Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 116 of 153).

“Chinglish” and Internet wholesalers

I was doing some Internet searches to come up to speed on some satellite TV technology when I came upon this amusing Chinglish description for an amazing set-top box. It combines many of my interests: amusing, over-the-top Chinglish; Linux; and DVB-S satellite set-top boxes.

DreamBox DM7025 is one of the latest in the serials of wares from Dream Multimedia System. It is highly advanced and scientifically ongoing digital satellite catcher which is obtainable at exceedingly low-cost and sound monetary values from the cyberspace. The device has the fullest and greatest capabilities than some other electronic device from the very same make. Continue reading →

Small head injuries damage brain too

Sports Illustrated’s latest issue brings news that head injuries don’t have to rise to the concussive level to cause brain damage. Purdue researchers have shown that the smaller, more frequent hits can actually do more damage than a concussion.

The mounting evidence suggests that some people—perhaps a lot—simply cannot play these games without being damaged, concussion or no concussion. “You can break something by hitting it hard once,” says Katie Morigaki, a Purdue graduate assistant athletic trainer who worked on the study, “or you can break it by hitting it softer many times.”

If the test scores were accurate, the researchers had inadvertently documented, in real time, a new classification of high school athlete: a player who was never concussed, was not verbally impaired and was asymptomatic even as far as his parents could tell, but whose visual memory was more impaired than his amnesic, headachy, light-sensitive, concussed teammates.

After reading this last night I woke up worried about how doomed I am with all the hits my head has taken, not from football but from falling out of bed as a kid, banging my head against the wall (also as a kid), and other misadventures. I’m not letting my kids play football, that’s for sure. The fewer brain-damaged members of the family, the better!

“Repeat Robber” was good handyman

I laughed this morning when a neighbor retracted her recommendation of a handyman she had been using for years. It turns out the handyman, Lee Pope from Precision Plumbing and Cooling, had switched from handyman work to robbing banks, becoming known to the FBI as the “Repeat Robber.” Pope was arrested Monday on suspicion of robbing over a dozen banks in the Triangle. It’s sad when a good guy turns bad. Perhaps the handyman trade wasn’t working out for him.

Before his arrest Pope drew praise for his handyman work. Said one customer:

We have been using Lee’s company for years now. He has replaced our furnace, AC, fixed pipes and we are getting ready to have him redo all the plumbing in our house. He is excellent and reasonable.

Once news broke of his arrest, the customer changed her tune:

I would like to retract this recommendation. For the past 6 years he did close to $10K worth of work for us and was always here when it was icy or 110 degrees and something was broken that needed fixed, fixed our friend’s AC for free, etc., I guess he hit bad times and went rogue.

I wonder if Pope had anything to do with the rash of copper thefts from AC units in the area. Hopefully police are following up on this, too.

Five years of Wikipedia editing

Wikipedia tells me that it was five years ago this month that I became a Wikipedian. I’ve focused my Wikipedia work with a few of my interests. I began by editing the entry for the USS Elliot (DD-967) as I had found a press release about its sinking. Then I went on to add bits to many of the Raleigh-area entries. I’ve also taken many photographs of Raleigh-area landmarks and added these to the appropriate pages (including the page for Raleigh itself).

Though I’ve slowed down lately with my Wikipedia contributions I still greatly value this amazing, free resource.

Here is an official list of my Wikipedia contributions, formatted in especially-hard-to-read geek format. Here’s a list of the photographs I’ve taken and donated to the public domain through Wikimedia Commons.

Coyote sighting

Late last night a man walking his dogs in the Cameron Park neighborhood spotted a coyote as it crossed the road about 20 feet in front of him. The coyote trotted on to the property of St. Mary’s College, apparently paying no mind to the man’s dogs.

I’ve had a friend report a coyote sighting in East Raleigh, too, but her sighting took place along the wooded Middle Crabtree Creek greenway east of Raleigh Boulevard. I think a coyote roaming around St. Mary’s is that much more unusual because of how urbanized that area is. It’s amazing how adaptable some wildlife is.

North Korea’s Supreme Internet Experts

Internet Expert

I’ve already given props to Great Commander Kim Jong-Il for his Great Internet Expertness. Now it turns out his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong-Un, is also an Internet genius. Word on the street is that he’s such a wizard at the keyboard that his nickname is Computer Numerical Control, or C.N.C.

That’s right. Not only was he promoted to an instant four-star general and groomed to take over the country, Kim Jong-Un has a kick-ass Internet screen name, too.

No wonder North Korea is so cool. Its leaders are off the hook!

I <3 ImageMagick


I was looking for a way to stitch together multiple scans I’ve made into a multiple-page PDF. Each page when scanned became a separate image file and I didn’t want to attach each one separately.

Fortunately, ImageMagick came to the rescue! All it took was this command:

convert -adjoin *.png report.pdf

… and my PDF was created instantly. What useful little tools ImageMagick are!

Sayonora, sunspots?

A recent report says that our sun is not kicking out sunspots like it used to. The paper, by solar astronomers Matthew Penn and William Livingstone, says that the magnetic field strength of the sunspots appears to be waning.

If the trend continues, sunspots could vanish completely by 2016. The last time this happened there was a prolonged cooling spell on Earth, known as the Little Ice Age.

It will be interesting to see what, if anything, comes of this.

Earth’s helium reserves ‘will run out within 25 years’ | Mail Online

Earth’s supply of helium is dwindling fast.

It is more commonly known as the gas that fills cheap party balloons and makes your voice squeak if you inhale it.

But helium is actually a precious resource that is being squandered with Earth’s reserves of it due to run out within 25 to 30 years, experts have warned.

Earth’s resources of helium are being depleted at an astonishing rate, an effect which will spell disaster for hospitals which use it to cool MRI scanners.

via Earth’s helium reserves ‘will run out within 25 years’ | Mail Online.

High-altitude balloon launch

A group of friends is launching a helium balloon to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. Josh Shaffer of the News and Observer wrote a story on it in this morning’s paper.

I am not involved in the project (I’m at the beach now), which kills me because I’ve wanted to do this for a long time. The best I can do is what everyone else can do, which is track the balloon online. Those in Raleigh can see the launch at Horseshoe Farm Park at 8 AM Sunday.

Update 23 August: Success! See the results!