March 12, 2007

There were 2 posts published on March 12, 2007 (this is page 1 of 1).

Your Government, Now On The Web

I happened to be poking around the City of Raleigh‘s website today and was happy to discover the Raleigh City Council meetings are now available as streaming media. These streams are designed for Windows Media Player, which not exactly an open format but can indeed be played using the open-source mplayer if one decodes the various URLs.

Being the political junkie (and, well, hopeless geek) that I am, I considered subscribing to cable just to view these meetings. Now not only do I get to view them, I can also skip through them easily to see only what I want.

Also today I learned that C-SPAN will be offering its content with a Creative Commons-type license allowing for non-commercial use. That makes the meetings of my federal and local governments freely available online, joining my state government which was already available online.

If there’s a better way to begin national Sunshine Week promoting open government, I haven’t seen it. Its also another great victory for the Creative Commons, which includes everyone. Go on: pat yourself on the back!

(On a related note, I find it ironic that many of the News and Observer’s open records stories are locked behind its paywall).

Destinated!

I’m back home this morning having flown 10,000 miles yesterday. Boy, are my arms tired! Heh.

My flight from Newark wasn’t without its snafus, either. We boarded 20 minutes late, finally pushed back and taxied about 10 feet before waiting another 20 minutes to get “sequenced” into the takeoff line. You can imagine my joy when the captain announced we were “30th for takeoff.” Man, you just gotta love Newark. Another 45 minutes and finally we left the ground, spending what I thought was an unusual amount of time rolling before pointing skyward.

A Continental pilot was catching a ride back to Raleigh. Since the plane was full, he rode in the jumpseat in the cockpit. I heard laughter from the cockpit more than once while we were waiting to take off.

When we landed at RDU we took runway 5R: the preferred one for Continental as its closest to Terminal A. The plane touched down and decelerated nicely but then the pilot did something unusual. We rolled gently right past the first available taxiway back to the very next one, for no apparent reason. The pilot then turned onto this taxiway, did a big circle and then proceeded to use the first taxiway to roll right back onto the active runway!

Yes, our ace pilot actually used an active runway as a taxiway, rolling down 5R in the wrong direction! I was freaking out when I saw the landing stripes roll by my window. I don’t think the pilot asked the tower’s permission because he never paused at all between rolling off the runway and rolling back on. I think he was just distracted by the extra pilot in the cockpit. I’ve never had a pilot pull that kind of stunt before. I was glad it was after 11 PM and the airport wasn’t busy.

Moral to this story: if its late and you see a pilot catching a ride in the cockpit, pack a parachute.

Anyway, I feel surprisingly rested and ready to go, so I’ll try working from home today. Its good to be back.