Friday evening we gathered the kids and went to Durant Nature Park for a folk concert. David DiGueseppe and Mara Shea played at the park’s training lodge. We had trouble finding it, first driving to the wrong building and then being puzzled at finding an empty parking lot in front of the other.
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Reviews
There are 143 posts filed in Reviews (this is page 14 of 15).
MPD – Music Player Daemon
I’ve been under a rock (and roll – hah!), but I just found out about MPD, otherwise known as the music player daemon. I’ve had my music server parked by my stereo for years and have been logging into the command line to play music. MPD makes this unnecessary.
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Ted Turner at UNC
I managed to get out to UNC in time for Ted Turner to take the stage at UNC’s Memorial Hall. What followed was not so much of a speech as it was two old friends on stage reminiscing. Across from Turner was Pat Mitchell, who not only used to work for Turner but also shares grandchildren with him.
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Bellsouth $10 DSL up and running
I got my Bellsouth $10 DSL up and running today with relatively little hassle. The “Sprint 660” DSL modem I purchased from Craigslist works just fine, too, in spite of not appearing on Bellsouth’s supported list of equipment.
I spent a little time at first just sorting out where my wiring goes in my house. I’ve got VoIP phones everywhere and so these “virtual” phone lines can be hard to tell apart from the real one. Once I found a good jack to use, I plugged in my DSL filters on my real phone line and cranked up my DSL modem.
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Bellsouth $10 DSL trial run
I signed up Sunday for AT&T’s FastAccess Lite DSL Term, otherwise known as $10 DSL. It requires a 12 month commitment, is only 768 Kbps down and 128 Kbps up, and requires your own DSL modem, but for the price its a deal … especially if AT&T loses money on it, and I have my reasons for, uh, wishing that to happen. While its true that the $10 deal does not appear on the FastAccess page, if you enter your phone number in the availability box the Term option for $10/month does appear which is the one you need.
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Steam double-header at the New Hope Valley Railway
It was Kelly’s “day off,” so the kids and I headed south to explore the New Hope Valley Railway’s “double-headed thunder” steam trains this weekend. For this weekend and next, the NHV has a sister steam engine to its familiar Number 17 on loan, the Flagg Coal Company Number 75. Together, they’ll be pulling the tourist trains in a double-header configuration (my kids would call it by its modern name, a “consist”).
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Fuji’s idea of customer service
After hearing the doorbell ring yesterday I opened the door to find a long-awaited delivery: Kelly’s digital camera that had been sent in to Fuji to be repaired. It has been six weeks since she sent her Finepix F470 off to the factory and she had really been missing it. I put the box on her desk, letting her have the pleasure of opening it when she returned.
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Home away from home, robotically
On my way back from the Ohio Linux Fest, my friend Bill mentioned that iRobot is building a new Roomba-style robot to provide “presence” to remote users. It’s called the ConnectR and provides a remote user (say, a dad traveling on business) the ability to move around, see, and talk to others (say, a family who’s dad is traveling on business).
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A Short History Of Nearly Everything
I just finished the Bill Bryson book, A Short History Of Nearly Everything: a fun, fascinating review of all the science you never paid attention to in school. Bryson has a lot of ground to cover, bringing to life discoveries in the atomic world, genetics, geology, physics, astrophysics, and many, many others. He whittles these complicated subjects down to their human stories, while keeping the science real. I found it very entertaining, as I mentioned here before.
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Independence Hall – The Birthplace of Freedom
I finally got a chance to tour Independence Hall today. I arrived this rainy day after the regular tours were over, leaving me with just the “open house” tour that began at five. I bided my time by viewing the Liberty Bell, then progressing to Congress Hall, where the U.S. Congress met while Washington, DC was being built.
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