Just a quick entry to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a safe and happy 2005! 🙂

On the way to work this morning, the frames of my sunglasses became so brittle with the cold that they broke.

How much longer until it’s summer?

If you’re in Ottawa, you already know that it’s bloody cold outside. Environment Canada’s website is reporting that it was -30C at 0700 and -44C with the wind. (Click here for a PDF of the report.)

The aviation weather information for Ottawa this morning was:

METAR CYOW 201000Z 30014KT 15SM SKC M29/M35 A3005 RMK SLP191=
METAR CYOW 201100Z 30015KT 15SM SKC M29/M35 A3006 RMK SLP192=
METAR CYOW 201200Z 30012KT 20SM FEW250 M30/M35 A3008 RMK CI1 SLP199=

TAF CYOW 201142Z 201212 30012KT P6SM SKC
BECMG 2022 30005KT
FM0700Z VRB03KT P6SM BKN160
FM1000Z 07008KT P6SM SCT040 OVC090
RMK NXT FCST BY 15Z=

The first block of data is three METAR reports for Ottawa showing the conditions in at MacDonald Cartier International Airport at 1000Z (0500 Eastern), 1100Z (0600 Eastern) and 1200Z (0700 Eastern). Fairly simple reports that say the temperature started at -29C (M29) and went down to -30C (M30) at 0700.
The next block of data is more interesting. This is the terminal area forecast (TAF) for Ottawa, actually. I’ve put the wind information in boldface to make it easier to pick out. At the start of the forecast period, 1200Z (0700 Eastern), the wind was forecast to be from 300 degrees (roughly WNW) at 12 knots (about 22 km/h). The windspeed drops to 5 knots (about 10 km/h) between 2000Z and 2200Z (1500 and 1700 Eastern). Starting at 0700Z (0200 Eastern) early Tuesday morning, the wind is variable at 3 knots (VRB3KT). At 0500 Eastern tomorrow morning, it should settle down to coming out of the east at 8 knots (07008KT).

You might be asking what’s so special about this. Well, if you look at the windspeed, you can see the high pressure zone as it passes to the north of us by the change in the wind direction. Once it’s past us, we should see the temperature get significantly warmer and looking at the (civilian forecast, you can see it’s forecast to be a balmy -8C tomorrow morning.

It’s still bloody cold out, however.

I have friends who play EverQuest who have bought and sold things in the game using eBay, but I don’t think any of them have shelled out as much money as this gamer did for island in Project Entropia.

CNet is reporting that ICANN is thinking of charging an additional $0.75 per .net domain. This would be on top of the $0.25 that they recently imposed on the Big 6 domains (.com, .org, .net, .biz, .info and .name). (As of the time of this posting, there were 5241523 .net domains and just over 46 million Big 6 domains.)

Obviously, if they decide to apply this $0.75 surcharge to the other Big 6 domains, they’d generate a huge amount of money.

This may have been prompted by a recent incident in which a significant number of domain registrars presented a unified opposition to the almost doubling of ICANN’s spending in a year. I guess they figure that the owners of the millions of domains will not be as organized as the registrars were.

I guess time will tell.

TAF CYOW 071140Z 071212 07012KT 6SM -SN OVC015 TEMPO 1214 11/2SM -FZDZ BR OVC008
FM1400Z 06015KT 3/4SM -SN OVC006 TEMPO 1419 3SM -FZDZ BR OVC012
FM1900Z 08012KT 3/4SM -SNPL OVC006 PROB40 1902 2SM -FZRA BR
FM0200Z 09010KT 1SM -FZRA BR OVC004
FM0800Z 21010KT 11/2SM -RA BR OVC008
RMK NXT FCST BY 15Z=

Translation: Brace yourself, this is not going to be pretty.
(more…)

AP reports that an elderly driver in France followed his onboard GPS’ instructions to a T when it told him “make a U-turn immediately”. Unfortunately, he was travelling on a 130km/h highway at the time and collided with another vehicle. Fortunately, however, no one was injured.
The scary bit is that this isn’t the first time something like this has happened.