[TAG] New web site

[Benjamin A. Okopnik]

On Sat, Sep 10, 2005 at 09:38:07PM -0700, Mike Orr wrote:
> [Not for publication.  I'm not sure I want it published where I work.]
> 
> I finally have a public site to show y'all.
> http://www.incidentnews.gov/
> It shows the offshore oil spills and chemical spills related to 
> Hurricane Katrina.  There's a bunch of photos and scientific information.

*Nice* work, Mike. Good, informative interface with reasonable user
feedback, and looks like a very useful resource. As an example,
http://www.incidentnews.gov/attachments/1/140/Flood%20Depth%20Estimation%209_8_05%20Small.jpg
shows the flood depths for NO - I can see where that kind of map would
be tremendously useful to, say, the Corps of Engineers as they decide
where the portable pumps need to be located.

> There are some three hundred discharges in the Gulf, some large and some 
> small.  They're only starting to be surveyed.

[nod] That was the part nobody had mentioned in the media - I thought
about it as soon as Katrina happened. There are thousands of oil
platforms out there, many of them unlit, which makes night sailing in
the Gulf one of the most dangerous, reckless, and nerve-wracking things
you could do.  If they can't afford to even light their towers, how much
reliance can you put into them standing up to a Cat 5 hurricane?

> When the Coast Guard 
> finishes its rescue operation, supposedly this weekend if they haven't 
> already, they'll turn their attention to the mess offshore.  So a lot more 
> information will be coming in over the next week.  Normally we get only one 
> or two spills at a time, usually a ship hitting something.  But now they're 
> identifying like twenty a day.  Not a good place to be a fish.  

Or a fisherman. A lot of those folks are on the bare edge of survival as
it is. There were a lot of Vietnamese families that moved down there,
pooled all their resources to build a boat and go into business for
themselves... this is going to wipe a lot of them out.  Those who didn't
die, trying to stay with their boats during the 'cane.

> I've been working on the entry site for three months.  It was supposed to 
> go live later this month, but with Katrina they said put the beta up now 
> and we'll test it on a real spill.  So I've been running around all week 
> porting the site to a Mac server (it was developed on Linux, and Macintosh 
> has these... quirks.  Like rigid configuration dialogs, anemic daemon 
> management services, etc.)  So if you were wondering why I was so quiet, 
> that's why.  We were going to have a public site sometime vaguely six 
> months away.  Then Thursday they said, "We need the public site now, can 
> you have it up by this weekend?" :)  "Um, we haven't even discussed UI and 
> layout, so figure mid next week.  --We need it sooner, otherwise we'll have 
> to use the old one."

Ah, the business we all know and love. :)

> There's one web application that's on a Linux server.  We'll prob'ly have 
> to move it to a Mac.  I'll just mention the Linux server is the most 
> reliable one in the room.  It just hums quietly away for months serving 
> pages, the ultimate in low maintenance.  Even the Windows-loving tech 
> support people have noticed this.  One of them said a few weeks ago, "I 
> have to move the server rack.  Can I just shut down the Linux box and 
> restart it, or do you want to be there when I do?  --No, that'll be fine.  
> As long as the IP doesn't change there's nothing to configure."  All 
> administration is via ssh from my desk; I haven't even been in the server 
> room since we installed it, until this week when I started working on the 
> Mac.  Well, someday the upper management will be as enlightened as my 
> department is.  "The sun'll come out tomorrow, tomorrow... you're only a 
> day away."

Hey, dude - call out "Gouranga" [1] and be happy. Five years ago, and
you'd have had to buck your boss to run Linux at all, tools or no tools.
Ten years ago, you'd have had to explain what Linux *is*.


[1] What the hell is that, anyway? A new pizza-delivery service? :)

* Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://linuxgazette.net *