\ Saturday, Team 11foot8 knocked it out of the ballpark at the Doughman 8 here in Durham, with a 4th place in the annual quadrathlon and fundraising event. Bill Copeland, Craig Young, Gordon Keeler and yours truly were on the team. Gordon Keeler started out with spaghetti and broccoli rabe & Italian sausage from Boot […]
View post on imgur.com Last Saturday, we picked up our mare Cleo from her “vacation” with her stallion Apache. The two of them had been “getting it on” for most of the week while she was in heat. Saturday she was at the end of her cycle, so it was time for them to part […]
For the 4th year in a row, 11foot8 is sponsoring a team at this month’s Doughman race, the world’s premier quadrathlon. The race combines competitive eating, running, biking and watersports into an epic battle of will power and athleticism. The race is also a fundraiser for Durham’s educational community garden SEEDS. Once we raise $1000, […]
Every spring, I find a copperhead snake near the house or the hay storage and have to kill the animal. This one was under our deck, and I had a shovel handy, so its demise was quick. I hate to do this, but a bite from a copperhead is not trivial and I am not […]
Today, we took our 15-year-old mare Cleo on her first date. We drove her to a horse farm nearby where she well be spending the next 2 weeks with this dashing tobiano Walking Horse stallion. His name is Ebony’s Midnight Rainbow, or just Apache (on the left in the pic below). Apache is 17 years […]
Speaking of collecting cars … this is not exactly competition for the Ingram Collection, but as of yesterday, I am proud owner of two W124 Diesel Mercedes Benz automobiles: This is the new one: a 1992 300D with 241,174 miles (388.131 KM). That is slightly less mileage than my 1991 Benz had 9 years ago, […]
Flatsixes.com has a great post about Bob Ingram’s Porsche collection visiting the new Porsche Experience Center at One Porsche Drive (OPD) in Atlanta. That famous collection is based here in Durham, and I sometimes catch a glimpse of it when they load some of the Porsches on a transporter to take them to shows. And […]
Today was another day I did not get younger. But as the case may be, I got some cool toys today, too. My daughter got me a nice beer glass that is the shape of an upside-down beer bottle. I also got a pair of FPV goggles for my quadcopter. Plus a mini camera and […]
Happy Leap Day! And congratulations to Ennio Morricone for finally winning his first competitive Academy Award for his score for Quentin Tarantino’s film The Hateful Eight (2015). Morricone’s almost 60-year career in music included over 500 film scores, 5 previous Oscar nominations: Days of Heaven (1979), The Mission (1986), The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991) and Malèna […]
Boston Dynamics is at it again. I am sure we’ll get used to this, but right now it’s a bit creepy. At the end, after it gets up, I fully expected it to go after the guy. Faszinierende Technik, aber emotional schon etwas gewöhnungsbedürftig. Ich dachte an Ende, nachdem sie aufsteht, dass die Maschine auf […]
The last few days have been pretty chilly around here. Sunday morning it was a brisk 15 Deg. F (-10 °C) and the waterfall at the little fishpond was almost frozen. Kühl war es hier die letzten Tage – minus 10 °C am Sonntag morgen. Sunday night it snowed and Monday we had freezing rain. […]
Jan 23 NC was hit by a “blizzard” and we had 2-3 inches (10 cm ) of icy snow. Here are some shots from my quadcopter the day after.
The solar system appears to have a new ninth planet. Today, two scientists announced evidence that a body nearly the size of Neptune—but as yet unseen—orbits the sun every 15,000 years. During the solar system’s infancy 4.5 billion years ago, they say, the giant planet was knocked out of the planet-forming region near the sun. […]
Most of 2015 went really quite well, but the last few months of this year did pack a bit of a wallop for us. The highlight of the year was in May, when Julia graduated from Middle College High School as valedictorian of her class. She got to speak at her graduation ceremony and she […]
My Christmas present this year was a little Syma X5C RC quadcopter with a camera from Amazon. This is a fun little quad, as long as it’s no too windy outside. With a little practice I managed to get some pretty nice aerial shots of our little farm without crashing the quad into the trees. […]
Meet Adjo, our newest and youngest family member. Adjo is a Lynx-point (Tabby-point) Siamese we got from the local animal shelter in August. She is about 10 months old at this point, so she is still very young and playful, which is (partly) why it took me so long to post a picture of her. […]
Our hearts go out to the victims of last week’s horrific attacks in Beirut and in Paris. We are told both attacks were perpetrated by extremists associated with Daesh (aka IS, ISIS or ISIL), apparently with the intent of creating chaos, and inciting hatred among Muslims in Lebanon, and hatred against Muslims in Europe. Spreading […]
As the leaves are turning and the nights are getting chilly, this October had some real challenges for us. One of those challenges sent me on a short-notice trip back to Germany. While the German fall weather was mostly chilly and overcast, I had one day of nice weather. On that day I was driving […]
In Germany, on certain holidays, public dancing is banned. The State of Baden-Württemberg has one of the strictest anti-dancing laws: no dancing on Sunday from 3 -11 AM plus a long list of public, religious holidays. Now the State government has decided to loosen the rules and allow public dancing on Sundays, New Year’s day, […]
After a 15-year civil war, Mozambique was one of the world’s most heavily mined countries. Twenty-two years after the war ended, the country was declared officially mine-free this month. Key to this success have been trained de-mining rats used by the Norwgian-supported organization APOPO. The rats sniff out the mines and their handlers destroy the […]
