This Saturday is the official dedication of Raleigh’s newest park: the Marsh Creek Skate Park. It will be one park event my whole family will be attending, as my kids will probably enjoy watching the skaters as they give themselves broken bones and concussions …er, I mean skate to the extreme.
Rumors that I will suit up and skate are patently false, in case you were wondering. Just watching will be dangerous enough for me!
Up until recently I have been content to let Asterisk answer my phone, routing incoming calls as I please. That has worked just fine, but I’ve always wanted to get Asterisk to automatically place outgoing calls as well. I found out how to do this this week using a simple text file dropped into a certain directory.
How can this be used? Take my home alarm system for instance. Instead of simply sending a text message to my mobile phone whenever the alarm is tripped, I can now send a recorded clip which states what sensor got triggered (or anything I want, really). I could get really fancy and create a challenge for whomever answers the call when the alarm trips: punch in the proper code and the police aren’t dispatched. Or I could call and have Asterisk pretend its really “Aunt Betty” saying she heard the alarm and is everything all right.
If I was feeling especially confident, I could have this system call the dispatch center itself and announce the event. There are laws against automated calls to dispatch centers, so I’m not quite ready to take this one on. It’s still intriguing, though!
As I am politically minded, I can now easily use my Asterisk system to place outgoing “robo-calls” on behalf of candidates or causes. I could create an application which leaves an identical voicemail on the phones of all of a committee’s members at once.
For security or neighborhood watch use, I could create an instant phone tree where one neighbor could record a crime alert message which could be instantly delivered by phone to an entire block, sort of like a small “reverse 911” system.
I could create a simple application which automatically dials a busy number in the background and then rings my phone when the number is free. Or if I travel to a foreign country I can have Asterisk do an automatic callback so that I can pay the cheap U.S. phone tolls rather than expensive foreign phone tolls. The possibilities are endless!
I look forward to experimenting more with this aspect of Asterisk!
I worked from home today because I had a dentist appointment in the afternoon. I thought I should take advantage of being at home so I also tacked on a trip to Labcorp in the morning as well as a trip to the optometrist in the afternoon.
It was a spring tune-up for me in a matter of speaking.
Friday is the night of the Reverend Horton Heat show in Carrboro. I’m really looking forward to the show!
I came upon the term “Dutch Uncle” on the Interweb the other day and decided to learn more about this curious phrase. That led me to a site with excerpts from the Culture Shock! Netherlands book, where I’m learning about all things Dutch. It’s pretty fascinating, actually. I was quite impressed with the Netherlands when I visited for business a few years back and though I’m not due to return any time soon I do admire the Dutch people and culture.
As a sailor I appreciate that the Netherlands has one of the world’s richest maritime heritages. Also the Dutch’s penchant for travel, and personal freedom. Hmm … maybe I was Dutch in a former life. Who knows?
The Way You Wear Your Head (YouTube)
Nada Surf
Don’t push me cause I’ll fall in love
With whatever you just said
Don’t push me cause I’ll fall in love
With the way you wear your head
Out in the corner you’re glowing white
Out in the corner you’re glowing white
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Some WRAL viewers had trouble watching the channel yesterday morning and wondered what was happening. WRAL’s crack team of meteorologists checked into the issue and found a strong temperature inversion to be the culprit. Nate Johnson describes the phenomenon in the station’s WeatherCenter blog.
I worked extensively with radio while in the Navy. Once I was blown away when I tuned in San Francisco FM radio stations from 800 miles away in the Pacific! This phenomenon still fascinates me, if you couldn’t tell!
The N.C. House Public Utilities Committee meets Wednesday morning to vote on the horrible Time Warner Cable bill “Level Playing Field Act.” also known as H1252/S1004. Please call the Committee members [PDF] and let them know what a horrible bill this is.
It’s Samuel Morse’s birthday and in tribute Google has replaced its logo with a morse code version.
As a former Navy code jockey, I appreciate the dots and dashes. Thanks, Google!
Yesterday morning the kids and set off on a preview of Raleigh’s upcoming Dr. Annie Louise Wilkerson Nature Preserve park. I’d heard about it from my Parks board meeting and wanted to see it for myself, so we all got drinks and snacks, loaded the dog in the car, and headed north.
The park is very much like it was when Dr. Wilkerson bequeathed it to the city. A long, winding driveway leads into the middle of a woodsy expanse of property, with two big meadows at the center. Two homes and a barn stand testament that this was the doctor’s home for over 40 years. Tall grass in the meadows long in need of a cut is the only thing that seems out of place.
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