I’m a big fan of Amazon. I’m dependent on my Prime membership for everything from deodorant to Christmas gifts, and at $79 $99 a year it’s a bargain. I’ve been impressed with their Instant Video original content efforts, and their ability to get big names in television and movies to license programming to them. Despite that, they’re still a long way from convincing me to leave Netflix and go all in on Amazon.
This is without doubt the snowiest winter in recent memory. Yet the snow we’ve received thus far hasn’t been more than a few inches each time, so while it’s enough to slow things down in the DC-Baltimore region, it’s not sizeable by any stretch. This time, we’re expecting anywhere between 6 and 14 inches from Winter Storm Titan, depending on who you ask. For us in the Annapolis area, it’s expected to be closer to the upper end of that estimate.
Annapolis is expecting its first significant snow of the year today, with a forecasted 6-10” of accumulation. As usual, I’ll be putting up pictures and videos throughout the day. Liveblog January 21, 2014 12:26pm The start of the snow, just before noon. I set up a time lapse camera in my living room to capture the accumulation. I’ll have footage from that up later tonight or tomorrow morning. January 21, 2014 12:50pm The snowfall has picked up, and so has the wind.
Anyone who’s spent time in Annapolis is likely familiar with the radio towers on Greenbury Point. The three remaining towers, at 800’ high each, are visible for miles and are a major landmark for residents and travelers. However, the towers as they stand today are just the remnants of what was once a massive complex of naval communications. A YouTube channel called A History of the Navy in 100 Objects has produced a video that covers the history of the facility that stood for over 80 years.
A federal appeals court today struck down some key provisions of the FCC Open Internet order. The court determined that, because ISPs do not have “common carrier” classification the way telephone providers do, the FCC does not have the authority to force ISPs to treat all traffic equally. This is a massive blow to the very foundation of what makes the Internet work the way it does, and has potentially devastating consequences.
Well the weather didn’t waste time ringing in the new year. Our first snow of 2014 arrived last night, giving us about 4-5 inches of snow in the Annapolis area. The snow never got all that heavy, but it did bring very cold temperatures and plenty of wind. The temperature in Annapolis as of noon on January 3rd By and large an uneventful storm, but a nice dusting of snow nonetheless :-)
It’s a new year! Huzzah! Let’s celebrate new beginnings and look forward to the good times ahead! Yes, facetiousness abounds. In truth though, that’s what we’re all doing. Rather than fight it and scoff like I have in years past, I’m going to embrace it. 2013 was, despite my optimistic outlook, a fairly lackluster year. I pretty much maintained status quo, and didn’t make much forward progress. It was, by all accounts, a placeholder year.
This year I started a recurring segment on my blog, to catalog my favorite articles from around the web. I've decided to borrow a page from @om's book and start doing "What I'm Reading" posts on my blog. — Christiaan Conover (@cconover) June 24, 2013 It seems fitting, then, that I look back on the year and pick out the highlights of what I read. Since this is a yearly summary I’ve got more than my usual 3 or 4 links to share, so I’ve broken them down by category.
Yes, you read that title correctly. I, of all people, am advocating against increased security measures for texting. Before we go any further, I want to be clear that I am 100% in favor of encrypted messaging. Let’s put encryption everywhere we can, and lots of it. Lest we forget, this site uses full-time TLS and there isn’t even sensitive data being passed back and forth. There’s a caveat to my security gusto, however: do it right, or don’t bother.
WordPress.com creates an end-of-year report for every WordPress site that runs the Jetpack plugin and has Stats enabled. Mine showed up yesterday evening. Here’s an description: A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 8,100 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 7 trips to carry that many people. Mostly I just like watching the fireworks :-)
