Re: [projectvrm] Re: Colo floods

[Doc Searls < >]

Thanks, Erik. I'd been meaning to ask, and glad you were listening on the 
list.

For everybody else, Erik not only lives near Boulder, but is a native as 
well. So he knows his way around — not only Boulder and environs, but all of 
Colorado.

I was going to show some photos of the tour Erik gave me a few years back, 
but http://flickr.com is down for maintenance. When it's up, go to 
http://flickr.com/photos/docsearls and look up "Erik" and "Colorado."

I've also published a few thousand photos of the state, viewed from aircraft. 
Some of those might show "before" conditions. They're on Flickr too.

Doc

On Sep 15, 2013, at 11:47 AM, Gmail 
<
 >
 wrote:

> Doc, Boulder took a direct hit; even areas far from drainages were 
> affected.   Boulder Creek normally runs 200cfs.  It was over 5000cfs 
> Thursday night.  To get an idea of the power that's more than 157 tons 
> (assuming pure water) of water per second moving very rapidly. The power, 
> to borrow from the NWS description of the intensity of the rain, is 
> Biblical.  A large boulder was rolled  into one building I know of near the 
> mouth of Boulder Canyon along with a few other buildings just crushed by 
> the water.  I spent Thurs night keeping water out of my parents house which 
> is just off Baseline about a mile east of CU  - well away from the action 
> but every drainage along the Front Range was pouring water - the Big 
> Thompson was a foot above what it hit in 1976 (which was a nice day in 
> Boulder if memory serves correct).  Baseline was a river of water for 
> several long stretches and all reservoirs in town filled to the top.  
> Levees north of town gave way draining into the St Vrain and affecting 
> points east including Longmont but all major dams appear strong and in good 
> shape.   CU campus is OK but areas near drainages saw quite a bit of water 
> including all along Canyon Blvd and Arapahoe.  Nearly all major roads were 
> under water - there were no ways out of town Thursday night - and many 
> roads under water Friday morning.  Most have reopened since but several 
> bridges washed out and some of the mountain roads are just gone I think US 
> 36 west of Lyons and 34 in the Big Thompson Canyon are severely impacted 
> and impassible.   I haven't been back in town since Friday am. Buckling of 
> roads will be an issue as well.   We are just beginning to learn more of 
> the mountain towns as helicopters were finally able to fly on Saturday and 
> we are hoping the storms do not materialize today.   After today we appear 
> to be in the clear.   
> 
> My immediate area of Superior was relatively untouched - significant areas 
> of open space and holding ponds separate homes and huge drainages exploded 
> with water but had somewhere and plenty of room to run.   Tiny streams - 
> ankle deep were thundering 6-8 feet deep torrents and some of the creeks 
> reached up to the roads - 15 feet up and nearly topped them and in many 
> areas went right over - I-25 being a good example.  But relatives who live 
> within a few hundred yards of the Poudre River - another that blew its 
> banks with epic flows - high and dry because their neighborhood engineered 
> to handle massive amounts of water.
> 
> Still the speed with which the entire environment goes from crappy rainy 
> day to catastrophic and life threatening is unbelievable.  I along with the 
> rest of Boulder was driving all around town to various appointments 
> Wednesday - sure it was wet and creeks rolling and of course staying away 
> from the water and out of the canyons but nothing prepares you for the 
> speed with which the entire system is overwhelmed. We were running errands 
> Thursday afternoon - rain was light and roads were fine as folks were 
> getting their groceries etc  - but once it started pouring Thursday evening 
> all bets were off. 
> 
> Most of the worst came at night as well, which partly explains how some 
> cars get caught - you drive on roads that never see water and suddenly they 
> are rivers - very hard to gauge depth at night in driving rain and you are 
> racing time to get to safety in areas you'd never anticipate to be 
> problematic.   
> 
> Other towns like Eldorado, Estes Park, Longmont and Lyons and many others 
> are also very hard hit.  That said Boulder worked hard for the past 30 
> years or so to engineer the town to take this kind of hit - bike paths and 
> tunnels under roads throughout town double as drainage and many bridges 
> widened to allow for the flow.  It could have been much much worse.  And 
> had this been snow - 17 to 20 feet depending on how you run the numbers.   
> 
> The town and the entire area is beginning to assess and pull together to 
> get through this.   But flood warnings are going up again as I write this 
> so we are keeping our fingers crossed and all in our prayers.
> 
> Erik Cecil
> 
> http://about.me/erik.cecil
> 
> On Sep 15, 2013, at 8:03 AM, Peter Cranstone 
> <
 >
>  wrote:
> 
>> I'm south of Denver in Parker, but Liz is in Boulder and experiencing
>> mother nature's flood. Although yesterday we got 4.5" of rain in less than
>> an hour and the results we're pretty amazing.
>> 
>> 
>> Peter
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 9/15/13 6:12 AM, "Katherine Warman Kern" 
>> <
 >
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Peter, aren't you in Boulder?
>>> 
>>> Having been through Sandie just a year ago, my heart goes out to anyone
>>> on this list in the Colo area effected by the flood.
>>> 
>>> K-
>>> 
>>> On Sep 13, 2013, at 11:24 AM, Peter Cranstone
>>> <
 >
>>>  wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Got to love those UI's :)
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Peter
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On 9/13/13 8:43 AM, "Dan Lyke" 
>>>> <
 >
>>>>  wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Stupid GMail interface meant the first pass of this went straight to
>>>>> Peter. Sorry.
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 4:08 PM, Peter Cranstone
>>>>> <
 >
>>>>>  wrote:
>>>>>> Browserless Information should be glancable and require no
>>>>>> navigation (I don't agree with this other than to display a
>>>>>> picture. There has to be a menu somewhere).
>>>>> 
>>>>> A menu is a way to navigate a hierarchical tree. I think what many of
>>>>> us desire in interfaces is flatter navigation, which is why the world
>>>>> tends towards command-lines. And if you're one of those people who
>>>>> says that we've settled on the GUI, I offer one observation: Search is
>>>>> a command-line for the web.
>>>>> 
>>>>> But really, I suspect that what T.Rob means by "ambient interface" is
>>>>> one that takes already available information and acts on it. This
>>>>> isn't the environment around me presenting me with a menu, this is it
>>>>> engaging me in a conversation.
>>>>> 
>>>>> It's a tricky space: When I flip a light switch, I want the light to
>>>>> go on. I don't want the light thinking "what did he really mean?"
>>>>> (Mostly [1]). But when I do switch on that light, I'm telling my
>>>>> environment a lot more than "hey, I'd like some more light in here".
>>>>> Likewise when I turn on my stove, or open a door, I'm engaging an
>>>>> interface, but if those handles have notion of context, they can know
>>>>> to do a lot more than light the burner or allow me access to the room.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Okay, here's one: My bathroom light switch plate has 3 switches
>>>>> (light, fan, heater) and a timer knob (heater). One of those switches
>>>>> has 3 positions, light off, on low, and on. If I'm up in the middle of
>>>>> the night, I want the default to be "on low". If the hall light is on,
>>>>> I want the default to be "on". If something knew the state of the
>>>>> other lights in the house, it could figure this out from how I
>>>>> interacted with the switch right fast.
>>>>> 
>>>>> No smart phone. No touch screen. In fact, probably the same physical
>>>>> hardware. And, yes, I'd pay $50 to know that I was far less likely to
>>>>> stumble into the bathroom in the middle of the night, want to find
>>>>> something, and accidentally turn on the bright light and make myself
>>>>> *wide* awake.
>>>>> 
>>>>> This is why designing interfaces now, or starting with interfaces, for
>>>>> the "Internet of Things" seem to me to be doomed to failure: I shed
>>>>> gigabytes of intent just walking around my two bedroom house. I
>>>>> already have buttons in the house that confuse visitors[2]. What I
>>>>> need is not more buttons and menus, but fewer. Which brings us to:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Calm Should be seamless with the environment
>>>>> 
>>>>> One only has to look at the mocking of walking and texting to see that
>>>>> phones aren't seamless with the environment.
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Persistent connection Information must be current, and
>>>>>> regularly updatable (this will eat your data plan and
>>>>>> battery on mobile if not coded carefully)
>>>>> 
>>>>> The interface must be responsive. This is different for different
>>>>> applications. A tenth of a second is too much lag in some UI, in
>>>>> others we're happy to have interfaces with latency of minutes
>>>>> (although sometimes we'll but in a secondary effect to message the
>>>>> user that something will happen: beeps when we press the crosswalk
>>>>> button, feedback on thermostats).
>>>>> 
>>>>>> Decision driven data Should be personalized and summarized
>>>>>> to help users make decisions quickly and easily. "Should I
>>>>>> bring an umbrella with me today?" (Context is key)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Great example: If there's rain forecast, maybe my hat stand knows
>>>>> about the weather and rotates to put my wool outback hat on the
>>>>> accessible side, rather than the ballcap. Doesn't force the decision
>>>>> on me, just makes a recommendation.
>>>>> 
>>>>> The interface for the Internet of Things will be on a screen, and
>>>>> especially on a touch screen, only if the Internet of Things has
>>>>> failed horribly and utterly.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Dan
>>>>> 
>>>>> [1] http://www.kosherswitch.com/
>>>>> [2] Hot water recirculator. "Help, I was on the toilet, pushed that
>>>>> button because I wanted to see what it did, and now there's a humming
>>>>> that I can't turn off". When we stopped laughing... Of course now we
>>>>> have a bidet seat, hopefully the Toto icons don't really give visitors
>>>>> like that a shock...
>>