Yay! Boulder finally received its first snow of the season last night. It wasn’t much–only about an inch on grassy areas–but it’s a start.

J-List has brought it to my attention that Glico Corp. has designated Nov. 11 as Pocky Day, because the digits 11/11 resemble four Pocky sticks. What’s particularly amusing about this year’s Pocky Day, from my perspective, is that Yellow Magic Orchestra have somehow been drawn into the celebration. It’s sort of hard to convey the significance of either Pocky or YMO if you’re not already familiar with them. The closest analogy I can come up with is to imagine if Aerosmith endorsed Oreos. (That doesn’t quite get the idea across because YMO is one of extremely few Japanese music groups to achieve international recognition, but it’s a start.) I first heard them in my teens when I was discovering electronic music and, decades later, made a point of putting “Technopolis” on my iPod so that I could listen to it while looking out the hotel window during my first stay in Tokyo. read more

Dear Webmasters of the world,

As you launch into some massive redesign of your site, consider usability over all else. Yes, it’s all very cute and impressive if you can use lots of Flash animation (BTW, Flash is going bye-bye in case you haven’t gotten that memo) to make things move around and bounce and stuff, but it’s only cute and impressive the first time the user sees it. After that it’s a waste of the user’s time. If I find myself waiting for your site to do anything besides simply load, at best my attention will wander and at worst I’ll lose interest in your company and its products altogether. This statement may lead you to think that I have the attention span of of a hyperactive seven-year-old who’s been drinking Red Bull, but in truth I’m a fairly patient person in my mid-40s with an above-average education. I just don’t like having my time wasted, and I particluarly don’t like having my time wasted when it’s not my choice to be digging around on your site in the first place. read more

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.