An unwelcome guest...
Pike could devastate fisheries Scientists say predator could devastate Delta
A predator fish that could endanger salmon and other fish populations throughout Northern California has survived efforts to poison it and has multiplied to alarming levels, according to the state Department of Fish and Game. [SFGate] 

Nature...
Two pollutants make much of our water undrinkable
More than 70 billion gallons of California groundwater is undrinkable because of contamination by just two highly publicized pollutants, an environmental group says in a report being released today. That's enough to supply 400,000 families for a year, according to Environment California.[OCRegister] 

Protecting Nature from the people...
Peninsula district buys scenic Summit-area parcels
A picturesque expanse of mountain land along the Summit area between Santa Clara and Santa Cruz counties -- notorious 10 years ago after trespassers used semiautomatic weapons and shotguns to blast apart hundreds of old TV sets, computers, kitchen appliances and junk cars on one corner of it -- is cleaned up and on its way to becoming a public park. [Bay Area.com] 

Going to the Opera...
Just gave Opera 7 a try. My Radio weblog looks like it does in Netscape 7. Campinguy.com looks fine. Dane's weblog looks fine. Joe's weblog looks good with just one or two minor things.

All in all, I think it's a good "alternative" browser. Obviously it needs work to catch the big 2. It is fast as hell though. I give it that.

Why I downloaded and tested it was this post from Dive Into Mark:

How to hide CSS from Opera 7

The Owen Hack hides CSS from Opera 5 and 6, but not Opera 7 (released today). However, my newly invented *7 hack hides CSS from Opera 5, 6, and 7 on Windows, and Opera 6 on OS X.

Note that I have nothing against Opera 7; it seems quite nice, and most of the bugs from the public beta seem to have been shaken out. I have no idea if there are any major CSS rendering bugs which would even require a hiding hack. It seems to handle all of the advanced demos in css/edge, which is impressive (and probably intentional).

One CSS bug which afflicted previous versions of Opera was the lack of simultaneous vertical and horizontal centering of background images (using background-position: center center). This is now fixed in Opera 7, which means that Oliver is now centered properly.

Since it renders all of our pages with little or no change it looks like you don't really need to worry about hiding the CSS in your webpage from Opera 7. I know that Dane's page, Joe's page, and both my pages employ CSS to the fullest.

 

Coming soon to a weblog near you...
Jake Savin
"I'm working on a new backup/restore feature for Radio UserLand, and have hit a bit of a snag." [Scripting News]

This is cool. I could have used this feature a few weeks ago and can't wait for it to get added to Radio.

 

THis is cool...
Model Rocket Inflight Video Camera link via 2.4GHz Microwave

  K-rad video clips of a model rocket flight transmitted live to a ground station via 2.4GHz microwave. Site offers videos in QT, WMV formats. Link Discuss (Thanks, Adam!)[Boing Boing Blog]

If you've got a faster connection this is a pretty interesting little video. We sat around for a hour talking about everything from which engine he must have been using to how a solar igniter works. Yes, we're geeks. Now you know who to call next time your computer crashes.

 

Local news...
Gold dredge vanishes in northern California
"A huge gold dredge sank under mysterious circumstances in the Yuba Goldfields early this week, owners reported." [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]

So did Dane know the history of this dredge when he made this post?