Another possible tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

In comparison, last December's earthquake was measured at 8.1 initially by the USGS. This earthquake is classified as a "shallow" earthquake, occuring within the top 50km of the earths crust. Shallow earthquakes are more likely to cause a tsunami, because as the lower within the surface the earthquake occurs , the less warping of the ocean floor occurs.

--Magnitude 8.2 earthquake in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia - WikiNews

Think about giving, if you can.

Update: No tsunami, but hundreds are dead and many buildings have collapsed.

I've been hoarding this little gem of a post for a while now, but now I feel that all should bask in it's glory. This forum post over at Ambrosia Software shows three different GeekTool scripts for your geeky pleasure:

1. Uptime stats for your computer. I have this little gem showing at the bottom left of my screen, always showing that my little computer hasn't been restarted in well over a month. Except when there's a security update. Damn you Apple!
2. Top on the desktop. Shows your top 12 (or whatever) process on your machine. I currently don't have this one running as I usually don't care about this and the script take up too much room. I might rework it to show more of what I want though.
3. IP address of all of your network connections. Rock on. This one shows your internal IP, your external IP and what interfaces are active. Very nice.

If I happen to mess with any of these in the future, I'll be sure to let you know.

I've been thinking recently about different approaches that could be taken to creative writing utilizing blogs. I've had an idea for a while of writing a book or a collection of articles about spending every day of a year in an art museum. Every day go to an art museum and every day write an article or essay about it. Maybe one day it's a story about something interesting that happened, another could be a critique about one of the pieces there, another could be profile of one of the people that work or visit there daily.

I like to call this micro social commentary. It could be very interesting to view daily life in an institution like an art museum through a magnifying glass and see what goes on every day right under our noses. How do these little events translate into the daily events of our lives and how does it effect us? A meditation on life as seen through an art museum. A real look at the beauty and wonder that you walk by every day and never notice.

Anyway, I think as a book this doesn't work. As a newspaper article, it could work, but at most you're going to get that in weekly and not daily and there's no real conversation. I'm even wonder if this can be done daily in a newspaper. But as a blog, this would fit perfectly. Every day, a new post about a new day at the museum. I'd be interested in that.

The problem becomes, how do you support yourself? I think that business models of writing blogs are just now coming into being and none are "mature" enough to really work. I'm thinking of subscriptions, advertising or donations. I could see possibly getting a grant from the museum, or possibly going to work for the museum as a PR person, but I don't see that happening any time soon. If you already work at a place like this, it would be fairly simple to write an entry or two during the day, but then you have the whole "getting fired for blogging" issue. And, of course, I would like to do this and none of the above really help me.

My thought right now is to try it out on the weekends. I would love to go downtown every Saturday to the Akron Art Museum and write a weekly article on that day. Of course the Akron Art Museum is closed until 2006, but blogging about the new building could be pretty cool. But I may be getting ahead of myself; lot can happen in a year.

It's an idea I've been kicking around and I thought I would finally kick it out and see what happens. Any thoughts?

Have you ever had anything on your blog that was breaking news? If so, check this out and send the guy gal your info: Help Defend Bloggers.

I sent this in to him her just now.

I don't know how much it counts for, but you could say I was in the middle of the Ohio Voter irregularity news story last year.  My relevant posts are below.

Ohio Elections Screwup
Ohio Elections Screwup (by Amy)
Ohio Elections: Hard Numbers

Additionally:
It's Over
Watchdogs Spot E-Vote Glitches
Computer Glitch in Ohio Gives Bush 3,893 Extra Votes
Provisional Ballot Update

I was also at the Kerry Rally in Akron

If you have any questions or anything, let me know.  I stand behind your cause and would be willing to help in any way that I can.

How you can't call that news, I don't know.

In fact, I'm kind of breaking the news right now.

UPDATE: Damn me and my sexist white, male mind! Thank you for the heads up, Kevin. All pronouns are properly changed to the female persuasion. Lauren, I apologize. I used to know a guy in college named Lauren and it's been a male name ever since.

Of course the Boing Boing article now says 'she' everywhere, so I'm just an idiot.

I've seen a lot of drawing with pictures applications coming out recently, mostly from Flickr, but this one is by far the coolest. Amaztype, draws the name of your search with pictures from Amazon of the results of your search. I just realized that that's a hard one to say, so instead I'll give examples.

You can search for your favorite musician and have the album covers of the results spell out their name.

You can search on your favorite author or favorite hunky actor. Steve, with your lust over fonts, graphic design, and a certain actor named Brad, this one's for you.

You can also click on the images and get a zoomed in view of the titles making up the name with details on the book, such as price, title, sales rank, and average rating. Way cool and a great new way to search for books and things on Amazon.

Found on Boing Boing