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Mark Sanford won his old House seat back tonight. Until we hold the people who represent us to a higher standard, we get the representation we deserve. - Jared Smith

Here’s advice virtually nobody in the Charleston area will take: Don’t drink #chs — warxtc (@plurcx) May 1, 2013 Back in 2008, Charleston Twitter users began to use #chs as a hashtag to talk about everything relating to the city, what’s going on, traffic, etc. We expanded on this in 2009 and it’s been pretty [...] - Jared Smith

Wacky weather day near Hilton Head. Golf-ball hail was reported in Sun City earlier today; these reports weren’t far from where there are a lot of new car dealerships out along Highway 278. Ouch. - Jared Smith

A 68 MPH wind gust was reported on the Ravenel Bridge today. The Ravenel continues to be a rough ride this evening thanks to a tight pressure gradient between high pressure to the northeast and a stationary front (the front that’s cooled us off back to the upper 60s) to the south. Gusts to 62 [...] - Jared Smith

A collection of people who think Chechnya is the same as the Czech Republic. Further proof that falling asleep in high school geography & social studies can come back to bite you, hard. - Jared Smith

Quicksilver 1.0 is out. Quicksilver’s future was bleak for a long time and was being eclipsed by commercial alternatives such as Alfred. It’s awesome to see the open source community pick it up and get it to 1.0. It’s really one of the most indispensable pieces of software I run and makes the Mac so [...] - Jared Smith

Today marks five years since supercells packing tornadoes, strong straight-line winds, and large hail ravaged South Carolina and Georgia in an incredibly unusual atmospheric setup for mid-March known as the Ides of March Tornado Outbreak. (Typically, our most favored time for tornadoes is April and May, according to a National Weather Service research study.) The [...] - Jared Smith

I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now — Google Reader will be retired in July. Many are (justifiably) upset, but RSS reading has always demanded something more frictionless and less e-mail like. I never successfully integrated Google Reader (or any other newsreading app) into my day-to-day routine, rather relying on aggregators like Techmeme and [...] - Jared Smith

The Web We Lost I share many of Anil Dash’s frustrations toward the current walled-garden social Web and how business deals, not open standards and protocols, drive content sharing. The post The Web We Lost appeared first on Jared W. Smith. - Jared Smith

Google Maps for iPhone is out. Pros: Turn by turn navigation (I’m shocked it’s built in, honestly), tremendously clean design. Cons: It’s not built into the phone, so we’re screwed as far as invoking it from Apple apps (though Google has a SDK so third-party developers can route around Apple Maps). I suspect the call [...] - Jared Smith

The Windows Launchpad, my first website, in late 1999. Note my obsession with Tahoma, my fierce Internet Explorer activism, and penchant for horrible writing. My favorite part, introducing an e-mail newsletter I published with ListBot(!): Nothing is better than information, and information is what you get when you subscribe to the WinPad Notebook, our free [...] - Jared Smith

jaredwsmith.com is now running WordPress 3.5. Chief among the improvements: The new media manager. It fixes a ton of my gripes with previous versions. Twenty Twelve, the theme I’ve been running for a few months, is also the new default (with 20 days to spare!) and it still performs very well. Looking forward to doing [...] The post Now running WordPress 3.5 appeared first on Jared W. Smith. - Jared Smith

Is #chstechspace the rebirth of #chscowork? Hmmm… - Jared Smith

This video was shot Tuesday evening by Drew Cavanaugh in central Florida, where several tornado warnings were issued due to strong rotation on radar and reports of funnel clouds, including this video. Nothing like driving down the road to see a tornado kicking up ahead of you to perk you right up. Hat tip to [...] - Jared Smith

The hardest part about switching to a Mac was the serious hoops it would have taken me to retain Winamp as my music player. The Mac adds a third inevitability to fans of music with local libraries: Death, taxes, and iTunes. iTunes has been a bulky mess for years, especially when compared to a minimal [...] - Jared Smith

"Did the upgrade as soon as I could, and I'm really glad I did. iTunes 10 was getting very sluggish on my mid-2009 Mac; this is a breath of fresh air. I do miss inline album art on the Songs view but I think I'll get over it pretty quickly for the speed gains." - Jared Smith

On Friday, I upgraded to an iPhone 5 on Verizon from my iPhone 4 on AT&T. You will have read this in 100 different places by now (and this is not intended to be a serious review), but here’s a few of my quick thoughts after my first weekend with it: Everything about it is [...] The post Quick thoughts on the iPhone 5 appeared first on Jared W. Smith. - Jared Smith

The Governor thinks the SC Department of Revenue data breach is like Hurricane Hugo. God forbid we get a hurricane right up the gut in Charleston during the Governor’s tenure. - Jared Smith

Saturday marked the fourth BarCamp Charleston (these days known as BarCampCHS). I spoke for the first time since the original BarCamp; my talk covered the dual-polarization upgrade being rolled out to the national weather radar network. Since the meat of the presentation was an analysis of the hail-producing thunderstorms that hit Summerville a week ago, [...] The post Coming this weekend (hopefully): a recap of my BarCampCHS dual-pol radar session appeared first on Jared W. Smith. - Jared Smith

Here’s what I’ve been working on for the last several months: BoomTown’s WordPress-based buyer’s site. Our team is doing amazing work and I’m thankful to be a part. I’ve been working a lot on the behind-the-scenes stuff, getting things optimized and performant. It has been really cool to infuse BoomTown with a healthy dose of [...] - Jared Smith

The Charleston radar is running again after the dual-pol upgrade. Dual-polarization data isn’t flowing to most people yet — based on my experience with the upgrade at Sterling, VA earlier this year, a day or two of calibration is still needed before the products are turned on over the Level III data stream (which serves [...] - Jared Smith

It’s cool to be getting a few scans of live dual-pol data from the Charleston radar site tonight, presumably as testing continues on the upgrade. This particular screenshot shows the Correlation Coefficient product, which essentially helps a radar operator identify what’s precipitation and what isn’t. One way meteorologists use the CC product (called RHO in [...] - Jared Smith

TLC was once a public channel? It was privatized before my time, which is why I never knew. I do remember its programming during the ’90s (a lot of which was still really good) before the shift to more commercially-viable programming in this decade. (Boy, it’s a sad state of affairs when educational programming is [...] - Jared Smith

ABC 33/40 in Birmingham covers the concept of “high pressure wedge” — such a weather pattern is in force today. We’ll see more high pressure wedges as the winter rolls on. If you love this cooler weather, it won’t be around to see tomorrow; if you hate this cooler weather, it’ll be much nicer tomorrow [...] - Jared Smith

Ever wondered what Chuck Woolery was up to? I don’t agree with his politics but the videos are pretty entertaining. - Jared Smith

Wedge is probably the best App.net client for Mac so far, with an easy interface and frequent improvements. Remember when Twitter had this kind of energy and enthusiasm around it? The post Wedge, a Mac App.net client appeared first on Jared W. Smith. - Jared Smith

The Weather Channel is having a Google+ Hangout to discuss the naming of winter storms tomorrow at 1 ET. Noteworthy: Several feet of snow have been dumped on northern Minnesota by an unnamed early-season winter storm. - Jared Smith

"I believe it's Tom Wilson at Jack Russell software." - Jared Smith

N — ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) October 4, 2012 - Jared Smith

The live stream of this search term is just nuts. Here’s a widget you can watch it with: Tweets about “#savebigbird” - Jared Smith