Mark Turner

Fairview Road and high-speed rail

There has been lots of discussion about how the Southeast High Speed Rail project will affect downtown Raleigh. One proposed route would close a grade crossing at Fairview Road. Some have suggested that the neighbors near Fairview Road might prefer that Fairview Road stay open.

I don’t live in right next to the tracks but I do live close enough to cross at Fairview every now and then. About half the time the crossing is blocked: the trains at the nearby Norfolk Southern yard frequently stretch across the road as their freight is assembled. It’s gotten to the point that I simply assume the road will be blocked and that I’ll have to wait. As far as I’m concerned, closing an already-congested crossing wouldn’t be that big of an impact.

Then there’s the noise. All day and night, the trains sound their horns as they move back and forth across the road. I live a mile away from this crossing and even from here they sound loud. I don’t know how the folks at Roanoke Park deal with it. Living right next to the tracks, the trains must be deafening. Closing the crossing would mean the trains would no longer sound their horns. That sounds like a plus to me.

Will the high-speed trains bring change? Sure they will. But they’ll bring more good changes than bad ones.

Could Raleigh’s greenway paths be fiber paths?

Capital Area Greenway

I was thinking again (I know, I know. I should stop that bad habit) about Raleigh and the potential for a municipal Internet network (or a Google one). It occurred to me that the miles and miles of greenways Raleigh enjoys would make the perfect place to run a fiber backbone across our city. We’ve got greenways stretching into every corner of our city and more are being built and stitched-together every year. Why not make burying conduit part of every greenway construction project going forward?
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Birds can see magnetic fields

Found this fascinating:

Some birds can sense the Earth’s magnetic field and orientate themselves with the ease of a compass needle. This ability is a massive boon for migrating birds, keeping frequent flyers on the straight and narrow. But this incredible sense is closely tied to a more mundane one – vision. Thanks to special molecules in their retinas, birds like the European robins can literally see magnetic fields.

via Robins can literally see magnetic fields, but only if their vision is sharp | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine.

What’s making Americans fat

My friend and fellow veteran Grier Martin pointed me to a story in the Army Times that warns that most American kids are too out of shape to serve in the military.

My wife Kelly thinks she knows why kids are getting fatter: the drink sizes offered with fast food have become supersized. The same sized soft drink that used to be considered a large is now the “small” size. It’s crazy.

What to do about it, though? Isn’t the restaurant just giving its customers what they want, regardless of whether or not it’s what they need? If everyone chooses to pig out, landing in the hospital with heart disease; diabetes; and other serious illnesses, the treatment of which will be paid for through my insurance premiums, is that simply free enterprise at work? Or should society try to set a better example?
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Is Google stifling municipal broadband investment?

I was thinking more about the Google Fiber project today. It occurred to me that Google might actually be doing more to put the brakes on municipal broadband than Time Warner Cable and its cronies ever could.

As long as the possibility is out there that Google may build a network in a certain city, that city won’t be investing in its own broadband infrastructure. Google is guaranteed to disappoint the huge majority of applicants with its selection of a few cities, but nevertheless I can forsee city officials everywhere holding up Google as an excuse not to spend money on developing their own broadband. “Let’s hold off until we hear from Google,” they’ll say.

Google would do well in furthering its “fiber everywhere” cause by not keeping everyone in suspense.

Google creates fiber Internet resource site

In response to the overwhelming demand that 1,100 communities showed for the Google Fiber project, Google created the Fiber for Communities website. This site is a collection of resources that is intended to pave the way for communities to acquire fiber Internet.

I really like how Google has positioned this new effort. They know that their fiber project will only serve a handful of communities, leaving many to fend for themselves. By creating this site, Google shows it is committed to sharing its findings and supporting those communities who want to make this jump.
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Integrating QEMU with your Linux desktop

Here are some handy tips for making QEMU work much better with your Linux desktop. You can now park QEMU on an unused workspace and not have to click in your QEMU window to use your mouse in a QEMU guest.

Integrating QEMU a bit with your desktop

Presently you have to run QEMU with a slightly lower resolution than your real desktop or run it in full-screen mode to get a decent experience out of it. With a patch I have written and a few tricks it can work a bit better.

via Integrating QEMU a bit with your desktop.

Bradley Manning Wikileaks case

Pfc. Bradley Manning

Speaking of spies, I’m not at all happy with Pfc. Bradley Manning and how he revealed classified information to Wikileaks. Wikileaks, not connected in any way to Wikipedia, is a site purporting to expose secrets.

While I deplore the Iraqi shooting incident revealed in the video Manning had posted to Wikileaks, I cannot get around the fact that Manning broke his oath to protect and safeguard classified information. Manning could have handled this in a way that did not expose classified information but the chose not to.

Manning is rumored to be going through gender identity issues. While the Army isn’t exactly welcoming of that behavior, it is still no excuse to reveal secrets.

Spy swap

Anna Chapman

There has been a lot of speculation on the Russian – U.S. spy swap that took place last week. Some have speculated that the exchange of 10 seemingly-inconsequential Russian spies in America for 4 alleged U.S. spies in Russia produced no real winner.

I didn’t see how that was possible seeing how one, Alexander Zaporozhsky, allegedly helped the FBI capture two of our nation’s worst traitors: former FBI agent Robert Hanssen and former CIA agent Aldrich Ames. Those two spies did more harm to American intelligence than any in history, with Ames being directly responsible for the deaths of 10 secret agents working for the U.S. in Russia. It goes without saying that Zaporozhsky did the U.S. a huge favor by tipping us off to these two. Trading ten supposedly-bumbling Russian spies for Zaporoshsky is a bargain (though maybe we should’ve kept Anna Chapman).

Still, questions remain about the whole affair. Anyone who takes anything in the spy trade at face value is fooling themselves. Back-room deals are the name of the game. I find it hard to believe that the KGB could be so inept. Even Russian officials are incredulous. And how convenient that the alleged spies’ paymaster lands in and out of one of the most porous jails in Europe, only to promptly disappear? Mayberry’s Barney Fife could’ve done a better job! Was Metsos the real target of the FBI investigation? And did a back-room deal ensure his apparently-trivial escape? There are a lot of questions to be answered here.

Like most spy cases, it’s what we haven’t been told that really matters. It will be interesting to see what further details emerge from this not so cut-and-dried case. The spy swap itself may only be the beginning.