Daylight Savings Time

Last Sunday, we changed the clocks an hour ahead and shifted sunset well after 7pm in Columbia.  For some reason, the mornings seemed much darker than normal.  Granted the time change moved the time of sunrise from 6:44 am to 7:44 am, but I don't recall it being as dark in past years.  For comparison, the latest the sun rises in December/January is 7:30am.  We get back to that time around March 18th.   I've lived in Columbia several years now, so I figure the westward/southward location compared to Long Island shouldn't have as great an effect on me.

For all intents and purposes, we've shifted to Central Standard Time in the east.  Through college, DST began on the first Sunday of April. In 2015, that would have shifted the start of DST to April 5th, when the sunrise is at 6:06 / 7:06 am.  I was living in NY for one year (2007) after the new schedule of switching the second Sunday in March was enacted.  The timing there works out to move sunrise to exactly when the latest time occurs in the winter (7:06am, using Bridgeport, CT as an estimate).

Of course none of this really matters long term, next year the change is made March 13th, when sunrise will be at 7:37am.  I find it funny that I went to such an extent looking up the late sunrise times because I am more of a night person, and generally enjoy the later sunsets.  What it really probably comes down to is having a dog now that is more in tune with being fed early in the morning. 

Starting Over

I've made it a point this year to get back into my website.  It's now March, and the ball is only starting to roll.  I want to begin updating the site by posting here more and even though this is just tangential to the other content on the site, I can at least use this as a way to get back into it.  I've been posting on here since 2008, and it's been very irregular; I haven't made any updates to mattrodgers.net since 2010.  To start, here's a few goals:

• at least one post a week
• improve python skills, and begin introducing them to the website
• take more pictures, post to the site
• add a resume area that focuses on technical skills
• develop some web mapping projects

Hopefully I'll stick to these simple areas and in a few months the site will be much fresher.

The Library

I've decided to start a new section on my blog. This area will be called the library, and I will connect to articles I've recently read and found interesting, or things I plan to read. This will also be a place for me to place stuff I think friends may want to read. The first addition will be an article in the New York Times Magazine on Mario Cuomo titled: "Mario Cuomo Still Believes".

Activist side of things

Throughout my blog updates (which admittedly came over the span of months quite often) I've tried to stay away from political discussion. It can make blood boil fast. I often find myself dancing around this line when discussing politics with conservative friends. It is instructive, though. I like to think my opinions are better formed when I run them up against an opposing view and can see where my holes and strong points are.
In any case, what I'm trying to get to is the case that was decided this past week by the Supreme Court. For how many years we've listened to the political right bastardize the liberal opinions of the Court as overreaching and activist. Now, with an opinion from the right that nullifies laws extending back a century and contradicts three opinions of the Court in the last twenty years, we hear none of this banter. The majority view of the court reached on Thursday not only extends an unwarranted liberty to a state-created structure, it also upends the voice of individuals. Money is power, and money can be a voice, but corporations and unions are not individuals. I understand that there were issues with the old rules: corporations with a media company attached, ie. General Electric (not anymore), or News Corp, were given greater freedom in expressing their views close to an election than those lacking such groups. However, to declare this entire section of law unconstitutional is disturbing. We can only hope that Congress, can come together to rewrite legislation controlling these special interests before the bidding war begins.

Update, Main Page

Continuing on edits made to the main page the last few nights, I have come close to finishing some significant edits to the main page. To start, the page has been organized slightly differently, with the News, Sports, and School menus moving across the page from right to left. This has freed up some space in the Current Weather Corner, which was actually contracted in size, resulting in a smaller window in the lower right corner. The window which used to show webcams is now used for displaying weather radar, which is controlled through a menu directly above. The webcams may be added back in at a later date after I check that they are all working (4 or 6 were not). Much of the title bar is now an image, with the links following below. In the middle of the site now resides a site index, which describes the major portions of the site behind the index page.

Some changes are still in the works, such as cleaning up the html and resetting the CSS styles. I recognize that the iframe setup for the radar will prevent any users acessing the website with IE from using them, however, to my knowledge I have yet to find a fix for that issue. This may be something that is resolved in the next major build of the main page, and further the website, converting to a master page format

12/28/09: Snow In the Forecast

Looks like another nor'easter will be making it's way north along the coast around New Year's Eve. Right now it is difficult to tell where the rain/snow line will end up, but there definitely looks to be enough moisture in this storm to produce another mess.

12/26/09: New Main Page Updates

Tonight, actually early this morning, I changed a portion of the main page. For a while I have been using the Quack to record changes to my website. Instead of entering these changes on the main page in text, they are now shown through an RSS feed that is using feedburner. This is a service offered by Google that I have added to my website. The new object will show the most recent posts, and cycle through them continually helping to clean up that part of the main page and conserve some space. Over the next few days there will likely continue to be some tweaking. Currently clicking on the object will take you directly to the main page of the blog, showing the most recent blog entry. Now since it's 5AM I'm off to sleep. Merry Christmas!