Fires

The view from our apartment today (Sunday) at 2:30pm:

This shot is towards Mount Wilson, which you can barely see. Anything you see in the sky is smoke, not clouds.

This shot is looking more to the west of Mt Wilson, so towards Altadena / JPL.



Useful reference sites:

www.iscaliforniaburning.com

Mt Wilson Webcam (UCLA Observatory) (May have loading issues, it's being hit pretty hard. Especially interesting pictures at night.)

LA Times google map.

ENPLAN Wildfire map.

Possibly more pictures here if I take any other interesting ones. The view from our apartment isn't that great.

A powerful statement

Jimmy Carter makes a powerful statement. I always had a good impression of Carter as a president when I was growing up. I found out later that may not have been terribly accurate, but I still think that his work after being president has been even more important. I hope many people read the linked article and are affected by it, to change in good ways. I know most of the people who read this blog are not those who need to be changed by it, but I think it's interesting nonetheless.

Barney

Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) pulls a Leeeeeroy Jenkins. (via Bluesnews)

Today on: "I'll believe it when I see it."

So, playing my new baseball game, I naturally have started up a franchise mode, playing the Braves. We're now 7 games into the season and won the opening series against the Phillies, gave up a game to the Nats but won the other two, and started off the first series against the Marlins with a come from behind 4-3 win (with Chipper hitting 3 solo HR's and McCann entering for a pinch hit RBI walk that tied it). Ok, so it's already stretching the likely happenings in the season, but at least the injuries appear to be consistent with the Braves' luck: Josh Anderson twisted something badly during the first game and is out for 98 days, and Javier Vasquez's second start got cut short to one inning when he threw a fastball so hard he broke a rib. Yeah, really. No, he didn't get hit with a ball or anything, so it must have been that crazy arm of his.

Anyways, aside from those oddities... I decided to take a look at what the standings were like, to see if it might be a decent predictor (ha ha). AL East: NYY 1st (6-2), Red Sox 2nd (5-4), Blue Jays 2nd (5-4), then the Rays (4-4) and Orioles (1-7). So far so good.

AL Central: Royals 1st (7-2) ... what? ... CWS 2nd (6-3), Twins (4-5), Indians (3-6), Tigers (3-7).
Ok, at that point I went yeah, not predictive. :)
The rest, for those curious:

AL West: Rangers 1st (5-3), Mariners 2nd (4-4, including a surprise 8-7 win against the Angels in 18 innings!), Athletics (5-5) and Angels (3-5).

NL West: D-backs 1st (8-1), Padres 2nd (4-4) Dodgers 2nd (4-4), Giants (3-4), Rockies (2-6).
NL Central: Cubs 1st (5-3), Cardinals 2nd (6-4), Astros (4-3), Pirates (4-4), Brewers (2-6), Reds (1-7)
NL East: Braves 1st (6-1), Mets (4-3), Phillies (3-4), Nats (3-4), Marlins (3-4)

For the Dodgers, Manny is 10-30, with two doubles, no HR and 5 walks.

There's a few weirdnesses. The first is that the AI bats very aggressively, even in simulated games, so pitch counts are a decent bit lower than expected. There's also a VERY annoying bug when trying to make a catch of a flyout in the outfield - sometimes it misses inexplicably when the animation looks perfect. It doesn't credit as an error. Of the three runs the Marlins had in the last game, two were because of this error causing H. Ramirez to get a pair of triples that should have been outs. It's not actually that common, but it's very annoying when it does show up. (Both of these are said to be fixed in the upcoming patch that's in testing, whew.) I'm also a very impatient hitter, so the Braves have a lot fewer walks than would be expected, but I'm working on that!

Oddity

Grant Park had an unusual visitor today. He was over near the tennis courts, in part of the outfield which never really gets used for much besides volleyball. It took me a while to figure out what he was doing, but it turns out that he was a fisherman. Had a rod and reel and was practicing the casting motions.

Strange.