Events

I'm in San Antonio on business. I brought The Rogue with me, and this week's Economist. Unfortunately, I finished both on the flight down. Worse, I left my Kindle at home. Fortunately, there's a Barnes & Noble just a short distance away. Because what I really need right now is more books.

From reader DC, I present...Dog: And for those who were never children, "Ralph" is the mouse with the motorcycle.

Forty five years ago today, Simon and Garfunkel released Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme. "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," "The Dangling Conversation," "7 O'Clock News"—you can hear the '60s happening right on your iPod. Which is, in fact, what I am about to do.

I had some time yesterday afternoon, and the weather in Chicago was gorgeous, so I hopped on my bike. But where to go? How about on a route that was largely clear of traffic and had recently been swept clean by the city, like, say, this one. Good choice: I don't think I've ever ridden on cleaner roads in my life. Only, I left home too early, so near 18th and Ashland I caught up with the street sweepers: A dozen blocks farther on I had to wind my way through the garbage trucks, and then near 31st St I...

The women's leaders, Ethiopian Ejegayehu Dibaba, 29, and Russian Liliya Shobukhova, 33, run past the 9 km point during today's Chicago Marathon: 7:58 am CDT today, ISO-400, f/5 at 1/400, 55mm, here. At this writing Shobukhova is in the lead on a 5:17 pace with Dibaba 56 seconds behind her at the 30 km timing pad. And she has followers:

No, not for the Chicago Marathon, currently underway a city block from me. (Parker and I were cheering the runners on for the past hour.) Rather, Chicago yesterday set a record for most consecutive days with 100% sunshine since records began in the 1870s: With 100 percent sunshine today, it marks the 7th straight such day this month - tying the old record set back in October 10-16, 1934. A new October record could be set, if [Sunday], as forecast, turns out to be another day with 100 percent sunshine....

Apparently a lot of people are interested in time zones. Here's The Daily Parker's traffic this week: Sat 2011-10-014,239 Sun 2011-10-02 3,727 Mon 2011-10-03 4,206 Tue 2011-10-04 5,497 Wed 2011-10-05 4,049 Thu 2011-10-0677,558 Fri 2011-10-07127,023 Fortunately my server seems to be keeping up. I expect that my ISP is unhappy with me, though.

We're having our sixth consecutive day of cloudless skies and warm temperatures. No one's complaining: Thursday's fifth consecutive 100 percent sunny day was the longest such spell of any here over the past 18 years There wasn't a cloud in the sky Thursday. It led to Chicago being credited with 100 percent of its possible sunshine for a fifth consecutive day. A check of weather records here reveals it's the first set of five completely sunny days in 18 years. In an average year, 46 days (13 percent of...

A little housekeeping: if the blog seems slow today, thank this entry, which has got over 70,000 page views yesterday through 19:00 CDT and continues to get hit today. (Usual site traffic is about 4,000 page views per day, total.) So, there's nothing wrong with either the blog or with your carrier. It's just a lot more traffic than my servers usually get.

After the shocking disappearance of the Olson time zone database yesterday (described here and here), some things have become clearer overnight. o The wonderful land of Oz has stepped up. Robert Elz, an Australian computer scientist who has actively supported the tzinfo project throughout, has revived the time zone mailing list maintained at the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). My, but the list was active overnight, with dozens of people volunteering to host the database, move it to non-U.S....