Vacuum

Trebuchet at Tech Twilight 2013 at the Hands-On Museum

2013-05-21T15:17:14-04:00

Here's S. demonstrating one of the trebuchets from Summers-Knoll School at Tech Twilight 2013, held at the Ann Arbor Hands On Museum. (Photo courtesy AAHOM).

No, he didn't fling anything indoors; that task was left to Dr. George and his ping pong ball cannon.

2013 Moore Oklahoma tornado path map

2013-05-21T14:16:55-04:00

This map from the National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma (via Atlantic Cities) shows the destructive path of the Moore, Oklahoma tornado of 20 May 2013. This is a preliminary map that also shows the track of a 3 May 1999 tornado that followed a very similar path.

There's too much graphic, devastating imagery from the scene which I won't include here. Dr Jeff Masters has an excellent overview of the meteorology of the event, including accounts of debris being thrown 100 miles in the air to land on Tulsa, Oklahoma.

UPDATE: The National Environmental Visualization Laboratory has this image of radar rotational velocity across the storms of that day, showing tornadic activity in darker colors. (Credit: NOAA)

UPDATE: The Google Crisis Map for 2013 Oklahoma tornadoes includes a track of the tornado plus shelter information and links to other local resources. I've included a snapshot from Tuesday evening, May 21, 2013.

UPDATE: A second National Weather Service map shows the detail of where the tornado was at its maximum intensity. (Credit: National Weather Service, Norman OK, via Facebook)

"Wikipedia is the great postmodern novel" - Qworty and wikipedia as unreliable text

2013-05-21T13:48:58-04:00

Credit to Salon's Andrew Leonard for the article "Revenge, ego, and the corruption of Wikipedia", which unmasks wiki-troll Qworty and his pattern of anonymous mean-spirited edits to settle old grudges. Qworty - his real name is not important to my discussion of him - was a prolific Wikipedian. He routinely sabotaged the biographies of rival writers by doing things like removing lists of literary prizes they had won after they had died. Because Qworty generally played within the rules of the Wikipedia game, even his most egregious efforts had their defenders:

In the aftermath of the Filipacchi episode, Qworty did not lack for defenders. Qworty, like many other Wikipedia editors, took seriously his responsibility to root out what he considered self promotion, unjustifiable praise or outright puffery. Just the facts, ma’am! He described himself, on his own Wikipedia user page, as particularly focused on identifying and fixing “articles with potential conflicts of interest.” Wherever he found people manipulating Wikipedia to their own advantage, he would intervene.

Andrew Leonard caught wind of Qworty's excesses and decided to investigate further. What he found led to a remarkable revelation: Qworty was playing a game with Wikipedia, a game different from that of neutral points of view and building the knowledge of the world.

Qworty's user page has been blanked, but thanks to Wikipedia's infinite memory, it lives on in past revisions. Before the page was shut down, it was replaced by a postmodernist manifesto of sorts.

So when you ask “Who is Qworty?” be aware of the affective fallacy and the intentional fallacy. Be aware that not everybody has reacted to my words in the way that you do (because not everybody is like you), and be aware that anybody who is trying to guess my intentions as a writer is blowing the purest gas.

So who is Qworty? Qworty is one of the creators of text on Wikipedia.

And what is Wikipedia? Wikipedia is the great postmodern novel, the book that James Joyce might have written if he had lived long enough and could somehow convert himself into the finite number of monkeys who are writing this postmodern novel that is subtitled “the encyclopedia that anyone can edit.”

Wikipedia is pretty busy telling you what it is not—WP:NOT—so the question must be engaged, just what is Wikipedia, besides a poorly understood post-modern novel in perpetual progress?

The postmodern encyclopedia does not like being described as such, and Qworty (after some thrashing about) has been banned from Wikipedia.

Yahoo makes changes to Flickr, users are not happy

2013-05-21T01:53:36-04:00

The site loads slowly, the photos are all squished together, and the carefully curated metadata and tags and comments and photo names are de-emphasized. It's like a weird mix of Pinterest and Tumblr.

I'm hoping for a classic.flickr.com to preserve the old UI, in the same way that old-school Weather Underground users can use classic.wunderground.com to see things the way they were meant to be.

If I had the time, I'd cherry pick the best photos from my Flickr stream and blog about them here.

Yahoo in talks to acquire Tumblr, users are not happy

2013-05-19T13:46:00-04:00

Yahoo is in talks to acquire Tumblr, with a price tag north of a billion dollars. Who knew that simplifying the blogging interface could be so profitable? I wonder, though, how Yahoo is going to make money off of Tumblr page views without ruining the service. (cf Flickr) (cf MyBlogLog) (cf GeoCities) etc. See what Tumblr users think of the acquisition.

You know that house your friends got that was the best hang out, watch tv, party you face off, great pot lucks, still clean and comfy to chill in place? Then the landlords were like ugh, yall gotta go, and then the best hang out place was gone?

Yeah, so where is everyone heading now that Yahoo bought this place?

There's nothing like a big messy purple smooch from Yahoo to make users fear for their accumulated friendships on a service that just wants to monetize page views with ads.

Welcome to Argo Cascades [Flickr]

2013-05-09T17:53:02-07:00

Edward Vielmetti posted a photo:

Argo Cascades signage near the Ann Arbor Railroad trestle and Argo Dam.

The B2B trail here goes over Argo Dam.

Notebook: paper twitter [Flickr]

2013-05-08T17:27:42-07:00

Edward Vielmetti posted a photo:

On the usefulness of writing things down on paper before you upload them to the net.

the great grey sky [Flickr]

2013-03-19T14:04:39-07:00

Edward Vielmetti posted a photo:

at the end of winter

Athens Press - Job Printing (screen capture) [Flickr]

2013-01-13T11:51:13-08:00

Edward Vielmetti posted a photo:

From a 1940 movie "We're In The Movies", a screen capture showing the Athens Press sign.

night light [Flickr]

2012-12-21T21:09:29-08:00

Edward Vielmetti posted a photo:

the dining room at night through the lens of one of the worst cameras I have used in a long time