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For the record, November has arrived and Boulder has yet to see a single snowflake this season. Temperatures have dropped below freezing on only one night. I just paid my utility bill and noticed that the average daily temperature for October 2010 was 56F; for the same month last year, it was 43F. The recent fire was blamed in part on the lack of precipitation. According to the local paper, Boulder has received only 2.26 inches of rain since August 1. (That doesn’t include the fraction of an inch we got last night.) The average precipitation for Aug-Oct is 5.14 inches. read more

The morning report says that the fire west of Boulder is 70% contained and the 1800 people evacuated from their homes are allowed to return. The fire did not spread during the night. It sounds like the worst is over.

Yes, there’s another fire burning west of Boulder. This one is closer than the Four Mile fire and the area of evacuation already includes residences and businesses within the city limits. We live to the east and north of Boulder proper so we are currently not in immediate danger.

A good chunk of downtown Boulder is now without electricity, according the local news. This seemed a little odd at first until I remembered that there are power-transmission towers in the area of the fire and a substation just south of it. read more

Yes, I’ve been bad about posting photos of the kittens. To remedy that I’ve just posted a bunch of photos of them and the rest of the bunch here on my flickr page. They were taken during August and September.

Here’s something I’ve been wondering recently: how was the bass line in “The Thin Wall” by Ultravox done? (A Google search will reveal links to the video and other ways you can listen to it. I sprang $0.99 at Amazon to get an MP3 of the remastered album version which has the cool cello stuff near the end. Unfortunately I think I sold my CD of Rage in Eden long ago.) We’re talking about 1981 sequencer technology here. Notice that it changes in subtle ways as it goes along. Is it just someone dinking with a CV sequencer? Maybe it’s just a gate programmed in the drum machine (a Linn, I think), which obviously has plenty of free voices since there’s nothing else coming out of it besides a kick and snare? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller? Anyone? (Wow, two 80s references in one post. Am I showing my age?) read more

10:10 on 10/10/10 just slipped by 5 minutes ago without my observation. I guess I’ll have to set a reminder in Outlook for 11:11 on 11/11/11.

(This is one of those weather-related posts that I’m writing largely for my own future reference.) Today is the first day that we’ve had weather in October that’s appropriate to the month. Until today it’s been hot and dry, but today it’s overcast with a forecasted high temperature of 66F. We had next to no rain in September and have not yet had sub-freezing temperatures. I’ve finally gotten over my habit of saying that it usually snows by the end of September; that pattern has been firmly relegated to the past, it seems. read more

This came by way of Tracie’s sister-in-law. I haven’t actually tried this yet, but it seems clever. Whether or not it would work would depend on the thickness and strength of the bottle, I’d think. Here are the photos from the email; I rewrote the instructions because my inner tech writer couldn’t deal with the grammar in the original text.

Cut off the neck and part of the top of a water bottle:

Insert the top of the bag through the neck of the bottle, fold it down over the threads, and close it by screwing on the bottle cap: read more