Quartz City

• What Would It Take to Send the U.S. Economy Into Free Fall? - Money 2007 — New York Magazine
  (tags: finance politics)

• The “Wargames IMSAI”
  What ever happened to the IMSAI 8080 used in the movie “Wargames”
  (tags: computer film history)

Holding down the high score on Tempest at Ground Kontrol in Portland.

I’m vaguely ashamed by my rather weak 109,526 high score. Back In The Day my average score would be around 200-220K after twenty minutes or so. Still, I’ll take what I can get. Ground Kontrol’s machine is in terrific shape (along with their Robotron machine which gave me a quite a workover)

• How-to: Proper Gmail IMAP for iPhone & Apple Mail
  Setting up Mail.app and iPhone to sync with Gmail IMAP
  (tags: google howto email)

• Stereolab origins, part I
  Part one of a four part series on YouTube which illustrates the origins of many Stereolab songs
  (tags: youtube stereolab)

Just stepped out for a coffee and noticed a new column of black smoke a little bit east of where most of the smoke has been coming from. I wonder if this is the Acton fire. The Mt. Wilson Solar Tower webcam has a better image.

HPWREN has webcams distributed throughout San Diego County. The Lyons Peak webcam is pretty close to the action.

I know I’ve been harsh on Twitter before, but the KPBS and LA Times Twitter streams are pretty informative along with this Google Earth/Map page.

• Hemmings Auto Blogs SIA Flashback - Tucker Hoax!?
  Scans of 1973 article on the Tucker auto. More or less the beginning of the Tucker’s reevaluation
  (tags: auto history)

Just as FYI to everyone, here are some online police/fire radio scanner streams.

• ScanOC is streaming Silverado/Portola fire crew radio via WMP.
• ScannerBuff is streaming Agua Dulce, Santa Clarita, Orange County, and Witch Creek fires (you’ll need to install the TeamSpeex client first)
• Santa Clarita Live Scanner Audio has several different stream formats of police and fire radio.
• The Listening Post is also offering some streams but I haven’t been able to load them.

I’ll update this list as I get more information. The SoCalScan group on Yahoo has been a good source of information.

QC was in Irvine this afternoon and in the space of two hours watched as a small column of smoke up the toll road turned into a full-on fire - blacking out the sky.

Ironically, the main emergency management center for Orange County sits on top of the fire area at Loma Ridge. Hope there’s a contingency plan for when/if the emergency center burns down.

There’s a few more pictures on the Flickr stream. Please be careful out there folks.

• The trouble with indie rock. - By Carl Wilson - Slate Magazine
  Probably the best analysis of Sasha Frere-Jones’ New Yorker “A Paler Shade Of White” piece on indie rock. In short, it’s not race - it’s class
  (tags: music culture criticism)