Here’s a fascinating report from Australia TV’s Dateline SBS about China’s “Ghost Cities:” vast, unneeded building projects whose sole purpose is to boost China’s GDP. If you think America’s housing bubble was bad, wait until this one pops.
May 8, 2011
That old neighborhood feeling
The neighborhood near mine (which I sometimes claim), Belevidere Park, was mentioned in today’s paper as being a friendly one. It’s great to see stories like these!
When author Peter Lovenheim came through town two weeks ago, he informed a rapt audience of 200 that interactions between neighbors are down 50 percent since the 1950s. But in a city with an entire department that devotes much of its resources to neighborhood connection, some in Lovenheim’s audience felt that Raleigh largely bucks that trend. After all, last month’s tornado gave evidence that Raleigh’s neighborhoods are plenty strong as neighbor turned out to support neighbor.
via That old neighborhood feeling – News – MidtownRaleighNews.com.
Kegbot
I was talking to another geek in the neighborhood last night who was telling me about this interesting idea that appeals to geek beer fans: the Kegbot. He had been at a friend’s party where the Kegbot was used to track who had been drinking what, with charts generated on the web for bragging rights purposes.
According to the project website:
Kegbot is a free, open-source project to turn your beer kegerator into a computerized drink tracker. With Kegbot and our Arduino firmware, you can:
* Monitor exactly how much beer is left in your kegs and track the temperature;
* Record the volume of each and every pour;
* Set up user accounts to track who is drinking, how much, and all sorts of other nutty statistics;
* Use special keys (tokens, RFID tags, barcodes) to authenticate your kegerator users;
* Control access to your taps (with special valve hardware) to prevent unauthorized pours;
Many of my computer-geek friends are also beer geeks, so this scratches two itches for them. I look forward to encountering my first Kegbot and trying this for myself!
Roomba’s “other shoe” drops
I’d been enjoying our Roomba robot vacuum again now that it has a fresh battery and its automatic schedule has been set. That all changed yesterday when the Roomba did it’s “wiggle walk” again, indicating that the only remaining wheel sensor has busted.
It has been over a year since the first wheel sensor failed and was hard-wired into place to extend Roomba’s life. Now it looks like I’ll be doing more soldering to patch Roomba up yet again. At least this time I know what to do, though!