|
Websites of the Month
March
My apologies for not providing neato websites for the past three months.
Maintaining pages for our
40th Anniversary has been a daunting task...so without further ado:
Give Away of the Day
I was looking for a couple of programming resources, freebies as a matter of
fact, and found this
site, downloaded a couple of files and found out the hard way that you had
to install AND register
these freebies on the same day they are free. If you don't, then
you've lost this opportunity. Anyway,
I downloaded a couple of these freebies and (registered on the same day)
found that these were
really, so far, good quality software. You can bookmark and check them out
daily or sign up and they
will e-mail you daily on their freebies. You know about Webshots Picture of
the Day, well, this is
almost the same: Software of the Day. PS: Don't wait till midnight to see
what the next day's freebie
is about...their servers are located somewhere in the Pacific Standard Time
zone so...midnight their
time is 3am North Carolina time...zzzz
www.giveawayoftheday.com
February
No WOM this month.
January
No WOM this month.
December
No WOM this month.
November
Deaf NC Events
Website of Events for the Deaf and the Hard of Hearing by Ches B. has been
closed down and left
a gap for Deafies in North Carolina. With the collaborations of two
anonymous sponsors, we decided
fill this gap with a new and expanded version of Website of of Events for
the Deaf and Hard of
Hearing for all of North Carolina. This website takes the place of
our own Events page on this
website which featured fewer Events but mostly serviced the Piedmont and
Eastern North Carolina.
Our Events page is now being
reworked back to it's purpose of featuring recent Class get-togethers,
Reunions, and Min-Reunions as it was originally intended for.
So here we are, tooting our own horn and invite you to our sister website, a
new service for the
Deaf and Hard of Hearing for all of North Carolina.
www.deafncevents.com
October
Randy has sent me funny videos and they are still available online and I
thought I share them here:
Why you don't hit your office computer
If you are a frequent visitor to this page, then you should know that I'm a
space nut;
Here's a new site from NASA:
www.nasaimages.org
September
Jigsaw Puzzle Paradise You like puzzles? We like puzzles.
How about going to Jigsaw Puzzle Paradise. You can select pictures to
puzzle AND you can select the difficulty of the puzzles. Don't like the
pictures they offer? Upload your own and make your own puzzle. It's
puzzling that we haven't found this puzzling site earlier. This site is
neat. You can e-mail a puzzle post card, sign up for Puzzle-of-the-Day and
you can compete with your buddies' solve times. It's a puzzling site to
enjoy!
http://www.jigzone.com
Space Stinks or Astronauts Say Space Smells
Funny Former NASA
astronaut Thomas Jones, a
veteran of three spacewalks before retiring from spaceflying in 2001,
thinks the odor could stem from atomic oxygen that clings to spacesuit
fabric.
"When you repressurize the airlock and get out of your suit, there is a
distinct odor of ozone, a faint acrid smell," Jones told SPACE.com,
adding that the smell is also similar to burnt gunpowder or the ozone
smell of electrical equipment. "It's not noticeable inside the suit. The
suit smells like plastic inside." Did I break after wimmimg?
August
40 years later, Woodstock still fascinates Woodstock remains one of those events — like the
moon landing earlier that summer — that continues to define the 1960s
culture in the
popular imagination.
Consider the bumper crop of Woodstock nostalgia marking the 40th
anniversary. There's a new cut DVD of the concert movie, a remastered concert CD, director Ang Lee's rock 'n' roll comedy
"Taking Woodstock" and a memoir by promoter Michael Lang. There are
also performances scheduled by Woodstock veterans at the old site, now home
to a '60s museum and an outdoor concert pavilion.
The Woodstock
legend stems from big names such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and
more and
more playing at a show where everything went wrong but
turned out right.
The town of Woodstock didn't want the concert and
promoters were bounced from another site at the 11th hour. Lang settled on a
hay field in Bethel owned by a kindly dairy farmer named Max Yasgur. The
concert did come off Aug. 15-18, 1969, but barely. Fences were torn down,
tickets became useless. More than 400,000 people converged on this rural
corner 80 miles northwest of New York City, freezing traffic for miles. Then
the rains doused everything.
It should have been a disaster. But
Americans tuning in to the evening news that weekend saw smiling, dancing,
muddy kids. By the time the concert movie came out months later, Woodstock
was a symbol of the happy, hippie side of the '60s spirit.
It still
is. Woodstock may have ended the 1960s with a bang but it is still part of
our generation. If you google just the word woodstock, you will come up with over 27 million
pages of references to this event...so instead of featuring a website of
the month, let's just say this a feature of our generation.
www.woodstock69.com
www.peacefence.com/woodstock.htm (Photos)
www.squidoo.com/woodstock_69 (Commentary and Photos)
www.woodstockny.org
(The town of Woodstock, NY)
www.bethelwoodscenter.org (The community location of the
festival)
www.yasgurroad.com/history.html (The farmland's owner of
the location of the event)
July
Apollo 11 images featured on the home page this month are courtesy of
NASA
and/or
apolloarchive.com
Lakes Umpire
Umpires has rules to live by when umpiring games, in this case baseball
games. John set up this
blog site for a friend explaining how baseball umpires should signal their
calls properly. Although I
have admitted in the past that I'm not into sports, I did read this blog and
now when I run across a
baseball game on TV, I will understand what the umpires are signaling.
Thanks, John!
http://lakesumpire.blogspot.com
Planetary Science Misconduct
Huh? A list of scientists who have committed scientific misconduct and
fraud? Wow! You wouldn't
think scientists would do such a thing and go so low as to commit
falsification in order to receive
funding and grants. Then again, for all we know, this has been going on "in
the name of science"
for ages. Anyway, the new age of the internet now exposes these horrific
waste of funds and the
scientists who do mankind wrong earns the right to be placed on this
listing. Hopefully, those who
commit fraud by releasing funds to these so called scientists aught to be
included on this same
listing...you would think?
http://www.bccmeteorites.com/misconduct-planetary.html
June
DTV Transition
Well, the historic DTV transition has come and gone. A non-event really,
unless you were watching
TV with rabbit ears or an antenna. At a specified time, if...and only if
your TV station mentioned it,
your tube went snowy/dark/blue when the TV station's analog signal was
powered off. If you were watching on a satellite network when the local
station's analog power off switch was pushed,
your screen probably went pink for maybe 20 minutes or so until the provider
scrambled to find the
signal they were supposed to use. Still have questions? this site sponsored
by DTV Transition
Coalition may have your answers.
http://www.dtvtransition.org
May
NASA Links to the Hubble Telescope Repair
Extensive repairs are now in progress for the Hubble telescope
and NASA has provided links on their
website to other locations in the internet for more information and
pictures. Of all the space
missions to date, this STS-125 Hubble mission is probably the most attention
grabbing mission so
far...with exception to the moon landing in 1969. Go to this page and click
on Hubble Links, located
near the top right corner of the page.
http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/hubble_servicing
Hubble
Telescope Gallery
Visitors to this page know that I'm a outer space junkie. There's tons of
pictures accumulated over
the years and are now collected all together on this website. I've collected
many pictures to use as
you can guess, screensavers and wallpapers. I go to this site several times
a week and still can't get
enough.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/solar_system
April
Possible feature here called TV show of the Month?
TV show produced in 2002 titled "Sue
Thomas F.B.Eye" is rerunning on the Animal Planet channel.
The original 2 hour pilot episode aired Monday, April 6, 8pm and again
Tuesday morning 12am. Her
dog Levi is the reason that we now have a second chance to catch these past
episodes. Remember,
the remaining shows airs on Mondays at 9pm EST/PST (8pm Central/Mountain).
And repeats after
midnight.
FBI 100: Celebrating a
Century
Celebrated in 2008, the history of the FBI is so expansive, their website
has broken down their
history into "periods". Everything you wanted to know about the FBI...it's
all here.
www.fbi.gov/fbihistory.htm
January
As promised, here is my CSDVRS review:
www.csdvrs.com
Well, this one is not a website of the month but a disappointment and a
grief about the
company
behind the website.
I've put off getting VRS because I just didn't want a another TV waiting to
be
used. The CSDVRS folks
at the ASL Expo in Greensboro, NC back in
September 6,
2008 convinced me
to sign up for Z30
(Z340) on sale for $80. Although it has a small screen, I really liked this
unit
because of its laptop like portability. It would serve its purpose very well
as I could take it with me
on my road trips as well as being able to connect this unit in any room in
my house as well as inside
my workshop separate from my house. Really, a perfect and ideal VRS unit for
me.
OK, so weeks go by...no e-mail, mail, or any communications from CSDVRS. I
go to NCSD's
Homecoming and eureka! CSDVRS has a booth! I asked about getting Z340. Their
representative said
I will get e-mail in three weeks. So again, I waited and waited. No e-mail,
nothing, nothing, and
more nothings. So, on January 6, I contacted them through their website and
basically I wrote: "It is
now 2 and half months OR 4 months since September 2008! WOW. I waited and
waited. No e-mail,
nothing, nothing, and more nothings".
And now, finally, I received a response, albeit a manufactured
response...you know...the same
response sent to anyone who's asking. Here's what they said: "We are
completing the final stages of
testing the new Z phones. The Z-340 has started being shipped to customers,
and there is still no
release date of the Z-150. This has been due to an overwhelmingly high
volume of requests we have
received for the Videophone. CSDVRS will be contacting you once the Z
becomes available, and the
current units we have will be assigned on a first come, first serve basis."
Oh, wow, whoopie doo! Geez, I didn't ask about the Z-150. Here was my
response:
Same old, same old.
That's the same story the rep said at the NCSD Homecoming on Oct. 18, 2008.
So in effect, nothing new, nothing changed.
Sigh,
Lester Latkowski
So the moral to any company offering any product: Don't offer products until
it has come off the
assembly and testing lines. DUH!
Sonicbomb.com = MH-47 Chinook helicopter
John forwarded this military clip and...well...I'll let his e-mail do the
describing:
Gutsy move...This is some chopper pilot...a rarely seen perspective: a video
of a U.S. Navy SEAL
extraction was filmed from inside an MH-47 Chinook helicopter. The pilot has
lowered the ramp,
dipped the tail end into the water to partially flood the compartment (a
maneuver that requires quite
precise flying) and awaits the Navy SEALs to board in their F470 Zodiac.
The rest of the website is outstanding...has historical items never before
released to the public or
declassified after so many years. Needless to say, I spent several hours on
it.
www.sonicbomb.com
|