Vacuum - Edward Vielmetti in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104

Michigan Football Parking 2008 map

These are projected, estimated, possible, or likely prices for Michigan football parking for 2008.  It's based on the dataset I collected from the 2007 football season, which as you might recall had an unfortunate start (which definitely impacted prices).

View Larger Map

It needs better icons so you don't have to decode the color chart.  Typically prices can vary $5 from week to week depending on the game, and if all goes well it will rain on a Thursday so that the golf course is closed and thus neighborhood parking is at a premium.

beer, barbeque, urban alienation and intranets

some interesting research from Marcus Foth in Australia about community networking; any paper that cites " Intranets and Local Community: 'Yes, an intranet is all very well, but do we still get free beer and a barbeque?' " is OK by me.

Participation, Animation, Design: The PAD Approach to Urban Community Networking

Foth, Marcus (2007) Participation, Animation, Design: The PAD Approach to Urban Community Networking. AI & Society.

This is the latest version of this eprint.

Full text available as:
PDF (author-version) - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer.

Abstract

Theories of networked individualism and forms of urban alienation challenge the continued purpose and relevance of conventional community tools in urban neighbourhood. However, the majority of urban residents surveyed in this research still believe that there are people living in their immediate neighbourhood who may share their interests or who are at least personally compatible, but they do not know them. Web-based community networking systems have the potential to facilitate intra-neighbourhood interaction and support community building efforts. Community networking studies have shown that technical connectivity alone does not ensure community, and that new and weak communities do not benefit from community networking systems as much as existing and strong communities do. This paper builds on these findings to present a methodology combining principles of Participation, Animation and Design (PAD). It is currently being employed and tested in a master-planned inner-city residential development. PAD builds on intrinsic motivation in residents to find out about and meet one another in a private and inobtrusive way. It encourages residents to take social ownership of the community building process and the community network. PAD recognises the network qualities in the communicative ecology of urban residents and supplements collective approaches towards community building with personalised networking strategies.

DTE power outage mobile phone reporting interface

DTE Energy, the power provider for SE Michigan, now has a mobile web based trouble reporting interface:

Now you can report power outages on line using a mobile device.

Just go to mobile.dteenergy.com with your web-based cell phone or PDA. In moments you can report an outage or get a repair estimate on a previously reported outage.

This is reporting only, not mapping, and the mobile interface has the most pessimistic assumptions about mobile phone capacity. If you have a cell phone capable of displaying a PDF file, you can get the DTE power outage map directly. Oddly, the mobile phone interface does not include a regular phone number (1-800-477-4747) on it if you happen to have a problem with the web site.

There were quite a few problems with incoming phone calls to that phone number in the past few days; they were attributed to problems they were working on with the help of Verizon.

Mike Wendland from the Free Press has been without power for a week, and relates this trouble report:

In my area of Oakland Township, said James, there were still six downed wires that needed to be fixed, a blown transformer, problems with an underground connection and still unknown issues at a nearby substation. He said crews were working 24 hours a day but there was still much to be done.

There are plenty of comments on his post regarding the untrustworthiness of DTE estimated time to repair numbers that are being given out, and unwillingness to believe the counts of houses without power:

We've been in a hotel for 3 nights, but...late yesterday, I got my hopes up. Our status was 'power restored'!!! My husband went to the house today at noon, and no...no power, and it hadn't been on in the neighborhood at all. I have to believe they're just closing some work tickets to make things look better, then reopening them when the get the 2nd, or 3rd or 4th call. This has happened to several people I work with as well. One got through to a warm body at DTE and they said "You don't have power? We show you do!!!" That whole neighborhood was and is "down".

More bad weather expected Friday, of course it's too soon to know if this will trigger more outages.

Marquette Mining Journal removes reader comments from newspaper web site

The Marquette Mining Journal recently ran this editorial regarding taking interactive comments off of the internet version of their newspaper, reading in part:

The comments were posted, without prior screening, in order to make it as easy as possible for Journal readers to submit their input directly. Unfortunately, a handful of participants abused the system. While most comments were astute and relevant, some relentless individuals decided to turn the comments section into a chat room that ventured, frankly, into the realm of inappropriate, sophomoric idiocy.

The roots of The Mining Journal’s editorial ethical standards go back some 163 years. In order for a letter to the editor to be considered for publication in our print edition, a name and other verifiable information must be included. Not so, however, with the Internet comments. Subsequently, on our Web site a small but persistent group of people threatened to tarnish The Mining Journal’s reputation for responsible journalism. A few Web comment submissions even consisted of cowardly anonymous personal attacks on local citizens. That could not be allowed to continue.

The New Orleans online newspaper, nola.com, also has unmoderated comments. Alan Gutierrez notes what this does to the discussion, quoting Mayor Ray Nagin:

Your news cast and the local newspapers are feeding these awful, ugly talk shows, that are feeding these blogs. You go look at these some of these blogs out there and some of the stories that come from the paper and you read the comments, it’s the most vile angry people that I’ve ever seen in this community.

Alan notes:

This is a common misconception in New Orleans, that the bloggers are the rabble. The city newspaper’s website, NOLA.com, is entirely unmoderated. NOLA.com calls these free-for-alls blogs.

Newspapers always run letters to the editor after verifying the identity of the writer. Should online newspapers be any different?

Snow Day - Billy Collins

As always, we will be tuning in to see if the Ann Arbor schools are closed tomorrow; it's bitterly cold, there are wind chill warnings, and a few area schools have already cancelled. AAPS snow day phone 734-994-8684 - WWJ SE Michigan snow day page - WZZM Grand Rapids MI school closings - WSYM Lansing MI school closings - WLUC Marquette MI / Upper Peninsula school closings

SNOW DAY by Billy Collins

Originally from The Atlantic, February 2000

Hear Billy Collins read this poem (in RealAudio).

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch,
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed,
the All Aboard Children's School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with -- some will be delighted to hear --

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and -- clap your hands -- the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.

Technorati Tags: michigan, cold, snow, weather, brrr

snow poetry, school closing, paczki, Kindergarten, NAAPID

Since the storm is coming, I'd remind you of this page I'm collecting snow poetry on. ORD was showing 5 hour delays a few minutes ago and there are expectations of 6-10 inches.

UPDATE: Wednesday, March 5 2008. Ann Arbor Public Schools closed. Check the Arborwiki sledding page for your favorite place to slide.

UPDATE: Thursday, February 7 2008. WWJ Radio has a comprehensive schools closed list for SE Michigan. In the area already closed are several schools in Livingston Co (Brighton, Howell, Pinckney) but no news yet for Ann Arbor. Some snow day reading for kids to inspire you.

UPDATE: Friday, February 1, 2008 The Ann Arbor Public Schools are closed today.
UPDATE: Snow depth maps daily from Weather Underground

UPDATE: NOHRSC is "the ultimate source of snow information"

Ann Arbor snow day hotlines by telephone:

Ann Arbor City snow desk 734-994-2359
Ann Arbor Public Schools closing info 734-994-8684

For Ann Arbor school closings information, consult your second grader, who is planning a play date. If you don't know about that you can check the Ann Arbor school closing information page which says in part:

Inclement weather may require closing schools or changing school schedules and bus routes. The decision is made after an early inspection of road conditions and school facilities, as well as current or forecasted weather conditions. When schools are closed or schedules and/or bus routes are changed, information is sent immediately to the major radio and television stations-by 6:00 a.m. if at all possible.

February 5 is Paczki Day, and the authoritative source of information on this day is the Hamtramck Star's Keyword(s): paczki collection.

If you know of good Paczki in Ann Arbor, Arborwiki would like to know abou them. On my block downtown they are being sold at Amadeus.

If you have a kindergartener starting in the fall, it's time for the Ann Arbor Public Schools Kindergarten Roundup schedule. The Burns Park dates are 2/11/08 and 2/19/08, and if you have any questions as a new parent to the school I'd be happy to help find someone to answer. The 2/11 date is National African American Parent Involvement Day, which was founded by Joseph Dulin:

"Every parent wants their child to have a better quality of life than they themselves had. It is the American dream, and for many African Americans, this dream has not been realized as a result of their child's failure in school. Education is the key to success and parents are educators' greatest allies." Joseph Dulin

That's it for tonight.

Yahoo leadership - nature abhors a vacuum

As GigaOM notes in Yahoo Please Put Up A Fight

Yahoo has a staggering 500 million users. However, it does a rather poor job of monetization. The vision that Yang shared at CES last week (“At Yahoo we want to be the most essential starting point for your life”) can come true if the key activities that we perform online are channeled through its My Yahoo service. And on the financial side, each of those activities needs to be backed up by a monetization model that takes full advantage of the traffic that Yahoo consistently manages to generate and preserve.

If you have an interesting network with a huge number of users and an awful way to monetize the traffic, people divert their attentions to other interesting networks with perhaps less users and much better ways to monetize traffic.  This is particularly true if the gating point for your interest and attention is your ability to fund day-in, day-out, constant attention to a project, and account or a campaign.

Jerry and Sue, you need to show some leadership.  Make it possible for me to make money on your network.  If you can't, I'll systematically divert my attention (and my clients spend) to other networks that perform better than Yahoo.  I'll happily take good ideas from Brad and Caterina and Stuart and Les and Susan and Joshua and put them to work somewhere that will generate good cash flow.  And I'll invite anyone who was laid off or who left Yahoo to join me on the Yahoo alumni network where we can figure out what's next.

Ann Arbor (Jones Drive) murder - suspect information

UPDATE 1/18: Two arrested in Ann Arbor shooting (Freep)

from the Ann Arbor Police Department account on Youtube.

Wanted for Questioning in a Fatal Shooting in the City of Ann Arbor, Michigan. If you know the whereabouts of Myrick, please call our Anonymous Tipline 734-996-3199. Refer to Case Number 08-457.

Local news reporting pull quotes -

Your best narrow search results show up for the Google searches for Ann Arbor Jones Drive murder . The outside.in searches for Ann Arbor murder are not good, but probably can be improved by tagging.

My inbox did not have anything about this murder in Ann Arbor today, which means I'm doing something personally wrong in my clipping strategy.

Michigan Daily

About 12-15 shots were fired at the scene and an AK-47 type weapon was found inside the house, police said. Bullet holes were also found on the exterior of the red brick house. Police found signs of forced entry at the residence. AAPD Lt. Michael Logghe said police are unsure why the victim entered Myrick's residence or of any other motives.

Technorati Tags: annarbor, murder

Michigan primary results - 2008 presidential primary

2008 Unofficial Michigan Primary Election Results from http://miboecfr.nicusa.com - who are these people, are they really part of michigan.gov ? Something is being outsourced, very badly.

The short story:
Dem: Clinton 55, Uncommitted 40, Kucinich 4
Rep: Romney 39, McCain 30, Huckabee 16, Paul 6, Thompson 4, Guiliani 3

Best counties (overnight approx, data from NY Times, where is my spreadsheet full of numbers?)

Democrats:
Kucinich: 9% in Washtenaw
Clinton: 88% in Houghton, 64% in Macomb, 66% in Chippewa
Uncommitted: 49% in Emmet, 46% in Washtenaw

Republicans:
Romney: 47% Oakland, 44% Leelenau
McCain: 40-42% Van Buren, Crawford, Marquette, Keewenaw, Kalamazoo

SOS - Elections in Michigan SOS stands for "Secretary of State", and the crummy TITLE tag is one reason why this page is hard to find. You'd think, with Google in Ann Arbor, that the state of Michigan would have better search engine friendliness for the state government site.

The best overall politics tracker is memorandum's political web; here's a snapshot of the overnight results at 1am.

Best Michigan 2008 primary map is from the New York Times, showing leaders by county. They picked a weird color choice for the Democrats, leaving Clinton and Uncommitted almost the same color.

The Democratic party pull quotes:

Hillary Clinton won a largely uncontested Michigan Democratic primary - Boston Globe

The Obama Campaign is not participating in the Primary and has not instructed supporters in Michigan whether or how to vote - National Journal, Hotline Blog

Because of the hopelessly messed-up nature of this year's Democratic primary, this is a perfect opportunity for progressives in Michigan to make a statement without taking any risk. And the way to do that is to vote for Dennis Kucinich. Detroit Metro Times editorial

The Republican party pull quotes:

Romney is the son of former Michigan Governor and 1968 presidential candidate George W. Romney (Wikipedia)

Ambassador Weiser, an Ann Arbor resident and chairman of McCain's Michigan campaign, said Lieberman will join McCain at a joint town hall meeting on Election Day (Ann Arbor News)

My personal election story was not as good as it could be. I tried at the last moment to figure out what the status was of the ACLU Michigan Primary Election law lawsuit, where the Green Party and a political consulting firm among others are suing for the right to have access to primary voter lists. If they win, I'm going to buy me a list; even if they don't, you can get voter lists (city of Ann Arbor through the Ann Arbor City Clerk, $5). Hm, time to put that online too.

The technological snafu was voting as though I was a vision-impaired voter and trying to use the AutoMARK machines provided for that purpose. (press release from SOS) The machine marks ballots with audio prompting; it has awful industrial design, a very clumsy ballot shield, the poll workers had not run a real ballot through it all day (just a sample ballot), and when it spat back my ballot a half dozen times they directed me to the hand marked ballot booth rather than spoiling the ballot and starting with a new piece of paper.

The other technological snafu (again from the perspective of the vision impaired) was that the ballot eating machine has no audio or tactile feedback that a ballot was successfully accepted, and even its visual feedback is really bad (a tiny lcd display hard to read in dim light). I had really no way of knowing that the ballot eating machine really took my ballot, not even a reassurance that some bell dinged. Had I had no sight at all, some poll worker could have taken my ballot and disposed of it or remarked it and I'd be no wiser.

Technorati Tags: vote, michigan, election08, bibimbop, primary

Hoop house basil? Some early research

It's January, which means no farmer's market basil until July or August. Not too early to start thinking about it, though, especially thinking about how to grow your own - perhaps using a hoop house to speed the process along. Here's some preliminary research to share.

http://mdmintake.blogspot.com/2006/08/basil-anyone.html

Brooke and I had a great time at the farm this afternoon. And by great, I mean I now know why Tricia is always wearing carhartts, a straw hat, gloves and boots. The weeds on the farm? Not so much like the weeds in our garden.

http://deberosahomestead.wordpress.com/2007/12/09/portable-hoop-house-construction/

This year we built a portable hoop house on Deberosa for tomatoes and basil. It was fairly successful but as you can see from the storm post, it didn’t survive an extremely bad wind. I think it would have survived it the rain did not make the ground so soft that the rebar simply pulled out of the mud. Oh well, we’ll rebuild for next year - it will just be a little shorter and perhaps oriented lengthwise to the prevailing wind.

http://quetzalfarm.com/tour.htm

Early in the spring we plant basil and cucumbers in our hoop house. It is significantly warmer than outside, allowing us to harvest much earlier. The basil will grow into fall.

http://www.newfarm.org/depts/beginning_farmers/0603/greens2.shtml

Basil’s really the only herb to which we give much attention, and it responds well. It flourishes in the heat of the hoop. Keep cutting back the terminal buds and it’ll bush out. Give it an occasional shot of fish and it may produce for months.

http://www.vpi.org/urban_farm.html

ReVision Urban Farm is an organic micro-farm whose guiding vision is environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable urban agriculture. The farm grows a wide variety of food crops on three reclaimed urban lots totaling one-acre of growing space. The farm enhances the delivery of nutrition services throughout our community and increases local awareness of the social, environmental, and economic benefits of sustainable urban agriculture.

Technorati Tags: basil, hoophouse, gardening, farm, ubifarm