A Duke University researcher has captured an image of a rare case of upwards lightning, or a “gigantic jet” in the parlance of lightning researchers. Steve Cummer caught a photograph of lightning that stretches above a storm to the upper atmosphere in a distance of over 40 miles.
Check here for more photos and a video.
Check out this unbelievable pipe organ built in the house across the street of my friend and fellow Wikipedia contributor Ken Thomas.
Says Ken:
Apparently the guy was a dentist and a fairly high-ranking officer in the Army. He retired after 30 years, and moved to Lenoir. I gather he had both money and time on his hands, and according to my tour guide “He just really liked pipe organs.” She didn’t come right out and say it, but I could tell from her responses that he may have been a little bit eccentric too. Considering what I was looking at, that little data nugget wasn’t exactly a shocking revelation.
I’ve seen pipe organs before, such as the one at the Rosario Resort on Orcas Island and this one appears to have homemade pipes.
I’d consider patching those hoses myself just to hear it play!
We had an active weekend as we wrapped up the last one before school starts again. Saturday was sweltering, with a high of 88F and 74% humidity. We joined Travis for his soccer practice in the morning. Then it took a while for me to mow the lawn as the heat sapped so much energy.
It had begun to sprinkle here and there by the time we grabbed lunch and went to Optimist Pool to dive off their diving boards for a bit. We hadn’t put 20 minutes into it before thunder kicked us out. We hopped over to Target to pick up the game “Clue” before returning to the pool in the hopes that the thunder would pass. We weren’t so lucky as the rain began to come down. So, we returned home, showered up, and played Clue for a while.
Sunday morning we slept in a bit. I took the dog for a walk in the cooler weather. Kelly took the kids to get their pictures taken while I walked the neighboring street with a petition to get its speed limit lowered.
We all returned for a late lunch. Then we scrambled to get prepared for another pool visit in the short time we had until our dinner guests arrived. A fun hour full of dives off the board followed! Then we got home and got ready for our guests.
Last week, Kelly discovered that a high-school classmate of ours lives in the neighborhood next to ours. He and his wife have kids that go to Hallie’s school. Both our families have been living here for a year without knowing about the other. We fixed that by inviting them over for pizza and conversation. The parents and kids both got along very well, so we forsee this as the start of many such visits.
It’s nice to have such cool neighbors in our area!
This morning was the first time since spring that I had to take a flashlight with me on my morning walk with Rocket. Fall is definitely returning.
I wrote UNC-TV today to ask when their antenna upgrades would be completed. It turns out the job was done just this past Friday evening!
Here’s the word from Gary Coble, Transmitter Site Supervisor at UNC-TV:
At 7:19pm on Friday August 21 WUNC-TV Channel 4 began full power maximized operation. The operation is at 1 Million Watts on the top mounted main antenna. For those viewers using outside antennas please aim your antenna towards the transmitter site in Northern Chatham County, just Southwest of downtown Chapel Hill and rescan your converter box or digital TV tuner. Thank you for your patience and thank you for watching UNC-TV!
After rescanning my channels, I can report the signal is coming in better than ever. I’m glad to have my PBS back!
Remember in the early, dot-com days of the Internet there were two classes of Internet users, dialup users and AOL users? The dialup users had access to the full Internet (well, full for the time, anyway) and AOL users got a sanitized, prepackaged version of the Internet at best. We dialup users looked down on the AOL users and their “walled-garden” system.
It dawned on me today that Facebook is the new AOL. Facebook has this whole environment where things are controlled and it’s set apart from the rest of the Internet. There are some people whose online experience consists almost completely of Facebook. It’s a walled-garden just like AOL.
I’ve been on the Internet since 1992, the same year that AOL for Windows debuted. Seventeen years later we are back where we started.
(You clever MT.Net readers are different, though. The fact that you’re reading this shows you’re not part of the unwashed masses. Pat yourselves on the back.)
Andy Kessler wrote an insightful piece on the stifling state of communications in America, called Why AT&T Killed Google Voice.
Apple has an exclusive deal with AT&T in the U.S., stirring up rumors that AT&T was the one behind Apple rejecting Google Voice. How could AT&T not object? AT&T clings to the old business of charging for voice calls in minutes. It takes not much more than 10 kilobits per second of data to handle voice. In a world of megabit per-second connections, that’s nothing—hence Google’s proposal to offer voice calls for no cost and heap on features galore.
What this episode really uncovers is that AT&T is dying. AT&T is dragging down the rest of us by overcharging us for voice calls and stifling innovation in a mobile data market critical to the U.S. economy.
Kessler mentions that people will one day buy their TV by the show and not the network, which is the same thing I’ve been saying. Packets are packets, and we don’t need monopoly-owned pipes anymore, whether they be real like AT&T or virtual like Apple’s iTunes. It’s time to crank the data networks wide open!
Canadian scientists conclude that zombies could concievably destroy civilization. That is, if they actually existed:
If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.
That is the conclusion of a mathematical exercise carried out by researchers in Canada.
They say only frequent counter-attacks with increasing force would eradicate the fictional creatures.
The scientific paper is published in a book – Infectious Diseases Modelling Research Progress.
Hrmf. If they actually existed. They don’t … right?
Three days ago yet another of our Bright Effects CFL bulbs dropped dead. This time I saw its spectacular death, as light flickered brilliantly through the dying bulb. Then there was an alarming smell that I soon recognized: the smell of a fried capacitor.
Capacitors have long been a problem in my electronics. I bought a video camera back in the 1980s with capacitors inside that were allegedly counterfeit. Just a few years into its life the camera’s electronics literally melted off the circuit board, rendering it useless. Most of my other CFLs died due to bad ballast electronics, too. I haven’t pried my dead bulbs open yet to check but it wouldn’t surprise me of all of them didn’t meet their maker due to bad capacitors (at least the one in February did).
One day, I hope a bulb manufacturer will create a replaceable ballast module like I’ve suggested.
Another gem Pandora brought me. What a great pop song.
We’re Not Getting Any Younger (free mp3 from ReverbNation)
Color Theory
I say I should take you home but you want to stay here
On the beach all alone with our blankets and beer
In the dark how we ache to fulfill this hunger
Cherish it now cause we’re not getting any younger
Ashes in fire pits and fires in our hearts as we move
Crashing waves in an urgent and quickening groove
Consummating the end of a perfect summer
Cherish it now cause we’re not getting any younger
Continue reading
