Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,530 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 136 of 153).

Cedar Creek Gallery


Kelly and I took the kids up to Creedmoor Saturday to visit the Oakleys, the family of Travis’s best friend Carson. They were hosting an arts festival at their farm, known as Cedar Creek Gallery. I’m amazed this place has been here for forty years and I never knew about it until now.

We watched as Lisa Oakley did some glass blowing, creating a long string of glass which will be used to create beads for necklaces and bracelets. It was fascinating: I’d never seen glass blowing before. There were other artists around, too, including some very talented potters and sculptors. And the event attracted a crowd. At one point, their one cash register had no less than thirteen customers waiting. I was tempted to buy a few things myself.

The kind of studio where one can practice glass blowing, welding, and the like is what I’d like to see Raleigh Parks and Rec provide. Something like a Mythbusters or Techshop kind of place. Maybe some day I’ll be in a position to do something about it …

If you’re interested in some of the coolest pottery, sculpting, and whimsical handmade products around, take a morning drive up to Creedmoor and see the Cedar Creek Gallery. You’ll be glad you did.

David Byrne coming to Raleigh Dec 8th

David Byrne of Talking Heads fame will be playing Raleigh’s Meymandi Hall December 8th, says N&O music critic David Menconi. The show’s not even up on the Progress Energy Center’s website yet.

David and Brian Eno recently released a new album called Everything That Will Happen Will Happen Today. You can listen to the entire album from its website, which while not as cool as Byrne’s Radiohead pals selling their album on the honor system is still pretty cool.

Wachovia and Citigroup: a shotgun marriage

The Charlotte Observer reports that Citigroup’s purchase of Wachovia’s was a panicked move by the FDIC to keep Wachovia solvent as nervous customers created a “silent” bank run. Customers began withdrawing their money on Friday and by Monday morning it was clear Wachovia had no liquidity left. In other words, Wachovia would’ve almost certainly failed this week had the FDIC not engineered the Citigroup deal.

Scary stuff, folks, and I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of it. I’m glad I’m a credit union member.

(h/t Suzzanne)

Mergers

The economic downturn is causing a lot of companies to either merge or else go belly-up. Watch for these consolidations in 2008:

1.) Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W. R. Grace Co. Will merge and become: Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace.

2.) PolyGram Records, Warner Bros., and Zesta Crackers join forces and become: Poly, Warner Cracker.

3.) 3M will merge with Goodyear and become: MMMGood.

4. Zippo Manufacturing, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining will merge and become: ZipAudiDoDa
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USS Elliot decomissioning video

I spent a moment last night watching the USS Elliot DD-967 Decommissioning Video that Ens. Jeff Underwood (now of MissionMediaUSA) was selling at the ceremony in December 2003. The video doesn’t show the decommissioning but it does show some of the ship and interviews from the last crew. Jeff gave me permission to post a copy of it, so I put it here. Its an MPEG4 file shrunk to … um, 160 megabytes, so start the download and go take a nap while it completes. You’ll probably only want to watch this if you served on the Elliot, truth be told.

I also went hunting and think I found a photograph from Elliot’s last day. A midshipman there for summer training posted pictures from the SINKEX that day. I originally thought the ship in the middle of this picture might be Elliot under tow, but its more likely another ship lining up to take a shot at Elliot.

Internet radio needs your help!

Tim Westergren, founder and CEO of Pandora, needs your help. Please call Senators Burr and Dole today and urge them to support the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008 so that great online music sources such as Pandora can continue to thrive. It might not hurt to remind them that their pal Jesse Helms supported Internet radio.

I just called and I hope you will, too. Below is Tim’s email:

Hi, it’s Tim from Pandora;

Today, thanks to the extraordinary support of many Pandora listeners, we took a giant step forward when the House of Representatives supported Pandora and Internet radio and passed the Webcaster Settlement Act of 2008. Now we need your help so that the Senate will pass it also – and quickly… The finish line is in sight!

After a yearlong negotiation, Pandora, SoundExchange and the RIAA are finally optimistic about reaching an agreement on royalties that would save Pandora and Internet radio. The legislation would give us the extra time we need to finalize the deal.
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Hosting multiple networks on a WRT54G

I was looking for some hints on an issue I’m having with the company wireless access point. Googling, as it often does, turned up something else useful: a wireless-savvy geek has figured out how to host multiple wireless networks on his WRT54G.

Why is this useful? Say you’re a giving guy, you know you have more bandwidth than you typically use, and want to make that extra bandwidth available to the public while not exposing your internal network. OpenWRT and a Linksys WRT54G can do this.
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