Events

I hope Chicago has decent weather for the full moon 11 days from now: It's coming Sept. 27 at 9:47 p.m. CDT. For starters, it is what some astronomy enthusiasts call a "super" moon because it will occur when the moon is close to perigee, its nearest point to Earth in its elliptical orbit. The moon reaches perigee Sept. 28, and it will be just more than 222,000 miles away at the time of the full moon. That is about 31,000 miles closer than lunar apogee, the moon's farthest point in its orbit. The moon...

A Texas high school called the police yesterday when a kid brought a homemade alarm clock to school: Ahmed Mohamed — who makes his own radios and repairs his own go-kart — hoped to impress his teachers when he brought a homemade clock to MacArthur High on Monday. Instead, the school phoned police about Ahmed’s circuit-stuffed pencil case. So the 14-year-old missed the student council meeting and took a trip in handcuffs to juvenile detention. His clock now sits in an evidence room. Police say they may...

If you live in the Midwest, NOAA has a fact sheet.

I haven't traveled nearly as much this year as I did the past few, but only a week after my last trip, I'm away from home again. For a few days I'll be in San Francisco for Dreamforce '15, where the Force is with me dreams are forced upon you I'll learn about Salesforce and hobnob with other nerds. Unfortunately, I left all of my laptop power supplies in Chicago. And, having had the same basic Dell model for the last five computers, I have quite a few. Fortunately, my office is sending me one. So...

One of the few remaining British Airways Concorde airplanes is parked on the east side of Heathrow, and last Sunday my plane taxied right past it: I remember, going to school outside New York, watching that thing fly over campus at 9am after leaving London at noon. That was cool.

One of my more scientific friends has identified yesterday's spider as Araneus Diadematus, literally a garden-variety orb weaver, and named her Gladys Weaver. Happy hunting, Gladys.

Saw this about two hours ago in my neighborhood. Can anyone identify the species? She was about 70 mm across, with a 25 mm body. Not something I'd want to discover in my kitchen.

I meant to post this a couple of days ago, but time got away from me:

After struggling for almost two weeks to learn AngularJS and other technologies, I've gotten BlogEngine.NET (which will replace DasBlog as the Daily Parker's platform) to do geography and time zones the way I want them. (Notice the time stamp and globe icon at the bottom of this post.) Specifically, last night I got the clickable Google Map on the Edit Post page to work. Sometimes I like learning new technology. This was a lot less painful than some I've taken up, with only a couple of blind alleys and...

Senate Democrats blocked a Republican move to kill the Iran nuclear deal, meaning it's pretty much done: The outcome means the disapproval resolution will not reach Obama's desk, and the nuclear deal will move forward unchecked by Congress. Senate Republicans are vowing they'll keep on fighting. House Republicans also are still maneuvering to find a way to stop the international agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program. But those efforts seem unlikely to produce results. The deal, which Israel's...