Repeating the tradition started last year by showing randomly rotated victims from 9/11 on pages at Hmm. This year instead of flying in the header section, the victims are being randomly displayed on every directory page, including the home page above the first post.

Will be leaving these up there for at least the next week. I noticed the victim details links that are supposed to lead to september11victims.com (didn’t link intentionally because don’t want to compound the problem) appear to be broken. I’ll see if I can link to a Google cache or something else as this site might be getting pounded if this continues.

Update 8:37pm PST: CNN has a complete list of victims by name sorted that you can learn more about each of the victims.

A list of 9/11 victims broken out by World Trade Center, American Airlines Flight 11, American Airlines Flight 77, United Airlines Flight 175, United Airlines Flight 93 and the Pentagon. Victims on the list were included based on confirmed dead (2,948), reported dead (24) and reported missing (24) for a total of 2,996. The list was compiled by Alex Spektor and last updated on 8/8/2004.

While wondering what to do with the empty blue header space (formerly used for 468×60 banner advertising) atop each page of this website I combined the list of 9/11 victims along with links to Spektor’s tribute pages into a single file. With a few lines of code and this master list (saved and served using only our bandwidth), a different 9/11 victim name is being randomly displayed with every page view today, and perhaps the remainder of the week in this spot at the top of each page.

Please take a few minutes out of your busy day and click on the names and visit at least some of these tribute pages for the people who lost their lives 9/11. Understandably today Mr. Spektor’s site is moving slow, so patience is in order. There are pictures on Spektor’s site for many of the victims, comments and additional details about them. I thought about rolling this code into a Wordpress plugin to share with the masses, but there is a copyright notice on the bottom of the page. I attempted to email the webmaster contact at the site and the email bounced. If the author of that site (Mr. Spektor) would give me permission to roll this into a Wordpress plugin, I’ll release it to the masses under a GPL license. Otherwise, well, I’ll just share here for a few days and put it away until another 9/11 in the future.

The pain goes on.

The firefighters and first responders who helped rescue thousands that day in 2001 and later recovered the dead were to read the victims’ names for the first time. Many of those rescuers are now ill with respiratory problems and cancers themselves, and they blame the illnesses on exposure to the fallen towers’ toxic dust.

In response to addressing the health impacts of 9/11 like those mentioned in the piece above, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has launched a new World Trade Center health website.

This post is in the current events category and if viewed on the single page should not be displaying any advertising.

Here is a story many people, myself certainly included, were hoping would not end this way.

Our hearts go out to the Kim family as James Kim, husband and father was found deceased a few minutes after noon today.

The Kim family became stranded in wilderness terrain some 11 days ago when taking a road that is typically closed for winter. A couple of Edge wireless employees were instrumental in tracking down a ping from a couple text messages that would lead searchers to focus on Bear Creek Road in southern Oregon.

After waiting for help for nearly a week, running the car out of gas and burning tires to keep warm, James Kim set out to try and find help for his family. On Monday a helicopter hired by the family of the Kim’s found the mother and children in satisfactory condition and there was renewed hope that Mr. Kim would be found nearby alive soon. Rescue resources increased and efforts intensified. Earlier today help finally arrived for Mr. Kim, but sadly was too late.

CNET, where James Kim worked, has cancelled their holiday party and will be providing as needed their 800 employees with grief counseling. Former workers and friends are beginning to capture and share their thoughts on James including this touching piece by Eliot Van Buskirk:

He died as he lived, doing everything he could to provide for those he loved. This was a happy man, confident enough in himself to have had extra concern left over for those around him. I am proud to have known him and will not forget him.

James Kim was 35. R.I.P.

Who in the tech world hasn’t been following this story with a lump in their throat? CNET editor and Tech TV Alumni James Kim, his wife and children have been missing for eight days near Roseburg, Oregon.

Today a helicopter hired by the family found James’ wife, Kati, and two children. A state trooper on video offered no details on their medical condition although Kati Kim was said to be “walking.” They are in the hospital. Also in the video segment, the trooper used the word “crash” but then backed away from that when asked for more details.

James Kim left two days ago with snow shoes to find help and as of this writing is still missing. No details yet have come forward on what exactly happened but the roads in the area where they were traveling this time of year can be severe. The area where the mother and two young children were found wasn’t accessible by 4×4 and only Snocats could get around.

Kim has always struck me as an industrious guy and I remain hopeful that he too is found alive. I hope he only traveled during the day with the heat of the sun above him and was able to keep warm through the biting night. There are logger cabins strewn throughout that area and he could have stayed in those areas to avoid being outside when it grew dark and temperatures dropped further.

It’s good to hear that Kati Kim and the two daughters will be sleeping in a warm bed tonight, I hope James is found and he will be too. More news is supposed to be available at 5pm PST today (about 30 minutes from this post).

Please keep the Kim family in your thoughts and prayers tonight.

Update 5:00pm PST: CNET is offering a live stream of the press conference.

They found James tracks some two miles away. They will be continuing to search throughout the night. Searchers from various agencies are out there looking for James Kim. Kati Kim and the two children reportedly are in good condition.

They will be working 24/7 until they find Kim and bring him home. They will be using night vision gear to follow the tracks. Dog teams are coming in the morning as well as some horse teams will be deployed.

5:15p: To survive the eight days Kati Kim used the car to keep the heat on until the car ran out of gas. Then they burned their car tires to keep warm.

When available, updates and information will be made available via flashalert.net.

Picture source: wsspg.org

An 8.1 earthquake struck Northeast of Japan about 6:15 EST this morning and a tsunami warning has been issued in Japan.

A tsunami about 6 1/2 feet tall or higher could hit the Pacific coast of Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido and main island of Honshu after 9:10 p.m. (7:10 a.m. EST), the agency said.

An official from the town of Shibetsu on Hokkaido, Kiyoshi Takimoto, told public broadcater NHK that about 4,000 of the town’s 6,100 residents lived along the coast and had been told to flee to higher ground.

While writing this, I just heard on CNN that Hawaii has now been put on tsunami watch, but it will take awhile for the wave to travel across to the Hawaii shores. Also on watch is in place in Alaska and Russia. Part of Alaska has a Tsunami warning. The lowest level warning for tsunami is a tsunami advisory, followed by a tsunami watch and finally the highest level (evacuation): a tsunami warning.

More coverage: CNN (Sirius satellite subscribers: channel 132) and various sources online via Google News [keyword: tsunami (RSS)]

Wonder if we’ll finally see the gaming Holy Grail, er Xbox 360, in some local retail stores by this New Zealand and Australia launch date? xbox (emphasis mine):

The new launch date has been set due to unprecedented global consumer demand and short-term manufacturing issues due to component shortages stemming from challenges in ramping supply. The move ensures that the markets will have an adequate supply of Xbox 360 consoles to meet demand at launch.

This is a delay from their earlier plans, so that’s a good thing that Microsoft has backed things up and earnestly seem to be trying to solve the supply shortage problem.

End of March, beginning of April will be about the time I hoped to be able to find one here locally, after realizing that getting one before Christmas was unrealistic. I do realize that they can be bought online and I might break down and buy one this way if too many more months go by. I keep hearing how great this Geometry Wars game is in the Xbox Live Arcade.

So tempting!

Let’s hope Gates is right and that third manufacturing plant really ramps up production. Something tells me when Sony ships the PS3, we’ll be tripping over Xbox 360 boxes at local retailers, so maybe I should be in Sony’s corner rooting for their nextgen machine to launch?

The Hmm poll on the homepage, though nothing remotely close to scientifc, still has some 68% either unwilling or undecided about buying an Xbox 360. I wonder if after this Australian/NZ launch if there still aren’t enough Xbox 360 units to go around if these numbers will rise or fall? I intend to keep that poll running until after I am able to walk into a local retailer and buy one. Please keep in mind that I live and work about 40 minutes from Microsoft’s campus.

Starting to wonder if/when I’ll be invited up to a usability testing session on the Xbox 360 before I actually own the unit. Wouldn’t that be something? I just went up for one, so I won’t be elligible for another couple months … which is about the time of this launch.

What are we now, about 75 days after the initial launch? This is probably my fourth or fifth post (at least) lamenting the Xbox 360 supply issue and this topic has grown lots of mold (so what am I writing about this again for?).

Ok, I’ll do my best to shut up about this supply issue — it isn’t going to change no matter what I write anyway — until either I can buy one or this March 23 date passes, whichever comes first. Feel free if you already own an Xbox 360 to gloat in the comments section and make me envious.

Just out of curiosity: is anybody out there — Japan aside — able to walk into their local retailer tomorrow and buy an Xbox 360?

At the top of the Hmm television category readers can now view current news videos from Reuters top news stories. These are short clips lasting around a minute each, are updated frequently daily and well produced from what I’ve viewed so far.

A current version of Flash is required. Successfully tested in current versions of Internet Explorer (although a JS error is being thrown as I write this), Firefox, Opera and Safari. Reuters maintains that advertisements may be shown, although I haven’t seen any yet.

Disclaimer: MakeYouGoHmm is not compensated by any advertisements shown in these Reuters videos and has no control over these ads if/when they are shown. This is part of a Reuters Lab experiment and is subject to change.

So it’s been more than 36 hours now since I signed up for the Alexa Web Services and no email, no call, no response from the Alexa team. Consider this my official Alexa Web Services watch (will update this post when/if I finally connect with them). Since I signed up shortly after seeing John Battelle’s post, I have to be among the first batch of folks who signed up. It’s definitely odd that I haven’t at least received an auto-reply message.

Anybody else hear something back yet?

Update 12/14/2005 4:41pm PST: Received an email from “Alexa Web Search Platform Account” with the following message:

Hello,

Thank you for applying for an Alexa Web Search Platform Beta account. Due to the high volume of applications it may take a few days to get back you.

We appreciate your interest.

Alexa Web Search Platform Account Management

12/16/2005 9:36pm PST Rejected! Receieved the “sorry, we’re full” email at 5:55pm PST. It was a lot longer than that, polite and professional. Seems like I might get a shot once they add more capacity but they are making this a very limited release. Again, I signed up within the first couple hours of the announcement. This early bird didn’t catch the worm. I’m going to check with some other developers I know signed up and see if they got in.

Wow, might want to turn on CNN. A suspicious man aboard a plane was fired upon by a federal air marshal who was believed to have a bomb in a carry-on bag.

The incident happened after the plane taxied to the gate and passengers had started to deplane.

Another network reports, according to CNN, that the man was running up and down the aisles inside the plane and there might have been mental issues.

No report yet if anybody else was injured in the shooting or the identity of the man who was shot. CNN just reported from a source that there was no bomb in the carry-on bag.

CNN just aired that the man who was shot has died.

Update 12:37pm PST: There are at least 2 air marshals aboard every domestic flight (later CNN would report this differently that not every domestic flight has air marshals) and as many as 6-8 aboard international flights. The reporting so far also indicates the man was warned multiple times to get down and not reach for his bag, and after he did was when the marshal fired.

12:50pm PST: Passenger shot is being reported as a 44 year old American man. Officials are not confirming that this man is, in fact, dead.

1:05pm PST: officials have now confirmed that the suspect was killed. This is the first time since 9/11 that a federal air marshal has fired his weapon in the line of duty. The man allegedly was running from the airplane and pursued by at least two air marshalls, one of which fired upon the suspect after several warnings. Wolf Blitzer in The Situation Room reminds viewers that first reports are often wrong.

1:25pm PST: now CNN is reporting that this 44 year old man deplaned, went through customs, then got back onto the plane and got in an argument with his wife and said he had a bomb. Next, the air marshals asked him to deplane which he did do, and then in the jetway he was told to go to the ground and drop the bag and he approached the marshals “aggressively” and reaching for his bag and 2-3 shots were fired.

Five weeks have gone by since Hurricane Katrina struck.

Let’s step away from the tech for a moment to remember the victims of Hurricane Katrina, who are far and away still not back where they belong.

The following is about real people doing real good for others just because they really want to help. This is what America is about and I’m honored to know people like Lestat.

Lestat my friend from Wisconsin who blogs over at BeginnerCode just got back from taking a truckload of supplies down to New Orleans. He took a week’s vacation time to go down there and caught the tail end of Hurricane Rita. Here are his comments from our open IRC conversation this morning:

^Lestat: we began to gautier.
^Lestat: but got re-routed to lake charles as the disaster struck.
^Lestat: we took an easterly route to avoid any remnant of Rita - but that was prroly times, and we drove through the tornados anyhow
^Lestat: that was exciting in an RV(tornado magnet)
^Lestat: in the end it ended up being a 40hr drive
^Lestat: we had enough food & water/med supplies for us the crew for the week.
^Lestat: didnt know what we were going in to
TD: wow, with gas prices soaring … like $4/gallon in some areas
^Lestat: a food service joined with nightrunners.net
^Lestat: with convoy of hope
^Lestat: they fed us break/lunch/and dinner
^Lestat: we also had plenty of ice/water/gatorade…man it was hot
^Lestat: lots of our people had heat exhaustion
^Lestat: the supplies for the line came from donations around the world to the convoy of hope
^Lestat: who sets up distibution points to truck in
^Lestat: the ice and food kept comming
^Lestat: we DID have trouble getting gas to get out of town.
^Lestat people were driving around with generators in their pickup selling them at 200%mu
^Lestat: one lady donate all 3 of hers to us, and went around the next day filling gas cans, and donated them too
^Lestat: the amount of charity is staggering
^Lestat: i would say only 1% of people asking for the charity were the abusers
^Lestat: NASCAR car #32 is now a sponsor - they donated 1.5 mil to our cause
^Lestat: WE were the ice water point for the police sherrifs/ national guard for many days
^Lestat: in return, the guard donated some soliders/time to help us in handing out aid…then we could break
^Lestat 1 of the soldiers was a disgrace, but I included him in the 1% of jerks out there
^Lestat: but the police were working 24 hours etc and hadnt gotten home
^Lestat: heard 1 story of a policeman who went home and found his family/ children dead…he shot himself
^Lestat: we were in the lobby of “hobby lobby” craft store, and little plaza with other stores…
^Lestat: the mgr, ended up helping us out too
^Lestat: he was trying to fix up his place that was flooded etc…
^Lestat: he had the only bathroom we could use …no portopottys
^Lestat: though we had to use a flashlight, and dump water in the toilet to make it go
^Lestat: no modestya nymore when you are grunting away, and who knows who is holding a flashlight for you outside the stall
^Lestat: but it was a necessity
^Lestat: the owner of the plaza wanted us to move our operation so alstate ins could move in to help victims. the ownere didnt really know what our operation was about…
^Lestat: BUT
^Lestat: the police said they would NOT assist us in moving - because they wanted us to stay
^Lestat: we were their support
^Lestat: Ive never been greeted by a policemen so nicly before walking up to his car.
^Lestat: usually they get kinda shifty when you do that

I took the sequence of the actual comments out of order so that the trip could be put in chronological order. The above comments were actually Lestat’s last comments, without any editing. These were his first comments:

^Lestat this is my tummy holding the case of water http://www.bangornews.com/news/templates/?a=121111
^Lestat: it was truly heart wrenching
^Lestat: both the photographer and reporter ended up helping us hand out aid. they were touched
^Lestat: it was a warzone
^Lestat: lots to tell…
^Lestat: military / helicopters flying everywhere
^Lestat: soldeiers everywhere - curfew on - humvees all over
^Lestat: and didnt see PEEP of FEMA until Friday
^Lestat: FEMA gets paid by us the citizens. Convoy of Hope is all donations.
^Lestat: I have pics, but no time to blog yet…

The lack of FEMA being visible is a criticism heard in the early days of Katrina, but haven’t heard as much recently.

TD: where was FEMA, you think?
^Lestat: FEMA was busy planning on planning how to plan how to help people
^Lestat: its hard when you meet people that all they own is in the trunk of their car
^Lestat: then again - they WERE told to get out
^Lestat it was 106 with the heat index there
^Lestat: lots of people had heat exhaustion
^Lestat: hard to see children in cars. The kids looked like they were swimming - but it was sweat.
^Lestat: to be honest, I cried a lot.
TD: I’m proud of you, Lestat. It is generous, caring Americans like you that really make this country what it is today.
^Lestat thank man
TD: I’d like to put this in the current event section at Hmm, CNN is talking about people going back to school and the city being almost dry
^Lestat: i need to get me new scanner hooked up to blog.
^Lestat: i journaled each day.
^Lestat: on paper
TD: I’m still wondering about that area though and think that it still needs much, much work and the news coverage of that will be less than the news of the initial tragedy and water
^Lestat: you got that right
TD: If that’s true, then that’s a tragedy in itself
^Lestat: its truly incredible. Pictures and tv doesnt do it justice
TD: I would encourage you to blog it and keep the story going
^Lestat: in the lake charles area (where i was) it will take at least 2 years
^Lestat: it’s very sad.
TD: bloggers can keep the news strong where mainstream media, drops it for other stories
^Lestat: it was even more surreal comming home to our weath
^Lestat: it was surreal, leaving the chaos into our piggish wealth(so it seemed)
^Lestat: it was just as surreal returning home - as it was entering the week of chaos
TD: Yeah, just UNlike our brave men and women fighting over in Iraq, we have it selfishly good right now
^Lestat: but it was SOoooooo nice to go to the bathroom without a flashlight AND have a shower WITH hot water.