My apologies for the ten-day outage. News and weather events have been overwhelming.

They'd better batten down the Baja today: Hurricane Juliette is rolling through.
Servicio Meteorológico Nacional hosts a nice satellite image of this tropical storm.

In gaming news, I am sickly addicted to Tropico.
What is it? It's SimCity for a banana republic.
I'm not certain if this game is racist, or if it's tongue in cheek satire. Both?
Interestingly enough, you can be neither a drug lord nor a golf lord, according the F.A.Q.

Will I be able to make money through the drug cartel?
Poptop decided early on to exclude all drug-related issues from the game. You will, however, be able to make money from "questionable" means, like cabarets or nightclubs.

Can my island have a golf course?
No, golf courses are no longer a part of the game.

Breaking from the recent somber tone, I thought I'd share a funny story (A Real Viking) from DNFI today:

The "Strongest Man of the South Peninsula" contest took place in Hafnarfjördur on Friday. One of the contestants was Jón Valgeir Williams who unfortunately chopped into his own leg with an axe in the first leg of the contest, the woodcutter contest.

Williams, whose sinews were cut in half, was rushed to hospital and stitched up. Undeterred, he returned in the afternoon to take part in a weightlifting contest. Asked whether he wasn’t in great pain with all that weight on his leg, Williams replied in true Viking style,

"You’ve got to be hard."

Williams came fifth in the weightlifting contest, but decided to quit after that.

They really have nothing better to do in Iceland, do they?

Louisville native, boxing legend, and America's most-loved Muslim goes on record against the attacks:

"I am Muslim. I am American. As an American Muslim, I want to express my deep sadness and anguish at the tremendous loss of life that occurred on Tuesday. Islam is a religion of peace. Islam does not promote terrorism or the killing of people. I cannot sit by and let the world think that Islam is a killing religion. It hurts me to see what radical people are doing in the name of Islam. These radicals are doing things that God is against. Muslims do not believe in violence. If the culprits are Muslim, they have twisted the teachings of Islam. Whoever performed, or is behind, the terrorist attacks in the United States of America does not represent Islam. God is not behind assassins. Anyone involved in this must pay for their evil. I pray the God blesses the people and families of those who were killed, and our great country."

Ali's statement courtesy of TheLouisvilleChannel.

I had a surreal Sunday. As seasonal allergies were manifest, I was doped up on various medications.
All in all, I think I made about four wrong turns during my travels. So everywhere I went, I was late and disoriented.
I wonder if anyone noticed...

First, I went to a women's rugby match, courtesy of the amazing Ms. AEB. Local heroines Twin Cities Amazons battled the Atlanta Harlequins in an invitational game.
Sadly, Minnesota lost in the final minutes of the game. I wish them the best of luck in their next league match against Chicago.

Then, I went to an Onero Specto get-together grill-out, courtesy of the Holsts.
Dave and Marie have a gazeebo! I love the structure, and I love the word. Gazeebo.
It's always fun to meet people "in the flesh" that you've known for a while only as their online avatars.

Finally, I met up with the amazing Rick Risch in the beautiful home of Ed and Amy.
Rick had just returned from Bangalore, India, and had fascinating stories to tell.
AEB, the Smiths, Rick, and I talked music and movies over salmon and wine. Yum!

UWEC has transcripts of a panel on "Storytelling and Computer Games: Past, Present and Future" featuring Scott Adams, not the Dilbert cartoonist, but the creator of the seminal Adventureland game.
(Bill found this on Slashdot who discovered it on XYZZYnews.)
Scott Adams has recently published a new text-based game, Return To Pirate's Island 2, some 25 years after his first.

Darryl pointed me a press release he found via Slashdot that concerns the issue of Scalable Vector Graphics as an official World Wide Web Consortium standard.
This could be really cool.
Adobe already has a viewer in beta.

While I would not go so far as to call myself a convert, having experienced firsthand the myriad differences between SAFECO Field and the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome is enough to make me reconsider the whole stadium funding issue.

Here on the web site, I've archived all the stuff from August.
I'll be adding new "Stuff on the Right" as I find it.
Hopefully, there will be more stuff in "Projects" soon.