June 2006

There were 50 posts published in June 2006 (this is page 5 of 5).

GPS Logger

I’ve been looking into interesting uses for GPS lately. A recent discussion on the Make Magazine Blog highlighted GPS loggers: devices which record location info for later download.

Today the Make blog featured another GPS logger: the Wintec WBT-200 which costs below a hundred bucks. I’ve crowed here before about a cheap USB GPS, but that still needed a PC to work. This GPS logger is self-contained: the only time a PC is needed is when the data is ready for download.

You could take this with you when you wanted to mark a trail but couldn’t take a PC with you. You could attach one to a weather balloon to track its movements. Or an elephant. Or a passing freight train. Or a business competitor. Or a spy. Or a cheating spouse. There are plenty of uses!

When cool technology drops below a certain price, it becomes available for all sorts of interesting uses. How would you use it?

Focused Train Horn

The other day when Yet Another Freight Train went rumbling by the house, blaring its horn, I realized a good new use of Woody Norris‘s HyperSonic Sound invention. As you may know, the HyperSonic Sound (HSS) devices focus sound like a beam of light. You may recall that such a device was used recently to repel pirates attacking a cruise ship.

Why not make a train’s horn hypersonic? A train’s path is pretty predictable, you know, straight ahead and all that. There’s no real reason for anyone on either side of a train to know where its going. What if the sound of the horn was beamed straight down the track – where the train is going – instead of everywhere else? A focused horn would maintain or enhance rail safety and cut down on the horn noise to the point that neighboring homes and businesses would be disturbed far less often by a passing train.

Man, am I a freakin’ genius or what?

BarCamp Unconference of July 22nd

I just signed up to attend the local BarCamp held July 22nd at the offices of Red Hat. The Barcamp is an “unconference” where interested geeks get together to share information about various topics.

I think I’d like to present on a topic, but one of my standbys – VoIP – has already been claimed by Scott Morningstar. Thus I have to get creative, which is good. I’m thinking I’ll have to do something edgy or unusual. How does one out-geek a conference of top-notch geeks? Continue reading →

Cheviot Hills Golf Course Closing

Well, it looks like I don’t have to worry about gunshots from the golf course any more. Parker Edwards, owner of the Cheviot Hills Golf Course, is selling the course. The last round of golf will be played June 30th.

While I won’t miss the guns, I will miss the course. Development has surrounded it from all sides, which added to its charm. Here’s this course from the 1930s: a slice of the past in my backyard. I read on its website today that the Edwards family homestead dates from 1792. Quite impressive.

The article quotes other real estate sources claiming that the site would be “great for mixed-use development.” Those are simply code words “another big box strip mall.” With the exception of The Lassiter at North Hills, I can think of few properties touted as “great for mixed-use” that turned out to be anything other than asphalt and big boxes.

Edwards isn’t saying why he’s selling it (probably because pesky neighbors won’t let him hunt at night). He’s also not saying who is buying it, so there’s no telling what the future holds for the course. Most likely it will be paved.

One thing keeping it from big-box stardom is the very limited access the property has from Capital Boulevard. There is a frontage road leading to it from the Gresham Lake Road – Capital Boulevard traffic light. There’s also an entrance on Capital with no signal. Neither one is ideal for moving lots of traffic to and from the property. That is a busy stretch of Capital to begin with and adding another traffic light is only going to make things worse.

Ah well. I’ve got a mere few weeks to find a day to go play Cheviot Hills before its gone for good. Any MT.Net readers want to join me for a foresome? (Do I have enough readers for a foresome?)

Where’s the Triangle’s super-entrepreneur John McConnell when we need him?

Good weekend and catch-up

It was a great weekend. Hallie had her fourth birthday party Sunday at Durant Nature Park. Over thirty of her friends and family were there! The weather was perfect and everyone had a great time. Good to see my parents, too. We’ve been spending more and more time with them and its been great.

Kelly’s parents stayed with us this weekend, too. It was great to have them visit. They kept saying how nice the house looked. I didn’t realize they hadn’t been here since we’d done our painting and stuff. They brought with them some backyard playhouses which the kids absolutely love. In fact, I came home to a yard full of neighborhood kids. What a happy scene.

We finally planted our vegetable garden two weeks ago. Amazingly, the plants are still alive. We’ve got four tomato plants, one squash, one cucumber, and a handful of herbs. With a little TLC we should have a nice crop at the end of the summer.

I went to the doctor last week to get help fighting off a lingering cold. The nurse took my vitals and asked “are you an athlete?” I laughed and told her I get in a bike ride every now and then. “I can tell, “she said. This either means I’m in great shape, or I look like death warmed over and my vital signs seem good by comparison. I found it amusing, at any rate.

I’m feeling the itch to better apply my creativity. The subscription to Make Magazine has inspired me to hack some things together. Last night’s musical post came in the midst of me jamming out to my MP3 collection. Music is one of my stronger outlets, though many who know me have probably never heard me perform. I had some fun doodling at work Friday, too, which reminded me of my love of art. Sometimes I daydream of escaping the cubible to make a living with drawing or music. Or podcasting. Maybe podcasting where I draw and play music! Who knows?

Yet another outlet is, of course, MT.Net. I need to do more posting here. Look for more here shortly.

Deuces Are Wild

Deuces are Wild
Aerosmith
From the album Big Ones

Ohhaho… yeah e yeah now
Ohhaho… lah bi dea lah laahhhh

I love to look into your big brown eyes
They talk to me and seem to hypnotize
They say the things nobody dares to say
And I’m not about to let you fly away

My lover with no jet lag
We’re staying up all night in my sleeping bag
You got a heart beatin’ rhythm from the subterranean
I really love you little girl
I don’t need to explain
Continue reading →

USS Oriskany Sinking

The ex-USS Oriskany, a World War II-era Essex-class aircraft carrier, was sunk this year off the coast of Pensasola to become an artifical reef. A mailing list I’m on had a link to pictures of the sinking taken from a helicopter.

Pretty impressive to watch an aircraft carrier sink. Check out the photos here.

I can only imagine that the sinking of my ship, USS Elliot (DD-967) , was similar, though I believe it lies in deeper water and thus was probably not anchored like the Oriskany was (the anchors make the ship land on the seabed right side up).

in Uncategorized | 99 Words | Comment

On The Wings Of A Dove

One of the best values for our money has been buying a bird feeder. We have one right off the back porch, viewable from the kitchen table. At times I can look out and see up to ten birds – typically cardinals and finches – chowing down on songbird mix. We even get an occasional furry bird, though we chase the squirrels away whenever we catch them.

Here’s a list of the birds we’ve seen from our yard (not necessarily at the feeder!):

Whew!

Cheap Thoughts: Chance Of Rain

Is there anything more worthless than the weather service information on “chance of rain?” Why bother to provide it at all? Rain is so hit-or-miss that any stats are essentially worthless.

If you think about it, the chance of somebody getting rain is pretty much 100 percent. It just may not be anywhere near you.

While driving around today, I noticed gathering clouds. Rain clouds, to be exact. They’re gonna rain on somebody nearby; the chance of that is 100 percent. Still, the official forecast says 40 percent.

What the forecast needs to say is the chance that rain will fall somewhere within the area. In addition to that, there needs to be a chance that that rain will fall on any particular spot, which is what is done now. Thus, there is a 100 percent chance of rain in the area, but only a 40 percent chance it will fall any particular place.

Or I can just poke my head outside every now and then to check. That might make more sense.

Tropospheric Ducting

This past weekend I spent some time installing my mobile ham radio into my car. The radio install went well, though disconnecting the battery cables had some reprocussions. My factory-installed car stereo has a stupid security code enabled which you have to enter each time the radio loses power. Like anyone would want to steal a boxy, Honda factory stereo! I had to track down the code before I could listen to any music.

Once I finally got my stereo working again, I found it tuned to a frequency just below the FM band: 87.7MHz. That frequency is in the low-VHF TV band, so I only a little surprised to hear something on that frequency. I was thinking it was Raleigh’s WRAL-TV Channel 5, but further listening proved it to be WECT Channel 6, the NBC affiliate in Wilmington! That’s a good 127 miles, according to Google Maps!

Yesterday, I also heard a repeater in Greensboro, itself a nice hop away. There’s been some pretty impressive tropospheric ducting going on lately.