get the fiction & poetry installed. In the meantime, there’ll be blank pages.
For what it’s worth, I’m aware of the funky “A” characters in my older posts. No idea how they got there, probably an artifact of the transfer. I might edit some of ‘em, but there’s just too many to bother with at this point. (Update: I think I found a fix, related to my WordPress configuration. Let me know in comments if you folks notice any other problems.)
By the by, one of the ideas I’m considering, and strongly leaning towards, is to pull my fiction over here onto the blog portion of my site. The main reason for this is I’ll have far greater control over presentation, plus a friendlier reading font and UI.
The XML site template is great for galleries and whatnot, including both photography and video — but really less-than-optimal for multi-page text viewing.
Blog and website recoded, and it’s a whole new look.
I finished the refurbishment of Stephanie’s website last night, got it uploaded and reset the DNS pointers. (Note: If it doesn’t display properly, make sure your browser’s JavaScript settings for the site is allowed/enabled. For example, I use the NoScript add-on for FireFox.)
Next comes my own attempt… whee. Probably be a couple days before I’m ready to make the jump since this effort will be more complicated (site + blog + underlying database).
At some point over the next week or so, I’m moving this site and blog over to LaughingSquid’s cloud-hosting system. Rather than just try for a wholesale move and hope the links don’t all break, I’ve decided to do something more radical and go ahead with both a general website and blog remodeling, a whole new look.
For the blog, I already have a much better template I’ve been using for another purpose… just have to figure out if I can transfer the database and do the WordPress upgrade at the same time. (Probably can, just may be tricky. I’m halfway considering tossing the blog archives and starting over fresh.)
As for the website… gawd, I can’t believe I left that Frontpage-based thing up for so long. For that, I’m going to go to a Java/ActionScript/XML template derived site that should look really slick once I get it put together. It’s not only gorgeous, it should also be far easier to maintain and modify.
(I know – the iPad doesn’t support Java, which means my website won’t work on their browsers. This is my own personal frack you to the Apple/Jobs behemoth. No one company should have the power to declare another company’s product and a worldwide industry standard to be obsolete.)
Anyway, in the meantime, there may be outages and disappearances as I get things moved and fixed up. Likely the blog will be operational first, then the website.
I know, I know… been a while. Moving is always rough, and then work went crazy on me.
Anyway, along the way our old Oregon Scientific weather station sensors, all of which had been showing their years of wear, decided to break down further. The outdoor hygrometer really never detected proper humidity levels, and the anemometer had one of its wind speed cups break off. Despite repairing it, I don’t think it ever really got the speed right again.
So we replaced it with a Davis Vantage VUE, which is considered to be the entry-level model among ‘serious’ personal weather stations — the kind farmers have been installing for some years now, for instance, among others. Instead of a bunch of individual sensors, the Davis has a single large all-in-one sensor unit with everything built in, even the rain gauge. While the basic receiver isn’t quite as nice as the Oregon, it does update much more frequently, about four times as often, and it’s rated to have much larger transmission range. The downside is cost about a hundred bucks more than the current comparable Oregon wireless weather station, but hey, we like weather data.
Appropriate Imagery