18 hours and a little hurricane can make quite a difference: Wissahickon Creek in Upper Gwynedd

If you look at the path of Hurricane Irene, it cuts a good wide path through many of the areas served by the Journal Register Company, owner of The Reporter. These sites are located in eastern Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut (other operations in Michigan and Ohio will likely be spared from this storm).

The digital and print operations of all these sites depends on a vast network of computers, servers and Internet connections that keep them all working together. And of course the print operations rely a highly co-ordinated system of delivery to get hundreds of thousands of newspapers to reader driveways and local stores each morning.

So with what could be a record-breaking storm looming to our south, planning to keep the web sites humming and the presses rolling has been underway for several days.

Sites with generators will host journalists and editors from other sites; alternate print sites have been lined up should one of the presses be incapacitated; alternate and cellular networks are ready to handle the data for both print and online.

In Yardley, PA, corporate headquarters for JRC, a temporary newsroom has been set up in a computer server room is ready to host reporters, copy editors and layout editors from nearby Trenton. This space has a generator to power not only the computers and network machines, but the lights and air conditioning as well.

We don't know exactly what damage Irene is about to unleash on us, but at least our journalists will be able to keep the readers, both on the web and online, informed and updated without a break.

The planned headquarters for Apple, Inc. in Cuppertino, California, likely will be getting some major press over the next few years as it is constructed. Some are calling it 'the spaceship', and from this picture it is not hard to see why:

Of course, because this is Apple, the building will feature all sorts of people and environment-friendly extras such as solar power and will be used to boost the company's 'bleeding-edge' reputation.

Very cool, but not so new. A certain local pharmaceutical concern (okay, Merck) has their headquarters just a short helicopter hop away from Lansdale, just off of I-78 in Whitehouse Station, NJ. It is nestled in a wooded area not too far from Donald Trump's golf course, and features all sorts of people and environment-friendly extras such as solar power:

The parking garage is in the basement, the building has a wooded area in the center. It doesn't look like a spaceship (at least not one from the 1950's), but sort of blends in with the surrounding area.

If there be nothing new, but that which is

Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,

Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss

The second burden of a former child.

O, that record could with a backward look,

Even of five hundred courses of the sun,

Show me your image in some antique book,

Since mind at first in character was done!

That I might see what the old world could say

To this composed wonder of your frame;

Whether we are mended, or whe'er better they,

Or whether revolution be the same.

O, sure I am, the wits of former days

To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

Shakespeare Sonnet 59