NOAA’s (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration) Bay Area weather discussion bulletin (aka, the “area forecast discussion”:1 or AFD) has been rather lively lately as we are entering into a weather pattern change. We’re going from last week’s high-pressure dominated clear skies and fair weather to a pattern of wind and rain. Here’s some excerpts from some recent AFDs talking about the upcoming systems.

First, regarding windy storms there is this from the Friday PM report…

bq.. GENERALLY IF A STORM HAS A LOW PRESSURE CENTER DEEPER THAN 1000 MB AND TRACKS OFF THE CA COAST E OF LONG 130 WE GET A LOT OF WIND FROM IT…

p. It looks like the first system will be too far to the west of the Bay Area to generate strong local winds per the latest bulletin on Saturday afternoon…

bq.. THE FIRST SYSTEM IS PROJECTED TO PASS WELL TO THE W OF US. AT 18Z SUN THE NEW 18Z ETA HAS A DEEP 986 MB LOW NEAR 40/133 MOVING TOWARD THE NE WHILE THE NEW 18Z GFS HAS THE SYSTEM AT 989 MB NEAR 40/130. IN BOTH CASES…ESPECIALLY WITH THE ETA…THE LOW IS TOO FAR OFFSHORE TO REALLY HIT OUR DISTRICT WITH MAJOR WIND AND RAIN. IN A MAJOR WIND EVENT THE LOW WILL USUALLY BE WELL TO THE E OF LONG 130 WHEN THE CENTER IS S OF LAT 40. THUS WE HAVE MOVED THE HIGH WIND WATCH BACK AND IT IS NOW EFFECTIVE ONLY SUN NIGHT AND MON. EVEN THE SUN NIGHT TIMING MAY BE TOO FAST.

p. Some translation may be helpful. 40/133 is 40 degrees north lattitude/133 west longitude. 18Z is 1800 zulu time or “Coordinated Universal Time”:2 (UTC) also know as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and is eight hours ahead of Pacific Standard Time. ETA is the old name for the North American Mesoscale “weather model”:3, and GFS refers to the Global Forecast System weather model. MB is the abbreviation for “millibar”:4 a measure of pressure. As you can see, meteorologists have their own language.

The second system on Monday looks like more of a direct hit…

bq.. THE MAIN EVENT IS NOW DEFINITIVELY SCHEDULED FOR MON/MON EVE. DURING THIS PERIOD A NEW SLUG OF SUBTROPICAL MOISTURE WILL SURGE INTO THE DISTRICT FROM THE SW. A SECOND SURFACE LOW WILL DEVELOP OFFSHORE AND THIS ONE IS FORECAST TO TRACK WELL TO THE E OF THE FIRST ONE…THE NEW ETA HAS IT AT 996 MB CENTERED NEAR 38/126 AT 00Z TUE.

p. And from this morning’s report there is this…

bq.. AMSU TPW IMAGERY IS SHOWING A PLUME OF TROPICAL MOISTURE STREAMING TOWARDS THE COAST. PW`S GREATER THAN 0.75 INCHES HAS MOVED TO NEAR 39/131 AS OF 230 AM. WITH THE STRONG SYSTEM NEAR 26/135 PW`S HAVE INCREASED TO 2.42 INCHES IN THE CONVECTION.

p. The “AMSU”:5 stands for the advanced microwave sounding unit which ride on three NOAA weather satillites. The AMSU sensors are primarily used to study water vapor in the atmosphere. TPW stands for total precipitable water.. PW for precipitable water. Colorado State University has a great “site”:6 for viewing these AMSU data. From the precipitable water data, I put together a short animated image showing the tropical moisture plume being tapped by the upcoming storm systems.

And again from the Saturday afternoon report all of this tropical moisture is going to result in some rather heavy rain for the district.

bq.. THE EARLIER FORECAST OF 2-5 INCHES OF QPF FROM SUN AFTN THRU TUE MRNG STILL LOOKS GOOD BUT THE TREND IS NOW TO WEIGHT THAT PRECIP MORE HEAVILY ON THE LAST 24 HOURS OF THE PERIOD…MON/MON NIGHT. STILL…IF THE PRECIP FORECAST VERIFIES OUR MAINSTEM RIVERS SHOULD NOT FLOOD. IT USUALLY TAKES AT LEAST 6 INCHES OF RAIN IN 24 HOURS TO FLOOD THE RUSSIAN AND NAPA AND WITH THE DRY WX OF THE PAST MONTH IT MIGHT TAKE A LITTLE MORE THAN THAT.

p. Browsing to NOAA’s “Quantitative Precipitation Forecasts”:7 site you can find image maps with the predicted precipitation for the next five days. Here’s the image for Sunday through late Tuesday.

Zoinger says, batten down the hatches.

[7(NOAAs Quantitative Precipitation Forecast site)]http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/qpf/day1-3.shtml

[6(Colorado States AMSU site)]http://amsu.cira.colostate.edu/

[5(Wikipedia on the AMSU)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Microwave_Sounding_Unit

[4(Wikipedia on pressure)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millibar

[3(Wikipedia on weather models)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_Weather_Prediction

[2(Wikipedia on time)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time

[1(Bay Area area forecast discussion)]http://www.srh.noaa.gov/fwd/productviewnation.php?pil=MTRAFDMTR&version=0

Check this out…

And just for fun, here’s a lap on the same course in Grand Turismo 4 — a Playstation video game that is considered the best game in the racing simulation genre.

GT4 actually does a pretty good job of simulating the course.

P.S. “Here’s”:1 a link to the page on Google Video for the real racing video, and “here”:4 is a link to the GT4 video. If you click on the _More from this user_ link, you’ll find some other racing videos from Google Video user _www.motorsportvideo.tv_.

P.S.S. If you download the videos and use the Google Video player client to view them, the quality is much better.

[4(GT4 video)]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8394480455903883272&q=gt4

[3(Sonys official site for GT4)]http://www.us.playstation.com/Content/OGS/SCUS-97328/Site/

[2(Wikipedia on the course)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurburgring

[1(Google Video page for the video)]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=586282598381569707

I’ve been so waiting for Canon to release a new point-and-shoot camera. So waiting to upgrade my trusty SD300 that is a few years old. So waiting for Canon to support MP4 movies.

Finally, Canon has release the SD630… and I am still fucking waiting.

What was Canon thinking? “Motion JPEG”:1 (aka, MP2) for movie compression??? Is it two thousand and six??? Yeah, it is. Canon, in the fucking 21st century we use MP4.

I’d really like to meet the product manager who made this decision. Hum… should we support MP4 and get an hour plus worth of movie mode on a 1GB card or just stick with MP2 and limit it to less than *nine minutes*. It’s called a clue, and Canon surely doesn’t have it.

I’m pissed. I’ve only *ever* owned Canon point-and-shoot cameras — from the S100 to my current SD300. Now I’m going to have to find some other brand of camera to buy.

Well, I’ll just go to the official Canon blog and comment on this… yeah, right like they’d have a clue about blogging either.

P.S. I’m sure this decision was made because they didn’t want to fork over a few pennies in “royalties”:2 to somebody like DivX in order to support MP4. Hey Canon, thanks for making your product five cents cheaper, so I won’t have to buy it.

[2(DivX licensing page)]http://www.divx.com/company/partner/soft_integration.php

[1(Canons specs for the SD630)]http://consumer.usa.canon.com/ir/controller?act=ModelTechSpecsAct&fcategoryid=145&modelid=12956

Actually, they already are…

and…

“Halo: Combat Evolved”:1 was originally released on the Xbox back in November of 2001. It’s superb multiplayer play, smart AI, great physics and revolutionary vehicle gameplay (you can drive, or gun or be a passenger in the “warthog”:2 the main Halo vehicle) made it, erh… makes it, one of the best “first-person shooters”:5 around. As said on Wikipedia…

bq.. “Halo” is widely considered to be one of the best first-person shooter games ever, rivaling such classics as GoldenEye 007 and Half-Life.

p. But that’s not really important. What is important is how web-based video distribution is changing the web — and a few other small things like movies, TV, DVDs, etc.

As an example of how things are changing, let’s consider a videogame review and tip site. Even as late as last year, if an individual or small organization wanted to start such a site, it would be heavy with text and pictures, but completely devoid of video. Video creation, production and especially distribution was expensive and costly. However, all of that has now changed. Digital camcorders and video-capable point-and-shoot cameras are cheap, production tools are available free on the net and with services like Video Google, hosting is now free.

Think about how much more engaging video is than text or even audio (like podcasts). As an example, here’s about the best you could have done last year in creating a simple tip for Halo.

bq.. It’s possible to “jump” the flag over the chasm in Halo’s Boarding Action map by laying down a plasma grenade on the edge of the opponent’s flag level, grabbing the flag and jumping over the grenade. If you time everything right, you will be killed by the grenade blast, and the flag will be hurled across the chasm to your flag level.

Hopefully a teammate will grab the flag and score, otherwise you will have to quickly retrieve the flag when you respawn, before the flag is automatically returned, and score.

p. The text and pictures get the point across, but now it’s possible to really show how this trick is done with video.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then video is clearly priceless. Oh, and just for fun, here’s another example of how to score quickly on Halo’s Damnation map.

Not the best video quality, and kind of esoteric, and the sound levels are all over the map (hey, I was just hacking stuff together quickly), but with a little effort you could make a kick-ass review site… or a cooking show… or a documentary… or even a full-length movie.

Zoinger says, 2006… the year the distribution bottleneck for video ends. If you’ve got business in movies, TV, DVDs or anything else having to do with video, you’d better be “getting it”:3.

[5(Wikipedia on FPS)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter

[4(YouTube homepage)]http://www.youtube.com/

[3(A VC on the future of video)]http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2005/12/tv_execs_need_t.html

[2(Wikipedia on the hog)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_vehicles_in_the_Halo_universe#Warthogs

[1(Wikipedia on Halo)]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo:_Combat_Evolved