The Atlantic tropics remain preternaturally quiet as we hurtle toward the season’s climatological peak on September 10. Alan Sullivan continues to expect a subnormal storm count for the season; indeed, he says “I am beginning to suspect it may be lower than I had dared to hope, when I was bucking the consensus several months ago.”

But now there is at least something to talk about, for the first time since Hurricane Dean died out over Mexico: “Invest 94L,” a reasonably well-organized tropical wave in the eastern Atlantic. Dr. Jeff Masters says 94L is fighting against dry air, and the reliable computer models don’t develop it. On the other hand, the computer models do predict that a currently hypothetical tropical wave in roughly the same area will become a depression later this week:

The UKMET and GFS models are indicating the possible development of a tropical depression by Thursday or Friday off the coast of Africa. There is a large surge of moisture with at least one strong tropical wave embedded in it coming off the coast of Africa this week. This moister air should make a more favorable environment for a tropical depression to form in than the one 94L finds itself in.

Cape Verde storms are always ones to keep an eye on, so this bears watching. Even if there’s nothing to actually watch, as of yet. :)

Meanwhile, Eric Berger has posted a cool worldwide map of all tropical systems’ tracks since the mid-1800s.

A very dear friend contacted me recently about Austin City Limits.  I’ve always been a fan of Austin City Limits so I was interested.  And, to my amazement, it turns out her two sons, in an indie band called The Frontier Brothers, are competing for a "new artist" slot on a future broadcast of Austin City Limits.  I knew they were a serious working band (out of Fort Worth), but this news about this opportunity, and especially about them in relation to this opportunity, was new to me.  I passed the word on to friends who are music fans and to a few friends who trust me when I ask a favor of them.  And only one friend misconstrued this situation as something like American Idol. Austin City Limits is a long-running PBS program presenting well-respected, professional musicians.  And it seems it is offering an opportunity to working (but not nationally-known) bands to be introduced in a new band slot. This is so NOT American Idol.

I now go to the site each day (one vote per day being allowed) and I vote for this band.  I urge you all to check this out at the URL I am putting below.  (Actually, this URL will specifically take you to The Frontier Brothers on the band ballot, but it also gives you the page, The Sound and the Jury.)  You can sample their music (you can sample any of the bands’ music) and if you like their music, you can cast a vote for them (or for another band there).  One reason this particularly appeals to me is that this to me is so far superior to American Idol.  No ridicule, no comedy, no Not-Ready-For-Primetime bands. The Frontier Brothers is a serious working band making their bones in venues all around Texas and the Southeast, and this is a serious opportunity for them.  For all these bands.  And that matters.   

Check it (and them) out:  http://acl.mp3.com/feature/soundandjury/?band=THE-FRONTIER-BROTHERS.

Since I don’t have CNN Breaking News alerts set to post automatically to the new blog setup yet, I’ll post this one manually:

Sen. Larry Craig, who was arrested on misdemeanor disorderly conduct in a bathroom, denies he is gay and accuses a newspaper of a witchhunt. Visit CNN for the latest.

Brilliant parenting at work I suppose So, umm yeah?.

The man who killed USC basketball star Ryan Francis has been convicted and faces life in prison without parole.

After blogging about it, counting down to it, etc., I actually ended up skipping this morning’s lunar eclipse. I hate to miss such things, but I was exhausted, and after all, I’ve seen plenty of lunar eclipses — and I’ll have a chance to see another one in February — so I decided going to sleep, and cuddling with my pregnant wife, was the more prudent option. :)

Anyway, SpaceWeather.com has an eclipse photo gallery.

…time for the Irish Trojan’s 3rd annual Notre Dame and USC college football pick ‘em contests to begin!

Just like the previous two years, the goal is not merely to predict each team’s final record correctly, but to predict each game correctly, and that’s how the contests will be scored. Final record and margin of victory will be used as tiebreakers.

To enter the contest, simply leave a comment with your name* (or a psuedonym that will adequately identify you to Irish Trojan readers) and your predicted margin of victory for each USC and Notre Dame game. (They’re separate contests, so you can choose to enter one or the other if you wish; you don’t have to enter both, though of course it’s encouraged.) Positive numbers mean you’re predicting a win by the Trojans/Irish; negative numbers mean you’re predicting a loss.

USC’s schedule is here; Notre Dame’s schedule is here. I’ll put a simple text list of all the games at the top of comments, so you can copy & paste that, and then fill in the relevant numbers, if you wish.

The deadline to enter is 3:00 PM EDT on Saturday. The prize, as usual, is good old fashioned bloggy bragging rights.

Good luck! Beat the Vandals! Beeeeat Jackets!

*First and last names preferred, not required. But please, if you have a particularly common name, at least give a last initial or something. I don’t want three "Davids" and four "Andrews" with no last names. :)

Welcome to the new and… well, downgraded… Irish Trojan’s Blog.

As promised, I’ve split the blog in two. The "old" blog remains archived on my WestHost dedicated server (and will soon be on a shared server, once I’ve downgraded my WestHost account), while the "new" blog — i.e., what you’re looking at right now — is actually located on TypePad’s servers. The fact that it appears at the domain brendanloy.com is just a bit of DNS sleight-of-hand; the new blog appears to be united with the rest of the site, including the old blog, but it’s really not. The end result is that the bulk of my traffic will go through TypePad’s servers, not WestHost’s, thus enabling me to stop throwing $260/month down the memory hole every month to keep the dedicated server up & running.

I picked TypePad over BlogSpot because I felt that its features were more robust in several ways. However, I may yet change my mind on that and switch to Blogspot. In fact, virtually everything about this "new" blog is subject to change, from the title and subtitle to the layout and design. Indeed, I intend to change a number of things. But I needed to make the switch now, before my September bill from WestHost comes due. So this will be a work-in-progress, as major changes to my blog invariably are.

Alas, one key feature that TypePad currently lacks is pagination, so you can’t look at "Page 2," "Page 3," etc. Supposedly, TypePad will be adding pagination sometime soon, but until then, if you fall behind on what I’ve blogged recently and want to catch up, you’ll have to use the daily or monthly archives. Sorry about that.

I did manage to hack together a recent comments page, displaying the 100 most recent comments. (Like the rest of the blog, it isn’t paginated, so you’re out of luck if you want to go past 100.) However, I haven’t yet figured out if I can do pop-up comments, which I know people like. For now, the "comments" link on each post on the homepage goes directly to the comment area on the permalink page. Again, sorry about that. I’ll try to fix it eventually.

I’m sure there will be some glitches and problems, so if you experience any technical difficulties, please leave a comment and/or shoot me an e-mail (irishtrojan [at] gmail.com) so I’ll know about it.

Oh, and if you want to read posts and/or leave comments on the "old" blog, you still can. Posts are at www.brendanloy.com/wp, and comments are at www.brendanloy.com/comments.