Archive for the ‘Community’ Category

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Raleigh’s website woes

Saturday, August 21st, 2010

The City of Raleigh’s new website was in the news again today. City Councilor Russ Stephenson picked it apart in an email to City Manager Russell Allen. Russ’s experience is the same as most folks’: he tried using the search engine to find something and failed utterly. When I critiqued it myself, I faulted it for simply relying on the search engine as heavily as it does. That wasn’t even considering that the search engine seems so completely broken.

My buddy Scott has built many a website in his many years of geekdom. He’s a professional. He tells me that he had seen many $500,000 websites, and what Raleigh got is not one of them.
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Posted in Community, Follow-Up, Politics, Reviews | 2 Comments »

East Raleigh Community Day

Saturday, August 14th, 2010

I am back from a fun but busy day at the East Raleigh Community Day. I was the master of ceremonies for the four-hour event, and also ran between booths to fetch supplies when needed.

It was fun, there was a good turnout from the neighborhood, and lots of kids got school supplies. That’s a good day in my book!

You can see pictures on Flickr here.

Posted in Checking In, Community | No Comments »

Raleigh’s new website features East CAC

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

The city’s new website does offer a feature the old one doesn’t: a great account of the Community Build of the Lions Park playground. It includes some quotes from me and photographs of me and my family, among the many others who helped with the build.

I’m happy to have helped to make this fantastic new playground a reality for the folks who use Lions Park.

Posted in Check It Out, Community, Parks and Rec | Comments Off

The City of Raleigh’s new website

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

Yesterday, the City of Raleigh unveiled it’s new website: the first update in a dozen or more years. The old website has long been a pet peeve, with it’s cryptic, miles-long URLs and lack of photographs or graphics. To find anything useful, users often had to resort to using the search box.

Unfortunately, that’s also the problem with the new website: to find anything useful the user has to use the search box. In fact, it’s more of an issue now. The old site at least attempted to categorize information in a hierarchical format (for every page, you saw a list of breadcrumbs that showed you where you were in the site). The new one, however, makes no attempt at all at organizing data (at least as far as I can tell).
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Posted in Community, Reviews | 2 Comments »

This tough cop knows how to reach tough kids

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

After I wondered where the good guys are who might have steered Reggie Gemeille to the right path, I read about James Johnson. Thank goodness there are men out there like him:

Retired police officer James Johnson spent 20 years dealing with gangs in New York City and is now sharing his wisdom with Raleigh children at the J.T. Locke Resource Center’s summer camp.

Johnson uses the same speeches he gave to members of New York’s Crips and Bloods gangs, urging youths ages 9 to 17 to cultivate their talents to better society and to value themselves over fitting in.

The talks have proven successful; Johnson says the youth program he participated in helped reduce gang violence 62 percent in New York City.

“Every child is reachable,” Johnson said. “Children’s strength is in their motivation for life.”

via This tough cop knows how to reach tough kids – Local/State – NewsObserver.com.

Posted in Community, Follow-Up | Comments Off

N.C. Wanted interview

Saturday, July 24th, 2010

N.C. Wanted

Thursday, I was interviewed by the WRAL show, N.C. Wanted. I’d gotten the referral from the Raleigh Police Department when N.C. Wanted called them seeking to speak with people involved with community watches. I told the producer that I’d be at a morning meeting with neighborhood stakeholders and they were welcome to tag along. They thought it was a great idea.

I arrived at the meeting and met the N.C. Wanted crew: Bill, Bridget, and Jay. They miked me and our Community Officer, James Kryskowiak, and filmed most of the meeting. Then I excused myself and went with them to areas around the East CAC to talk about the successes we’ve had in cleaning up the crime problems. I took them to the area where I witnessed a suspect leaving a breaking and entering, showed them the local shopping center that is far safer than it was just a year ago, and talked about the troubled apartment complex that has really cleaned up its act. Bill apparently is a retired police officer and could attest that the neighborhood was markedly different when he was on duty.

Unlike the other interviews that I’ve done that covered breaking news, this interview isn’t time-sensitive. Thus, there’s no telling when it will actually air. I hope I don’t seem like too much of an idiot when it airs!

Posted in Community, Media | Comments Off

Those people

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

Overheard among four GOP women waiting in line before yesterday’s school board meeting:

“If those people would just get jobs, they wouldn’t have to worry about living in a bad neighborhood.”

Clueless. Shockingly, unbelievably clueless.

Posted in Community, Politics | 2 Comments »

Could Raleigh’s greenway paths be fiber paths?

Saturday, July 17th, 2010

Capital Area Greenway

I was thinking again (I know, I know. I should stop that bad habit) about Raleigh and the potential for a municipal Internet network (or a Google one). It occurred to me that the miles and miles of greenways Raleigh enjoys would make the perfect place to run a fiber backbone across our city. We’ve got greenways stretching into every corner of our city and more are being built and stitched-together every year. Why not make burying conduit part of every greenway construction project going forward?
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Posted in Community, Futurist, Parks and Rec, X-Geek | 1 Comment »

Bonner Gaylord: genius app developer?

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

The City of Raleigh sent out this breathless press release this week touting a new mobile application called SeeClickFix. People can use the service to report things around the city that need attention, such as a traffic light that needs replacing, graffiti that needs to be removed, etc. It’s a very useful service: one that I plan to use on a regular basis.

The only issue is the press release itself. It reads as if Bonner developed the whole thing himself:
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Posted in Community, Politics | Comments Off

My photo of Raleigh seen again in the wild

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

My public domain picture of Raleigh I uploaded to Wikipedia continues to make the rounds. Flipping through the newspaper this morning, I spotted a small ad on page 2B of the Triangle section. The ad, placed by the City of Raleigh Recycling, featured the picture in the header, with a “swoosh” ribbon thing coming out of it. There’s no doubt that it’s my picture as the cars line up perfectly.

Some photographers get upset when their work gets used without their permission. I suppose there might be a time in the future when I work professionally as a photog. Even then, though, there will be shots I take that I’ll be happy to pass around, either because it’s the right thing to do or because it’s a great way to advertise my skills.

Posted in Check It Out, Community | Comments Off

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