Power outage takes out major sites

Filed Under News, Second Life, SF Bay Area | 2007-07-24, 15:17

A series of power outages in San Francisco has taken a couple of pretty large sites out of commission. Those affected include:
craigslist
some SecondLife servers
NetFlix
LiveJournal, Vox, TypePad (and the rest of SixApart)
Yelp
Technorati
AdBrite
Some CurrentTV servers
Some ZDNet blogs

and the NSFW kink.com is also down…

All of these sites are hosted by 365 Main and I’m sure there are several other sites that are down because of this. Don’t these people have reliable backup generators? sheesh.. where am I going to get my Internet fix from today? The best part is this press release went up shortly before the sites started going down.

SecondLife is also experiencing trouble due to the power outages and has disabled logins until it is back up fully.

And for us locals, it looks like the afternoon commute might be a bit crazy if this isn’t resolved soon.

At least 20,000 without power in downtown S.F.

customers are lining up

UPDATE from SFGate:

At least 30,000 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. customers in San Francisco and the northern Peninsula lost power this afternoon after an explosion under a manhole cover on Mission Street, the utility said.
…
Witnesses said they heard an explosion at about 1:50 p.m., then saw flames coming from the manhole.
Actor Torino Von Jones, 32, said he was filming a Fruit of the Loom commercial down the block at the time.
“We were standing over there waiting for the camera cue when we heard a big explosion,” he said. “Flames came up taller than I am, and I’m 6-foot-2.”
“Naturally, when you hear an explosion, you think the worst,” said Von Jones, who nevertheless hurried back to work. “We’re Fruit of the Loom — we’ve got to make this commercial.”

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Bay Area Maker Faire 2007: Divining Pod, NifNaks, and SRL

Filed Under Education, Fire, News, SF Bay Area, Video | 2007-05-23, 21:30

Wow, what an event. I only made it down for about half of one day and was astounded by the number of people as well as things that were there to see and do. Everyone and their brother who was within driving distance seems to have already reported on the event, but there were a few things I wanted to personally touch on that I found most interesting.

monochrom’s Divining Pod

The Monochrom crew was back in the states on their International Year of Polytheism tour this past weekend. Large balloons, a supply of helium, and small children contributed to an attempt at sending one lucky person to the heavens. To quote Johannes, it was a “semi-total success”. There are tons of videos and photos floating around, and monochrom has a good wrap-up here

NifNaks

Our friend Nifer has been in hiding, working hard on starting her own business, NifNaks, for several months. While we had a chance awhile back to peek at what she’s been up to, it wasn’t until the Maker Faire that she fully unveiled everything. She had her very own booth for the business that’s sure to take off. Of interest to most geeks out there, one of her more popular items was the Flying Spaghetti Monster pin. Her site, NifNaks.com, is up and live so those of you that didn’t make it to her booth can order your own felt creations.

The SRL Show

While there were a large number of things at the Maker Faire that were kind of dangerous (Tesla coils, fire sculptures, power tool drag races, and more) I don’t think many of them truly compared to the unannounced SRL show. They had several amazing machines to show off this weekend, including Hovercraft, Running Machine, Dual Mule and Mr. Satan Head. Destruction, noise, and fire were all the results of this show. Part of it included Mr Satan Head setting fire to a large ball that appeared to be made of cardboard, which burned ever so nicely. However, the wind started to kick up, fueling the fire and blowing smoke and ash directly into the audience. The bleachers evacuated, and people were forced to move away from the fence. This picture kind of gives you an idea of the level of smoke when they began to put it out.

Of course sirens were heard in the distance and the fire department showed up shortly after. It turns out that the event organizers impounded Mr. Satan Head and billed SRL for $6600 in cleanup to the damaged parking lot. Ouch. In addition, one woman suffered minor burns, however SRL covered both her medical expenses and “pain and suffering”. Laughing Squid has some great photos in their post about the show. We’ve got a few more shots on Flickr and Rick Washburn posted the follow video of the event:

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Golden Gate Bridge collapses

Filed Under Funny, SF Bay Area | 2007-05-02, 18:39

Wikipedia just told me that the Golden Gate Bridge has collapsed. Hope nobody has to head north from the peninsula tonight!

Freeway Collapse in Oakland, CA

Filed Under Fire, SF Bay Area | 2007-04-29, 13:54

For those that haven’t heard yet, early Sunday morning (around 3:45am) a tanker truck carrying 8,600 gallons of gasoline crashed and exploded into flames (up to 200 feet tall) in what locals know as the MacArthur Maze. The heat from the resulting fire was so great that the on-ramp above the crash site melted and collapsed into what now looks like a Dali painting. Needless to say, this will have a significant impact to the traffic that flows out of San Francisco into the East Bay. Authorities are saying it’s even worse than the disruption from the collapse of the Bay Bridge in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Looks like a lot of us will be taking BART more often. Jason Schupp was kind enough to put together a Google Map showing where the damage took place.

More Coverage and Media:
CBS 5 (with video)
SFGate photos
Thomas Hawk’s photo from the morning after
SFist’s coverage including routes around the damage, aka take BART
Metroblogging SF also has some links
New York Times
Inside Bay Area

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

Filed Under SF Bay Area, Video | 2007-04-24, 16:18

This may be more interesting to the Bay Area locals, but I figured other people might find it neat as well. This is an old newsreel about the Bay Bridge opening up back in 1936. I love the style with which this news is presented. It’s exciting and sensational and for good reason.

Some fun facts about the Bay Bridge (via wikipedia)
* The Bay Bridge is 44,352 ft (8.40 miles) long.
* One of the busiest bridges in the US, carrying approximately 280,000 vehicles per day.
* The legal name of the bridge is The James “Sunny Jim” Rolph Bridge
* Construction began on July 9, 1933, with the bridge opening on November 12, 1936, causing one of the greatest SF traffic jams ever.
* The total cost came out to $79.5 million (equivalent to $1.07 billion in 2005 dollars).
* The toll started at 65 cents, dropped to it’s lowest of 25 cents.
* The current toll for autos is $4, collected only for westbound traffic. For comparison, the original $0.65 toll in 1936 would be $8.62 in 2005 dollars.
* The dirt excavated for the Yerba Buena tunnel (the largest diameter tunnel in the world) was used in part to build Treasure Island.
* Construction for a more earthquake-resistant replacement on the eastern span began in 2002, with an initial completion date slated for 2007. Now they’re looking at somewhere around 2012 or 2013.