Historically Most Active Hurricane Day: September 10

I recently looked over some hurricane data from 1851 until this year. I got curious: on what day of the year is there the most hurricane activity? Answer: September 10. There have been 96 active hurricanes on that day since 1851.

To create this graph, I downloaded a data set from the NOAA Historical Hurricane Tracks page: http://maps.csc.noaa.gov/hurricanes/download.jsp. I downloaded the dataset for both basins. It comes in the form of an ESRI ARCMap dhape file, but there is a dBase dbf file that can be imported into Micosoft Access (if you try this, you may run into some trouble unless you rename the DBF file to have a normal eight character file name).

I used Microsoft Excel to query the data from the Access database I had created and create the graph. I had to be careful in my query not to double count hurricanes that had more than one weather advisory on the same date.

Visio Org Charts: Change Border Color Based on a Custom Property

I recently was asked to modify an existing Visio Org Chart based on a custom property. Every person in the org chart had a custom property for a BlackBerry number. Based on whether the person had a blackberry number or not, my client wanted the border to be set to a thick red line.

I came up with the following code to do just that:

Sub set_blackberry_border_red()
  Dim vsoPage As Visio.Page
  Dim VsoShp As Visio.Shape
  Dim i As Integer

  For Each vsoPage In ActiveDocument.Pages
    ' Loop through each page
    For Each VsoShp In vsoPage.Shapes
      ' Loop through every shape on the page
      If Not VsoShp.OneD Then
        ' Shape is not a line
        nrows = VsoShp.RowCount(Visio.visSectionProp)
        ' Set shape to normal border
        black_border VsoShp
        For i = 0 To nrows - 1
          ' Look at all properties
          If VsoShp.CellsSRC(Visio.visSectionProp, i, visCustPropsLabel).ResultStr(Visio.visNone) = "Blackberry" Then
            ' If property is blackberry phone number...
            If VsoShp.CellsSRC(Visio.visSectionProp, i, visCustPropsValue).ResultStr(Visio.visNone) <> "" Then
              ' ... set its border color to red
              red_border VsoShp
            End If
          End If
        Next i
      End If
    Next VsoShp
  Next vsoPage
  MsgBox "Finished.", vbInformation
End Sub

Sub red_border(shp As Visio.Shape)
  ' Set border size thicker
  shp.CellsSRC(visSectionObject, visRowLine, visLineWeight).FormulaU = "1.2 pt"
  ' Set Border color to red
  shp.CellsSRC(visSectionObject, visRowLine, visLineColor).FormulaU = "2"
End Sub

Sub black_border(shp As Visio.Shape)
  ' Set border size to thin
  shp.CellsSRC(visSectionObject, visRowLine, visLineWeight).FormulaU = "0.24 pt"
  ' Set border color to black
  shp.CellsSRC(visSectionObject, visRowLine, visLineColor).FormulaU = "0"
End Sub

Microsoft Live Map of where I've lived

This animation was created using the Microsoft Live Map tool. You can reach the tool at http://www.3dMapTour.com. I was impressed with how easy this was to create, and a little impressed at how far I've come to end up where I am.

Why Burma doesn't want our help

The introduction to Disasters and Development by Fred Cuny gives an explanation of why dictatorships want us to give aid to the government for distribution and not directly to the disaster affected population. I read this and immediately thought of Burma:

...In reality, just as disasters and development cannot be separated, neither can disaster response be divorced from politics. Unfortunately, few governments in the Third World are democratic and many regimes perpetuate underdevelopment because it supports the needs of an oligarchy or other privileged class. Thus many of the ideas presented here are anathema to these groups. For them, control of disaster relief is another way of maintaining the status quo, and a paternalistic dole of relief goods from foreigners is the preferred method of aid, for it is in keeping with the dictatorial system.

How a hurricane forms: an explanation by Fred Cuny

I'm reading Disasters and Development by Fred Cuny. It's an excellent work by one of the most important people in the Disaster Relief field. Fred Cuny engineered the repatriation of 400,000 Kurds after Gulf War I, arguable saving the lives of tens of thousands of people. Cuny disappeared in Chechnya in 1995.

Disasters and Development has one of the clearest explanations of how a hurricane forms that I have ever seen:

Much is known about how a cyclone forms. In order to develop, a cyclone must have a warm sea and calm warm air. The warm air rises -- heavy, humid, and full of water vapour. Its place is taken by air rushing in from the sides and, because of the earth's rotation, this moving air is given a twist, so that the entire system begins to revolve. The warm rising air meets cooler air and releases its water vapour in the form of rain. It takes a tremendous amount of energy for the air to lift the water in the first place, and now this energy is released in the form of heat. This increases the rate of ascent of the air and a continuous cycle begins to develop. More water is released and also more heat : more the water and heat released, faster the cycle moves. This cycle becomes the engine that drives the beast, and gradually it goes faster and faster and the air mass becomes much larger.

Because the wind system is revolving, centrifugal force tends to throw the air outward so that the pressure in the center becomes very low, thus forming the eye of the storm. The pressure on the outside is very high, so the wind moves faster in an attempt to fill that low pressure area. The faster it moves the more the centrifugal force throws it outward. Soon there are very fast circular winds and, when they reach 120 kilometers per hour, the system becomes a cyclone or hurricane.

The system then begins to move forward like a spinning top. This brings it into contact with more warm sea and air, and the process becomes self-sustaining. Once a cyclone is formed, it will continue to move and expand until it passes over land or over an area where the sea is cooler.

In the northern hemisphere, cyclones generally move in a north-westerly direction; in the southern hemisphere, in a south-westerly direction. Little is known about what makes these storms move and change direction, other then that they are affected by the high altitude winds and rotation of the earth. So far, scientists have found it difficult to predict the movement of the cyclone, making this hazard one of the most dangerous.

How to reinstall the Windows TCP/IP stack

It's been a long time since I blogged anything technical. In my current job I am quite far from technology, which is a drag, but kind of part of the dues of moving along in my career. However, I still get some opportunities to do geeky stuff.

For example, my neighbor just called me with a problem with his Windows XP machine. He had gotten hit with a virus. Norton took care of it, but his browser no longer worked.

I fired up a command prompt and pinged google. I got this:

Pinging www.l.google.com [ºÿ] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=245
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=245
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=245
Reply from 64.233.167.99: bytes=32 time=63ms TTL=245
...

Which was kind of what I expected, except for the weird ºÿ characters in the first line. I started to suspect that my neighbor's TCP/IP stack was messed up. In the past, I seemed to remember fixing this by deinstalling TCP/IP and reinstalling it.

But when I went to deinstall TCP/IP, I saw that the "uninstall" button was grayed out. Hmm.

A little research on the Internet (always have a second computer!) revealed a single command that could be used to "reinstall" TCP/IP. It doesn't really reinstall it, it just resets the configuration of it:

netsh winsock reset

After this, Windows asked me to restart. When I went to the signoff login, the "Shutdown" button had a message that stated that shutting down would install a necessary update. I chose to shutdown.

When the PC rebooted, everything worked! There are more details on this technique here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811259

February Album Writing Month: You're Really Great! (Song #2)

I've actually got four songs written so far (I'm supposed to finish 14 in February; we'll see), but I've only been able to record two more or less successfully. Here is the second one: http://fawm.org/songs.php?id=2436. I'm also putting these up on my MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/timothychenallen.

February Album Writing Month: Naphthalene (Song #1)

After finishing National Novel Writing Month, I was looking for something to do and ran across February Album Writing Month (FAWM). The idea is to write 14 songs in 28 days. I've gotten started on my album (ha ha), which I'm tentatively calling "14 things I f&"@#!d up (and one thing I got right)".

You can see and listen to "Naphthalene" at http://fawm.org/songs.php?id=227.

Charlie's Hash

Over 150 hashers from all over the DC area and beyond got together to celebrate the life of our friend Charlie "Wrong Way" Roberts:

Jingle All the Way 10K: 51:45

A woman I work with, Allison Thompson, got a bunch of us to run in the Jingle All the Way 10K. Our team, Allison Thompson, Natalie Palugyai, Xavier Hughes, Rob Goucher, Deni Taveras, Tami Theiler and I were listed as the Disaster Blasters. It was a lot of fun, though it highlighted for me what I've been coming to grips with for a while: I'm not as fast as I used to be!