Last night, Ohio State’s Junior Linebacker James Laurinaitis won the prestigious Butkus Award, bestowed upon the best linebacker in the land each year. He’s the heart and soul of the number one defense on the number one team in the country, so in a way it’s fitting he would win this award.

Bucknuts has a nice article posted with details, facts, and figures. This entry is intended as a hearty congratulations to James, and to his cohorts on D. It’s been an outstanding year and this group has really produced.

 

 

 

Ta Da! I’ve just unveiled our new look, I hope you like it. Please do let me know what you think, leave a comment if you’d like. With the change, I was trying to make the site a little more readable, improve the navigation, and generally make the look a little more clean while creating some new opportunities for monetization.

There are a number of “new” things to look at. On the left hand navigation bar, you’ll notice we finally integrated search for web or this site. Directly beneath the search box is a new section, Featured Links. To the right of that are a few “button” images. These two sections are set aside for sponsors of this site. If you have need of or are interested in what they offer, check them out.

The Categories section has gone on a diet, I’ve consolidated down to the group you see to the left. If you hold your mouse over a category, it will give a short description of the contents. The Links section survives intact from our prior version, good resources and reading there, I encourage to explore them.

The Tools section is new, in addition to an About page (which existed in the old look), an Advertise Here page has been added to provide information about advertising, Archives, which organizes content by posting month/year and category now exists, and I’ve added an extensive section on the tools and technologies used to create this site and keep it up-to-date.

Below the Tools sections are Most Popular posts and Recent Posts and Comments sections. That’s a short tour, I hope that you’ll find our new look and feel not only easy on the eyes, but easier to navigate and read content. Thanks for dropping by!

As a point of comparison, the image below is a screen shot of our “old” look:

Musings from the Coast “Old Look”

Via CNN:

The House of Representatives passed the first major increase in fuel economy standards in more than 30 years with a 235-181 vote. The energy bill requires automakers to raise their average fuel economy standard by 40 percent to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The current standard — 27.5 mpg for cars and 22.2 for trucks –was passed in 1975.

…

The bill also includes a mandate that electric utility companies generate 15 percent of their energy from renewable sources of energy such as wind, biomass or solar power by 2020. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, argued the “renewable energy standard” leaves out some technologies like clean coal and hydrogen, and is “almost impossible to meet” by most states.

Read more…

While not reported in this story, the bill also extends production tax credits until 2012, which will stimulate renewable power project development as it reduces the risk to finance these projects. The Senate will likely approve the bill and it will then face a veto by lame-duck President Bush.

Welcome Stumblers! If you like this content why not give it a thumbs up? Thanks for dropping by and I hope you enjoy your visit.

Last night, one of my family members sent me a link to the ridiculous, viral network tool, Go ELFYourself! Effectively, it’s a mashup of photo technology (cool stuff) and a flash type movie where you can turn your favorite photos into dancing elves rocking out to Jingle Bells. There’s even a process to add voice, though I didn’t test it.

I’m hoping these guys have a sense of humor, in honor of it being viral and a Web 2.0 kind of thing, I decided to Elf: Jason Calacanis, Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, and Guy Kawasaki.

Here’s a screenshot, click the image to see the Elves dance!

Click to Watch Them Dance!


All kidding aside, OfficeMax and PixFusion have created an interesting and topical viral message for the holidays.

If you like this content why not give it a thumbs up?

Argh! Winter arrived on the San Mateo coast this week, and last night, we had quite the blow. Sufficient to rearrange the furniture on the deck and send the trash cans who knows where. As soon as it gets lighter outside, I’ll go find them. The NDBC San Francisco buoy (18 miles west of San Francisco) shows sharply increasing wind and wave heights through the night. Check this data out:

Wave Height


Sustained Wind Speed


This series of storms has taken a real toll, earlier this week the fishing boat The Good Guys was lost at sea and its crew of 2 is missing and presumed dead. Also, further south in Monterey, renowned big wave surfer Peter Davi drowned in high surf after losing his board. For all of our technological prowess, Mother Nature is still able to get some licks in – you really do have to respect the power of the ocean.