Better Than Ezra Tonight at The Walt
Tonight marks the second of the Bud Light CityFest series of bargain concerts in downtown Raleigh.
Better Than
John Denver
Ezra
plays with guests
The Stone Chiefs
,
The Gravy Boys
,
Lonnie Walker
. The event begins at 5pm. It is rain or shine, and umbrellas are not allowed.
WCPSS Student Assignment Meeting Tonight at BHS
Tonight begins a series of important meetings by the Wake County Public School Board. The meeting is at Broughton High School from 6:30pm to 8pm (presumably in the auditorium, which is in the building’s corner closest to the intersection of St. Mary’s and Peace Streets). Most likely the hot topic will be the assignment of students from the JY Joyner Elementary School (
map it
) district. The zone which currently predominantly feeds into Daniels Middle School and Broughton High School, is slated to inclusively feed East Millbrook Middle School (
map it
) and Millbrook High School (
map it
).
The controversial proposed school reassignment plan (.pdf) is intended to keep students closer to home and minimize long-distance student commutes. The plan looks logical for nearly every school in the system, however it certainly breaks down for Joyner. Under the proposed plan Daniels would be fed by Root, Stough, York, and Jeffrey’s Grove. Martin would be fed by Lacy and Olds. I don’t have access to the number of seats in those eight schools, but it seems strange that Daniels would be fed by four schools and Martin would be fed by only two. Perhaps Martin is smaller than Daniels, but from what I have heard they are roughly equivalent in size.
If the plan aims to keep students in the same part of the county as their residents, then sending people in the Five Points area to the shadows of Triangle Town Center, just inside of I-540, seems completely counterproductive. If the plan moves forward, the property values of houses along Anderson Drive will plummet while houses along Ridge Road in Raleigh will skyrocket. This is why there ought to be a very strong showing at this meeting tonight. There is much on the line for people who live in the Northeast quadrant inside of I-440.
There will also be meetings at Sanderson (Wed, 9/14), East Wake (Thu, 9/15), and Millbrook (Mon, 9/19). For more information see the WCPSS website .
North Hills Getting Bookery
Emerald Isle Books , a privately owned, small bookstore at the beach is relocating to Raleigh’s North Hills. The North Hills Bookery plans to open in the first week of November. From the EIB website:
We carry a wide variety of books including the current bestsellers. From mysteries to romance we have all the popular authors.
Note: The NH Bookery will occupy the space that Wolf Camera once filled, to the right of Jolly’s.
Hopscotch Google Calendar Organizes Big Weekend
The Independent Weekly’s
Hopscotch Music Festival
returns this weekend. The event is bigger and better this year, showcasing over 150 of the best emerging indie acts in the country. Highlighting the festival are The Flaming Lips, Superchunk, Guided By Voices, Drive-By Truckers, and many, many more. However, that only scratches the surface of what’s going on all weekend.
The festival has an iPhone app and an Android app available, however Gogoraleigh’s Hopscotch Google Calendar may serve your needs better. See an act you like? Add it to your own calendar. Need a map to the venue? Open up the details and select the venue name to open it in Google Maps (Android only). You can even enable an alert for each act if you want. Instead of reinventing the wheel, though, let’s just follow the links to all of the great material out there about Hopscotch:
American Idiot Coming to Raleigh
Fresh on the heels of Billie Joe Armstrong’s
dismissal from an airplane
for refusing to pull his pants up,
American Idiot
, the Broadway musical (based on the Music of Green Day) is coming to Raleigh. The tour stops for eight shows at Memorial Auditorium from January 31 thru February 5. The
ticket presale
begins today at 10am.
2013 Downloadable Wake County School Calendars Available
Wake County School System has compiled their official calendars for the 2012-2013 school years
in PDF format
. In fine fashion gogoraleigh has converted all of these calendars into numerous downloadable formats. Now readers can easily import their favorite school calendars into Android phones, Outlook, iPhones, Blackberrys, and more.
The set includes calendars for the Traditional, Track 1, Track 2, Track 3, Track 4, and Modified schools. Even better, if you already subscribe to any of these calendars, then all of the new dates have been automatically added for you.
For more information (and of course, the 2011-2012 WCPSS calendars) see the Calendars tab at gogoraleigh .
UNC Football Parking Guide Now Online
Going to a UNC football game this year? You may want to peruse UNC’s new
Football Game Parking Guide
(pdf). As the Ram’s Club reseated all donors and expanded the stadium, they also reassigned many of the parking passes this year. That coupled with the brand new Cameron-Graham and South Chiller parking lots, there will be
much more mayhem
than usual getting to Kenan Stadium this season. Be sure to leave home 30 minute before you think need to leave until people settle into their routines.
Parking is so bad in Chapel Hill that they created a 28-page manual to guide people in to games. I strongly advise reading the manual before leaving, although you will have plenty of time to sit and read if you choose I-40 and Hwy 54 for your route. Instead, it is likely a better option to take highway 64 West from Cary, then turn on Farrington Road, which leads to the 15-501/54 intersection on the south edge of campus. Other good back roads are Old Durham Road (from the 15-501/40 area) and Stagecoach Road.
Or, you could just be like Greg Little and park wherever the #$%^ you want. Good luck!
Solas Named to Top 50 Late Night Finds
OpenTable Diners have spoken, and they have named Raleigh’s
Solas
among their list of
best late night eats in the country
. No other restaurants in North Carolina won the award.
2012 ACC Basketball Calendars Ready for Download
Local basketball fans with iPhones, Android Phones, Blackberrys, Outlook, Palm devices, and more are in luck!
Gogoraleigh’s Calendars Tab
is your home for free 2011-2012 ACC basketball schedules for the entire ACC in .CSV, .ICS, and Google Calendar formats.
gogo has gone all out again, offering schedules for each individual ACC team , as well as one giant calendar which includes all 281 games. Events on the calendars include not only the game time, but also links to ESPN’s team pages and the name of the venue where the game is being played. On some devices, like Android phones, the location becomes a link to Google Maps showing the venue’s location.
For those already subscribed to the Google Calendar version of the ACC Complete calendar or any of the other supporting Google Calendars from gogoraleigh, you don’t have to do anything. All 281 events have been added automatically. As event details change, you’ll see automatic changes in your calendar.
And wait….there’s more! Gogoraleigh decided that these 13 calendars aren’t enough, and added home-only calendars for UNC and N.C. State. All for the low low price of ZERO!
Outlook-Based Blackberry/iPhone/Palm Users
-
After downloading the appropriate CSV file (see below), create a new folder in your in Outlook calendar (Bball11, for example). Use the File | Import and Export… to import from “another program or file”, then “Comma Separated File (Windows)”. Be sure to pick your new calendar folder as the target. This will set up the schedule in your new sub-calendar where you can make whatever changes you want.
- iPhone Users – Open iTunes with the iPhone connected and sync (you may have to specify your newly added calendar in the “Info” tab’s Calendars section.) Now you can view the basketball schedules as their own sub-calendar or as a part of all calendars.
-
If you have a device which doesn’t support subcalendars (like Treos and older Palm devices), you’ll need to copy the imported basketball events into your main calendar. When you are happy with
the way the subcalendar looks, change the calendar view to “Events” (instead of 7-day or 31-Day or whatever view you’re using). “Select All” from the list, and drag them over to your main “Calendar” (The Treo and other Palm Handhelds only sync to the main calendar – time for Palm to get with the program on that one!). If you want to keep your sub-calendar intact, use Ctrl-drag instead of plain drag. That will create a copy of each event to the main Calendar and keep the Bball08 calendar in place. Sync your handheld to copy the events to the handheld.
Google Calendar/Android Users
My favorite way to follow the ACC’s basketball calendar is to add it to my
Google Calendar
set. The Google Calendar is a dynamic, subscribable calendar that offers much flexibility. For instance, several game times have not been announced. As soon as they are set, actual game times will magically appear in your calendar. Also, Google Calendar offers a map link for quick viewing of the game’s venue location.
Additionally, Google has created a simple interface through mobile phone browsers. It allows one to view and implement ACC Calendar events. It also recognizes hyperlinks in the event’s description, so easy access to the team files is achievable by using the online Google Calendar app. To view these add the calendar using the link below, then visit http://calendar.google.com from within Safari on the iPhone or your Android browser.
(Note: Gogoraleigh will also carry the home-only calendars as an integrated feature of its normal Gogoraleigh Do-It Calendar ).
To view a Google Calendar, go to the gogoraleigh Calendars page and click on the appropriate calendar link. Once the calendar is displayed, you can add it your set of Google Calendars by clicking on the “+Subscribe” bottom on the bottom right.
iCal Users
There are two options:
- Use iCalTextImport to import the .CSV version (linked above) of the schedule.
- Download the .ics file from the Calendars page and import it into iCal.
Palm Desktop and Yahoo! Calendar Users
My brother-in-law taught me a neat trick. In order to get a CSV calendar into Palm Desktop, one can use
Yahoo! Calendar
as an intermediary. After downloading the .CSV file from gogoraleigh, open Yahoo! Calendar and click “Options” in the upper right. Then select “Import/Export”. Go to “Import From Outlook”, selected the filename, and click “Import”. Yahoo! Calendar users are done at this point. Palm Desktop users need to verify the import, then return to the “Export to Palm Desktop” section. Pick your target and hit “Export”. The resulting .DBA file should then be ready to import into Palm Desktop.
Beware! It appears easy to lump Yahoo! Calendar events that are unrelated into one calendar. If you are simply using Yahoo! Calendar as a conduit to Palm Desktop, verify that your calendar is clean before originally importing the .CSV file, otherwise unrelated events will get lumped with basketball dates in your resulting .DBA file.
RSS
Each of the Google Calendars carries an RSS feed. This might be an interesting addition to your RSS Feed collection because each calendar change will appear in the feed. This is most useful as an alert to a game time changes in the schedule. The RSS Feed for each calendar can be found when viewing each individual Google Calendar.
Notes
Calendars are apt to change, so check back occasionally for updates. To determine the version of your schedule, open the note associated with any event, and look for the version number. If your calendar is older than those listed above, simply delete the events in Outlook in your old one and import the events of the newer file. Google Calendar is dynamically updated on the back end, so you always know you are up to date when using Google Calendar.
Use at your own risk. I do not accept responsibility for any consequences resulting from errors in the schedule.
Ashley Christensen’s Sunday Supper Featured in Bon Appetit
The September issue of
Bon Appetit
magazine features their latest favorite restaurants. On page 67 Raleighites will be happy to find a 3-page feature of Ashley Christensen’s “Down-Home Sunday Supper”. The spread contains recipes for these dishes:
- Roast Chicken and Herb-and-Garlic Pan Drippings
- Fig and Thyme Jam
- Creamy Rice Grits with Tomato Relish
- Late-Summer-Greens Sauté
- Pots de Crème with Reisling-Poached Grapes
Bill Cosby Returning to DPAC
One of the legends of comedy is coming back to Durham!
Bill Cosby
will be performing at the DPAC on Saturday, January 21. General Public tickets go on sale tomorrow (8/26) at 10am.
Durham and Bill Cosby have always had a special relationship. Readers may recall that Russell and Anna Huxtable, Cosby’s fictional parents on the show “Cosby”, met in Durham before moving to Philadelphia and then New Jersey. Cosby last performed in Durham during March of 2009.
Lupe Fiasco Coming to The Walt
The week that keeps on giving, just got even better! On Sunday, September 18,
Lupe Fiasco
will play The Walt with Tinie Tempah opening. Tickets go on sale tomorrow morning (8/26) at 10am.
World Wide Webb
Congratulations to Raleigh native Webb Simpson who won the Wyndham Championship (formerly the GGO) on Sunday. It’s been a long road to a first win for the 26 year old, and there no indication it is the last. Simpson has done it the right way, whether it Is picking up self-imposed penalty strokes or getting up with the baby so his wife can sleep in, Simpson seems to be a much needed stable figure in the golf world. He holds the course record (?52? shots) at Raleigh’s exclusive Carolina Country Club, yet Simpson seems to be the type person that the golf world feels comfortable rallying behind. Tiger Woods; he is not. Check out these nice articles which undoubtedly are making his family proud this Monday morning. Congratulations, Webb!
- Webb Simpson a humble star in the making (CBSSportsline)
- Webb Simpson rising through the ranks (ESPN.com)
- Simpson reacts to the win he "was dreaming about" (WRAL video)
- Simpson’s victory hits close to home (Boston Globe)
- Webb Simpson Wins Wyndham, Proclaims Christ Lord and Savior (Examiner.com)
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