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Geek CAM watching Hurricane Floyd in South Florida
Gregory F. Maxwell gave us the
link-up to a South Florida Geekcam. The house has been evacuated, apparently, but the Cam must go on. I'm looking forward to watching Floyd make landfall.Update: 09/14 11:31 by H :There's a back-up site up. And for record, I regret damage done to property and life-but the power of Nature is still amazing.
I don't know what webcam *you're* looking at, but the one I see is pointed out at somebody's back yard and a body of water. If we're going to see anybody's house being blown away, it'll be the house of the people that set up this webcam in the first place.
I applaud them for allowing us to witness this spectacle of nature from the point of view of their home. I don't particularly think it's funny, but like most people, I consider it thrilling to be able to witness such a thing, even if it's not first-hand.
Could simply be normal tidal forces..
It actually didn't seem that submurged.. mainly wet. But yah, you're right of course.
It would have been much cooler if they'd managed to set up a live RealVideo stream. I'm sure they could have found some rebroadcast providers (like that distributed RealNetworks "backbone" thing) to donate the bandwidth...
Not necessarily. I'm from Tallahassee, which has previously been described on /. as being the armpit of Florida. Which is actually pretty close to the truth if you're trying to figure out what part of the state it's in.
Anyway, we rarely ever get 'canes, and the last one that was major was back in '85, IIRC. Basically, 'canes would have to either cross the penninsula where it connects to the mainland, which is tricky; circle the entire way around the Gulf clockwise; or make a sharp right after entering the Gulf.
So you can live in Florida and be pretty safe from hurricanes. My younger siblings have, I'm sure, no idea what it's like to get hit by a hurricane. Thunderstorms, sure, but not a 'cane.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
The power company always has trouble with trees. Remember how a few years ago when the load was very high there was a blackout across much of the city? IIRC it was because the lines sagged (due to the waste heat generated by the passage of so many electrons) and hit a tree that was _way_ too close to the lines.
But other than Kate, which didn't really do much in my neighborhood, I can't remember a single serious storm in Tally for as long as I lived there. (I now live in Seattle where I'm told they're expecting a magnitude 8 or 9 quake any time now. Crap)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Aye, the cowards came from behind.
The unsuspecting cam never had a chance.
Everyone who lives there know that there will be hurricanes.
Hurricanes are not a new invention so if you choose to live there you have to expect them.
What do you think the best way to face something you have no way to affect in any way ?
The ones who put up this cam decided that turning it into a fun event was the best thing. Is that so wrong ?
I really don't think that the post was intended to poke fun at or in any way detract from the serverity of the threat that Florida and the South-Eastern Seaboard is facing. It has been woefully misfilled under humor, though there is a sense of 'geek-to-the-end' about abandoning your home but leaving a WebCam to record the onslaught of the storm.
/. readership when I say that we are not entertained, but rather concerned and enawed by Floyd. Our thoughts are with you, and we are not laughing.
I, for one, am dreading the reports from the Bahamas, once they are available. I certainly hope that this does not turn out to be another Andrew for Florida. I'm also a bit concerned about the leftovers (or whatever there be) that makes it's way here to New England.
We have all seen severe weather at one point or another. It's been a number of years since I've seen a hurricane. I think Gloria was a class 3, and I'm quite a ways off shore, so I can only imagine what you folks are facing now. But if it helps at all, I'm sure I speak for most
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
No, not the storm itself. That's not funny.
Putting a web cam up to virtualy "brave the storm", THAT's funny.
The pictures are broken because they are being sensored by Big Brother. They don't want you to know there really is no hurricane. It's all a plot by the government to boost lagging sales of plywood.
This article is about geek culture and the fact that in the shadow of a disaster a geeks still love technology, computers and the internet. This is not about a morbid death fetish. Get of your soap box and quit crying. No one is twisting these peoples arms to live where they live. I dont feel bad at all for the dummy who gets crushed because he is stitting in his beach cottage filming the storm surge. Slashdot is looking at this from a geeks perspective if you dont understand that then go read www.cnn.com like the rest of the masses.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
As a resident of Florida (Orlando), I don't know if I appreciate the morbid interest a web cam provides to the slash dot crew. I hope, that while you watching it, that you realise real people and real lives are about to get pounded. I've got friends and acquantances who stand a real good chance of loosing their homes to the storm surge projected on Florida's coasts. On the way in to work I've been watching the long lines of traffic from Melbourne and Daytona. They're shutting down Research Park near UCF (we leave at noon), and Orlando itself will essentially shut down around 4 pm.
Floyd is a big, crazy storm, class 4 trying to be a class 5. It might pass by and the only thing we get is a lot of wind and rain. But then again, it might not. Whatever happens, keep in mind that our experiences in Florida over the next 48 hours are not meant to be a form of cheap entertainment for slash dotters.
Yesterday, I stocked up - at the grocery store, there was no bread, no soup, no canned meats (tuna, spam, etc.) the first aid section was ransacked, there were not enough shopping carts, and people were parking in the middle of the road to get to the store while workers put up solid steel storm shutters on the outside of the building. A fistfight broke out twice while we were there - the second because someone tried to go through the express line with a full cart. At least they had just gotten a new shipment of water.
As we drove back, we went past a Scotty's (a local hardware store). One guy rammed his truck into another truck several times, and then peeled off. I heard later that there was a riot there. The store had run out of all fasteners (screws, nails, etc), and people were buying plywood and duct tape.
Bandwidth has been spotty. I haven't done many tests, but browsing the web on my ADSL has become a "maybe" affair. I'm not pinging through to some sites occasionally. I'm using BellSouth. My server (www.onepaper.com) is also down here (actually located in Boca Raton, another city), and located in the old IBM campus, which is built to withstand a nuclear attack, and should weather the hurricane without trying. Just in case, we made copies of backups, and CD-ROM sets of critical data, and sent them around.
Phone service was ringing "circuits busy" (fast busy signal) quite a bit yesterday - I was using my cell phone more that my regular phone. I had a dozen people over for Monday night Rocky Horror rehearsal at my place (which I think would take place even post-apocolypse). One person is living in a mobile home, and is more afraid of the shelters than the hurricane. She has nowhere to go. Another person who just moved back from college, and is currently living with her parents, lives in a wood construction home. She and her sister are going to stay with us tonight.
A large part of a tree is down outside. I just got a call that they are closing down the roads in a short while.
If anybody is from this area, I am near the corner of Okeechobee (a major road that runs east/west), and Military Trail (about two miles west of I-95, and about three from the coast). I'll stay on-line as long as possible - lightning dosen't often go along with hurricanes.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
But Floyd winds are 117% of NASA shuttle hangar strength. Keep watching the skies...
For archival readers, this was posted at 11:47 CDT, in case the above time is still several hours off.
Actually, it says 500 feet _from_ the atlantic ocean, maybe in a marina, methinks. Should be able to detect trees falling without too much extra-sensory perception. =)
A friend of mine has his web cam aimed out of his window towards one of the local bridges. Shortly after he put it up he started getting once an hour on the hour hits from the local weather office. His curiosity finally lead to calling them to find out what was going on. They were using his web cam to suppliment their weather data.
Now he tilts the camera up a bit to catch more of the sky for them. I don't know how much data a web cam can provide on a fast moving storm but I wouldn't completely rule it out.
I also live in Tallahassee and was in Hurricane Kate in November, 85. Kate was a minimal hurricane when it hit our beautifully forested city of Tallahassee. heheh. The 70-ish MPH winds of Kate knocked down so many trees that we, living well inside the city limits, had no electricity for days. Some people in the outlying neighborhoods and further had no power for 2 or 3 weeks!
;)
But the thing I remember most vividly was the howling wind that went on for hours. A large tree, about 20 inches in diameter, fell behind our apartment -- and we didn't even hear it fall. We discovered it the next day lying about 10 feet from the house.
A minimal hurricane, even hitting where there is no possibility of flooding, is a pretty scary thing. Stuff flying through the air, trees and limbs falling, and the ever present possibility of a "tornado" or superswirl focuses your attention every time the howl reaches a higher pitch.
I'm alternately fascinated and terrified by hurricanes. We've had many much larger ones threaten our area since '85 but we haven't been hit again. But we choose to live down here and we take our chances. My friends and relatives living right on the Gulf made their own choices too.
As for those who think there is something wrong with a webcam sitting in the path of the hurricane, remember: you don't have to look. But, please, don't judge those of us who appreciate the view.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Why is the Space Center in Florida again?
Because the people at NASA are big fans of Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon".
The real reason:
When you launch a rocket into a normal (non retrograde) equitorial orbit, you add the velocity of the launching site, at the equator this translates to v = (2*pi*r)/(24*60*60) m/s, or about 450 m/s velocity that you get for free.
The two parts of the continental US that are closest to the Equator are Florida and Texas, and it was a coin toss as to which got the launch facilities (though the lack of great populations to the east of Florida certainly helped). Texas got the Space Center as a consolation prize.
Jules Verne's also described having to choose between Texas and Florida.
A lot of Vandenburg launches are destined for polar orbits, which is why Vanderburg isn't at much of a geographic disadvantage (and the Air Force security, too).
This is also why the French/ESA launches from Guiana, just about right on the equator.
George
If you want to put your big monitors to use, NOAA posts a handfull of
big high resolution satellite images here.
I've never had to evacuate from a hurricane. However, I have had to deal with one or two (or ten or twelve) typhoons during the seven years I lived in Taiwan. Better still, on a small island in the middle of the Pacific, you don't get to evacuate inland.
,fresh vegetables (they would be in short supply for a few weeks after a typhoon, and wincingly expensive), and beer. The worst consequence we ever had to deal with were friends who came up from the center of the island after a few days because their water had stopped (they usually smelled pretty ripe by then!).
We lived through the typhoon season every fall. Our standard plan was to stock up on bottled water
How do you survive? a few pointers now the Florida coast has to reconstruct...
1) Wood-frame houses are great -- in California. Look into concrete and brick as building materials.
2) Some parts of the world have iron or stainless steel hurricane shutters for the windows. They're attractive and useful at the same time!
3) Walk the extra 200 feet to the beach. Pumping salt water out of your beachfront house has just got to bite.
Good luck!
All the shuttles are at the Cape along with parts of the International Space Station and parts to repair and improve the Hubble Space telescope.
If all that gets trashed by the hurricane we (humanity and science) might lose years of work in space program. A significant amount of Congress is hostile to spending money on NASA and the Space Station. We could lose the ISS all in one shot without Space Shuttles (which will take years to rebuild).
Meanwhile, I'll be hiding behind my plywood here in Miami.
Anjin-san
I'm sorry...but I think it is kind of funny for millions of people to live on a sand bar that gets hit over and over again by hurricanes and the Federal Governemnt keeps giving them money to rebuild there.
No it's not funny when people die from a hurricane...but it is funny that people will move back and wait for another one. And for people that will ignore an evacuation notice and ride a 150 MpH hurricane out on a boat...two words for you. Natural Selection.
Man I hope KSC doesn't get damaged...all four Space Shuttles are there.
Why is the Space Center in Florida again?
What the hurricane couldn't bring down, the Slashdot effect has/will. Poor little web cam, so bravely facing the onslaught on the storm, only to be blindsided by hordes of geeks clicking it to death.....
Never ask a geek why, just nod your head and slowly back away. -Rob Malda
Hurricanes are terrible. Scary. Very Dangerous.
People who don't evacuate (i.e. "ride it out") are VERY STUPID. The geeks left and set the cam up to stay behind. They were smart.
BTW Meteorologist like to see things like this because they might produce some interesting data to let them better understand and predict these things.
Everyone who is in the path of this storm has my sympathy, until you refuse to evacuate. Please be safe down there. Just remember that my tax dollars will help you rebuild that beach-side condo afterwards anyway, dumbass.
OK, so the humour icon might be a little tasteless. However, to me, this really shows the power of the internet (if not the power of the host computer and its internet connection!), and the way that current affairs and news coverage is changing (although admittedly this probably wouldn't make a terribly interesting TV program).
Top 20 Things Iain M. Banks Would Name Hurricane Floyd
20. Hurricane Mild Inconvenience
19. Hurricane Looter-Friendly
18. Hurricane Net Congestion
17. Hurricane Wildly Overrated
16. Hurricane So Much For Subtlety
15. Hurricane This, Too, Shall Pass
14. Hurricane Flying Shrapnel
13. Hurricane We're Not In Kansas Anymore
12. Hurricane Rotating Cow
11. Hurricane Huddling In The Basement
10. Hurricane Hissy Fit
9. Hurricane That's It, We're Moving To Wisconsin
8. Hurricane Doing Unto Others
7. Hurricane The Movie
6. Hurricane Hurried Evacuation
5. Hurricane I Didn't Know My Car Could Swim
4. Hurricane Slashdot Effect
3. Hurricane What I Did On My Summer Vacation
2. Hurricane We're All Going To Die
1. Hurricane Warrior Princess
We want endless gardens of data, where the bits can flower, flourish and reproduce. -- Andy Mueller-Maguhn
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
You can be sure there will be dozens of live reports on television; so why not a webcam? If anything, it makes me care for what happens more than some phoney journalist dramatising the whole thing on national television. I hope I won't see anything on this webcam and that the house stands.
This is only technology at the service of communities, people. If anything, it makes us seem to live closer to one another. The Slashdot category chosen may be weird, but I think it's comic in a tragic sense. The poor webcam faces the uncoming storm long after the people have evacuated. Beyond that, there is nothing funny about it.
So, cool, people. The day they put a webcam in a concentration camp I'll scream. For now, I'll watch and hope things are alright.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I do not think that this is the correct category for such stuff. The following message came around yesterday evening on the PHP-Slashdot Developers mailing list:
...
From:
Date: 13.09.1999 01:46
Subject: [PHPSLASH] The big blow
To: "PHPSlash"
Well, we are under mandatory evacuation orders here in Hollywood, Fl. where I live. There is a major storm about to stomp us. They are not sure if it is going to come ashore here, or somewhere north of us, but as it's less then 400 miles away now and is over 400 miles wide, that puts the leading edge less than 200 miles away. Tropical storm force winds (35+ MPH) are due in a matter of hours, gale force (about 60+ mph) by 10 AM. The storm is expected to last all day tomorrow and most of Wednesday. What fun. Currently it is a
category five storm that is described as capable of doing catastrophic damage. Love that word, catastrophic. Everything three and above is
considered deadly.
As most of you possibly know, I live on a sailboat about 500 feet from the Atlantic Ocean. If my home (boat) is destroyed, or S. Fl. looses power/telephone/water, then god only knows when I will be back online, might even take weeks/months. If everything survives all right, I'll be back online Wednesday night or Thursday morning.
The good news is that the storm center is thinking the hurricane force winds (155+ mph in this case) will miss us. By about 10 miles. Nothing like
cutting it close.
Currently, I am ignoring the evacuation orders, as nothing much will actually happen for another 10 hours or so, but after that...
So, wish me luck and if you are so inclined, say a prayer....
Best always,
...
Still thinking this is funny?
I have pics of the house at http://ralph.cx/page.phtml before the storm....
:) Now i wish i had more than a 256 Frac-T.....
As I read some of the responses here i would like to point out, we took all of the important stuff out of the house (like our main server with 40+ gigs of mp3s) and have dat backups of everything else, so we are just trying to make light of the situation. Hurricanes are a fact of life in Florida and we understand the risk living on the water... I think it was really cool of Hemos to put it up, thanx
Almost everything in our house runs linux... (except for the HP-Apollos running HP-UX, the NeXt box, and my Amigas....)
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
Here is a live cam from Miami Beach, several North Florida cams and a link to a whole page of weather cams for the US.
Don't kill them all at once! Spread it around.
In case something somehow happens to the main site, a backup site is set up. In case the site is too busy, the view is looking out a window at what looks like a river. I was hoping for a view which included the computer so we could watch the water rising...
Perhaps this mail should be sent to CNN, Reuters, AP, UPI, and the major networks instead -- groups which are encouraging hapless freelance paparazzi to deliberately risk their lives to film the storm themselves.
All the testy objections to publicity of one little linux-cam taking footage of the storm, which apparently all of you have forgotten has been standard media fare in every disaster for the past 20 years at least, are ignoring one significant point here.
How much does a cheap Linux box cost? 500, 600 dollars, if that? And a little color webcam comes to 100 - 150 dollars? And no one has to be there. So not only do you come up with a remotely viewable camera that costs MUCH less then your average news camera, it doesnt require anyone to risk their life filming a dangerous situation.
To me, that's much more preferable than people driving themselves off of torn-up causeways and dunking into turbulent water just to film swaying trees and floods on a Florida barrier island. It's not worth anyone's life. THAT is something to be thankful for.
Romulus
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
You know, whenever a natural disaster, or a massacre, or whatever occurs, a few of us refuse to see it as a serious life-changing event. Then, people on message boards like this, or Usenet, or editorials in your local rag, get on us because "this isn't funny! Remember all the people who were hurt/died/homeless!" Know what? If I wanna find humor in this, I will. Nobody freaks when my county gets a tornado warning. Or a tornado. It affects you, not me. It'd be really shitty of me if I made these jokes around someone who had lost home and family, but you know what? I don't really give a damn. What affects you doesn't affect me, and be damned if you're gonna try to make me feel bad because you got property in a hurricane zone. I hope your home and family survive OK. But don't expect me or