Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 117 of 153).

Sound Choice in the news again

I was delighted to read the story in today’s Charlotte Observer about Kurt Slep and Sound Choice, fighting back against illegal copying of their karaoke music. The company took a beating when unscrupulous karaoke jockeys (“KJ’s”) downloaded their music rather than paying for it.

While I was sad to hear how devastating music piracy has been to Sound Choice, I was glad to read about the history of the company, including the time in 1985 when I was one of its first employees.

Kurt, give me a call if you need a vocalist!

Did the SBI set up Floyd Brown?

The story of the SBI’s treatment of Floyd Brown, convicted by a dubious murder confession, should make everyone shudder.

Some of the shine has come off former golden boy Attorney General Roy Cooper. It’s a shame, since I once thought Cooper could do no wrong.

Here’s Floyd telling his story, brought to you by Travis Long, Shawn Rocco, and Mandy Locke of the News and Observer.

Agents’ Secrets: A confession doesn’t add up from Travis Long on Vimeo.

Record-breaking hailstone

Hailstone from Vivian, SD storm


The largest hailstone ever recorded in the US fell in South Dakota on July 23rd. It weighed almost two pounds! NOAA scientists estimate the updraft required to keep it aloft exceeded 160 MPH!

During the late afternoon and early evening hours of 23 July 2010, thunderstorms developed over portions of central South Dakota. Several storms quickly became severe in an environment favorable for supercell thunderstorms. In particular, one very strong supercell thunderstorm moved southeastward across portions of Stanley, Jones, and Lyman counties. One of the hardest hit locations was the community of Vivian, South Dakota, where extremely large hail, destructive winds to 80 mph, and a brief tornado were reported.

A record setting hailstone was ultimately discovered in Vivian, measuring 8.0 inches in diameter, 18.625 inches in circumference, and weighing in at an amazing 1.9375 pounds!! This hailstone broke the previous United States hail size record for diameter (7.0 inches – 22 June 2003 in Aurora, NE) and weight (1.67 pounds – 3 September 1970 in Coffeyvile, KS).

via July 23rd Extreme Hail Event.

(h/t Mike Moss at WRAL)

Sobering look at end-of-life decisions

The New Yorker has a thoughtful article asking if end-of-life procedures for terminally-ill patients are only masking the inevitable, giving these patients false hope when medicine could instead be helping them make the most of their last days. It’s worth thinking about.

Sara Thomas Monopoli was pregnant with her first child when her doctors learned that she was going to die. It started with a cough and a pain in her back. Then a chest X-ray showed that her left lung had collapsed, and her chest was filled with fluid. A sample of the fluid was drawn off with a long needle and sent for testing. Instead of an infection, as everyone had expected, it was lung cancer, and it had already spread to the lining of her chest. Her pregnancy was thirty-nine weeks along, and the obstetrician who had ordered the test broke the news to her as she sat with her husband and her parents. The obstetrician didn’t get into the prognosis—she would bring in an oncologist for that—but Sara was stunned. Her mother, who had lost her best friend to lung cancer, began crying.

via Hospice medical care for dying patients : The New Yorker.

How Skype gets around firewalls


Here’s a fascinating description of how the Skype VoIP application can poke holes through firewalls – bypassing your network security. What’s even more eye-opening is that there is little that can be done to block it.

Anyone who has used the popular Internet telephony software Skype knows that it works as smoothly behind a NAT firewall as it does if the PC is connected directly to the Internet. The reason for this is that the inventors of Skype and similar software have come up with a solution.

Naturally every firewall must also let packets through into the local network – after all the user wants to view websites, read e-mails, etc. The firewall must therefore forward the relevant data packets from outside, to the workstation computer on the LAN. However it only does so, when it is convinced that a packet represents the response to an outgoing data packet. A NAT router therefore keeps tables of which internal computer has communicated with which external computer and which ports the two have used.
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Metal Method with Sledge

Back in the 1990s this show, “Metal Method with Sledge,” was the rage on Raleigh’s public access channel. Fortunately it lives on thanks to YouTube. Rock on!

The Libya Investment Firm and the release of the Lockerbie bomber

The Telegraph has more dirt on the Libya-BP terrorist-for-oil deal. There’s certainly lots of smoke here. Could fire be far behind?

The name reads Dalia Advisory Limited, a company established by Libyan businessmen just a week after the country’s officials were told the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was being considered for release on compassionate grounds.

Dalia Advisory is in fact a “front” for the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), a sovereign wealth fund with £80 billion, to invest in Britain and beyond. The Georgian town house, bought for £6 million, is, ironically, only a few yards from the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square.

Senior business sources have told The Sunday Telegraph that had Megrahi died in a British jail, the LIA would have taken its vast sums elsewhere. “If Megrahi had perished in Scotland, we would have become a pariah state as far as the Libyans were concerned,” said one source.

via Special report: the Libya investment firm and the release of the Lockerbie bomber – Telegraph.

The peculiar siren song of coffee

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with coffee. During my Navy days I would drink multiple cups a day, which usually led to my being agitated. I often point to my coffee-drinking friends’ near-homicidal behavior during Hurricane Fran as reason enough to give up coffee.

I’ve mostly given up drinking caffeinated coffee. I’ve speculated to myself that the years of drinking coffee have carved canyons through my brain which can only be filled by the next cup of Joe. As with any addiction, each cup never seems to reach the level the prior one did.
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