Drescher: How a blogger helped us tell a story

I got an unexpected shout-out from N&O executive editor John Drescher today about my work with the East CAC, quoted by Fiona Morgan in her New America report. We had actually all gotten together back in October after Fiona’s report was released.

I had no idea I would be the subject of Drescher’s column today, but I appreciate the shout-out. I hope other groups will be inspired to spread the word through technology!

The question to Mayor Charles Meeker came from a woman who lives in East Raleigh’s Lockwood neighborhood with her husband and two young children.

She wanted to know about the future of Powell Elementary, the school closest to her home.

Meeker harshly criticized the majority of the Wake school board. He said they were outsiders who didn’t share our values and were trying to isolate the affluent from others in separate schools.

Meeker’s comments last summer, which prompted weeks of community debate, were reported on the front page of The News & Observer. But they likely would not have received news coverage if it had not been for Mark Turner, president of the East Citizens Advisory Council, one of 18 such groups across Raleigh.

Turner, a tech professional and blogger, uses streaming video to broadcast his meetings online, where they are archived for anyone to see, including reporters.

Turner’s efforts show how citizens can help inform a community. His story was told by Fiona Morgan in a report on the availability of information in the Triangle.

via Drescher: How a blogger helped us tell a story – Drescher – NewsObserver.com.

Red flag rules poorly enforced

We went camping Saturday night at Falls Lake’s Rollingview campground. I’d checked the forecast before we went and saw that the dry air and wind conditions were likely to result in a ban on campfires at the park. Sure enough, when we arrived the winds were whipping around so much that the tent was blowing away before I could assemble it.

After the family and I put our tents together, our friends arrived and mentioned seeing a small sign at the entrance about the fire ban. I was surprised that we hadn’t seen a sign when we arrived: it must have been a small sign. Later, we saw an 8×10″ sign taped to the wall of the restroom building and it wasn’t very prominent. It said “Red Flag Warning: no fires except charcoal or gas.” The place it was posted was right in the middle of the building, though the restroom doors were on either end.
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Chris Colmer a CTE victim?

Since I began wondering about the ultimate fate of former NCSU football player Chris Colmer, I have discovered that I’ve not been alone. Many people have found this blog through Internet searches, looking for details about Chris’s death. A good number of these searches have included the keyword “suicide.”

First off, let me emphatically state that don’t know for sure the details of Chris’s death. I don’t know if he took his own life or it was a simple car wreck as others have stated. I only have the sketchiest of details and no communication with his family, so I only speak for myself here – this is my opinion only. Hell, I’m not even sure why I’m drawn to Chris’s death. I didn’t know him and I’m not the biggest football fan, either. Why this intrigues me is as much a mystery to me as it probably is to you.
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Germany and clean energy

I often wondered why Germany is a world leader in solar photovoltaic production and installations. After all, it’s a country that doesn’t get much sunlight, right? Then I learned about Bitterfeld, an industrial city in the former East Germany.

Bitterfeld is an ecological wasteland: a city where its former communist leaders paid no heed to the dangers of pollution. Instead, the state planning committee would deliberately poison rivers and streams to cash in on pollution fines.

With that kind of shocking, wanton destruction going on in the name of energy independence, I have a better understanding of Germany’s strong commitment to clean energy.

Warm, spring-like day!

A warm, spring-like day rolled into Raleigh today, pushing the temperature to a record level. Today’s official high at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport was 78°F, breaking a record that had stood for 68 years. The weather station at MT.Net was even warmer, reaching 79.2°F! The normal high for today is 55°F.

This warmth has been a nice reprieve from the dreary, cold winter we’ve been having (especially since I spent last week in below-zero temperatures in Chicago). We’re going to pay for this warmth, I’m afraid, by increasing our drought. The dry air and winds have also increased the fire danger this weekend. We were considering going camping tomorrow night but the fire danger might snuff our plans.

This taste of spring gives me hope that more comfortable days might be ahead.

ISS fades over Raleigh

ISS fades over Raleigh

I took this photo tonight of the International Space Station as it flew over Raleigh shortly after sunset. As the space station headed northeast it passed into Earth’s shadow, making it grow noticeably darker until it was almost completely invisible. It was pretty amazing to watch it fade out as it passed halfway through the sky.

The next, potentially spectacular pass is Sunday around 6:40 PM. Right now the weather forecast calls for partly-cloudy skies but we may get lucky with another good view.

Using DSLRs for video

Canon consultant Patrick Reese demonstrates shooting video with a Canon EOS 7D

I went to a conference last weekend that was being video recorded. Instead of the typical DV cameras I’ve come to expect, though, the videographers were moving around the room with DSLRs. Curious that they were doing this with what I thought were still cameras, I went up to ask about their equipment.

It turns out the higher-end DSLRs (also known as HDSLRs) from Canon and Nikon are now being widely used to shoot high-quality HD video, often to the chagrin of more traditional HD camera manufacturers. A DSLR’s relatively small size and its ability to make use of exceptionally high-quality lenses makes it ideal for shooting HD.
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One Call draws a crowd

Interesting. I put in a North Carolina One Call request to mark utilities so that I could bury a satellite dish cable in my yard. On the same day the marking contractor came out, coincidently so did a Time Warner Cable truck. There was no technical need for TWC to be here: the marking contractor marks TWC lines along with everything else.

It looks to me like TWC smelled competition from the One Call report and wanted to see what provider might be moving into the neighborhood. I wonder what TWC would do if the whole neighborhood put in marking requests?

Cheap thoughts: cell phones in prison

I’ve read about the problem of cell phones in prison for the past year or so and I’m not sure why this is such a difficult problem to solve. If prison officials don’t want prisoners to access the outside world, and the FCC won’t let them set up jammers, why not do the next best thing? Why not set up a small, low-power cell site in the prison itself, and lock it down?

Any phones inside the prison will automatically register themselves with the bogus cell site because the local site will have a stronger signal inside the prison. Then the prohibited cell phones could be easily identified, flagging them for later confiscation. Also, the repeater site could either monitor any transmissions from the prisoner’s phones, or block those transmissions completely. All of this would be playing by the FCC’s rules and the cost would be less than $10,000 per prison.

Why hasn’t anyone tried this yet?

Update 1:27 PM: Looks like several states are implementing the “managed access” solution I’ve suggested. (Thanks, Guus!)

Feedback from the airport

Like many people, I like to pass the time while waiting for my flight to board by doing a little people-watching. Where is this person going? Where’s home? If home’s not here, what brought them to the Triangle? I find it fun to speculate on these things.

What’s really insightful is to hear departing visitors talking into their phones. Last week I overheard a man apparently describing the Triangle area to the person on the call. “You’d like it,” he said. “There are lots of trees. It’s really beautiful. Lots of trees.”

I smiled, because that’s not the first time I’ve heard a traveler rave about our area’s beautiful, abundant trees. We tend to take that for granted, I think.

Raleigh and Durham invested a lot of money in renovating RDU Airport’s Terminal 2, knowing that for many travelers their impression of Raleigh and Durham starts right there. The airport can also be a great source of feedback, too, when those travelers depart. Just listening how they describe their trip can show where we’re doing well and where we can improve. It can also show what assets we possess that we could be better in publicizing.

As a proud citizen of Raleigh I love hearing others’ impressions of the place I call home.