mike.whybark.com

Cringely takes a second look at the Apple-Intel deal and thinks he sees a video pod in the future. Of course, he would, having just announced his podcast-like video series, NerdTV, but you know what? I think that’s what’s behind the addition of podcasting to the iTunes Music store. Podcasting is the dry run for video-on-demand, for reals this time. The differences and usability issues between providing two-track time-based media and multi-track time-based media is negligible.

Do I see a vPod down the line? Well, no, and neither does Bob – he makes his patented absurd prediction by positing a retinal-scan headset as the playback device for the vPod, which is just silly, although it would be kinda cool. I can easily visualize Apple setting up to contro; the market for distribution of video on demand and letting others – such as Intel – bear the burden of entering the low, low, low profit margin world of video components.

I’m thinking, I’ll hold off on any television technology purchases for a few years.

In fairly unrelated news, I ordered a refurb Airport Express from the Apple Store online when my second original Graphite Airport BS croaked last week and once again, Apple beats their own TOS. Free shipping within five business days, they said – the item shipped the day after I ordered and is sitting on my coffee table this evening.

Interesting AskMe post requesting the crew to explain the poster’s mitochondrial DNA, as reported by the Genographic Project.

The P-I, again today, has a passel of stories of interest relating to South Park and Georgetown. I guess the paper was also interested by the response to their call for disappearing Seattle institutions, because they devoted a full page to it in the front section of the paper edition today.

Drowning their sorrows? Nope, they’re after crime: this story picks up that Stranger piece I linked to earlier regarding the adoption of The County Line as an unofficial venue for meetings of the South Park neighborhood association. The County Line is located in a slice of riverside property which is not in incorporated Seattle, but remains county. That section of the neighborhood is slated to be annexed by the city, but the plan has hit a snag, as the accompanying story, linked below, notes.

(It’s interesting to note the geographic relationship of the slice of county to the distribution of PCB hotspots mapped in yesterday’s coverage.)

Damaged bridge holds up South Park annexation: The 14th Avenue bridge leading north out of South Park into non-residential Georgetown and onto Marginal Way about halfway down the side of Boeing Field needs to be rehabbed or rebuilt, if I understand this story accurately, and the city and county are fingerpointing over who should bear the funding burden.

Boeing Field neighbors stirring up own noise: (Ugh! what a terrible subhead: “Plucky Georgetown residents upset by plans to remake airport.” Plucky! My god!) Southwest Airlines is talking to Boeing Field about moving there from SeaTac, which would add to the volume of air traffic at Boeing. Georgetown residents are understandably peeved and concerned. The info-graphic accompanying this story includes the tracks of all the major approach-ways for both Boeing and SeaTac. I found it interesting and maybe a bit tragic that the section of that map just south of the pointer to Boeing field contains the intersections of approaches to both facilities and every single one of the approaches to SeaTac (although the map notes that in this case the red tracks are departures). Earlier in our house-hunt, Viv and I looked at a stunningly beautiful house located right there – we went to it and hung out in the back yard for bit. During the time we were counting and timing, a period of fifteen minutes, eleven inbound over-flights went by at an average altitude of 250-300 feet.

Regarding our bid in South Park, we did not hear back from the selling party yesterday, which means we’re beyond the offer expiry date. We may yet hear back but we have no legal obligation to accept the reply.

The P-I blog opens up a can of crusty Seattle nostalgia which I am surprised to find myself sharing. I have been coming here my home whole life and have lived here for fifteen years. It’s clearly the early ’90s pre-grunge landmarks that tug my heartstrings the most.

The P-I’s front page story about PCB contamination in the South Park neighborhood is assuredly not the sort of fornt-page news one wants to see about an area in which one has just put an offer on a house. The good news is that the contamination is in the river-bottom area of the neighborhood, on the other side of the freeway. The bad news is, well, I know a little bit about PCBs, heath risks, and the related spectacular collisions of industry, local politics, class, and bureaucracy.

One item that really gave me the willies in the article is the offhanded note that the PCBs came from “the waste oil that Malarkey Asphalt bought from City Light as a cheap energy source in the 1970s.” Apparently, the company was burning the oil as fuel. But not in a high-temperature incinerator. Presumably, the oil was burned in convential ways, which would have had the effect of creating multiple airborne plumes of presumably-intact PCBs. It’s interesting that this use occurred here, as in Bloomington, the primary issue was dumped transformers form the plant that built them. I can’t recall any anecdotal information about people using the oil as fuel.

I guess the next thing for me to do is learn about the prevailing winds and to what extent the City or EPA has done soil sampling up-slope, near our potential house.

Here’s the City’s research and activity report, and here is the site of the Duwamish Cleanup Commission. This PDF is the city map that was the basis for the P-I’s graphic embedded in the story linked at the start of this entry.

Mother Earth News hosts a fascinating narrative from Bloomington in 1976 concerning a family that inadvertently fertilized their farm with sludge contaminated to the order of 300 ppm (parts per million), resulting in soil contamination levels of 50 ppm. By comparison, the Washington state cleanup level is 1 ppm, and some of the sites sampled along the Duwamish exhibit levels greater than 50 ppm.

The blessed and indispensible Things blogs the living heck out of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, exposing my mind to the odd fact that Ian Fleming’s absurdist flying car was a) based on a real car and b) that said car was powered the engine of a WWI era Gotha. Thus, she flew.