January 27, 2014

There were 3 posts published on January 27, 2014 (this is page 1 of 1).

Retablature

I spent a little time voiding the warranty of my Lenovo Ideapad K1 tablet last week. I’ve owned it for over a year and like the idea of tablets but I grew increasingly frustrated at Lenovo’s lack of software updates. Finally, I got determined enough to flash it with a new ROM, just like I did with my Samsung Galaxy Epic Touch phone.

A number of web searches later and I had Cyanogenmod 10.2 running on it, with the latest Android 4.2.2 under the covers. My tablet speed tests report a speed boost of a whopping 25%, too. What’s more, I can transfer files with it much easier than with the stock rom, making it far more useful.

This kind of stuff is another example of the power of open source: if a company can’t (or won’t) do the right thing, customers have the power to do it themselves. (The corollary to this is: if you don’t have the right to hack it then you don’t really own it.)

Preemptive school closings and delays

Wake County Public Schools just announced they will stay closed tomorrow. This comes a week after the school system had a two hour delay for about a half-inch of snow. Tomorrow’s threat of anywhere between 4 and 8 inches of snow is a bit more serious, at least, but you have to wonder if the school system isn’t getting a bit too snow-shy.

Everyone who’s been around here long enough remembers the utter disaster of 2005, when an inch of snow at morning rush hour closed schools and sent everyone on the roads at once to fetch their kids. The roads promptly froze over, leading to colossal gridlock the likes of which I’d never seen before nor since. Certainly, no one wants that to happen again. I sure don’t. I’ll never forget it!

Even so, that incident is now nine years in the past. Raleigh has grown up considerably since then. The city now pre-treats the roads with salt brine and gets ahead of the storm. I think the city has handled subsequent storm events very, very well. In essence, I think it’s highly unlikely Raleigh will get caught off guard again.

So if the city has improved its snow response, what about the schools? Seems to me the school staff aren’t making a call based on how a given storm will impact school transportation. Rather, the school system should be deciding based on how well the City of Raleigh and NCDOT can keep the roads clear. Yes, it may be -9 degrees or, yes, it may snow two feet overnight. It shouldn’t really matter what happens if the city and state can clean it up in time for the early buses to roll.

MT.Net goes Creative Commons

I’ve been mulling this over for a while now and have decided to put my blog and photographs under a Creative Commons – Attribution license. That means you can use my material here without asking, so long as you attribute my work to Mark Turner (and include a link to my site where possible).

I look forward to seeing where my blog material winds up.