“Think ya used enough dynamite there, Butch? “

From Sioux Falls, SD:

The toppling of the Zip Feed tower failed Saturday, turning what was supposed to be a spectacle watched by thousands into a source of amusement for an entire city.

The 202-foot tower, the tallest building in the city and possibly the state, was scheduled to topple at 12:55 p.m. But after a loud blast it tilted east, dug itself into the ground and stuck.

[...]

He said there was nothing that could have been done to prevent the non-collapse; the concrete was apparently too old to maintain its integrity after the blast. Old concrete structures like the tower are “the toughest structures there are” to demolish with explosives, he said.

“The basement foundation and all that collapsed and didn’t allow it to push over, that was my fear.”

More Great Podcast

I’m really getting into podcasts now — can’t you tell?

• Poptech’s “The Future of Africa Roundtable” Part 1 and Part 2 was really good. It seems to be the last event at Poptech 2005 and the first one that IT Conversations posted — probably to tease us on what is coming. Very informative and educational. It was good to hear about the issues in Africa from their perspective.
• “Java Super Platforms” was a good overview about the big three in Java application servers and where they are heading. It could have been about two-thirds as long if Monson-Haefel wouldn’t have repeated everything. Not only that, but it would have been shorter if he wouldn’t have said everything two or three times.
• IT Conversations also has a good interview with Mark Fleury of JBoss fame. He comes off as a little arrogant, especially with his opinion about people who don’t do open source for a living (though he does have a point about the /. kiddies). And they didn’t even ask me about Geronimo, which should have he and his company shaking in their shoes.
• Grow Omaha is a show on KFAB that talks about economic development in Omaha. The bad news is that it is on Saturday mornings at 8am. The good news is that they archive their shows as MP3’s.
• Jeremy send me an email about Python411 — a podcast series about Python. Some good stuff there as well.

Top Posts for October

Page Stats interest me and, now that this blog as been up in a while, I can do a decent survey on it. Hopefully, I will start doing this the beginning of every month.

The About Mike and Colophon pages are the most popular and that makes sense to me — most visitors here will probably visit those pages. So I’n throwing them out of contention for now.

After that, here are the top entries for October:

1. More on Geocaching Hacks
2. The only reason why I am posting this is because it is soooo wrong
3. pwsafe
4. The GPSBabel Fever

This is interesting, because my pwsafe entry is a recent one, while the geocaching and GPSBabel entries are over a month old — this says that those are things people are interested in.

If you want to, you can click on the Blog Stats link on your left, create an account, and look at the stats in real-time.

Now, on to November!

Pictures are up

This is the first public reveal of our new photo gallery. It’s really Gallery2 — I’ve been using Gallery for a long time, but this is the next generation. I’m not sure it’s ready for prime-time yet, but it has some cool features and a good built-in look and feel.

The only reason why I am posting this is because it is soooo wrong

Much More Emotional You have: 55% SCIENTIFIC INTUITION and 77% EMOTIONAL INTUITION

The graph on the right represents your place in Intuition 2-Space. As you can see, you scored well above average on emotional intuition and about average on scientific intuition.Keep in mind that very few people score high on both! In effect, you can compare your two intuition scores with each other to learn what kind of intuition you’re best at. Your emotional intuition is stronger than your scientific intuition. Your Emotional Intuition score is a measure of how well you understand people, especially their unspoken needs and sympathies. A high score score usually indicates social grace and persuasiveness. A low score usually means you’re good at Quake. Your Scientific Intuition score tells you how in tune you are with the world around you; how well you understand your physical and intellectual environment. People with high scores here are apt to succeed in business and, of course, the sciences. Try my other test! The 3 Variable Funny Test It rules.