Inaugural Trams

Inaugural Trams (YouTube) (download from Mediafire)
Super Furry Animals

Trams
Inaugural Trams
Trams
Inaugural Trams
Trams

I will design a town in the image of your face.
Round the wrinkles of your eyes my footsteps you can trace.
We could promenade down infranasal depression.
The streets of your hands will never feel a recession.

It’s a secular day and it will be even better tomorrow.
It’s the first day of the integrated transport hub,
Let us celebrate this monument to progress.
We have reduced emissions by seventy-five percent.
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Sad, sorry newspaper

There was a bank robbery this afternoon on Six Forks Road near North Hills Mall. This kind of thing happens from time to time but usually they aren’t violent. Usually the robber implies he has a weapon, or brandishes one but never fires it.

This afternoon’s robbery was different: the robber toted a shotgun into the bank and then fired on witnesses as he fled. No one, fortunately, was hurt.

Tonight this story is prominent on WRAL’s website but there is no mention of it whatsoever on the News and Observer website. Clicking on the “Crime/Safety” link shows no story, either. The N&O completely dropped the ball. It’s been over six hours since the incident.

I suppose the N&O staff has been too busy chasing Mike Easley out of office to cover anything else. It’s sad to see how far the N&O has fallen.

The case of the mangled remote control

Exhibit A

Exhibit A

Kelly and the kids had a mystery to solve this afternoon. They stepped outside for a half hour to play in the driveway and when they returned, they were astonished to discover the TV remote control was destroyed. Parts were littered everywhere and the case of the remote control was shattered. Strange indentations were found on the end of it and what was left of the device was covered in an unusual oily substance.

The family searched the house but could find no signs of forced entry. All the locks were locked and no other valuables were affected.
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Daylight saving time experiment

This winter I thought I’d try something new: a somewhat altered Daylight Saving time change. The goal is to minimize the impact of the time switch.

My idea is to switch clocks like everyone else but adjust my waking schedule by only 30 minutes, not the full hour. So as I currently wake at 5:45 AM EDT, I will awaken at 5:15 AM EST after the time change. Thus I’ll be waking up effectively 30 minutes later than I do now but the rest of my schedule will match others.

If I were brave I would continue to wake and sleep at the same time I do now but I’m not yet ready to take that on! We’ll see how a half-hour difference goes first.

More MSN search bot shenanigans

Got more funny hits this morning from MSN’s search bot (emphasis mine):

65.55.104.132 – – [26/Oct/2009:10:20:24 -0400] “GET /2009/03/06/sailing-this-weekend/ HTTP/1.1” 200 4398 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; SLCC1; .NET CLR 1.1.4325; .NET CLR 2.0.40607; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)”
65.55.104.132 – – [26/Oct/2009:10:20:25 -0400] “GET /wp-content/themes/mtdotnet/style.css HTTP/1.1” 200 10345 “http://www.markturner.net/2009/03/06/sailing-this-weekend/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; SLCC1; .NET CLR 1.1.4325; .NET CLR 2.0.40607; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)”
65.55.104.132 – – [26/Oct/2009:10:20:25 -0400] “GET /wp-includes/js/comment-reply.js?ver=20090102 HTTP/1.1” 200 786 “http://www.markturner.net/2009/03/06/sailing-this-weekend/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2; SLCC1; .NET CLR 1.1.4325; .NET CLR 2.0.40607; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)”

The IP address 65.55.104.132 resolves to msnbot-65-55-104-132.search.msn.com.

I’m about ready to kick MSN off my sites permanently.

Update 10:41: Done. MSN is no longer welcome at my site. I’ve never banned a search engine before but this is inexcusable behavior and Microsoft should know better.

Yet another GPS talk at Conn

Friday afternoon I did my latest talk about GPS to Mrs. Jarrett’s 5th-grade module at Conn Elementary. It rocked! The kids were so engaged I talked long after the end-of-class bell had sounded. I think it was my best talk yet!

This time I spoke with not just Mrs. Jarrett’s class but another one, too! It was so much fun to see the wheels turning in the kids’ heads as I would pose a question and wait for them to figure it out. Half the kids’ hands would shoot up every time I did that. This time around there were several kids who obviously knew their stuff which made it easier for me to make my points.

What a thrill it is to get kids engaged in learning. Makes me think that I may have made a good teacher if I only I had the patience to be a good student first!

Action-packed birthday weekend

Wow, it’s been quite a busy weekend! Travis’s birthday is today so we spent much of the weekend celebrating. Travis’s official birthday party was a pool party at Pullen Pool. There were dozens of his friends there and lots of fun had. We went home from there to clean up and then it was off to the Haunted Mordecai event at Mordecai Historic Park. The threat of rain kept things a bit low-key there but we did enjoy the “haunted” tour.

This morning we woke at 7 and got to the fairgrounds by 9 to beat the crowds. It was like a ghost town there until 10 AM when the rides officially opened. We all had fun just walking around and looking at things. After 10, we put the kids on a kiddie roller coaster and watched them have a blast. Next we played a few impossible-to-win carny games before we ordered some French fries to eat while we walked to the Ferris wheel. Travis was unsure of the Ferris wheel and took a lot of convincing before he decided to try it. Boy was he glad he did! He chattered non-stop while we were cruising around it.

We got home from the fair, ate lunch, and then puttered a bit around the house. I couldn’t pry the kids away from watching a video, so I headed out alone to Lions Park to watch the cyclocross taking place there. After only being there a few minutes I could see that this was an amazing event and called Kelly to bring the kids. We spent the next 45 minutes cheering on the racers as they rode their bikes around the challenging course. It was very exciting!

Now the kids are tucked in bed and I’m feeling like the zombies that walked downtown Raleigh last night. Hopefully I’ll be well-rested by the time I leave for work tomorrow!

Beautiful fall morning

It’s unusually mild and breezy this morning, not sunny but pleasantly overcast. The wind is gently ushering yellowing leaves off their perches. It was extremely relaxing to walk through the breezy neighborhood streets with the dog this morning, knowing we were safe from rain for now but the showers would soon begin.

A morning like this just makes me feel so alive!

French in Action

I actually had some free time last night so I decided to catch up on the TV shows I’ve been recording but haven’t watched. One of them was the PBS show French in Action, which teaches French at the college level. It’s an immersion-type series first show in 1987 which teaches the language through various scenarios. The three years of French I took in high school are as old as the TV show itself and yet I found that following the conversations was much easier than I expected!

I found the show’s way of dumping you into the dialogue and only afterward tying up the loose ends – after you’re forced to try to figure it out yourself – to be very effective in making the lessons stick. In fact, it seemed easier to pick things up using video than it did using textbooks and a French-speaking teacher in the classroom. Of course, it didn’t hurt that I could rewind the show if there was dialogue I didn’t understand.

Looks like I’ll now be brushing up on my French in the evenings. If that goes well, I may also start watching all the episodes of Destinos: An Introduction to Spanish that I’ve also been recording!

(P.S. All the episodes of French in Action can be streamed online for free as can episodes of Destinos).