Links to cool places or things.
There are 1,524 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 137 of 153).
It looks like a replay of my Kerry-Edwards encounter four years ago will take place tomorrow. I’ve been given a VIP spot onstage with Barack Obama for his talk in Raleigh tomorrow night, again due to my being a veteran. While I’m still not happy that Obama voted to throw the Fourth Amendment under the bus, he beats the alternative.
Look for me on TV wearing my goofy, oversized Navy ball-cap.
A local company is seeking volunteers to go to the moon. the volunteers won’t themselves go the moon, but they will help in the effort of local group TeamSTELLAR to win the Google Lunar X Prize by being the first private company to land a rover on the moon.
TeamSTELLAR is made up of a number of local businessmen and N.C. State engineers. The group is seeking volunteers to assist in a number of tasks, including administrative, fundraising, legal and engineering roles.
If you’d like to find out more, TeamSTELLAR will hold a presentation from 7 to 9 PM Tuesday, August 19th, on the first floor of Engineering Building II, Centennial Campus, N.C. State University (map here).
You’d have to be looney to pass up this opportunity.
A local group called Triangulator is planning to hold a scavenger hunt here in downtown Raleigh on Saturday, August 23rd. Looks like fun to me! Their announcement is below.
(By way of the Historic Oakwood email list)
Triangulator Part Deux: City of Oaks
People of the Triangle,
Back in May we held our inaugural Triangulator scavenger hunt in Durham. Over thirty people participated in the six hour multi-media, multi-modal (sub)urban (mis)adventure.
In the Bull City we climbed, we rhymed, and we memorialized, discovering coal chutes and hidden swimming pools and secret passageways in the process. We learned about why Durham was the city of medicine long before Duke Hospitals, unearthed the ghosts of the city’s industrial past and experimented with new uses for Fufu flour and Waxy Corn. But most importantly, we were able to see Durham in new ways: finding new intrigue and beauty in the places and people we pass by every day and discovering parts of the city (sometimes right around the corner) that we never knew existed. Check out some of the photos from the event on our interactive map (circa 1923).
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I found out Tuesday from the excellent New Raleigh blog that the North Carolina State Archives has posted a number of its historical photographs to Flickr. This is without a doubt totally awesome.
For me the juiciest photos are the ones of early Raleigh, most of which are from the Carolina Power and Light Photograph Collection. I’ve always wanted to know where Raleigh’s trolley tracks used to be, and here’s a mess of photos that shows just that.
Kudos to the State Archives for making these historical photographs so easily available!
Remember the North Carolina Museum of Transportation excursion train I was psyched to ride from Spencer to Charlottesville? I happened upon the museum’s webpage last night to discover that tickets were already being sold. Though I had “sent an email for more information” way back, the museum left me in the lurch. It would seem important to know when one could actually purchase tickets, so I’m not sure why I wasn’t told about this.
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I was trying to finish up work here when I noticed the near-constant stream of traffic outside my office window had come to a halt. In its place are a number of tents, tables, and chairs.
Off to New Raleigh for the answer: today is the first of a downtown music event called the Fourth Friday Downtown Jams.
Sez New Raleigh:
If you’re trying to have a post-work week beverage in the street while checking out some early evening music–then definitely step over to Hargett Street on Friday, July 25th. This blues jam block party will be the first in a new monthly Fourth Friday event featuring Jazz, Blues, Reggae, and Afrobeat jams in downtown Raleigh
If I wasn’t playing Barney Fife tonight I might want to go. There doesn’t seem to be any website showing who’s organizing this (Raleigh Times is my guess) and the New Raleigh site is borked at the moment (note to New Raleigh: check out Apache), but take my word for it: this looks like it’ll be fun.
No, I’m not going up in a hot-air balloon this weekend, but I’m going to be there at the launch of two balloons Saturday evening. Local balloonist Jonathan Trappe, famous for his “Chairway to Heaven” flight last month, will be launching his one-man hot air balloon Saturday evening, weather permitting. Jonathan’s ballooning pal will be launching his traditional gondola hot-air balloon at the same time.
This will be my first exposure to hot-air ballooning and I’m really excited about it. If you’ve got no plans Saturday evening, drop a comment here (or email me) and I’ll tell you how to get to our meeting place in North Raleigh. While you won’t get to ride, it should be fun just to watch the launch.
Hmm. Already I’m wondering what it might take to make this a new hobby. Must … resist … new …. hobby …
Randy Pausch, the Carnagie-Mellon computer scientist with terminal cancer whose “Last Lecture” video lit up the Internet last year, has lost his battle with cancer. He was 47 years old.
His “Last Lecture” video was inspiring, and touching. I remember thinking this healthy-looking, optimistic guy couldn’t possibly be dying, but sadly I was proven wrong. He must have been an amazing professor and a wonderful dad and husband.
Go watch his Last Lecture if you haven’t seen it already, and also see his surprise commencement speech in May. And then go hug your loved ones.
Local geek Andy Withers had an excellent point of view piece in today’s News and Observer regarding Raleigh’s lack of bandwidth. Withers compares Raleigh’s options to nearby Wilson’s, which has blazing-fast municipal Internet service.
I wonder if Raleigh could take on municipal Internet some day.
This News and Observer headline is wrong on a few levels:
Woman may have been sex slaves, policy say
By Cleve R. Wootson Jr., The Charlotte Observer
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Police say two women arrested after a prostitution investigation may have been sex slaves — illegally trafficked into the United States and sleeping on mattresses at the back of a Monroe massage parlor.
I, for one, wasn’t aware there was a policy on sex slaves. Even so, the slang “policy say” is a bit too hip for a newspaper. Also, its unclear how one woman may have been more than one sex slave, unless there was perhaps some sort of outsourcing going on.
Hmm. Could it be that McClatchy is missing some of those staffers it recently canned?
Update @12:19: Looks like the N&O has fixed its headline. Thanks, y’all!
