Vacuum

Discardia is the new discardage; or, um, BBQ

While waiting for the page to load, please enjoy this brief televised interlude, previously recorded for your enjoyment; 0:24 in if you are impatient.

Thanks to Peter Honeyman for the heads up.

For the summer discardia, look for plans for the first ever OMG WTF BBQ.

discardia for spring 2009

Discardia is a four times a year holiday that celebrates letting go, getting rid of, and removing unneeded things from your life.  It's one of my favorite modern holidays, one of those repeated reminders that there are sometimes things that you have gathered into your life that need to be scattered around instead.

Priority one is a book purge; I'll be filling up a few bags with books to get out of the house.

Priority two is an internet purge, looking at the online services that absorb time (and money some times) and seeing which ones I can do without.  This means that every single email that comes into the inbox for the next few days gets the query "how do I get rid of this".

Priority three is a kitchen purge, looking at the emergency cupboard for the food that will never be eaten by us and should be donated, and looking for spare utensils and containers that could go.

Properly done, this is a year round effort, the sort of effort that has a box in your house that is the designated spot to send things off to the Reuse Center or some other organized recycling process.  With two kids around the house the natural tendency is towards unmitigated clutter, but there's some way to counteract that.

What's at the Ann Arbor Farmer's Market, March 21, 2009

Molly is publishing market lists; here's last week's.  I don't yet have a vendor list that goes with it.

March 21, 2009! 

• Apples
• Baked goods
• Beef
• Beet greens
• Beets
• Bison
• Biscotti
• Cider
• Cupcakes
• Delicious chocolate cookies
• Cultivated mushrooms
• Coffee (including hand-pulled espresso!)
• Dulce du leche
• Eggs
• Honey
• Jams & jellies
• Kale
• Lamb
• Maple Syrup
• Onions
• Popcorn
• Potatoes
• Delicate salad greens
• Radishes
• Spinach
• Tamales
• Winter squash

+ a delightful selection of crafts, plants, and flowers!

Dutch baby apple pancake; and a March 2009 maple report from the UP

Here is the Penzey's Apple Pancake recipe...a morph from the Dutch Baby.

 

1/4 cup butter                                                  

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup milk

1/2 tsp salt

2 medium baking apples, peeled and thinly sliced  (I used Braeburn apples)

3 Tbs sugar

1/2 tsp ceylon cinnamon

 

Preheat oven to 400.  divide butter between two 9" pie plates and put them in the oven to melt the butter.  Rotate to be sure that butter covers bottom and  sides of pans.  Use a 4 cup measuring cup as a mixing bowl (makes it easy to divide the batter).  Beat eggs, flour, milk and salt on medium speed for 1 minute.  Divide the apple slices between the pans and pour 1/2 of the egg mixture over each pan.  Mix the cinnamin and sugar and sprinkle over the batter.  Bake until puffed and folden brown  20-25 minutes.  Serve right away, while still puffy, with warm syrup. 

 

Serves 4-6   Prep time 10 minutes, baking time  20-25 minutes.

and the report from up north from March 18, 2009:

 

Over the weekend we put 28 taps in our maple sugar trees.   We collected 8 gallons the first day but the next two nights were not below freezing.  We have only 17 gallons so far.  It was cold last night so the sap should run today.  Snowshoes are very necessary as the snow is "punky".  Even with snowshoes we sometimes break through the crust and one leg goes down 1 foot...makes for slow going.  Hopefully we have a good wide track packed now. 

records request: ann arbor downtown development authority parking data

update: broken links fixed to interview, thanks John Balogh for the heads up

as sent by postal mail and email

March 14, 2009

 

Ann Arbor Downtown Development Authority
150 South Fifth Avenue
Suite 301
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

 

     RECORDS REQUEST

 

Dear Records Request Officer:

 

Pursuant to the state open records act, I request access to and copies of the continuously updated information about the current availability of parking structure occupancy and free spaces, as currently provided to the general public on the web page

http://www.a2dda.org/parking__transportation/available_parking_spots/

For your reference, this system is described in this interview

http://www.homelessdave.com/tt20080411stephensmith.htm

conducted by Mr. David Askins of the Ann Arbor Chronicle, in which a representative of a contractor for the DDA says:

"SS: Oh, okay! Yeah, no, I haven't had a lot of time to pay attention to our statistics yet, but I will at the end of this month. It just rolled out April 1st. Our area associations, I imagine, are going to want to embed this--and we encourage them to--in their own webpages. For instance, Main Street Area Association, and State Street Area Association. There are a lot of them, these associations and other organizations, who could really benefit from it, especially if you're going to have an event, you're telling your attendees to come downtown. "

Despite these assurances, our current requests are met with this error message:

Forbidden

You don't have permission to access /parking__transportation/available_parking_spots/
on this server.

---

Apache/2.2.4 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.4 OpenSSL/0.9.7a DAV/2 mod_jk/1.2.20 PHP/5.2.1 Server at a2dda.org Port 80

.

 

I am willing to pay up to a maximum of $20 in fees associated with the fulfillment of this request.

As the release of this data is in the public interest - indeed, is within the primary goal and charter of the DDA - I ask that these fees be waived.

 

If my request is denied in whole or part, I ask that you justify all deletions by reference to specific exemptions of the act.

 

Thank you for your assistance.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Edward Vielmetti

Organizations that don't exist yet, but should

National Association of Professional Lunch Organizers.   For people who organize civic, professional, and industry meetings at lunchtime.  Publishes a national directory of meeting times and locations organized by day of the week, and a guide to the tax laws on entertainment expenses with a handy records filing system for the lunch professional.   Their for-profit software development spinoff, NAPLOsoft, produces mobile phone applications with customized daily alerts for travelers for professional lunch opportunities wherever they are.  Local organizing meetings of NAPLO are always held at breakfast time (because you don't want to interfere with work).

Ann Arbor Downtown Software Development Authority.  This organization captures tax increment financing from increases in the value of intellectual property in downtown Ann Arbor, and uses those funds to provide project financing for programs that assist in the development of human capital and information infrastructure.  The DsDA also operates an innovative system of "municipal data garages" which offer  computing and storage resources paid for by user fees as well as a network access point to the Alameda-Weehauken Burrito Tunnel.

photo: MAE East, IT History blog, Paul Ceruzzi

Lunch non-summary for a2b3 for March 12, 2009: 34 people there, a status update on the parking project, lots of good discussion.

The story of mad-stone (W. R. Sanner, Fort Worth, TX, 1886)

pulled from text at an online newspaper clippings archive

THE COURIER
ALEX A. WALL, Editor and Proprietor
Vernon, Alabama
Friday, December 24, 1886

THE STORY OF MAD-STONE
[Fort Worth (Texas), December 4th - Cor. New York Mail and Express]
Miss May Bartlett was bitten yesterday by a dog which, from all
indications, is mad. A mad-stone owned by W. R. Sanner, of this city,
has been applied and adhered several times, drawing out the poison.
This stone has something of a history. In 1848 Captain Wilson, of
Alabama, killed a white deer in Talladega County, and search was made
in the stomach for a stone. One was found a little larger than a
goose-egg, with a flat surface on one side It resembled a petrified
sponge. The stone up to this time has been used in upward of one
thousand cases. Captain Wilson gave the stone to Mr. Cowan, who lives
near Handley, in this county. Mr. Cowan, as a token of great
friendship, gave the stone to W. R. Sanner, who would part with it for
no amount. The philosophy of the operation of the stone and the reason
it is found in the stomach of the white deer is given by the Indians
as follows: "The white deer is more susceptible to vegetable poisons
taken into the stomach when eaten with grass. To preserve the life of
the animal, nature has placed in the stomach this porous stone, which
at once absorbs the poison, neutralizes it, and saves the deer's life.
The stone applied to a bit into which poison has been injected at once
draws it out, and when its pores are filled drops off; being soaked in
milk the stone is made pure again and ready for another application."

slightly delayed back channel for meetings with Twitter, tweetdeck

If you were at LA2M today you saw my new experimental presentation screen - two windows up, left hand side a browser running an iPhone emulator, right hand side a single column of Tweetdeck doing a search for the tag associated with the event.  Anyone who twittered to that tag got their twitter up on the screen a minute or three later. 

(photo goes here)

Here's build notes for that, with the caveat that I am not 100% satisfied with it just yet, and it will probably get another tweak for the next preso.  This is all for Mac though I'm sure if you are clever you can get something equivalent for Windows.

1.  Run Spaces (from System Preferences) and put the only apps you are going to use into their own screen; I used Tweetdeck as the twitter client and Safari as the browser.  This ensures that random messages from other apps don't clobber the screen.
2.  Tidy up your desktop so that files with embarrassing names aren't in view.
3.  Run Tweetdeck; set it to single column mode, move it all the way to the right side of the screen.  Set up a stored search for the tag for the event.
4.  Run Safari.  Set the window size and dimensions not to overlap the Tweetdeck window.  Merge all tabs into one window.
5.  Before you start, load into tabs all of the sites you want to show.
6.  I was doing some iPhone demos, so find an iPhone demo tool you like and load up apps into that. 
7.  Leave enough space so that your beautiful desktop photo (thanks Cindy!) overlooking Lake Superior shines through.

To control the preso, go into Safari, and flip through tabs (control-tab) until you get the thing you want to show.  I had blogged the outline of the talk ahead of time, so I knew what to hit in what order, but sometimes you want to just flip-flip-flip.

Go into the Tweetdeck settings and tune the API settings to adjust the delay in refresh of the search window.  The speediest I saw was a poll every 36 seconds, which should be plenty for the window to seem interactive but not enough for griefers to take over.

Learn the "filter" command on Tweetdeck so that if something comes on screen that's unpleasant you can squash it quietly and quickly.

That's it...I'll stop now for a round of questions, or you can talk to me after the presentation.

"very quotatious" - rules of thumb for mobile apps

another pointless numbered list with a provocative title, and slides for a talk at LA2M today.

ten ways to make your mobile app fail

1.  use public data and go down for 6 weeks in the dead of winter (ridetrack)
2a.  reuse public data and get blocked for "security" reasons (a2parking)
2b. reuse public data that is unreliable (a2-park)
2c.  reuse public data and get sued for doing so (transit sydney)
3.  wait in a long, long line at the app store to get approved (many)
4.  get rejected at the app store for naughty words (tweetie)
5.  get rejected at the app store for doing something jobso wants to do (podcaster)
6.  expect rapid uptake by early adopters to turn into sustained growth (pinch media)
7.  wait for an unlocked phone with an open stack (g1 market)
8.  do anything fancy on your crappy phone
9.  depend on in-your-face stalker advertising (plazes)
10.  make phone calls without paying by the minute (skype)

and ten ways to succeed

1.  party like it's 1995.  simple web apps w minimal data
2.  web toolkits: IUI as "hello world" point of entry; think Gopher
3.  content management + themes: WordPress "WPTouch" themes
4.  public data: think like a chinese dissident
5.  services: think like twitter - SMS, mobile web, APIs
6.  design partition: simplest thing that works (socialtext "miki" wiki)
7.  fun stuff: think like a gamer, not a web geek
8.  situated design: back seat, passenger seat, bus seat, bus stop
9.  situated design: apps that only work right here or within 100 feet (minimuni)
10. think like THE_REAL_SHAQ

Ann Arbor plastic bag ban - vote postponed

Previously: Paper, plastic or burlap (2008)

The Ann Arbor City Council has decided to postpone a vote on a ban on plastic bags. As noted in the Ann Arbor News prior to the city council event:

There's still more of that work to be done, said City Council Member Stephen Rapundalo, who's among the promoters of the ban. Because the council had voted to postpone any action on the issue for six months, a vote has been scheduled on Monday to extend that period, Rapundalo said.

The Ann Arbor Chronicle gives many more details in its account of the council meeting:

Rapundalo moved for a postponement to June 1 to allow city staff to have a little more time to take in information and to have a discussion with retailers. Rapundalo asked Bryan Weinert, the solid-waste coordinator for the city of Ann Arbor, to give an update on staff efforts. Weinert said that on March 22-23 staff would be meeting with retailers to get feedback on the already-drafted ordinance. He said there would be information on city’s website and a public information survey, acknowledging that there was some controversy surrounding the issue.  Weinert said that based on feedback from the public and merchants, staff would bring forward a recommendation. Weinert did not state what the range of possibilities for such a recommendation would be.

Plastic bag manufacturers are not immune to the current economic stress; one leading manufacturer, Hilex Poly, just went through Ch. 11 bankruptcy (restructuring of debt) in 2008.

HARTSVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA – May 6, 2008 – Hilex Poly Co., LLC, ("Hilex" or "the Company"), the world’s largest plastic bag company, today announced that it has reached an agreement with its lenders to restructure its senior secured debt. Hilex is taking this action to significantly reduce its overall debt and strengthen its balance sheet to better serve its customers and continue its market leadership position in the plastic bag industry. In addition to a substantial reduction in outstanding debt, the plan will reduce annual interest expense and significantly improve cash flow.

Coincidentally, Hilex Poly also publishes a web site called "The Truth About Plastic Bags", which is unvarnished pro-plastic bag propaganda; I won't quote from it, but if you want the plastics side of the story, here it is. 

Dart Container of Mason, MI opposed the Palo Alto plastics ban by astroturfing letters to city council there in 2008.  The Palo Alto Online News picked up the story:

"We don't think there's a full understanding of what we believe the facts to be," Dart spokesman Jim Lammers said Thursday. He confirmed his company had sponsored the letter campaign, a tactic it has used in other communities considering bans.

"The issues surrounding the ban are much more nuanced and complicated than I think people realize and the stated goals to be achieved by these bans are not going to be realized by selecting as the target of the ban foam products," Lammers said.

Whole Foods has gone to all paper bags, and is offering $0.10 per bag credit for reuse - the same as Michigan deposit cans.  Their bags are made by Duro, based in northern Kentucky with manufacturing plants around the country.  Their PR behind the launch of the bag claims

 Duro’s 100% Recycled Paper Bag is exclusive to North America and is made from 60% Post Industrial and 40% Post Consumer fibers. The larger 1/6 size bag helps with source reduction at the checkout counter, as it allows for more items. By applying more adhesive surface the wider, stand up handles provide additional carrying strength.

1/6 size is 1/6 of a barrel; you can get 500 similar bags made by Duro from Instawares for $70 + shipping which works out to about $0.14 per bag (making the $0.10 bag credit an easy sell).