Places
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Pirate radio lives, big time, in New York
Last Saturday evening I was walking up Wadsworth Avenue in Manhattan, a few blocks north of 181st Street, when I passed a group of people sitting sitting on the steps of an apartment building. They were talking, drinking, eating snacks and listening to a boom box set to 94.9FM. A disc jockey chattered in Spanish,… Continue reading
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Daily Outline
Cool Britt Blaser’s flying stories. The dude is a terrific writer who has lived to tell, and tell well. He should do that more often. Speaking of which, I interviewed him for this podcast. How 24 Tiny Satellites Could Change Business Forever. By Nate Hindman and Joe Epstein. Subhead: “Skybox doesn’t want to see pictures of Earth from… Continue reading
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Getting kicks at 66
A year ago I entered the final demographic. So far, so good. @Deanland texted earlier, asking if I had a new affinity with WFAN, the New Yawk sports station that radiates at 660 on what used to be the AM “dial.” Back when range mattered, WFAN was still called WNBC, and its status as a… Continue reading
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Hot Death from Above
Driving from New York to Boston today, I heard “Summer ‘Heat Tourists’ Sweat With Smiles In Death Valley” — a four-minute feature on NPR, aired on the 100th anniversary of the hottest temperature ever recorded outdoors on Earth, which happened in Death Valley: 134° Fahrenheit, which is around 57° Celsius. The report says Death Valley… Continue reading
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West Fork Fire
On my way back to New York from Sydney on Wednesday, while flying east over the San Juan National Forest and the Rio Grande National Forest in southern Colorado, I shot what at first I though was a controlled burn, but later realized was the West Fork Fire. I knew it was a big one… Continue reading
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Aviation vs. Weather
20 December 2025—This post has been read often since it went up more than 12 years ago, including 104 times in the past week. Meanwhile, the resources have changed, so here are some updates: Intellicast is gone, but there are many alternatives. The mobile apps I like best are Windy, Weatherbug, MyRadar, and Storm Radar.… Continue reading
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Springing in Paris
That’s the Parc de la Villette, also variously known as Parc La Villette, Parc Villette, or just Villette, here in Paris. I shot it two days ago, when we got here and the weather was clear. It got cloudy and wet after that. But it looks like things will clear up for::::: From the About… Continue reading
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Let’s put Echo Cliffs and the Kaibito Plateau in Wikipedia
I say that because I didn’t find those entries when I went looking for them yesterday, when I was putting up and annotating this photo set here. If I get a chance later I’ll put some links here. [Later…] And now there is a Wikipedia entry, thanks to Phllip Stewart, @pmsyyz, who improves Wikipedia as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pmsyy. I just made… Continue reading
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Digging Blackhawk Slide
One day, back around 15,000 BCE, half a mountain in Southern California broke loose and slid out onto what’s now the Mojave desert. The resulting landform is called the Blackhawk Slide. Here it is: It’s that ripple-covered lobe on the bottom right. According to Robert Sharp’s Geology Underfoot in Southern California, it didn’t just flow… Continue reading
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The costs of celebrity
On the way back from a concert in Brooklyn yesterday we shared the subway with a well-known filmmaker. He’s one of those people who look ordinary enough to blend in with the rest of us, which is lucky for him. Still, he’s not anonymous. We know his name. We’ve seen his movies. We also did… Continue reading
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FiOS is in my street. Can I have some?
[4 December: I got a call from Verizon and an answer. For that, skip down to *here.] We have a new apartment in Manhattan. Washington Heights. Verizon FiOS is here. FiOS trucks roam the streets. They set up little tables in front of apartments where FiOS is now available, to sign customers up. My wife… Continue reading
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The evolution of radio from waves to streams
WMVY is a delightful music station on Martha’s Vineyard, with a great history, that I always enjoy tuning in when I head down that way to visit friends in Falmouth or Woods Hole. Alas, like so many other good small radio stations, it’s is going off the air. The station’s signal on 92.7fm has been sold to WBUR, one… Continue reading
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The kontroversial kittehs of Rome
Strays Amid Rome Set Off a Culture Clash says The New York Times. On one side, archaeologists who wish to save ruins from occupation by cats. On the other side, the cats’ lovers, including tourists who marvel more at the abundance of serene kittehs, lounging atop walls and columns than at the historic site itself: … Continue reading
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Riding out the storm
Reverse chron reading here. LIFO. For the full experience, start at the bottom. 7:30am Tuesday morning: I can tell the storm is over by tuning in to the Weather Channel and finding it back to the normally heavy load of ads, program promotions and breathless sensationalism. So I’ll turn ya’ll back over to your irregularly… Continue reading
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Flying into New York at night
The conditions were what pilots call “severe clear” from Charlotte to New York on Thursday night. I made sure (paying $44 to USAirways) that I had a window seat on the left side, and had a perfect view through an imperfect window of nearly every city and town from Charlotte to New York. Rolling by… Continue reading
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Browsers should have been cars. Instead they’re shopping carts.
Back in 1995, one of my wife’s sisters became one of the first executives at a hot new startup called Netscape. We wore Netscape t-shirts, used Netscape’s browser, and paid close attention to what was happening in Netscape’s space, which was the entire Web. One of the first things to happen on that Web was… Continue reading
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Speed shopping
Yesterday my 15-year-old son and I made brief stop at the Micro Center in Cambridge, looking at what it might take (and cost) to build a Linux/Windows desktop computer from the ground up—something that had been an interest of his for the last couple of years. (Mine too, actually.) The answer, price-wise (at least there),… Continue reading