Off topic – Space pictures have always held a special fascination for me and today when I ran across this one I couldn’t resist mentioning it. Maybe it’s all the space-related movies growing up, or just the amazing mix and blend of colors on a black background that the composite images give us.
Category: Hobbies
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Sounds under the creative commons license – freesound
The last post was disabling unwanted sounds on a laptop running Mandriva 2006…. this is about an archive of Creative Commons licensed audio free for the downloading. The Freesound project boasts a collection of over 10,000 sounds. Mostly sound effects of various types. (Thunder, rain, record scratch, hens, etc. etc.) So, if you’re looking for some sound effects to customize your desktop or…
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Old Play by mail (email) games…
Ok – not work related, but… I was remembering with one of my brother’s a computer game we played maybe 10 years ago that was a strategy game and had a neat play by email feature. The game was turn based, we’d make a move and it had a handy link to email the game info to each other and I think we went back and forth with it for several weeks. It was really quite an entertaining way to deal with the game. Now, today, with realtime strategy games, online multiplayer communities, etc. play by email seems a bit dated, but for many turn based games this would be one feature I’d LOVE to see more of.
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Kstars – great personal astronomy software under linux
I’ve played around with Kstars off and on for a good while. It reminds me vaguely of a program I used to have under windows. It’s essentially a planetarium on your desktop. It is GPL licensed and part of the KDE Education suite of programs for the KDE desktop under Linux. It has all the basics for a program of this class (view the night sky and the stars from your latitude and longitude.)
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Energy bill brings several expanded tax credits
This may not directly relate to computers, but one of my interests has been solar electric. I have a solar and battery system setup for powering small things when we have black outs and I also have an outbuilding that has a modest bit of power using solar with a sealed lead acid battery. At some point, I may do an article detailing those, as they’ve been fun projects. But, there are several articles out lately, like this one describing the tax credits in the energy bill which is to be signed today I believe.
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Shortwave Listening Over the Internet
Ok, so with the post on the shortwave schedule viewer software, I got the idea to mention a site I’ve played with and think is a pretty neat idea. Of course, part of the concept of shortwave is, with the longer radio frequencies they can travel hundreds (even thousands) of miles and you can hear a breadcast from literally the other side of the world.
There are problems these days, interference (more…)
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Archives of old Genealogy sites
I don’t know how many know, but one of my sidelines (hobbies) over the years has been Genealogy. Sometimes I’ve had more time for it than others. The last couple of years it hasn’t been something I’ve had much time for. However, the archives of two sites exist at this domain. The first www.northcarolinagenealogy.net has not seen a makeover in a LONG time. In fact, the second archive was meant to be the next revision of northcarolinagenealogy.net it is located here This second one will likely be changing soon as I look at converting it to the model I’ve used for the main site. (more…)