RTP Railfan Website

I'm actually updating the website more than my blog. I put in a new features section (flash takes some work). Also added an article on the new antenna setup that I installed for the RTP Railfan radio installation. I can not hear down to Sanford, NC and downtown Raleigh quite well. The other night I heard the Amtrak call out well north of Durham, but I think this was because of atmospheric phenomenon. Check out the site, I have really got back into it and I'm adding new stuff all the time.

http://www.researchtriangleparknc.com

I now have a new site that is the replacement for the http://www.whatstodotoday.com site. The problem with that site was AJAX is very difficult to get listed in the search engines. So, now I have a new website about the Research Triangle Park area. http://www.researchtriangleparknc.com will be a site that tells users about all the interesting things they can do in the RTP area. It will start off small at first, but I hope it will grow over time. I will also link the mapping application within this site so users can still use it. We'll see...

www.whatstodottoday.com

Well, I learned a good lesson about AJAX from doing the whatstodotoday site. The original purpose was to have a mapping application that users could put pushpins and enter comments about cool places to visit. Well, AJAX is horrible for getting crawled and I have had absolutely no users for a year. I think I am going to get rid of that domain and pick up another about the Raleigh/Durham area. I'm taking a C++ class so its eating up all my spare time but I'll try to put one together.

Updating www.rtprailfan.com site

Well, its been quite a while since I've posted anything. Actually I wasn't doing much railfan stuff over the summer. I usually turn the scanner stream off because of the computer in the attic and just doing other things. Recently I turned the stream back on. Right now I have this wierd setup in the side yard. I got the traintenna omni from DPDProductions but I have it mounted on this pole in the yard because I haven't figured out how to get it on the roof yet. In addition, I don't think my HOA would like me mounting it up there. Anyways, I have it connected to a Maxtrac in the garage, not a bad setup but it would be better if the antenna were on the roof. I have also been upading the RTPRailfan site as I have let it go for a while now. Hope to be adding some new material but probably won't completely overhall the site. Talk more soon....

Hamlet Railfanning

Hamlet Railfanning
Originally uploaded by WISCHMI2

Hamlet, NC is a great place to go watch the trains pass, although today was kind of slow. You can usually see 15+ trains on a good day. A lot of freights come by the station. Make sure you check out the station, they have a nice model train setup of the area.

Rockingham Railfanning

Rockingham Railfanning
Originally uploaded by WISCHMI2

West of Hamlet, NC there is a nice quiet road where a person can sit and watch the freight traffic from the Hamlet yard come and go. Its in PeeDee just west of the PeeDee River. The picture was taken near a bridge that passes over a local road.

Alexandria Amtrak

Alexandria Amtrak
Originally uploaded by WISCHMI2

Alexandria, VA Amtrak Station after getting off 92.

Richmond, VA Amtrak

Richmond, VA Amtrak
Originally uploaded by WISCHMI2

Richmond, VA Staples Mill Road via Amtrak 92.

Rocky Mount, NC

Rocky Mount, NC
Originally uploaded by WISCHMI2

Rocky Mount, NC stop on Amtrak 92. Looks like a nice station although i couldn't get a picture of it from where we stopped.

Raleigh by Amtrak 92

Raleigh by Amtrak 92
Originally uploaded by WISCHMI2

Made it to Raleigh!

Amtrak Cary

Amtrak Cary
Originally uploaded by WISCHMI2

Waiting for the train to show up!

Love PeiWei

Love PeiWei
Originally uploaded by WISCHMI2

Dont you just love peiwei. They have the best honey seared chicken. This peiwei is in Cary, NC.

Trying through message

Trying through message
Originally uploaded by WISCHMI2

Multimedia message

Multimedia message
Originally uploaded by WISCHMI2

I still haven't figured out how to post pictures/video to my blog but ill figure it out soon. I've been taking lots of pictures with my new HTC Fuzi. Its very nice, u can do a lot with this phone.

Tehachapi, CA

I am fotunate enough to be writing this post from the tehachapi loop in california. i had a 2 week business trip and decided to come up for the weekend. what a beautiful place. i highly recommend this spot for all railfans to visit. i wosh i had my camera!!!

Railfan Locations

I took the same basic usage that I have on http://www.whatstodotoday.com and applied it to http://www.rtprailfan.com. Essentially users can register with the site and post their railfan sites. I have posted several of my sites around North Carolina. Even though its centered around North Carolina, you can post locations for anywhere in the world. Pretty cool....

whatstodotoday_

I still haven't figured out how to get the adsense operating correctly but I did add Greensboro, NC and Winston Salem, NC to the database set. I am going to add Wilmington to the database set and then move on to Virginia. Hope the site gets picked up by Google soon.

Railfan Radio

Hi again,

RTPRailfan radio is up again. I've had it running for a few days and it seems like its operating correctly. There seems to be a lot of good scanning around the middle of the day, and during the day on weekdays is good. You can catch the Amtrak going through at 8:30 and 9:30 at night. Weekends are kind of slow sometimes. I'm still working on whatstodotoday.com. I'm having issues getting the Adsense to do what I want it to. I'm trying to figure out how to update the Adsense based on the updates from a MySQL database. What a pain.

RTP Railfan Mapping

Hi everybody,

Well, I haven't done much with the www.rtprailfan.com website much lately because I've spend 3 months on my new site http://www.whatstodotoday.com. This is a dynamic google maps site that required me learning the basics of javascript, php, mysql and refreshing my html and css. That was a lot to learn. I'm definitley not an expert but I have a better understanding of how they work. Anyways, one of the things I added to www.whatstodotoday.com is a "railfan" type. I don't want to go into the specifics of the site, check out http://www.whatstodotoday.com/about_whatstodo.html to see a quick overview. However, the point is railfans currently in the Raleigh or Charlotte area can post google map locations with comments to the site. I think it would cool to add the radio frequencies of trains applicable to this area as well. I think I might add a function like this to www.rtprailfan.com, but this might be a while, as I'm still developing the whatstodotoday site. Anyways, check it out and let me know what you think.

RTPRailfan Forum taken down

Hi yall,

Been a while, been working on a new website. I took the RTPRailfan forum offline because it was getting to much junk and spam on it. It wasn't used very often anyways. I did put the RTPRailfan radio back up. I'll probably leave it up until summer when the heat is too much for the computer in the attic. By the way, I'm setting up a new site called whatstodo_. Should be an interesting site for the Raleigh area at first. I'm just getting the last issues worked out and then I should be good to go.

See ya soon...