All About that Bass …. Meghan Trainor Cover Kate Davis – vocals and upright bass Dave Tedeschi – drums Scott Bradlee – piano [Update]Check out Kate’s amazing version of Just One Of Those Things

So … it’s Labor Day and the gas grill is busted. What to do? Fire up the hobo grill, of course! My half-barrel burn barrel came in really handy today. We lit a fire in the barrel and chucked some charcoal on top and grilled our chicken kebabs and sweet corn – old school. This […]

The sailing stones of Death Valley were one of natures curious and vexing riddles. How do the stones move to leave their distinctive trails? I wrote about this phenomenon a few years ago. Now I found the answer in this YT video published today:

Germany wins the U20 Women’s Soccer Worldcup! Deutschland’s U20 Auswahl der Frauen hat in Kanada die Auswahl Nigeria’s knapp besiegt und damit den dritten großen internationalen Titel dieses Jahres für den deutschen Fußball ergattert! Super Leistung!    

Today, I cooked my 120th bath of biodiesel. With every batch I convert 50 gallons/200 liters of used fryer oil to fuel for my vehicles. So at this point I have converted roughly 6,000 gallons/24,000 liters of used fryer oil to fuel. Recently, I have been cooking a lot more frequently – almost every other […]

Another Championship! Germany’s U19 Mannschaft is UEFA Champion! They defeated Portugal’s U19 team 1:0 today in Hungary in the final. Fortsetzung! Die deutsche U19 Nationalmannschaft ist Europameister! Die Jungs haben heute Portugal im Finale in Ungarn 1:0 geschlagen. Ganz tolle Leistung!

Here are some new records and interesting numbers from Germany’s 2014 Worldcup appearance Germany now has won FOUR Association Football (Soccer) World championships: 1954, 1974, 1990 and 2014 This ties them with Italy and is one less than Brazil. Germany now has had the most Final appearances (8), most top-three spots (12) and most consecutive […]

(SPON) If you missed any of the games, here are highlight reels of all Germany games and below the fold links to all games of the Worldcup in Brazil. Falls du ein Spiel verpasst hast, hier sind Links für Highlight Videos der Deutschen Weltmeistermannschaft. Weiter unten sind Links zu den Highlight Videos aller Spiele der […]

What a great Worldcup! And what a fantastic achievement by Jogi Löw and his Mannschaft! This moment had been 10 years in the making. In 2004, after the German debacle at Euro, former star-striker Jürgen Klinsmann took over from Rudi Völler as team manager. Klinsmann brought in a new assistant coach, Joachim Löw, who had […]

Deutschland ist Weltmeister!!! ★★★★ What a game! Zum ersten Mal triumphiert ein europäisches Team in der Neuen Welt!

Summer is here and today Laura, Jacob and Julia all embarked on a new adventure. Laura started her new job at Unique Batik, where she will help Sharon grow this great company, and take it to the next level. After her stint in an academic environment at Duke, my dear wife will now foray into […]

Last week, I retired the last XP machine at work. Today Microsoft retires XP. Rest in Peace. [Update: interesting story about the iconic XP desktop background “Bliss”]

Today, we bought our third horse. we brought her to our place on Friday and introduced her to our two guys. Her name is R. U . Madison Saint and she is a registered Rocky Mountain Horse. This is not really a great photo of her – it’s windy and she had just had a […]

(DEUTSCH) And yet another ice storm in March! Yesterday morning everything was coated in ice, yet again, even the poor little daffodils. After it had rained all Monday, temperatures dipped just below freezing Tuesday morning, while it was still raining. It was not as bad as the ice storm on March 4th, but schools closed, […]

25 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He almost named it the Mesh. Happy Birthday, WWW! Let’s keep the Web free and open!

(DEUTSCH)    This winter has been a bit of a rollercoaster here in Central North Carolina, with temperatures in the 50s and 60s one day and then well below freezing the next. Earlier this week was a good example: On Sunday, we hit 71°F (21°C) and for the next 40 hours temperatures went straight down. At […]

Today, on my way to take Julia to school, my 1991 Mercedes 300D completed 300,000 miles (482.803 KM). Funny – the odometer rolled over at Brightleaf Square, right before the 11foot8 bridge!

On Feb 12, winter storm Pax dumped a lot of snow on the East Coast of the US. we got 3 inches on Wednesday afternoon between 1:00 PM and 5:00 PM. I made the animation below from the footage recorded by our home security camera: Click on the image for a larger version (warning: 21MB) […]

Angélique Kpasseloko Hinto Hounsinou Kandjo Manta Zogbin Kidjo – or Angélique Kidjo – is one Africa’s greatest voices and my favorite singer. Last night we had the great fortune to experience her and her band live at Durham’s Hayti Heritage Center. Plus … a guest appearance of none other than Branford Marsalis. Yes, that Branford Marsalis. […]

Once again our annual quest for our favorite beer was successful (and chilly). After a late night drive to Winston Salem, Manfred and I had or first taste of this year’s incarnation of Foothills Brewing’s Sexual Chocolate Stout at the brewery. Then we camped out in sub-freezing temperatures on the sidewalk with a hundred or […]