Planet Geek

Katrina a Year Later, from someone who was there.

My friend Michael was down in St Bernard Parish in the weeks and months after Katrina came through, using his skill and knowledge as an architect to help evaluate the condition of the schools in the area. He toured virtually every one of them, taking pictures and working with the local, state, and federal agencies 'up close and personal'.

He's just posted fantastic photoessay about some of his time there, interspersed with words from the Powers on High. I found it incredibly moving.

Katrina Peoplefinder Project

Many folks have seen this elsewhere, but just in case.

I spent an hour or two last night doing data entry on the Katrina Peoplefinder Project. If you have some spare time, this is a great way (beyond financial donations), to help out people trying to find relatives and friends in the area.

The nutshell description - there are zillions of resources on the net where folks are posting messages asking about loved ones. The Peoplefinder Project is pulling all those requests and calls together into one database that will be available as a 'one-stop' resource.

Donations ticker is online.

I whipped up a page that is showing live data coming from the donations ticker on the Red Cross donations page. The page is updated on the server once a minute.

The page is here.

Donation rates at http://www.redcross.org/

I'm running a small program that's watching how fast money is flowing into the Red Cross from donations. As of this morning, the rate is running between $9k and $17k A MINUTE.

              |Total amt | Last   
Datestamp     |donated   |minute 
--------------+----------+-------- 
20050902-1332 | 35332065 | $54340 
20050902-1333 | 35344485 | $12420 
20050902-1334 | 35354175 | $ 9690 
20050902-1335 | 35369140 | $14965 
20050902-1336 | 35385620 | $16480 
20050902-1337 | 35397525 | $11905 
20050902-1338 | 35412485 | $14960 
20050902-1339 | 35428895 | $16410 
20050902-1340 | 35443220 | $14325 
20050902-1341 | 35460745 | $17525 
20050902-1342 | 35470625 | $ 9880 
20050902-1343 | 35487250 | $16625 
--------------+----------+-------- 

I'll have a live version of this up and running in the next hour or two.

Update at 16:09pm -The live version is online. See this post.