I am very pleased to announce the launch of Smartovation Technologies, a new venture devoted to iPhone and web applications. We expect to be able to submit at least one new App this month. Stay tuned for updates!

And, work continues on the walki-talk.com audio tour guides.

This year the fires are hitting a little closer to home. (Fortunately, everything seems to be OK so far.) A couple weeks ago there was a fire in the Ventura River bottom. Today, a more serious fire started on the edge of town and moved up into the hills. The entire hillside burned, but by the time I saw it, it was just a black hill with a bit of smoke coming off. It must have gone over the ridge, since helicopters were dropping water there. (I can still hear them as I write this.) But there wasn’t much smoke coming from the area. It looks like the wind has died for the evening, so I would be suprised if it flares up again.

But, it looks like a bigger fire must have started up the coast twards Santa Barbra, because there is a lot of smoke blowing out to sea from much farther west.

I took a picture of the sunset and smoke with my iPhone, but can’t seem to get it off the phone without a lot of extra hassle. (Apple has been a big disappointment lately, but that’s another story.)

Other relevant links.

Speaking of the PCH:

What??

Isn’t it just easier to say “KEEP OUT” or “NO TRESSPASSING”?

But, I’m still alive.

After my own server died a few months ago, I finally have my website moved over to laughingsquid.net. As far as I can tell everything is now back up and running.

Most of the outage has been due to my own laziness. I haven’t been motivated to keep the site up lately. But, Laughing Squid seems to have very responsive servers, which is far more than I can say about godaddy.com.

I returned to SoCal today to find it hot and burning. Quite a change from the 1-2 inches of snow on the ground in Denver. We flew over one of the fires where more than 100 homes have burned. The smoke from another fire (near Santa Clarita, I think) fills the whole Ventura/Oxnard area. In daylight, there is a strange orange glow and this evening the sun disappeared about 40 minutes early. It just sort of faded into red and then was gone. The smoke comes in to all of the buildings at work and my apartment, making my eyes itch.

I didn’t get any pictures today, but maybe tomorrow.