Disqus - Latest Comments for Yule

Re: Six years and running

gothamgal — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 07:18:58 -0000

Thank you to everyone! Yule...great quote.

Re: My web site is my space (Scripting News)

Yule — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:12:15 -0000

Interesting. I hadn't heard of Sidewiki before - but I've been using Diigo for years. Since few people paid attention to Diigo, I wonder if this is a new problem or a problem of scale... Diigo is a small David compared to Google's Goliath. When they did it, it seemed innocuous. Now that Google is doing it, it doesn't.

From my ex-academic p.o.v., I've always felt "entitled" to mark up someone else's webpages (and even felt good about being able to do it digitally, for it saves printing out text and annotating it in pencil). When Diigo became better known, I made my annotations private - I realized other people could see this stuff even if they didn't want to. Others might be less modest, though...

Tricky problem. I don't think it's the same as standing on a public sidewalk and "choosing" to look at your house through pink sunglasses or whatever. It's more like rearranging the shrubbery around your yard, so as to signal to others on the public sidewalk what it is they should perceive first. And that is quite a different kettle of fish than deciding on the color of sunglasses for yourself.

You're being given the power to create a frame, which will be seen first by some people (those signed in to Sidewiki, or Diigo). (I like to think we Diigo users are a better class of people, but I know I'm probably just flattering myself here... )

We did learn something about the power of framing from George Lakoff, didn't we? It's not sunglasses we're talking about.

Re: Six years and running

Yule — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:42:33 -0000

Happy Birthday, Joanne!

PS: Love that t-shirt text, it reminds me of something Ryan Sholin (@ryansholin) tweeted over a year ago: "all my batteries are dead. talk to me in person."

Hell, yeah! Long live the analog world! ;-) Many happy returns!

Re: Comment Length

fredwilson — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:52:45 -0000

I wonder if Pfff would have done the trick here Yule. That was good

Re: Comment Length

Yule — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:43:20 -0000

Pfff... I write long comments (which I usually edit carefully, on my knees to Strunk & White), so pardon me for disagreeing with those who might pursue an algorithm for determining correct comment length. It really all depends, imo.

Re: Urban Architects

ShanaC — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 01:18:07 -0000

Took it out from the library- it's interesting. I'm in the middle of reading it now. I feel a bit odd in it for a combination of cultural reasons and time reasons (she discusses a housing collapse, I grew up in what most of the US considers a Traditional community, yet I can see what she means by loss of transmission)

It's a book that seems to raise more questions than answers. Sort of like reading Jermiah in the context of the Hebrew scriptures. Is she a failed prophet if no one heeded her warning? How true is she? Very troubling book.

Re: Victoria News - Bridge replacement project takes three steps back

Yule — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 19:48:13 -0000

Kudos to Counc. Geoff Young, who was the only one to make the case that we should look again, "with enthusiasm," at the refurbishment option. What he meant was that since April, the city (including its Engineering Dept) has rushed ahead with a great deal of enthusiasm to explore options for replacement. Yet virtually no investigative energy was spent on the alternative (refurbishment, or preservation).

If the same dedication were put toward exploring preservation, however, we might find ourselves with a simpler and, I'd wager, cheaper option than replacement.

I would encourage people to read the report by Delcan, the engineering firm hired by the city to assess options for the Johnson Street Bridge. The report is available on the city's JohnsonStreetBridge.com website. It's a PDF, and you'll find it by clicking here. (Warning: It's a 232-page PDF, and could take a while to load.)

If you scroll forward to pp.67ff, you'll find the section on "Seismic Retrofit Options." P.72 is particularly interesting. P.74 compares the options, and you'll see that Option 4 does not entail plating over the characteristic (and historically significant) steel lattice-work, and is also not as expensive as some of the other options.

It's certainly not a trivial problem to refurbish a bridge like this, but our current first-term mayor is not doing the city any favors by telling residents that there is "no choice" with regard to replacement (i.e., saying that we must replace the bridge), and his loyal lieutenants Hunter, Luton, and Lucas are digging themselves a one-term hole with their blind allegiance to his scheme.

Re: Things everybody should know how to do

GraemeHein — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:40:53 -0000

Jump starting a car betrays one's geography - above a certain latitude/altitude EVERYONE knows how to do this. You don't have to go too far upstate in NY before it's an absolutely critical skill.

In areas where everyone does know, the major problem stems from the design of upper end foreign cars - batteries in late model Mercedes, Volvo, etc aren't on top of the engine. There's a hardpoint where you can get a boost, but you can't rescue someone else. Truly painful to have car trouble in a nice neighborhood!

Re: Shoreditch area of London

gothamgal — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:29:23 -0000

Hilarious.

Re: Shoreditch area of London

Yule — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:22:27 -0000

The person in the brown corduroy jacket (with his back to the viewer) in the first photo looks like Stephen Pinker! ;-) (Great hair!)

You're really on a roll with some great London posts - I've enjoyed traveling along, vicariously, and appreciate your musings on philanthropy, health care, and back to community etc, which the London sights are prompting!

Re: Urban Architects

fredwilson — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:31:02 -0000

That is great stuff yule

Re: Things everybody should know how to do

gothamgal — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:26:06 -0000

I can barely Waltz (I tend to lead) but love a man who can

joanne wilson
joanne@solomonwilson.com

Re: Things everybody should know how to do

Yule — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:56:16 -0000

That's a great list (and good additions from comments, too). I think I have some aspects to work on... Waltz? Fail! Not sure I could do "jump start a car" either. Hmm... ;-)

Re: Urban Architects

zingano — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 00:52:28 -0000

A very interesting thread. You touched on UI right at the start, but it's a point that's not been much developed in the comments. We're addressing the question "What's going on around me" - but we've thrown away the usual maps-and-pins interface to develop our own custom UI that we think is much more suited to the mobile device. Would love to show you if you're interested - www.flook.it

Re: Urban Architects

Yule — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:45:58 -0000

Blabbed-off in response to several comments on this thread already, but I can't sign off without mentioning the city of Nanaimo, British Columbia (on Vancouver Island). They are really making strides in putting all sorts of public-services related things online. Almost exactly 2 years ago, the city was written up as follows:

Nanaimo Wins "Spirit of Innovation" Award at MISA Conference
(...)
Last year the Director of Public Works, Mac MacKenzie, approached the Information Technology Department (IT) to see if a better way of monitoring work and maintaining records for the City's boulevard mowing program could be achieved using MapGuide, the City's Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping product.

Then, less than a year later, they struck again:

Nanaimo links fire calls to Google Maps
NANAIMO -- If you hear the wail of a fire truck and want to know where it's coming from, Nanaimo residents can now go online to track the city's fire fleet.
In what may be a first for Canadians, the techno wizards at City Hall have linked up the daily fire and rescue response report with Google Maps, to show anyone in the city where action is happening.
The new service allows people to see where incidents occur in real time.
"Pretty much anytime something goes out it will be updated," said senior systems analyst Chris McLuckie.
"We've wanted to upgrade the existing system for quite a while now." Using what's called an RSS feed, residents can go to the city's fire response page found on www.nanaimo.ca.

An article about how Nanaimo has become "the capital of Google Earth" even made it as a reprint in Time Magazine: How Google Earth Ate Our Town. (It's all kind of embarrassing from my p.o.v. since I live in Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia, and our city's website sucks and we have no where near the sophistication that Nanaimo managed to bang together in a couple of months and on a budget of less than $2000 (using open source). So, this month for example, we learn the following:

City Log: Live camera feed introduced
Derek Spalding, The Daily News
Published: Wednesday, September 16, 2009

COUNCIL CAM

The City of Nanaimo's information and technology experts just introduced a live camera feed to the city's website, giving political junkies another medium to keep up on the latest Nanaimo issues.

But the techies didn't stop there. The Shaw Cable feed will also be available through an online archive. And it gets better. Instead of watching the entire meeting or scrolling through to find a particular item, the savvy staff included links to each agenda item so viewers can jump to the issue they are interested in.
(...)
The city originally inquired about contracting the project, which would have cost about $2,000 each month for the service, Pattje explained. By building it in-house the city spent $2,000 and will only see a monthly bill of approximately $15.

The application is the brainchild of Chris McLuckie, acting manager of applications support. He came up with the idea and the team set out to build the program. Each agenda-item link also has feeds to a host of social networking sites, allowing viewers to share information with all their friends. (source)

Another article adds: "McLuckie said it’s another tool provided by city hall to enable residents to become more involved in municipal issues, while also providing council transparency. The feature will cost city hall $15 monthly. Each segment can be shared on social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter with the click of a mouse."

Even though it kills me to say so, I love how Chris McLuckie has pulled this off for the city of Nanaimo, and how he is leveraging social media like Facebook & Twitter, too. ;-)

Re: Urban Architects

Yule — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:31:50 -0000

^ Yes, definitely, re. William Mitchell. The ideas are more mainstream today, though, and a bit less Jetsons-like. I would guess that part of that has to be due to Richard Florida's enormous popular success. (And Florida builds strongly on Jane Jacobs, too.) Also, there's bldgblog (also here, on Twitter) and varnelis.net (and here, on Twitter): they've done a lot to disseminate MIT School of Architecture-incubated and otherwise-sourced ideas.

Oh, and don't forget the Netherlands-based group The Mobile City.

I <3 this stuff... Many many nodes, all busily working away...

Re: Urban Architects

Yule — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:16:20 -0000

Also great points - you and Venkat are having an interesting conversation here!

Re. my reference (in reply to Venkat) about reading Jane Jacobs, and what you wrote, ShanaC: "What I've found to be true is the following: Users hack tech and change it into means of cultural transmission and meme. It is the best way to get older messages across. As a result, the message being transmitted gets shifted by the technology."
You might want to take a look at Jacobs's book, Dark Age Ahead (the one she published shortly before her death). Check out the editorial reviews.

Re: Urban Architects

Yule — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 21:07:04 -0000

Good points, Venkat ...but, oh-no!, you left out Jane Jacobs. Lots to learn from her, that's for sure!

Re: Bleary Eyed Investors

fredwilson — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 07:02:02 -0000

Thanks Yule. I'll check out Greenspun's stuff

Re: Bleary Eyed Investors

Yule — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:37:49 -0000

Sounds like a great recipe for managing the visual load, ShanaC - thx!

Re: Bleary Eyed Investors

ShanaC — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:03:15 -0000

Choose three colors and one tonal variation of one of those three colors, plus black and white(maybe) for shading for any image you have. Those three colors must act as your grayscale. Otherwise people will get confused with the visual hierarchy on the page. Choosing that you will have certain elements distinctly on the white end of life, or the black end of life creates coninuity, yet that's not always obvious when you look at an image. Nor is it obvivious that your eye follows a grayscale along a page (up a page, down a page, left, right) so where you put your now grayscaled objects can either focus people's attention or distract the hell out of them.

When in doubt, take a screenshot, take it into Photoshop or the GIMP, and convert To Grayscale. You'll see where your eyes are floating to on the page, including off the page! You'll see if everything that should be highlightlighted, is highlighted.

(It works in real life, I've tested this one with friends, they are often surprised by how grayscaling helps create visual hierarchy and that it can be done with color, too. Colors have gray in them.)

Re: Bleary Eyed Investors

Yule — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:34:57 -0000

@DaveinHackensack: ;-)

Re: Bleary Eyed Investors

DaveinHackensack — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 01:25:56 -0000

I think we now need an expert in design principles to aggregate all the presentation suggestions in this comment thread into one compelling PowerPoint presentation -- or maybe several, and have a little contest for the one that gets voted the best.

Re: Bleary Eyed Investors

Yule — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:48:10 -0000

Definitely look at Tufte's The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint ("...slideware often reduces the analytical quality of presentations. In particular, the popular PowerPoint templates (ready-made designs) usually weaken verbal and spatial reasoning, and almost always corrupt statistical analysis...").

Also check out any of Philip Greenspun's riffs on Tufte here. Some good stuff there.

I actually found a couple of typically wordy comments from me on Phil's ancient 2003 blog entry, PowerPoint v. PowerPoint (well, my 2nd comment is long, anyway).

And in 2006, Phil had a nice (and pithy) synopsis of Tufte's Beautiful Evidence book, here. Phil isolates 3 key ideas from Tufte's book, describes them briefly, lets the reader grok it and run with it. Consider it the Cliff Notes version! ;-)

Oh, PS: I hope you get to catch up on some rest over the weekend!

Re: Gotham Gal:

gothamgal — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:47:05 -0000

Both of you make not only good points but Ellen's first hand knowledge of
the system is truly frightening. The system is obviously seriously flawed.
I am not that intimately familiar with the changes that Obama is looking to
make but there has to be some movement forward to provide health care for
everybody starting with an annual check-up. My guess, like all changes in
the system, is that eventually there will be a variety of lawsuits that go
through the system over the new health care bill and through those rulings,
there will be changes that will hopefully be better for all Americans. What
we have now just doesn't work and the people who show up at the emergency
room without any insurance costs all of us dearly.