US Flight Information and Airport Status

~Courtesy of ResourceShelf, I've found a very useful and interesting website, which displays current US airport information and live flight data. You can use it to track expected flights and see when travelers will arrive and if there flight has been delayed. The information is not real-time, but it is up-to-date within a few minutes. The initial display shows all flights in the country, but you can zoom in and select a specific flight to see its number and status, or you can enter information into the boxes on the left to get more specific data.

Check it out here: http://www.helloflight.com/

This pun is *UNACCEPTABLE*

~If you thought my word play was bad, you haven't seen anything. But is this pun an "epic win" or an "epic fail"??

Friends of the Carrboro Branch Library Webpage

~As part of my scholarship from the Friends of the Carrboro Branch Library, I was supposed to construct a web page for the library. However, a few months ago, I learned that Orange County authorities had decided to standardize the web pages of their library system, which meant that I would no longer be making the "official" library page. I'd already put some work into it, but I was able to pass this work on to the person who is in charge of making the library page.

As an alternative project, I made a web page for the Friends, which I recently completed. You can behold the fruits of my labor if you are so inclined: http://www.ibiblio.org/cbl/. As you might notice, it still needs a bit of work, but at least it validates!

Barackula!

~I just finished the novel Fledgling, by the late Octavia Butler, which is one of the books assigned in my Popular Materials class for the Spring semester. Fledgling is a science-fiction story about modern vampires (known as Ina), and in particular, one young vampire who has lost her memory and must discover who is hunting her and her family.

While it was initially enjoyable, I felt that it jumped the shark when I realized, about halfway through the book, that it was all about racism. See, the main vampire character is black as a genetic experiment allowing her to resist sunlight, but some racist vampires don't like her being black!! Seriously, I like my metaphors a bit less obvious. Also, there was entirely too much weird sex going on with human "symbionts" bonded to the vampires; for example, the main character is 57 years old, but appears to be only 10...you can probably guess where that's going.

Speaking of vampires, I recently stumbled across the website for the musical Barackula, and...well, here's the description from the website:

"Barackula is a short political horror rock musical about young Barack Obama having to stave off a secret society of vampires at Harvard when he was inducted into presidency at the Harvard Law Review in 1990. Obama (Justin Sherman) finds that he must convince the vampire society that opposing political philosophies can coexist or else the society may transform Obama to the dark side. Reminiscent to Michael Jackson's Thriller and a slight infusion of Jesus Christ Superstar and The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

Of course, some people feel that Barack is already on the dark side (*coughmomcough*), but from the above description, how can you not watch Barackula? Besides, the film manages to take potshots at both the Clintons and Mrs. Obama. If you have a few minutes and need a laugh, it's well worth watching. You can see the whole thing online (it's about 12 minutes long). If nothing else, it shows how much fun we're going to have making jokes from the new President's endlessly-adaptable first and last names.

Moonwalking Bird

~If there was an avian dance contest, the male of this bird species would win hands down: