May 30, 2003
Popdex
Popdex is my current favourite Cool site of the day tool.
for example, it found these parodies of A-list bloggers.
My Popdex Game Profile
Linkwhoring: PopdexMetapop
May 27, 2003
Transit Board rides bus (every year)
Though they oversee a bus system that provides 65 million trips a year, none of
the 14 regular or alternate board members are regular bus riders - and at least
four had never set foot on an OCTA bus before Friday.
"Ever since I've been on the board, I've made a point of taking the bus at least
once a year," said Tim Keenan, Orange County Transportation Authority Chairman
and Cypress councilman.
A great idea. Or as it's known in the software industry, eat your own dogfood.
From Orange County Register
More like this: transit blog
Full story
2003 May 03 (Saturday)
OCTA officials driven to see how bus riders fare
The board chairman decides that the best route to understanding the needs of
passengers is a ride-along.
By PETER LARSEN
The Orange County Register
ORANGE – Laguna Niguel Councilwoman Cathryn DeYoung scrutinized her bus
map and her schedule book Friday as she and seven other OCTA board members
set out on a four-hour bus trip around Orange and Santa Ana.
"In order to get around, do you need the map or the book?" she asked Art
Leahy, chief executive officer of the Orange County Transportation Authority.
"Regular users - " Leahy began.
"What do they do?" DeYoung interjected.
"They know the lines," Leahy finished.
Which is something few if any OCTA board members can claim to have
mastered.
Though they oversee a bus system that provides 65 million trips a year, none of
the 14 regular or alternate board members are regular bus riders - and at least
four had never set foot on an OCTA bus before Friday.
Chairman Tim Keenan, a Cypress councilman, said he organized the scavenger-
hunt-by-bus to get the board out and about on the system.
"Ever since I've been on the board, I've made a point of taking the bus at least
once a year," Keenan said.
He said the outing Friday was prompted by a rider at a recent meeting who stood
up and said: "When I hear the board talk, they all know the highways and
streets, but when a rider says, 'I don't like the way the new fare box takes my
dollar,' I never hear a board member say, 'Yeah, that's right.' "
To increase the board's knowledge of its bus system, the OCTA staff worked up a
scavenger hunt that required the kinds of transfers and route changes that
everyday bus riders experience. As they traveled along thoroughfares such as
Main and Bristol streets in Orange and Santa Ana, they got off at specific spots to
pretend they were running errands bus users might run for real - picking up
paychecks, visiting the doctor, making a deposit at the bank.
"It's an excellent experience because we need to know what people go through
when they ride the bus and do what we can to make it better," said DeYoung,
who some 20 years ago rode a Los Angeles bus regularly when she worked there
- but rode her first OCTA bus only Friday.
None of the drivers on the routes taken Friday - primarily 53, 70 and 57 - were
told the OCTA brass would be boarding Friday, Leahy said.
"We're a good system. We're a human system," Leahy said. "We can do better.
When the employees see that the board takes what they do seriously, that
improves service."
Problems that Leahy said OCTA continue to work on include overcrowded buses
or buses that run early or late. Regular riders on the buses Friday mentioned
those issues as well as lack of bus frequency for certain routes or lack of
benches or shelters.
Several riders said they liked that the politicians and officials in control of their
buses were out getting firsthand knowledge.
"They're able to know what people need," said Maira Torres, a freshman at
California State University, Fullerton, who uses the 57 line to commute between
campus and her home in Santa Ana.
"And they don't just sit in the office thinking, 'I think the people need this,' "
Torres said. "So it's good."
Several transit advocates who tagged along said they, too, feel that it has to be
good for the board to get any kind of experience on the buses.
"Elected officials are always riding the freeways, and they know which
interchanges are bad," said Roy Shahbazian, who no longer owns a car and uses
buses and trains to commute to work.
"But they have no firsthand experience of riding the bus - what it's like to wait for
a bus, what it's like to be on a crowded bus," he said.
"I hope this is just a first step in more regular riding of the bus."
Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido said the trip left him with a few ideas to make bus
trips better for riders.
"I learned that along Santa Ana Boulevard, probably one of the most heavily
used transit stops in the county, we have a shelter that has nothing but a bench,
and if it rains, people get wet," Pulido said. "And I'm going to look into that come
Monday."
CONTACT US: (949) 454-7363 or plarsen@ocregister.com
May 26, 2003
Good editorial cartoons in flash
Editorial cartoons in flash, will excellent production values.
(Will likely inflame conservative readers. Does FSP have conservative readers ?)
Planner: War planning excellence followed by post-war bedlam.
Looting: The American Way.
May 25, 2003
SV FT Do
FT SV Do.
Many Bay Area FTers have suggested it's time for a Silicon Valley event. Here it is:
When: Sunday, June 8, 2003, 6 p.m.,optional, no-host, pre-dinner beverage service / meet-and-greet
6:45 p.m. dinner.
Where: Sarovar Indian Cuisine, 544 Lawrence Expressway, Sunnyvale, CA 94086
between Oakmead and Arques Ave. just 1/2 mi. south of 101 (Bayshore) Fwy and 5 mi. N. of SJC. Easy, free parking in front of the restaurant.
www.sarovar.com
What: Meet FTers while enjoying typical Indian cuisine of Silicon Valley. Choose either the $9.95 dinner buffet including soup, appetizers, green salad, 7 vegetable dishes, 5 meat dishes including lamb curry and tandoori chicken and dessert and soft drink or order dinner from the menu (See web site.)
Other info: Sarovar will accommodate 30-40 of us and more. We'll get their private room if we're the largest party. Sarovar serves a variety of beers and some wine at your option.
Please book soon. I need to confirm our res. by June 5. Please post your booking in this thread or e-mail. Below this post, I'll keep a thread going for names and numbers, updated periodically.
So, bring your appetite, digicam, PDA, and all the other icons of "the Valley" and let's network over dinner on June 8. Very early arrivers may want to hang at Fry's Electronics, Sunnyvale, just 6 blocks from Sarovar. See y'all on 6/8
Sound byte on executive multitasking
Better than a tarball in the head.
While 200 top telecommunications executives and analysts met last week in
Dana Point (outside Los Angeles, Calif.), at the Vortex Conference, speakers
and panelists made their presentations on stage during the two-day affair,
outside Los Angeles, many of the audience members were, quite glaringly, doing
their own thing. Armed with laptop computers equipped with wireless Internet
connections, many executives had only one ear on the speakers but both hands
on the keyboard, checking e-mail and stock prices, surfing the Internet and
otherwise whiling away their time wirelessly.
The problem may be genetic, joked one participant, Charles R. Lax, who said it
was simply reflexes that kept him continually monitoring e-mail on both his
laptop computer and his personal digital assistant. "I have a multitasking Linux
kernel in my head," said Mr. Lax, a general partner with GrandBanks Capital, a
venture capital firm in Newton Center, Mass.
-- NYT.
May 22, 2003
Driveway
I need a driveway like this:
(Virginia internatonal Raceway), or like this:
(Michael Schumacher's backyard).
May 21, 2003
Today Jayson Blair, tomorrow Paul Krugman
Today Jayson Blair, tomorrow Paul Krugman ? asks Donald Luskin.
But the NYT is still a top notch paper, offers Michael Kinsley.
May 18, 2003
Second Superpower
Faithful blogging spectator GEOFFREY NUNBERG reports that Google is
the Second Superpower, or rather the Second Superpower is the
Internet Community itself which posts the links and words for
Google to crawl.
Incidently, I met Prof. Nunberg at a BAYCHI dinner event when he first
spoke about blogging (almost two years ago) and he really does speak
in that lecturious voice he uses on NPR.
May 17, 2003
Dating with Google
The thrilling and sometimes perilous world of blogging: NYT.
Further proof blogging has gone mainstream.
Once (about 1993), people were noteworthy because they had web pages.
Later (1997), notewothy people began to have web pages. I estimate
the equivalent transition in blogging also has taken about four years, 1999-2003.
See also bloggers play the field.
May 16, 2003
Transit as an organizing: Grand Central bloggers
A good transit system provides both a symbol of personal identity
and pride (What station are you ?) and an organizing system for
the locality it serves. This month's example is NYC Bloggers.
And of course a good transit system is also good for transportation.
Previous example.
May 13, 2003
Preview and edit on same page
MT needs to show both the preview and the edit screen at once.
When I'm re-editing because I didn't like what I saw in the
preview, I have to leave the preview, go into the edit, and
then I can't remember what I'm supposed to change in the
edit window.
I need to see what's wrong in the entry (the preview) when I'm
fixing it (the edit).
Here's a sample preview:
I see several things I'd like to correct:
I leave preview, go into edit:
Now, did I want to make five changes or six ?
Are there any changes needed in the second paragraph,
or can I keep scrolling down ?
Am I done yet ?
Some forum software does better:
May 10, 2003
May 08, 2003
set date = now
MT's edit entries tools need a 'set date = now' button.
How to use it:
On January 01, compose but do not publish an entry, Pay Taxes;
MT assigns a date of Jan 01 to this entry.
Wait, then compose and post more entries in February and in March.
Return to entry Pay Taxes, edit and publish it on April. 15
A problem is that by default, Pay Taxes will never
get its day of fame as the most recent entry. It will be published
listed at its original creation date, January 01, and will be listed in
the archives, but never on top of the blog as most recent entry.
A solution is to add a simple way to adjust the entry date to
date of publishing. In this example, when publishing Pay Taxes
in April, the author clicks on Set data=Now, and the
date of this entry is once and for all locked to be April.
May 01, 2003
Fury Index
Update 2003 May 14: complete index.
What will google do to this index ? (My gift to Kevin.)
Why ? Because mousovering to see where an url leads in uninstructive for a
javascript:void(0); link, and clicking on such a link often hijacks
an existing browser window. And because most crawlers don't follow
Javascript new window poping links.
Exercise: To compare two sets of comments, open two comment windows
on fury.com at once.