I came across an interesting site that monitors the accuracy of forecasts from weather providers. The site is called ForecastAdvisor.com. The site compares the accuracy of weather forecasts from such groups as the National Weather Service, The Weather Channel, Accuweather, etc.
Over the past several years, I have had a number of people ask me for advice on how to get their own Web site online. I've been very cautious in the advice I've given. I simply didn't have the resources available to really get them where they needed to go and stay there. You would think with more than 20 years of computer experience, helping the government manage their Web pages the past ten years, and having my own Website would be enough to start my own Internet business. However, someone who wants to put their business online needs much more than just a single computer geek can provide. They need 24-hour user support, they need various options in Internet services as their business grows, and most importantly they need to have online security. None of these customer needs could really be provided by me to prospective customers, so I've waited.
I was browsing the Web a couple days ago looking for a few things near my hometown. I came across the homepage of my "first" grade school,
Our family recently went on a mini-vacation a couple weeks ago. We spent a few days at Niagara Falls (on the Canadian side). The weather was initially warm so we were able to dine outside and walk the tourist areas. This is my fourth time in Canada and I'm always amazed just how much more "relaxed" everyone seems. On the third day it rained and we were pretty soaked during our visit to Marine land. Karen likes to see the Dolphins and more importantly, Logan does too. We had a blast despite being wet.
Last week we moved bryansplace.com to a new hosting company. You likely noticed the new look. For the most part, consider the site still under construction. After taking a look at several Content Mangement Systems (CMS), I've settled on Drupal. Once I install a few more modules and tweak the code a bit I think I'll be happy with the results. At least happy enough to go to bed at a decent hour.
My son and I took a walk last Friday evening. To our surprise...flocks of birds were heading south for the Winter. Geez...it is only the end of August and we are already seeing signs that Summer is over. Hopefully, we have a few more weeks before we have our first cold snap. I suspect sometime in September will be the first real signs that Autumn is here. You know...jackets, no shorts, take a blanket along for my son just in case, etc...
I doubt few people outside of Geek Land know this, but there is a programming language called Ruby. According to a Linux Journal article, the language is about to be really hyped up along the same lines as we have seen with Python and PHP. From
Ruby Central:
Most of all, Ruby puts the fun back into programming. When was the last time you had fun writing a program---a program that worked the first time; a program that you could read next week, next month, or next year and still understand exactly what it does? We find Ruby to be a breath of fresh air in the dense, often hectic world of programming. In fact, we see nothing but smiles after we present Ruby to programmers.
I have not written too much about technology or IT related issues. In part, this is due to spending most of my work day dealing with IT problems. Shoud not that be enough?
However, increasingly I am finding the need to be more creative outside work in applying what I know. At work I have been working quite a bit with the Mozilla products, Thunderbird and Firefox. Thunderbird is an e-mail client and Firefox is a browser. I was the team leader for deploying the Thunderbird e-mail client in my organization's region. This was not too much of a stretch since our previous official client was the Netscape 4.7 suite. For those that don't know, Firefox and Thunderbirds roots are with Netscape.
