Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 109 of 153).

Raleigh CityCamp

This weekend brings Raleigh’s first CityCamp. Raleigh CityCamp is an “unconference” where the agenda is decided on the participants: and everyone is a participant. It’s a giant brainstorming session about how government can be made more efficient using technology.

In an unconference, everyone is expected to contribute ideas and perspectives. There is no “audience” per se. What you as a participant get out of it is exactly what you put into it. It’s one of the few events where you never go home disappointed: because you help set the agenda.

I was involved in some of the initial planning for Raleigh CityCamp but soon had to dial back my time. Many of the planning meetings took place when I was away at other meetings. Also, my daughter’s birthday is Saturday, taking me out of the running for most of that day’s discussions.

I did volunteer to sit on a panel regarding the “government” view, joining Raleigh’s CIO, North Carolina’s CIO, and other experts. I’ll be bringing the layman’s point of view, obviously!

Tree crew makes short work of tall pine

My neighbor got a pair of her tall pine trees cut down on Thursday. I broke out my digital video camera to record the process for the second tree. It was fascinating to watch them work, and even more fascinating to watch it again on video.

I sped up the video to 5 times the normal speed to show how the tree guy went about dismantling this pine.

The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse – Businessweek

It’s a lonely calling. “Washington is full of Carnegie and Brookings Institutes with people who can tell you every option we have in Egypt or Pakistan,” laments Herr, who has a PhD in anthropology from Columbia University. “Try and find someone who does that on the postal service. There aren’t many.”

Yet Herr finds the USPS fascinating: ubiquitous, relied on, and headed off a cliff. Its trucks are everywhere; few give it a second thought. “It’s one of those things that the public just takes for granted,” he says.”The mailman shows up, drops off the mail, and that’s it.”

via The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse – BusinessWeek.

Air France 447 black boxes

Ages ago when I was taking ground school, thinking I would get my pilot’s license, I asked my pilot friend some questions about the mechanics of flying. To my surprise my friend, a retired Eastern Airlines Boeing L-1011 pilot, could not answer my simple questions. I wondered to myself how a seasoned pilot could not know the basics. It seemed to me that, like many things people do in their jobs, the skill of flying a plane becomes second nature to many pilots and they no longer have to think about what they’re doing.

Except when they do have to think. Like in an emergency.

The news today is that investigators of the doomed Air France flight 447 have found evidence that pilots were pulling the nose up on the plane in reaction to the stall warning.
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Watch Lent Carr tell whoppers

I’ve been watching the raw video of Carr’s interview and my bullshit detectors have flat out exploded. Watch about 8:38 into the interview when he discusses his current job as a “Business Development Specialist” at Allstate Insurance and spends the next few seconds mumbling phrases about policies. Carr tap-danced around that question like Miss Teen South Carolina Caitlin Upton did. Nowhere on his LinkedIn profile (which is mostly fiction, granted) does he mention working for Allstate. Nor do any Google searches turn up any hits linking him with Allstate.

The guy isn’t simply a liar, he’s a pathological liar. It makes me feel sorry for him.

To My Third Grade Class

It’s posts like this that make me wonder what it would be like to be a teacher:

To My Third Grade Class
We have 30 days left together. You don’t realize this yet – You are just eight years old and the only thing you count down to is Christmas. You are living for Soccer at recess, Spelling games, and Art on Fridays. You live for computer class free time and the moment you can multiply 6×7. That’s one one of my favorite things about you- you are too busy filling up today to worry about tomorrow.

This was written by an online acquaintance whom I’ve never really met but I read her blog because I love her writing. The post also reminds me of how quickly our own kids are growing, and how fleeting childhood (and life) really is.

Javascript-based PC emulator

Fabrice Bellard, the author of the open source, VMware-like QEMU emulator I use every day, has written a virtual PC that runs entirely in Javascript called JSLinux. Geeky? Yes. Practical? No, but give the man points for being a world-class hacker!

Fabrice Bellard has written a 32 bit x86 emulator in Javascript — in plain English, he’s created a virtual PC that runs inside your browser, using Javascript. And then of course, he created a GNU/Linux variant that can run inside it — so you can run a full-featured PC inside your browser.

via Javascript-based PC emulator, running GNU/Linux – Boing Boing.

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.