Music in this video is by AjT.

A weak upper-level low, about 450 miles south of Diablo Canyon, continues to bring monsoon moisture towards our area.

The doppler radar at Vandenberg AFB is indicating a band of lighting and showers over northern San Barbara County moving west-northwest towards San Luis Obispo this morning. The SLO Weather lighting tracker indicates over 1,700+ strikes this morning mostly southeast of San Luis Obispo

As this band of thunderstorms moves over San Luis Obispo, it will produce mostly cloudy weather and lighting with a chance of rain showers. Precipitation amounts south of our area have been mostly light, with most of the rain evaporating before reaching the ground. (virga).

(Any spelling/grammar errors in the above block were copied over from the source.) Naturally, when there’s lightning in the sky, the smart thing to do is to stand near an open window, holding an electronic device that’s plugged into a wall outlet. And that’s exactly what I did, with the video camera. Watch for the time-lapse lightning bolt around 1:18:

The storm did produce a couple of really loud booms accompanied by bright lightning bursts (not on the video, unfortunately) but it mellowed out not long after I turned off the camera. It tried to come back strong a couple hours later, with a few boisterous thunderclaps just passed 10AM. And then it was done. That’s probably the last storm we’ll have for awhile. Still, I’m looking forward to the next one. Even if it doesn’t happen until sometime in 2009.

1.) Spambots: Spambots are easily identifiable. They’re usually obvious-looking “fake people” who are trying to push porn sites, get-rick-quick schemes or other nefarious ‘net institutions. The best defense against these bots is to simply block them and move on.

2.) Human spambots: I couldn’t think of a better term for this class of Twitter scum. Unlike spambot accounts, these are Twitter accounts that are owned and operated by real, live humans. Problem is, all these accounts do is spew out endless, auto-generated links to blog sites, Flickr photos, forum posts and anything else that has an RSS feed. If I’m interested in someone’s content, then I’m probably already subscribed to it. If I’m not, using the human spambot approach won’t get me to. I don’t always block these users, but I never follow them.

3.) Numbers runners: Again, I couldn’t think of a better term for this final, and most vile class of Twitter scum. Numbers runners go on massive follow/unfollow campaigns, in the hopes of artificially boosting their follower counts. While there are plenty of valid reasons to follow/unfollow someone on Twitter, there is no good reason for any Twitter user to add hundreds (if not thousands) of followers in a couple of days, and then immediately unfollow 90% of them. Again, this tactic is used by Twitter scum who want to appear to be super-duper awesome, ’cause you know, they have like 10,000 followers but they’re only following 20 of them back. I figured out a way today to track down potential numbers runners. I clicked the “Following” link on the sidebar of my Twitter homepage. That showed me the list of all of the Twitter users I’m following. Any users listed there that didn’t have the “Direct message” and “nudge” links right under their names are users who aren’t following me back. I could then easily go through the list and weed out any who originally chose to follow me but have since unfollowed.

I understand that Twitter is a dynamic service, populated (mostly) by people. And people can and will change their minds. I don’t care if someone chooses to unfollow me. I do find it annoying when Twitter users try to buck the system by becoming numbers runners. To me, Twitter is best as a conversational tool, and I’m not interested in connecting with people who aren’t there for the conversation. I welcome any and all Twitter users to connect with me through the Twitter ID in the sidebar. But if you’re Twitter scum, don’t expect me to follow you back.

We went to the California Mid State Fair a couple weeks ago. We walked around a bit and saw the Stone Temple Pilots play on the grandstand. Those pictures are here.

My sister gave us an aquarium she no longer needs (because she replaced it with one that’s big enough to hold small whales). Photos of our new aquarium can be found here.

• Backups
• Compression
• Archives

My hard drives are all very messy. Filled with half-finished videos, random files from the ‘net and who knows what else. I’ve decided that, before I can seriously commit to anything new in the creative department, I’ve got to get this situation under control. The first item to tackle was to find a reliable system for backing up the data I already have. I recently decided to upgrade the Mini to Mac OS 10.5 Leopard. That gave me access to Apple’s new Time Machine backup software. I’ve also found a relatively simple way to backup Jen’s computer, thanks in part to the Leopard upgrade. But I’ll be writing more about that in the future. So that takes care of backups. Next up on the list: compression. I’ve started going through all of my videos and making high-quality renders of each one, from the original project files. This’ll allow me to keep a high-quality finished version of the videos and then delete the bulky project files associated with each one. Coincidentally, I’d love to do this with audio projects, as well. But the file sizes are too big. For example, a completed episode of Hyper Nonsense, before mp3 encoding, can yield a file that’s easily 1 GB+ in size. But again, I’ll be writing more about that in the future. So that brings me to the last entry on today’s list: archives. Whenever possible, I’ll be burning archival items to disc. Some things (like those pesky audio files) will just have to live on hard drives until those drives get full. And then they’ll likely have to be sent to the trash. But who knows? I’ve got 750 GB in external storage to burn through. Maybe by the time that happens, Apple will have developed some amazing new archive software. To keep with the Time Machine theme, it’ll be called something like “Transporter” or “iBlack Hole.” Anyway, once I’ve got all of this tedium out of the way, I should be able to focus more time on creative things for this site (and elsewhere). At least until I let it all go again, and have to start over with the backups, compression and archives.

I will report on my experience with that site when I’m done with it.

We walked out on the Pismo pier and sat for awhile, enjoying the scenery and sounds of the ocean. I didn’t take many photos, mainly because I’ve already got plenty of photos of Pismo Beach. Then we walked for a little while out on the beach. We saw this cool sandcastle:

Jen wore her new sandals. They squeaked when she walked. It was cute. After we were done walking on the beach, we had a small lunch at Hot Shots, a place we’ve been to before. Then we went home.

I spent the rest of the afternoon playing with my computer. Specifically, I burned a lot of CD’s as part of my ongoing music archive project. I also printed out a bunch of photos so Jen could use them in her ongoing scrapbook projects. During this time, Jen recovered from the sun exposure she received at the beach. (Recovering = sleeping.)

After she was fully rested and feeling better, we drove across town to our local Best Buy. I wanted to go there because we need to get an external hard drive for archive/backup purposes, and we’ve also been considering the purchase of a new digital camera. I wasn’t happy with the store’s prices on hard drives, so we passed on those. After receiving some help from a very knowledgeable Best Buy employee, we decided to pick up an Olympus PE-340. Based on the camera’s specs and price, compared to the other cameras on display, we thought it was the best choice. Haven’t had a chance to use the camera yet, as its battery is charging. But it’ll be nice to have a real camera, as the camera in my cell phone isn’t the best, and our other digital camera is old and ready for retirement. Of course, we also had to buy a memory card. But the card we got is 2GB, and should hold lots of photos/videos.

Our new Olympus PE-340 digital camera. We bought it as an anniversary gift to ourselves.

After Best Buy, we went to dinner at Applebee’s. We both had the classic-three-combo, or whatever it’s called, and we both had sirloin steaks as entrees (an unusual choice for me):

We finished off the meal with Applebee’s cute lil’ dessert shooters. Jen had key lime pie, I had chocolate mousse:

A few more photos from Applebee’s can be seen here and more photos of the digital camera can be seen here.

If you look really close at this photo, you can see an orange dragonfly sitting on one of the plants. Don’t see it? Click here for help.

Chela showed some patriotic flare with this red, white and blue bandana.


We played fetch with Lelo, my sister’s lil’ chihuahua.

My sister let me take her new riding lawnmower for a spin.

We had a great time today. See more photos and another lawnmower video on my Flickr account.