In reality, the article has a bunch of real data and useful insight but it starts out with three paragraphs of 21st century “scare journalism”. The typical reader will get only get as far as the first part and never get to the real information - which says a lot for the modern attention span visa vi a 3000 word article. It’s also unfortunate the author makes reference to a number of sources but neglects to actually know anything about them. For example, there are numerous references and credits to work by Arthur C. Nelson of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech. From what I’ve read, Mr. Nelson goes by “Chris”. It took me all of 45 seconds to find that out.

So, if you’ve gotten this far, you are doing better than most. I deliberately spend two paragraphs on stuff unrelated to my post, in part to make a point and also to lambaste some of today’s journalists. Now for the real information.

Are people moving from the cities to the suburbs -or- are people moving from the suburbs to the cities. I think the answer is both. Perhaps the difference is the demographics of the cities vs the suburbs. It’s my supposition that the demographics undulate like some strange circadian rhythm.

The city offers “everything on one place” and ironically is more environmentally “green” than it’s suburban counter. In this case, my definition of “green” refers to the fact that a 100 people living in a condominium tower and walking or using public transportation, have a lower carbon footprint than those same 100 people living in individual homes and driving private automobiles to get everywhere - especially when you add up the the carbon footprint of building the dwellings, automobiles, etc. Further, you can make a much greener condominium tower for 100 people then you will make suburban homes for the same population.

Singapore is a perfect example of this “city center” engineered society.  By constructing high rise complexes for living; then clustering basic needs - first level schooling, food, basic shopping, etc. - at ground level; and connecting these centers to the major facilities via train, you leave a lot of open space for trees, grass, and outdoor areas. Plus, you have reduced the need for traffic for basic necessities to near zero and optimized public traffic at the same time.

Unfortunately, Singapore is a special case. There is very little “growth history”. Imagine how different Boston, Chicago, Francisco, or Seattle would be if you literally wiped them off the map and said; “go build it, new”.

Now for the rub. As a commenter wrote, “in many cities, like Austin, major employers are not necessarily all centered downtown”. My employer is just such an example. Over the past decade, they have moved further and further from the city. They once had a work population of 1000 in Boston, now they are making yet another step further out - even abandoning an established site to move another 10 miles down the road. Why ? Simple - it’s cheaper for them.

Most companies do not look at non direct costs (”green” or “greenbacks”). If they can get the job done for less, they will. As long as they can get a workforce to do the job, it does not matter if the work is done in a city center, the suburbs, or South Africa. I expect there will be a time not too far in the future, where “payment for work” will get a serious adjustment - downward in high paying areas just as it has gone upward in low cost geographies around the world. If Ford could build a car in Detroit for the same cost as in Mexico, they’d likely choose Detroit. Of course, it means the Detroit auto worker will have to make less than they do now. It also means the cost of housing, health care, etc. will need to get under control, which means insurance companies and drub manufacturers will need to be realistic, … and the flattening goes on and on.

So, what does this mean ? I think it means that cities and suburbs will ebb and flow. I think it means people will prioritized their needs and wants and then match those to the places where they live, the places where they work, and the impact they will have on world (this last one is deliberately nebulous since people will choose too prioritize their definition of that too).

Now, you can agree. You can agree to disagree. You can disagree outright. If you are still reading, surprise surprise, then you might want to read the original article, CNN’s “cities are hot” article, FoxNews’s “flocking to the suburbs” article, Men’s Style saying “move to the suburbs” article, Dayton’s “Gray to Green“, or Google for lots more including Down Under !

Today I added 2 more 750 GB drives. The system reconfigured itself for RAID5 so now I have 2 TB (yes, TB = terabytes). So, it should be a while before I run out of storage and more important, with RAID5 I have hot swappable storage - if any one disk drive should ever fail.

the down side now is there is no way I will ever have a fallback for the NAS. It has become a single point of failure if - unlikely as it may seem - the entire thing should bite the dust. (I truly hope that writing that was not asking for trouble.)

BTW: for those with slow-speed internet, I apologize for the 360KB image. I tried to make it smaller but it started at 2.7MB so I feel I did “OK” when all things are considered. For those asking “how”, all I can say is; “GIMP is one of the most amazing photo manipulation tools I have ever used - and I’ve used Photoshop and Photoshop Elements for years … and GIMP is free !

There are five characteristics I need …

1. “what to include” - directories and files to save; needs to support wildcards
2. “what to exclude” - directories and files to skip; needs to support wildcards
3. “since last backup” - support a timestamp (saved after the last successful backup) as a filter of what to backup on the next iteration
4. Create a single compressed file (using formats like ZIP, 7z, or GZip) containing all files selected for the backup
5. Free or reasonably price

On Linux TAR does all of this and it does it nicely. I just use the following:

tar -czvf outputfile.tar.gz timestamp -I file-with-include-list -X file-with-exclude-list -N=file-with-timestamp

All of the version of TAR I have found for Windows either has bugs related to the first three features or the documentation is so bad/void, there is no way to diagnose the generic error messages they spit out.

Most Windows solutions rely on the “archive bit” but that is not a reliable mark for what has been backuped with incremental backups.

So, what backup tools do you use ? What would you suggest?

Those are the opening lines from a story I never read - well, “read” I guess is the key word there. From what I remember, the “creature” in question looked a bit like what your imagination would conjure if I described a mouse morphed with dragon - but remaining the size of a mouse. the creature was called a Vesper … but no relationship to the drink or the scooter.

The Vesper was both quick *and* ferocious - at least to anything that crossed its path. Yet to most creatures of the forest, the Vesper was the guardian. The Vesper was also a very old creature - older than nearly every other thing that dwelled in the vast growth. Most reckon it has evolved over millennia but not quite sure from what. It had no real root origins in any phylum or species. And yet, the Vesper was more often than not respected for its fair undertaking of the goings on in the deep woods. That was, until the day that the forest was besieged by the “invaders”. The Vesper knew it’s domain was in jeopardy but knew even more keenly that it’s presence should be disguised.

So, it was, that the Vesper took to the caves and the darkness. Time passed and the Vesper grew more accustom to the dark. It’s eyes became sensitive to light and its body grew anemic. It gained a keen sense of space and objects in its vicinity. Time passed too for the “invaders” and they grew in numbers. The Vesper multiplied too, but in hiding.

There would come a time when the Vesper over crowded all of its dark places and could no longer keep in hiding. Given it’s extended evolution of darkness, the Vesper only ventured out under the cloak of darkness - an environment suited to it’s generations in hiding. It was seldom seen in the night and when it was it was not recognized for what it once was and how it had became its current form from its long forgotten presence.

to be continued ….

image source: unknown

Today was a bit different. I would have loved to see the jet that made this contrail …

… and a few minutes later the wind had started to push it away …

I’ve found a good map and it is available in two sizes - one is huge and if you run Firefox, it defaults to scaling to your browser window and clicking on a part of the image, it zooms to original size centered on your click! There are also regional animated maps.

The main website is www.weather.gov and has a lot of useful information for the amateur (and professional weather forecaster).

And for those with a mobile device with internet access, you might like to check out this live radar mobile map. It lets you choose a region (by letter) - currently USA only - and then zoom/pan (zoom with “I” and “O” and pan with “N”, “S”, “E”, and “W”). Once you zoom in to an area, it provides an up to date animated weather loop. You can also bookmark an area once you have it on-screen. Great for knowing if you are about to drive into “fowl” weather or for checking your aviation route as part of your “go / no-go” preparations.

 

This is the oldest Stearman flying in the world. It is also much bigger than it would appear in the photos. the only thing that might give a hint to it’s size is the fact that the little windows in the fuselage are for the passenger compartment ! Yes, in addition to 750 lbs of mail, this plane was also designed to carry 4 passengers. You might ask - if the passengers are inside the plane, why is the pilot still outside. The truth is that the wisdom of the time was a pilot could not fly an airplane if he could not feel the wind and environment surrounding him.

If you have high speed internet, check out the videos !

Update:
I read a funny statistic over at NORDO News. First the serious one - the restoration took 18,000 hours ! Now the funny one - the restoration took 416 hanger meals with an average of 9 place settings, requiring 7,400 paper plates, 104 gallons of tomato sauce and 1000 bread rolls.