President Obama’s decision to cut funding to Yucca Mountain has, for me, been the most disappointing decision he has made so far in his presidency. And yet he has also professed his desire to increase the use of Nuclear Power Plants to meet the United States’ energy needs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Well, in my opinion, you can’t have it both ways.

People are concerned about the security risks of transporting spent nuclear fuel, and possible long term environmental risks. What about the risks of hundreds of “Obama Barrels” (to borrow a phrase by geoblogger Ontario-geofish) littered around our nuclear power plants for the next hundred years. Geology.com posted this CNN video showing the dry storage of spent Nuclear Fuel at a Chicago area nuclear power plant. Check it out. Sorry about the rant, but this topic is a hot button with me.

The January newsletter was really late, so I just decided to wait until the beginning of this month and combine it with February. Highlights include Haiti Earthquake coverage, Top Content for December and January and more. You can find this newsletter and all the others in our Newsletter Archive and you can subscribe using the form on this site or directly through Constant Contact.

I am very grateful for the support of two new sponsors this year, Nicholson Construction and Dataforensics. Please let them know you appreciate their financial support of GeoPrac!

 Nicholson Construction is a specialty geotechnical contractor headquartered out of Cuddy Pennsylvania. They have expertise in many different techniques, including micropiles, augercast piles, soil-nailing, ground anchors, jet grouting, compaction grouting and stone columns among many others. Find more info about the on Our Sponsors page or at the Nicholson Construction website.

Dataforensics is a software company specializing in geotechnical and geoenvironmental data management. Their products include PLog, the most popular field borehole logging system on the market, PLog Enterprise - the only GIS based geotechnical data management system, PDensity and PConcrete for field and office data management of construction QA/QC, PWell for groundwater monitoring data management, and a cone penetration testing software package called RAPID CPT. Read more about Dataforensics on the Our Sponsors page or at the Dataforensics website.

Ok, not exactly. But Garmin just announced that their new Voice Studio software will allow users to record their own voices for navigation prompts and edit them in the software for use on their Nüvi. It is compatible with all nüvis except the nüvi 300 and 600 series. The process of recording the “few dozen” phrases is supposed to take about 30-minutes. As my title suggests, I think it would be cool to have celebrities contribute their voice to the navigation. I’m picturing Morgan Freeman or maybe Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong in character! Ok, that might get old. (Image from Garmin)

Oh, and they also just announced a cool adapter for your car that plugs into the standardized onboard diagnostics port (OBD II) that turns your GPS into a trip computer, monitoring things like RPM’s, temperature, battery voltage, emissions etc. It connects wirelessly to the GPS unit so the wires don’t get in the way of your driving. It will also give you error codes for the check engine light, some with descriptions of the problem. Both technologies will be showcased at this year’s CES in Las Vegas.

[Disclosure] I own a few shares of Garmin stock. [/Disclosure]

Best wishes for a happy and prosperous 2010 to all the readers of GeoPrac.net! I am grateful for all of my readers, visitors and sponsors for a great 2009 and I look forward to continuing to work in the new year towards making this site one of the best online resources for geotechnical engineers, geoengineers and all professionals in the geo-industry.

As is customary for bloggers at this time of year, I have listed below the top 100 GeoPrac.net stories published in 2009. Long-time readers of GeoPrac know that I don't like to rank the articles by total number of 'hits', since I think that biases the rankings towards the ones that have been published longer. Instead, I order them by hits per day. I think that works well when looking at popularity of content on a monthly basis, but just for grins I've also included the top 100 items of all time (based on total page impressions). Again, Happy New Year!

Click Through for the Top GeoPrac.net Content of 2009 and All-Time!

So you probably couldn’t order any of these things and expect to get them to your GIS colleague before the Christmas holiday, but they would make a great belated present! Geo-Tee has these T-Shirts and stickers for GIS nerds enthusiasts. Via Slashgeo. (Images by Geo-Tee)

[Update 11/16/09 12:52] I fixed the sponsor banner issue, but I'm still looking into what's causing the IE 7 error. Despite my fondness for Firefox, I realize a large percentage of users still have IE 7 and this is a serious issue. The site appears to be working fine in Firefox and IE 8. But like I said, I'll keep working on it. [/Update]

I just noticed some sponsor banner are not displaying properly on the site. I'm looking into it as quickly as I can. These issues may or may not be related to some Internet Explorer 7 issues where IE gives the following error when trying to display the GeoPrac.net site: "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet Site. .. Operation aborted." It's some kind of JavaScript issue, but I rely on third party software and plugins so heavily on this site, it might take me a bit to track down the poblem.

In typical Microsoft fashion, their solution is to upgrade to IE 8. But I still get some warning messages there myself. I usually use Firefox, but even with that I'm still getting the issues with the banners.

Your patience is appreciated in the meantime as I try to get it sorted out. If you have any observations with regards to your particular browser configuration, let me know (leave a comment).

Most geotechs are familiar with the Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering (JGGE), one of the (if not the) premier journal in the industry. It’s published by the ASCE’s Geo-Institute (G-I) and accounts for about 20% of the revenue of the G-I organization.

The G-I’s President, Dr. Jean-Louis Briaud, convened a task force in early 2009 to investigate if the JGGE is “adequately serving as a venue for practice oriented papers.” According to the final report from the Proposed "Journal of Geotechnical Engineering Practice" Task Force, the reason for the task force is that:

I am pleased to announce that Moretrench, a specialty geotechnical contractor based in Rockway, New Jersey, has become the second Premier Sponsor of GeoPrac.net. Moretrench has a proud and distinguished history in the industry, dating back more than 90 years. With offices in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Delaware and Florida, their services include:

• Dewatering and groundwater control
• Ground Freezing
• Underpinning
• Grouting Systems
• Earth Retention and Excavation Support
• Deep Foundations
• Environmental Remediation
• Industrial Construction

I am grateful for their interest in supporting the mission and objectives of GeoPrac.net and I look forward to a long and fruitful working relationship!

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media and social networking websites have become absoutely huge in this day and age. I have prepared a brief survey to see how people in the geotechnical engineering, engineering geology and geoconstruction fields use these technologies, and if there is a potential for an extension of these technologies to be applied to our industry in the form of a GeoPrac.net feature.

And don't be shy if you don't use social networking or even if you feel strongly against it. I need hear from you too!

Take the Survey! (Powered by Google Spreadsheet)