Clubjuggler » Life

TMBG Covers Tubthumping by Chumbawamba

lovelace — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 19:30:30 +0000

This is an awesome video of They Might Be Giants covering the song Tubthumping by the band Chumbawamba. (If you don’t see the embedded video, click the link to get to the original location for the video.)

They Might Be Giants covers Chumbawamba

Things Janell & I can’t do right now

lovelace — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:47:15 +0000

With Janell’s knee recovering from ACL surgery there’s no way we could do this right now, but next year I’d love to learn how to do this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-3vZKoi5HM

Peaceful Schools

lovelace — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:14:32 +0000

My son’s elementary school, Central Park School for Children started a program three years ago called Peaceful Schools that tackles bullying from a holistic perspective. My son’s teacher recently went on ABC 11 to talk about the program:

From a parent perspective, I really like the program. We haven’t had any problems at all with bullying at my son’s school and this program is a big reason for that. Right now it’s only at Central Park School and the Carolina Friends school, but it looks like they are looking to expand the program soon. I, for one, would be all for it.

Woodworking projects

lovelace — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 05:13:31 +0000

Apparently, I forgot to post anything about various woodworking projects I did this past year.

First off, I built a bench for our foyer to hold all the various shoes that piled up there:

Then, I built an electric train table for my son:

Finally, I made a couple of end grain cutting boards I gave as gifts (one to a friend on her birthday and another to my mom at Christmas):

A few weeks ago, I also made a set of shelves to fit our VCR that got displaced when we got a new TV recently. I don’t yet have pictures for that but I’ll post some later when I take them.

Now I’m wondering what woodworking project I should tackle next.

On a lighter note

lovelace — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:02:46 +0000

A vigorous debate: is Fox News “evil” or simply “stupid”?

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

The Parent Company Trap

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Quick Balloon Update

lovelace — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:01:14 +0000

I’ll have a more complete writeup later when I can slow down and wrap my head around things, but for the moment here’s a quick update. Our first balloon lost tracking about about 20k feet. Not to be deterred, we quickly put together a second balloon from spare parts and sent it up. It landed a few hours later in Rocky Mount and we spent 4 hours getting it out of the tree where it landed about 65 feet off the ground! Once we did, it turned out to be well worth it as we found some great pictures!

Also, we ended up on the front page of the News and Observer today! Here’s the article.

Media coverage

lovelace — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 19:19:45 +0000

I just spoke briefly on the phone with Josh Shaffer from the Raleigh News and Observer newspaper. It looks like there will be an article about our balloon launch in tomorrow’s paper. I don’t think I’ll have a chance to pick one up unless I can find one in the evening. If anyone local can grab one for me, I would greatly appreciate it.

Near Space Launch

lovelace — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:33:53 +0000

I’ll write more about this when I get a chance, but this Sunday morning, myself and a group of people will be launching a balloon to “near space” in an attempt to get a picture of black sky and the curvature of the earth. You can read the press release about it here: http://tinyurl.com/33wxxww

It’s been a crazy month, but a lot of fun!

Lake Crabtree Ride

lovelace — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 18:26:53 +0000

John, Lee, & I left from John’s house in Cary, rode the greenway to the back of Lake Crabtree County Park, then rode a while there before returning to John’s house via the greenway.

Direct link to activity on Garmin Connect.

New Focuser Installed

lovelace — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 04:55:17 +0000

The new focuser for my telescope showed up yesterday so I spent yesterday evening making the modifications to the optical tube assembly to allow the new focuser to work correctly. The telescope isn’t done yet, but after installing the focuser I reinstalled the spider/secondary mirror and the primary mirror. The sky was clouded over last night so I had to wait until tonight to try it out but I managed to get some really good views of the surface of the moon with what I’ve got right now! Even with the mirror coating not as good as it could be the surface of the moon was bright, clear, and big!

To see pictures of me fitting the new focuser and cutting the OTA to get it to fit, start at this picture and follow it for the next 12 pictures.

So, what’s left to be done now is I need to get a finderscope, paint the tube, find a screw to help hold the telescope axis steady, clean everything, and check to see if the clock drive works correctly (it rotates the tube, but I’m not sure how accurately). So, still lots to do, but I’m encouraged so far!