5.6 Earthquake in our backyard

October 30, 2007, 8:04pm
Calaveras Fault
Alumn Rock area, San Jose, CA
5.6 on the magnitude scale

(Images courtesy of USGS, San Jose Mercury News and San Francisco Chronicle)

Nobel Belgians

A colleague of mine is very skeptical about global warming and believes humans have little effect on the warming of the globe. So when Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Price, I knew he would drop by for a little chat. What does Al Gore and co have to do with fostering peace? "It's all political", he said. We decided to look up the list of previous Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Indeed you wonder why some did earn the price.

I was surprised to see four five Belgians on the list. Although most of them won in a by gone era, when Europe was the center of the world and when Belgium was a little more relevant in the world.

• 1904 : Institut de Droit International
• 1909 : Auguste Marie François Beernaert, Member of the Cour Internationale d'Arbitrage.
• 1913 : Henri La Fontaine, President of the Permanent International Peace Bureau.
• 1958 : Georges Pire, leader of L'Europe du Coeur au Service du Monde, a relief organization for refugees.
• 1999: Artsen zonder grenzen (Medecins Sans Frontieres) (Wikipedia incorrectly listed them as French/Swiss, although Nobel organization lists them as Belgian)
  

Here's a chart of the number of Nobel Peace price laureates by country. (It is not perfect since e.g. Mother Teresa gives both Albania and India a point.)

Disco in my pants

Halloween, celebrated on the night of October 31th, is always a big deal in the United States. I hear it has become a big deal even in Belgium.

The term Halloween (and its older rendering Hallowe'en) is shortened from All-hallow-even, as it is the evening of/before "All Hallows' Day", also known as "All Saints' Day". ... On Halloween night adults and children dress up as creatures from the underworld (e.g., ghosts, ghouls, zombies, witches and goblins), light bonfires, and enjoy spectacular fireworks displays (despite the fact that such displays are usually illegal). Halloween was perceived as the night during which the division between the world of the living and the otherworld was blurred so spirits of the dead and inhabitants from the underworld were able to walk free on the earth. It was necessary to dress as a spirit or otherworldly creature when venturing outdoors to blend in. The children knock on the neighbors' doors, in order to gather fruit, nuts, and sweets for the Halloween festival. Salt was once sprinkled in the hair of the children to protect against evil spirits. (Wikipedia)

Last year, I missed the company Halloween party as I was on a business trip. However, I helped build on our Disco Scarecrow. Disco shoes $5; a John Travolta suit ($19), a disco ball for his head ($19); a wig, some materials from Osh, a stroboscope in his pants ($25). Kicking marketing and core engineering's butt while having fun with your services teammates ... priceless.

A milestone

(picture by Leo Reynolds)

August 27, 2004 was the beginning of my blog. Since then I tried to post regularly, often once a week, sometimes once or twice a month. My goal was to focus on creating new content and start writing in English. I did not want my blog to be a check-out-this-link listing. This is blog post number 100.

For a while I also posted in the "Carnivals". Carnivals are organized by bloggers: on a given topic (e.g. frugality), the frugal carnival is posted each time on a new blog. The post is list of blog posts on different blogs discussing frugality. The next month, the carnival moves to another blog. It is a great traffic source.

I use Google Analytics to track readership. I do not have the readership nor run my own server to warrant scripts like used in the wide finder project. A couple of tidbits:

• I do have readers from all over the world, with the US in first place and Belgium in second place, and a couple of readers from Australia, Canada and several countries in Europe.
• Firefox represents fifty percent of the browsers visiting my blog. Internet explorer takes 35%. I even had visitors using Opera and Portable Playstation.
  
• Top content includes: Home is where the tank is parked (probably because it was cross posted by various carinvals); Farewell Luis Rest in Peace; Netbeans CND; Lake Wobegon (Not all content is included as the early content (2004) was not part of the tracking.)
  
• Google and Google blog search is the top referred; though LinkedIn ranks higher than technorati. Interesting. Also the blog of my dad refers a steady stream of readers.
  

flanders.california.usa ... ongoing