Right, where shall I start?

The more perceptive among you will have noticed that BigglesZX.com “as we know it” has completely changed. Gone are the vast expanses of green (or red, for the colour-blind), replaced instead by a crisp array of greys and shiny images. Yep, in my never-ending quest for a site UI that can please me for more than a month, I’ve taken the drastic step of moving the site to the WordPress blogging backend. This means that for the first time I’m using a system that I didn’t write myself - which is a slightly unsettling feeling - but it’s counterbalanced by the fluffy feeling I get when entering posts through the WP Admin pages, which is nothing less than a joyful experience.

Yes, instead of an ever-so-slightly shallow home-made interface, I’ve spent my time designing the new BigglesZX.com as a Theme to be plugged into WordPress. That should mean it’s portable to anyone’s WP installation, but that’s not 100% true, as it includes some homegrown bolt-ons like the Chatbox (which had to be included really, didn’t it?) and BOFHcam. But taking the Theme approach means I can make it “mine” as a site while still using all the handyness of WP.

So anyway. Frankly, this new site is more about me than before. The collage of images that form the header are intended to represent my different interests, and you’ll note also the succinctly organised list of categories into which posts will fall. Rather than just infrequent posts about interesting media morsels, the site will carry more blog-like material on what I’m up to, as well as - of course - trumpeting projects that I’m working on.

I need not (but will anyway) say that this is a work in progress - my first WordPress theme was never going to be perfect - so expect to see various bits tweaked, improved or otherwise. The Comments section and popup will be first on the list, as I just used the defaults, and could do better. I just wanted to get a functional system up before I enter the gauntlet of University (in 3 days), and here it is.

When I get a chance I will see about reposting some of the old articles here - in the meantime they can be found at the old site here. Thanks to the miracle of timestamp faking, I can backdate them to when they were originally posted, and for all you know they could have been here the whole time.

Well there you go, introductory announcement dispensed. Stay tuned for more.

To anyone who has been following the terrible events in New Orleans, this will make both interesting and concerning reading. Since Hurricane Katrina hit the area, its effects have been nothing less than catastrophic, but now the winds have receded, the real problem is a human one.

Michael Barnett, a.k.a. The Interdictor, works for DirectNIC, a large domain hosting company operating out of New Orleans. He and his crew have been holed up in their 9th-floor office suite, tasked with keeping the tens of thousands of hosted domains online. The building the houses their data centre and office has its own diesel generators, and as of today their Internet links are still up, and they are still online. His blog, now become the “Survival of New Orleans blog”, documents the things he has done and witnessed since the hurricane’s impact.

From his office he and his crew broadcasts a webcam feed (URL is a mirror and subject to change) and takes pictures of what he can see below - looting, military and police action, and the progress of the floodwaters. And a read of his blog shows things to be a lot worse than the mainstream media is reporting.

He reports police officers carrying out looting of SUVs, ATMs and guns; emergency supplies being dropped off bridges by the National Guard, destroying most of them in the process; reports of armed civilians surrounding police officers - one police source is quoted as saying,

“The people in the city are shooting at the police. They’re upset that they’re not getting help quickly enough. The firemen keep calling because they’re under fire. He doesn’t understand why the people are shooting at the rescuers. Here it is 5 days ago the Mayor said get out of town and nobody went and now they’re pissed.“

As he puts it,

“In case anyone in national security is reading this, get the word to President Bush that we need the military in here NOW. The Active Duty Armed Forces. Mr. President, we are losing this city. I don’t care what you’re hearing on the news. The city is being lost. It is the law of the jungle down here. The command and control structure here is barely functioning. I’m not sure it’s anyone’s fault — I’m not sure it could be any other way at this point. We need the kind of logistical support and infrastructure only the Active Duty military can provide. The hospitals are in dire straights. The police barely have any capabilities at this point. The National Guard is doing their best, but the situation is not being contained. I’m here to help in anyway I can, but my capabilities are limited and dropping. Please get the military here to maintain order before this city is lost.“

The blog’s RSS feed is here.
Apparently it’s also possible to listen to the National Guard radio channel with Winamp here.

Update: I’ve been trying a bunch of different feeds and this is the first I’ve found that works - it’s the Louisiana State Police radio channel in Baton Rouge, the one currently being transcribed on #interdictor-scanner (with occasional crosstalk on #interdictor-scanner2) on irc.freenode.net. Other feeds are listed here.