The recent popular trend in keeping stats on yourself seems to be peaking with a recent issue of Wired magazine focused on the topic.
Whether it be the Hawthorne effect or the Prius effect, I believe that using feedback in the form of personal stats can have a positive effect on your ability to control and understand your own behavior.
To me Buster Benson appears to be right on the leading edge of this whole field, with stats (and lovely charts) tracking many, many aspects of his life. I'm using his google spreadsheet to track my Infinite Summer. Matt Haughey also wrote a blog post that brought this into focus for me recently.
I've experimented with this stuff in various ways myself. In college I made a big chart on poster-board to track my sleep. More recently I tried using daytum to track my caffeine intake.
All these things are inspiring me to begin working again on an idea that i first had way back in '06.
I'm a big fan of Lifehacker - in particular the work of Gina Trapani and Adam Pash. Gina has written a nifty set of tools for todo tracking. One of those tools is an AIMbot that can interact with her todo.txt files. Adam later modified this bot to be a personal budget tracker.
I actually ran the budgetbot tool for a short time, but ultimately didn't use it enough. Later I modified it to be a gas mileage tracking bot. I sent it SMS messages everytime I filled up my tank, and a page on my website showed a nifty little graph of my MPG over time. Eventually I moved hosts or something and the code was lost.
Ever since that time I've had more and more ideas for ways to modify the bot to track various stats. I've never sat down and actually done it though. I'm putting this idea out there so that maybe I'll either do it finally, or inspire someone else to do it.
I'm imagining a general-purpose bot/service that can track all these different stats. I could of course just write one big uber-bot by continually hacking the existing bot, but the software engineer in me wants to break it up into a core with many plugins. And instead of simply using sms/AIM, it would have a trendy REST/XML/JSON API or something. Or maybe that would all be overkill.
Here are the ideas for "plugins" that I can see being useful and probably easy to implement:
TodoBot: The original. This is obivously the most mature, since it's already been done for several years.
BudgetBot: Also well defined due to being already done.
GasBot:
commands: gas gallonsmiles[price] - adds an entry to the db mpg - returns your most recent miles per gallon or maybe your current average mpg bestmpg [n] - returns the all time best mpg you got in the last [n] months, default n=12 worstmpg [n] - returns the all time worst mpg you got in the last [n] days, default n=12
WeightBot:
commands:
weight pounds - adds an entry to the db weightavg [n] - returns your average weight over the last [n] days, default n=30 hiwieght [n] - returns your highest weight in the last [n] days, default n=alltime loweight [n] - returns your lowest weight in the last [n] days, default n=alltime trend - returns whether your weight trendline is pointing downward or upward
BowlingBot:
commands: game score - adds a game's score to the db gameavg [n] - returns your average score over the last [n] games hiscore [n] - returns your best score in the last [n] days, default n=alltime loscore [n] - returns your worst score in the last [n] days, default n=alltime handicap - returns your calculated handicap
I think there is a general structure emerging (addnew, best, worst, average), but each one is slightly different.
I'm envisioning a basic storage structure (the existing bots use .txt files, but a real DB may be in order) that can be accessed in various ways. Building one generic interface to the data store allows the ability to put data into it and get data out of it in many different ways. I'm picturing everything from simple websites with forms and Google Charts, to Ubiquity/Quicksilver commands, to fancy Android apps.
I have a hunch that most of this can be accomplished using existing web services, but I need to research it more.
I wrote up a post about all the City Council candidates that have Twitter accounts over on the HereInCincinnati blog. Here is a widget containing all their accounts merged into one feed:
At the beginning of the year I made a list of things that resembled resolutions for the new year. I had this feeling like I was not doing things as much as thinking about doing things. The list was there so that I would have a place to look during those moments of free time when I think, "I should probably try and do something interesting right now instead of wasting my life away."
Then in March I checked back in to see how many things I'd done, and I was honestly a little bit surprised that I had done more things than I thought I would have. So now I'm checking back in, with the year half gone, so see if I've made it anywhere near halfway through the list.
Making stuff:
Cooking - GOAL: Cook "real" food at least once per week at home. - STATUS: Not going so well. I've learned some new recipes that make it easier to cook something that is relatively healthy relatively quickly, but I'm still mostly just making sandwiches and kool-aid for dinner. I'm doing a decent job of staying away from eating junk food at home though.
Bread: - GOAL: I wish I could get good at making my own sourdough bread. - STATUS: I started out making a lot of Amish Friendship Bread, and that got old after a while. I started a regular sourdough and made bread with it once. Making bread is a long ( like 15-hour ) undertaking. Recently, after several months of keeping the sourdough alive but not making bread, I finally had to commit some of the sourdoughs to the drain.
Beer: - GOAL: make beer and root beer - STATUS: The root beer was fun, but kind of petered out after a while. I met some people recently that brew beer, and I might try and learn from them. I also read recently about making your own mead, so I might consider doing that since it might be easier.
Cheese: - GOAL: make chese - STATUS: Haven't made anything. I think I'm going to follow Fankhauser's syllabus where you make yogurt, then work your way up to cheese. I'm not a big dairy person, so I'm not actually in a big hurry to do this one.
Gardening: - GOAL: Grow food. Possibly hydroponically. - STATUS: Well, I didn't get my hydroponics set back out, but I did attend a class at Park+Vine called "Your Spring Salad" and got a really great set of seeds and seedlings. I grew several different salad greens, beets, radishes, and onions. I successfully harvested and ate some of the greens and one radish. Most of the plants died while I was in Minnesota for almost a week. Some are still alive though.
Local Food: - GOAL: eat more local - STATUS: I had a big project in mind a few months ago and was actively learning a lot about local food systems and was seriously considering building or at least running some sort of local food website for the Cincinnati area, but I think I got kind of burnt out on it. Maybe I need to go back and revisit what I want to accomplish and build some more relationships.
Bison: - GOAL: visit a bison ranch and possible eat some bison - STATUS: This is still something I want to do sometime when I have a free weekend and someone to go with. Unfortunately weekends like that are rare for me. There is a ranch not too far from here.
CSA: - GOAL: join a CSA - STATUS: I didn't join a CSA, but I did a lot of research and the CSA page on my Cincinnati wiki is far and away the most popular page on the site. I believe I have put together a table of information there that is not available anywhere else. Although it is fairly well out of date now.
Farmer's Markets: - GOAL: visit farmer's markets more often - STATUS: I've visited the Green Corner Market several times and visited Findlay Market once since March, although I still have not made it a regular practice.
Recycling Paper: - GOAL: make paper - STATUS: Big win. I successfully followed this set of instructions and made several pages of paper. I use a shredder to shred waste paper, then use a blender to blend it into pulp. Then I use a piece of screen to make it into new sheets. The new paper is still a bit rough, but the process basically works. I would like to start making things like greeting cards. I would also like to experiment with adding seeds to the paper.
Crafting / Remaking / Upcycling: - GOAL: turn my busted IKEA hampers into useful new things. - STATUS: I successfully prototyped a folding table made from one of these hampers, but it is now falling apart. I need to figure out how I am going to go from cardboard prototype to real, useful table.
Knitting / Weaving: - GOAL: learn to weave or knit - STATUS: I haven't really done this at all. It seems like lots of people are into knitting, but not as many are into weaving. I would like to track down this video tutorial I saw one time that showed how to weave. Ah, here it is.
Composting: - GOAL: create a place to take kitchen compost outside somewhere - STATUS: I haven't gotten to this yet. I really need to soon though because my under-sink compost container is getting full.
Rapid Prototyping: - GOAL: have something made by ponoko and/or papekura - STATUS: I took a design from Thingiverse and sent it into ponoko. And I got back a sweet laser cut bunny. But I (stupidly) scaled the bunny up and it doesn't fit together the way it's supposed to. I might order something else, now that I see how the whole process works. I just wanted to get my feet wet, so I consider that a success.
Making online stuff:
hereincincinnati blog hereincincinnati wiki virtual vine st. diycity cincymicrocosm citycouncil2rss wikipedia photo hunt cincinnatiparking.info
I'm just going to summarize all of these by saying that I haven't worked a whole lot on any of them. I'm considering working on the wikipedia photo hunt idea some more now that I have a phone with a great browser, gps, and a camera.
New Ideas:
Hackerspace: - It's hard to believe that 4 months ago the hackerspace was just a twinkle in my eye. A LOT has happened since then. The hackerspace is a real thing. It is a corporation, I'm on the board of directors, and we have signed a lease. We are currently working on raising money and making our space awesome to hang out in.
Local Currency: - I've had some more ideas on this, but haven't gone out and implemented them. My desire to run an instance of oscurrency has not decreased.
New New Ideas:
Libraries - Due to several factors intersecting - including the possibility of many libraries closing soon in the State of Ohio - I've been pondering the future of libraries more than usual. Obviously libraries have been struggling with what their purpose is for many years now, but I've started to evaluate what types of alternatives to centralized libraries have become possible in just the last year or so. With the rise of cheap and easy cloud computing, and the maturation of the open-source Koha, I've been thinking that there may be an opportunity to create a community of small-scale independent online libraries. Something like a blog-hosting site, but instead of a blog, you get your own ILS. Still need to think on this some more, but I am going to pursue it and see where it leads.
Screen-printing: - Via a contact in the hackerspace, I was invited to a crafts night at KHAC hosted by the Cincinnati League of Artisans and I learned that it is really pretty easy to screen-print. I was so excited by it, I asked for (and received) a screen-printing starter kit for my birthday. I have some ideas for some shirts and I may also screen print onto my homemade paper.
Android apps - Oh yeah, did I mention I have a G1 now? It is really awesome. I've started doing the HelloWorld tutorials for programming Android apps and I have some ideas for apps that I think I'd like to build if I learn enough. One would be turning the wikipedia photo hunt idea into an android app. Another would be an offline topographic maps application that can be used while hiking.
Kombucha - I've acquired a starter and brewed several kombucha batches. I'm still learning about tea and haven't made the perfect kombucha yet, but I like doing it.
MakerBot - I have been lusting over these for months now, and now that I have the hackerspace, I have an excuse to buy one. And I think I've found some people there that will team up with me to build it.
Just Getting Warmed Up
I've surprised myself again with the number of things I've done between March and now. The biggest thing is that the Cincinnati Hackerspace is real. This was (and is) a big project, but the awesome thing is that it will help me do all my other projects. I've found a community of like-minded people and we now have a really nice facility in which to work. I couldn't be more excited.
1) In 2008 PLCH was ranked in the top 10 in Hennen's American Public Library Ratings for libraries serving a population of 500,000 or more AND the Main Library branch downtown was named the busiest library branch in the the country. Library use is at an all time high.
2) In March of this year, the Fiscal Office at PLCH was awarded the 2007 Making Your Tax Dollars Count Award bestowed by Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor for being in the top 5 percent of finance directors in the state honored for careful spending, accurate fiscal recording and efficiency.
3) Because Library funding is a percentage of the state’s general revenue fund, as the economy has faltered, the Library’s funding has already been reduced 25% since 2000. The Governor’s proposed state budget is considering a 50% cut to the Public Library Fund, a $6 million FURTHER cut to our Library funding. If this proposed funding cut is enacted, consequences would be DEVASTATING regardless if a 1 mill levy on the November 3rd ballot is passed. This is what you would see in September 2009:
* 250 additional Library jobs will be lost * 20 branch libraries will be PERMANENTLY closed * Main Library hours will be dramatically cut * Computer access will be reduced by more than 30% * Fewer new books, CDs, DVDs and other materials will be available * Diminished quality of service and less qualified staff to help
Ok, so the last time I blogged about this was two years ago, but I still think it's interesting and I still have the same questions. I think I've found a better way to illustrate what I mean. I've drawn up some drawings.
I'm going to run through a series of scenarios that could possibly describe what is happening in a gentrifying neighborhood. I don't know which (if any) of them describe what is happening in Over-The-Rhine. I don't know which (if any) of them describe what is happening anywhere. I am not an urban planner. I just want a more concrete way to look at a social justice issue.
Also, here I'm just talking about the issue of displacement, which seems to be one of the biggest stated downsides of gentrification. I'm not talking about other cultural effects on a neighborhood, or other kinds of problems that might occur. I'm just talking about how many people can fit in a neighborhood and who moves out when other people move in.
So, I've outlined two basic situations here. The numbers are completely made up. I don't know what the real numbers are in any neighborhood. I am actually skeptical that anyone knows the real numbers in these situations, and that is part of the point I'm making with this blog post. The numbers I've used here are just to illustrate some of the range of things that could in theory be happening.
We start with a square that represents an urban neighborhood. I've made this one 10 by 10 pixels so that the "capacity" of the neighborhood is 100. That makes it so everything works out as a percent. I recognize that a neighborhood isn't a fixed box and that it doesn't have a fixed capacity. And I understand that the quality of housing varies. Those details are not in this abstract model I'm building here.
In situation A, we suppose that there are 37 people living in the 100 person box. The current residents of the neighborhood are the blue squares. It is 37% occupied.
Now, let's say 16 people want to move into the neighborhood. These are the gentrifying urban-pioneers or whatever you want to call them. The question I am exploring is what happens to the people that already live in the neighborhood when the new people arrive?
Let's say most of the new people move into places that were already empty and 5 of them move into places where other people used to live. And let's say that those 5 previous residents all stay in the neighborhood. I think it would look like this:
Or what if all 5 of those previous residents just move out of the neighborhood? It would look like this:
What if the new people make all the rents go up, or make the neighborhood otherwise repellent or unlivable for the previous residents and a whole bunch of people move out. That would be something we would want to avoid. It might look like this:
The blue number to the right is the number of people that move out due to displacement caused by the gentrification. Assuming that this displacement is a social injustice, then that number is bad. We would rather keep that number small or zero.
Let's look at another situation - again with made up numbers. Let's say that there are 73 people living in the neighborhood. It is 73% occupied.
Now let's say 32 people want to move in. Again, there seem to be several ways this can work out, but right off the bat it should be obvious that not everyone is going to fit, because the neighborhood can only hold 100 people. This is an abstract neighborhood - it has a fixed capacity.
Let's say that everyone that can possibly fit tries to stay in the neighborhood. The smallest number of people that would have to move out is 5. The neighborhood is 100% full:
That doesn't seem the most likely though. Let's say like before that the people who leave their current places just move out of the neighborhood, but everyone else already there stays. Maybe 25 people move out. The neighborhood is 80% full:
What if we make it so that the number of original residents left in the neighborhood is exactly equal to the number of new residents? 41 people move out - over half of the original population. The neighborhood is 64% full:
Or maybe the neighborhood is so different now that most of the former residents move away, even leaving their own former homes empty. The neighborhood is only 54% full. That might look like this:
Remember, the blue number is bad. So, this last scenario is the worst of all.
My real frustration is that I don't know which of the above scenarios is actually happening in OTR. Which do you think is happening? Which does 3CDC think is happening? Which does OTRCH think is happening? Studies have been done in other cities that make actual, factual surveys of neighborhoods where gentrification is happening. Detailed block-by-block surveys and multi-decade record keeping would be necessary to make maps like the ones I made above reflective of the facts on the ground.
The decisions that are being made about OTR development rely in part on a narrative of what is happening in OTR - and everyone has a different way of reading the story. It seems to me that this is due in part to the fact that no maps like the ones I made above can be made accurately. Correct me if I'm wrong.
"In 1950 approximately 30,000 people resided there, with whites constituting 99 percent of that population. Recent data show about 7,600 total neighborhood residents, 80 percent of which are black. Of the current residents, 95 percent live below the official poverty level of $13,000 annually for a family of four. Of Over-the-Rhine's 7,500 apartment units, 3,000 are below housing code standards and approximately 300 buildings stand vacant."
7,600 / 30,000 = 25.3% That's even less dense than I modeled in my first scenario above. In theory a large district like OTR has room for plenty more people before residents start overflowing, but who knows.
I think the thing most people would want to see is something similar to the second graphic above. The neighborhood is mostly empty -> some people move in -> some other people may have to move, but everyone who was there stays within the neighborhood - no one moves out. The neighborhood is fuller and more diverse.
I recently subscribed to the Reds Home Game Schedule using Google Calendar. Today I noticed a cool feature: they update the games that have finished with the scores, so you can see at a glance how the Reds are doing. For example, the event for yesterday was called "NY Mets at Cincinnati" but now it has changed to "NY Mets 6 - Cincinnati 8". Use this url right here:
Put that url into Google Calendar to see what I mean. That's the url for home games, but if you want the complete schedule or the away schedule, you can get iCalendar feeds for those too at their page on mlb.com.
Update: I'm going to attempt to embed the calendar below:
I think that the Critical Mass Pattern makes sense. I think I'm going to go to the meeting tomorrow night at the Brewhouse and see how I can help. Join me?
I've become somewhat preoccupied with this whole "local food distribution" concept and I've been finding different examples of how folks are doing it in other areas. (I list a lot of what I've found in these previous posts: 1, 2 ).
To my mind there are two big components to a local food distribution system. The first component is allowing local producers and consumers to discover each other. The name I have for this component is the "market". It can take the form of a website or a physical meetup at a farmers' market. The second component is moving the food around the region from producer to consumer. I call this the "T&L" component for Transportation & Logistics. This can range from farm stores where the consumer travels to the site of production, to CSA's or farmers' markets where producers and consumers meet up in the middle somewhere at pre-determined times, up to home delivery where food travels all the way to the consumer's home or business.
For the market side of the equation, I've thought mostly about solutions based on the internet. I'm a bit of a technophile and so that is where my mind turns and I honestly think there is a lot of untapped potential there. There are a handful of solutions that can be used basically "off-the-shelf" to varying degrees. Those would be:
I know a lot less about T&L than I do about websites, so I have not figured this out as well. In my mind one of the basic problems with farmers' markets and CSA's is the fact that you have to meetup in a certain place at a certain time. I realize that this is probably the simplest way to do the logistics and I'm not trying to knock it. But it does seem like there is room for other types of physical distribution to be tried. What about a CSA pickup point that is limited in location but not so limited in time? Or a system composed of a distribution center and delivery trucks that send food directly to the doors of subscribers? What would the minimum order sizes be? What would be the optimal delivery frequency? All questions I'm not well equipped to answer. I was at first inspired, then disappointed hearing about CityCargo that seemed to have a good idea that ended up being cancelled. It may in fact be that the weekly or monthly meetup is the most efficient way of distributing goods from many producers to many consumers - I have no expertise in the field, so I can't really say.
I'm really, really, inspired by this new application for iPhone called Locavore. It brings together a lot of cool info making it super easy eat locally:
Features:
* Automatically detects which state you’re in (currently only covers the US) * Food that’s in season near you * Food that’s coming in season near you soon * Farmers’ markets near you * Browse all 234 fruits and vegetables to see where it is currently growing * Links to Wikipedia articles and Epicurious recipes from each food detail page * Browse all 50 states to see what’s in season in other parts of the US
Built with the help of:
* Natural Resources Defense Council for food availability * LocalHarvest.org for farmers’ markets data * Tattfoo for colors * Designed by Matt Hickey * Integrated with Get Satisfaction Remote for in-app feedback, ideas, and bug tracking
Amazing! But I don't have an iPhone. :( Has anyone out there tried it?
The possibility of takeaways was brought up on localfoodsystems.org, but I have not seen anything shared or published yet.
I'm interested in what happened since I wasn't able to attend. Were any documents or anything produced at the congress that could be shared / made available online?
VeggieTrader.com is a new site that aims to be a place where those people looking for locally grown produce and those people looking to sell locally grown produce can find each other.
In the Cincinnati area the closest listings are for the Boulder Belt Farm in Eaton, OH. They're offering leeks for $1 and 1/2 lb. bags of spinach for $4. Boulder Belt offers many, many more items at farmers' markets, their CSA, or their farm store. Check them out at their blog or website.
I've been doing more research on the web since my other blog post, and I've found some new avenues that I hope to explore further.
First, I found two "off-the-shelf" systems for setting up a local food market website. One is http://www.locallygrown.net/ which gives a pre-packaged site hosted on the locallygrown.net website. The second is http://www.localfoodcoop.org/ which has created an open source software package that can be customized and deployed on one's own server. I'd like to compare and contrast these two a bit more. I just discovered them yesterday. If there is interest, I can set up a version of the LocalFoodCoop.org software on my own site and customize it for Cincinnati, so folks can see how it works.
Another site that I found very interesting but still haven't had time to go through in depth is http://localfoodsystems.org/ which is a discussion site about the many aspects of local food systems. It looks like a good source of knowledge. It was created as a coordination point for a workshop held by OSU’s Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in February of 2008, but has since grown substantially. There are discussion forums on the site for such exciting topics as "Logistics, particularly transportation for increasing volume of local foods" and "Local Food Systems Computer Modeling, GIS, Data(mining)" as well as many others. I tried to join the site, but the signup process didn't work right for me, so I'm still waiting. Still, it looks like all the conversations can be viewed without joining the site.
Yet another site I found worth mentioning here is http://oh.marketmaker.uiuc.edu/ which is the Ohio version of the Market Maker website I mentioned in my other post. This one provides access to the analogous data sets for Ohio. Also, if you go to the "Buy & Sell" forum it shows the same entries as if you browse via the Indiana site. I guess that explains why the entries are from all around the country. I tried searching in the forum for listings in Cincinnati, but didn't find any.
Finally, I'll mention that I probably won't be going to the Food Congress next weekend, but it does sound really exciting. If anyone is going, I'd love to hear from you about how it goes.
So, everyday is bringing new and interesting ideas out on this topic! I'll keep digging around and keep you posted.
cooking: -goal: "been trying to really cook at least one real meal (not pizza rolls) every week" -status: fail. still find it hard to prepare real food very often.
bread: -goal: "been keeping one sourdough alive, want to start another one (or two)" -status: started up a second sourdough starter; made bread with it once. i need more practice.
cheese: -goal: "not huge into dairy, but find cheese-making to be as fascinating as bread and beer making" -status: fail. haven't made any cheese yet. did join the cheesemakers mailing list though. http://groups.google.com/group/cheesemakers?hl=en
gardening: -goal: "want to get my hydroponics rig going again and also start a real outside garden if someone will let me use their land" -status: haven't grown a thing yet. there is still time to make a plan before it gets too late.
local food: -goal: "been a member of the cincilocavore mailing list and loving it; want to make more of that" -status: been thinking a lot about this one. i've been putting feelers out about some sort of alternative distribution project, and that may go in some interesting directions. very exciting. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CinciLocavore/
bison: -goal: "visit a bison farm and maybe get some bison meat; bison are so awesome" -status: need to find a boring weekend to go out and visit some bison. put it on the calendar. http://www.vistagrandranch.com/
farmers' markets: -goal: "visit these more regularly despite not being very close to one" -status: fail. only visited one market one time this year (at pea pod cafe). i will definitely try and visit more often when the move up the street to the "green corner". http://www.greencornercincinnati.org/
recycling paper: -goal: "found some super-easy instructions on how to do this online; want to try it" -status: i got a used paper shredder from goodwill. i either need to get a used blender to do this with, or just go ahead and use my main blender. http://flickr.com/photos/bzedan/sets/967347/
crafting/remaking: -goal: "i am working on turning a busted ikea hamper into a folding table; needs more work" -status: my ikea hamer -> folding table is falling apart. needs some love.
knitting/weaving: -goal: "i'm fascinated by weaving and would love to give it a try in some spare time" -status: fail. haven't even thought about weaving since writing this list.
composting: -goal: "tried collecting kitchen scraps but it doesn't work too well if you don't have an outside compost place to take them" -status: have re-started my kitchen scraps composting. need to build an outdoor compost bin to transfer the scraps to or possibly venture into vermicomposting. http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/SOIL_FACTORY/SOIL.html
rapid prototyping: -goal: "i want to try getting something made from ponoko or similar (also maybe papekura); i'm a big fan of everything bre pettis does" -status: fail. gotta find a neat design to have made. even something pointless. just to do it. http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/http://www.ponoko.com/
Making online stuff:
hereincincinnati blog: -goal: "update the blog more frequently and let people know it exists" -status: updated the blog a few more times. changed the layout on my blogs so they prominently link to one another. gonna blog about some of these ideas over there maybe. http://hereincincinnati.blogspot.com/
hereincincinnati wiki: -goal: "keep it up-to-date and use the articles in blog posts; maybe reach out to others to help contribute" -status: been adding, but it's hard to find enough time. been mentioning the wiki in conversations, blog posts. traffic is going up; edits by other people, not so much. http://wiki.hereincincinnati.net/index.php?title=Main_Page
virtual vine st.: -goal: "tried it with omeka, wasn't really that great; maybe try another cms or roll my own. also, may need to get approval from CMP" -status: fail. haven't touched this project. still need to find right way of building the site. needs research. i have not enough time. http://vine.hereincincinnati.net/
diycity: -goal: "started a local "chapter"; need to find others to join in with me; do projects on something other than transit" -status: win. :) got involved and participated in conversaitons. rolled out twitter bot traffic_cincy. looking forward to more projects here. http://diycity.org/wiki/index.php?title=DIYcity_Cincinnati
cincymicrocosm: -goal: "blog needs love; find ideas, blog them." -status: made an attempt to write a stimulus-in-cincinnati post, but it was a bit weak. blog's concept is still viable. http://cincymicrocosm.blogspot.com/
citycouncil2rss: -goal: "i'd like to streamify the city council agendas and other stuff they do; needs a weekend of planning and doing; also maybe a team to help" -status: some progress has been made. a real rss feed is emitted. minutes have a cool contextual link feature that makes use of the wiki. http://hereincincinnati.net/citycouncil/minutes.php
wikipedia photo hunt: -goal: "got started with the project, but ran into hangups; need to kick it up a notch or let it die" -status: fail. haven't touched this project in a while. BUT, win because i got really involved with wikipedia loves art project. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Loves_Art
cincinnatiparking.info: -goal: "figure out a way to get the data into the site "fresh" and automatic" -status: fail. haven't touched this project either. next action still somewhat uncertain. http://www.cincinnatiparking.info/
local currency - found an awesome open source project that allows people to create an online complementary currency. http://www.opensourcecurrency.org/ need to explore the possibilities there.
Not Too Shabby
I was actually a little bit surprised how many things I actually worked on considering how many things I normally do when I make lists like this. I have made a conscious effort this year to say "yes" to projects more often. And I've also tried not to spend as much time as I used to "keeping up-to-date" on things, and instead going out and doing new things. I've got buckets of ideas of things I could work on and they will never get anywhere unless I go out and start trying stuff.
If I think of it, maybe I'll update again in another two months.
"The Food Congress aims to gather delegates from Southwest Ohio, Northern Kentucky, and Southeastern Indiana concerned with local land use, public policy, health, environment, and economic development as they relate to food production, distribution, and consumption. The general objectives of the Food Congress are to foster a culture of collaboration between urban and rural stakeholders concerning local food systems in the Cincinnati area."
When Saturday, March 14, 2009 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EST
Where Community Design Center 2728 Vine St Cincinnati, Ohio United States-45219 (map)
The Food Congress is a day-long event aimed at developing a shared vision for the future of the tri-state's local food system. The Food Congress will bring together urban and rural stakeholders from non-profits, citizen groups, governments and businesses to identify opportunities for food system development, share best practices, and set goals for the local food economy.
Right now there are farmers markets, and CSA's. And there is what some people refer to as RSA - Restaurant Supported Agriculture. In Cincinnati we have many farmers' markets and CSA's. I know there are some restaurants out there that have relationships with local farms too. It seems to me that there are many, many producers of local food as well as many, many different consumers of local food that can be matched up to each other in creative ways.
I'm imagining that there may be room for other forms of distribution to be tried. I found a number of exciting projects around the web that don't seem to have any local equivalent in our area.
Indiana MarketMaker MarketPlace Buy&Sell Forum:
A project of Purdue University New Ventures Team, Indiana Market Maker is "an interactive mapping system that locates businesses and markets of agricultural products in Indiana, providing an important link between producers and consumers." In addition to being a large database of business and demographic data for the state of Indiana, there is an area of the site that lets buyers and sellers find each other directly. The Buy & Sell Forum lets sellers (all across the country) list goods and services that are available. Buyers can also list requests for items they are looking for. The listings can then be browsed by buyers searching for products in their local area or sellers looking to sell to locally. In addition to produce and other farm products, listings can be created for value-add services or transportation services.
Fresh Fork Market
Fresh Fork Market in the Cleveland area is an organization that provides a supply chain solution that matches up the needs of restaurants that would like to buy locally produced food with those of local farmers. In this system farmers set their own prices and restaurants can search through the listings by farm or by product category. Fresh Fork also gives farmers the opportunity to detail their growing practices so that restaurants can be choosy. Fresh Fork delivers products twice a week and requires a 2-day lead-time for all orders. Since products are delivered straight from farm to buyer and never stored, the produce is always delivered within 24 hours of harvest. Over 20 restaurants and over 50 suppliers have joined Fresh Fork.
City Fresh
City Fresh is a nonprofit program of the New Agrarian Center a 501(c)3 organization focused on growing a sustainable local food system in Northeast Ohio. "The City Fresh program impacts the local food system through the development of neighborhood food centers called Fresh Stops, nutrition education, facilitation of garden installations in urban areas, the cultivation of direct farm to business connections, and the City Fresh Youth program." City Fresh guides a network of urban farms, educating people about food production and business in the process. City Fresh also operates a series of "Fresh Stops" that act like traditional CSA pickup points but they are different in that they allow buyers to purchase on a week-by-week basis. City Fresh has a network of around 22 supppliers. I really, really like this chart of how food flows through City Fresh (inspiring!):
Farm Fresh To You
Farm Fresh to You is a set of services in San Francisco based around the distribution of food from their farm Capay Fruits & Vegetables. Amazingly, they offer their products via home delivery, office delivery, restaurant delivery, wholesale, farmers markets, and a retail store.
Door To Door Organics
Door To Door Organics is a direct-to- home, office, and co-op delivery service that offers variously sized subscriptions in several markets in mid-west / east coast. The service allows subscribers to select a box size and a few vegetable/fruit types when ordering, rather than setting up individual relationships between each buyer and supplier. The products are not all produced local to the buyers, but they are organic certified.
http://www.doortodoororganics.com/
Sprouts Box
Sprouts is a student-run organization at the University of British Columbia. They've started a basic CSA that they're calling the Sprouts Box. I include it here because of the unique distribution method. They've teamed up with a local bike co-op to have all the weekly deliveries carries out by bicycle. Nifty!
Where to go from here?
I'd be interested in any efforts similar to the ones that I've mentioned going on in the Cincinnati area. I really think there is an opportunity for some sort of service to spring up, whether it be a website for locals to buy and sell or some sort of supply chain solution. My guess is that there may be other novel ideas out there for better connecting locally produced food to local eaters. Comment here or join the discussion at the CinciLocavore mailing list if you have any thoughts on the subject.
UPDATE: I've posted again on this topic with some more ideas here.
I'm going to plan on being at the Taft Museum for the Wikipedia Loves Art event / contest on this coming Sunday the 22nd from 11-12. I'm hoping I'll get a chance to meet up with other Wikipedians, photographers, and art lovers. Although this is a way to hopefully encourage participation in that project, I hope other Wikipedians will feel free to come and chat. It is not necessary to pay admission to come into the cafe portion of the Taft. Please stop by and see me!
I started this post with the intention of finding some facts on whether or not a streetcar would be a waste of money compared to investments in highways. Even though I believe streetcars are a good investment for more than one reason, I wanted to address the congestion question directly, since it is seemingly the easiest question to get data on. (We shall see that I was in part wrong about this.)
About adding lanes
Scientific studies have shown that adding new lanes to highways does not necessarily reduce congestion; instead, adding lanes often makes congestion worse. This is often referred to as "Induced Travel".
One way to think about this is to think to think of highways lanes as something similar to what economist call a "free good". What this means is that people will use up as much of the resource as there is. If more of the resource is added, people will just use that up as well. One way to change model is congestion pricing which makes the resource no longer "free".
If you turn to page 30 (page 36 of the PDF), you'll see OKI's evaluation of many strategies for reducing congestion including congestion pricing, rail transit, and additional lanes. If you look at table 10-1 (page 39 of the PDF) you'll see an analysis of which strategies could be used at which locations across the county. You'll see that on I-75, both rail-transit and additional lanes are give black squares which indicates high-cost/high-impact. (I don't see any way of knowing what ranges of costs are represented by the shapes. Perhaps a $100 million streetcar and a $800 million highway project are both squares.) There are also a number of X's which I'm not exactly sure how to interpret. I'm guessing either the analysis wasn't done there, or that strategy is infeasible for that location. If you turn a few more pages, you'll see that I-75 widening to four lanes in both directions is listed as an underway project.
I tried browsing through here for more info on what OKI has published relating to the streetcar, but couldn't find anything showing it's estimated effect on highway congestion (or any road congestion at all). Mostly I'm finding cost esitmates and ridership estimates.
There are some up-to-date presentations on the city's website here but there isn't a whole lot on the congestion question there either. Again these focus more on cost and ridership. One study showed impacts on local traffic, that is to say traffic on the sames streets as the streetcar runs; but they didn't mention impacts on regional traffic.
Conclusion
I'm guessing that the reason that the question I originally set out to answer hasn't been answered is that the effect of a streetcar on highway congestion is probably pretty small. The number of people that forego a car trip on the highway to ride a streetcar instead are probably small to non-existent. Travel between areas served by a streetcar is probably already accomplished without using highways.
Thus, I've come to the conclusion that at least in terms of their effects on congestion comparing highway investments with streetcar investments is probably like comparing apples to oranges.
I have recently starting getting into the exciting world of brewing my own root beer and I'm loving it. Over the past few months I've been learning about sourdoughs (which may lead to a separate post sometime), and that led me to learn about other fermented foods. Two things have really inspired me to start trying things on my own at home that I never would have thought I could do.
The first is an incredible website belonging to Professor David B. Fankhauser. The second is a book called Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz.
Dr. Fankhauser's Cheese Page is one of the best sites out there covering the basics of home cheesemaking. (And he's local!) I haven't tried any cheeses yet, but as I was browsing through the site, I saw the root beer recipe and knew that I had to try it right away. It's really easy, and I think the results are pretty tasty. The root beer does have a beery / yeasty flavor to it that I don't mind, but my girlfriend is not a big fan. This brew is definitely not like the liquid candy that you would buy at the grocery store. Here's the basic recipe (but definitely check out Fankhauser's page for the full details):
1 cup sugar, 1/4 tsp. yeast, 1 tbsp. root beer extract, 2 liters water. Leave out on the counter for 3 - 4 days; put into fridge overnight.
That's it!
I also tried the ginger ale and cream soda recipes on the site and I came up with somewhat less drinkable sodas. The root beer extract is a really powerful flavor and I think it matches up a little better with the beery flavor, whereas the lighter flavors of the ginger ale and cream soda are more easily over-powered. I plan on trying again with some champagne yeast I got from The Party Source. The first time around I just used regular old baking yeast from the grocery.
In my most recent batch of root beer I made a minor modification in an attempt to make it at least a little bit less bad for me (since I've started drinking the stuff all the time). I substituted some of the sugar with a sweetener called agave nectar. The main advantage of agave is that it has a lower glycemic index. I substituted half of the sugar (1/2 cup) with agave. Most everything I could find said to reduce the volume of agave when substituting it for sugar since agave is supposed to be sweeter so I used 1/3 cup in place of the 1/2 cup sugar. After I mixed it up I started reading more about agave and I found out that this is the same plant that is fermented to make tequila -- I was starting to worry that I was making tequila flavored root beer! But no worries, it tastes just fine. Another way to have approached it would have been to try brewing the root beer with less sugar and then adding in the agave after. There is a limit to how low you can go with the sugar because that's the food for the yeast, and I don't know what the limit is yet.
I haven't made any sodas with the champagne yeast yet, but if it turns out well I've got all kinds of crazy ideas for sodas I could make. I've started the search for unusual flavoring oils and started researching other beverage recipes. :) I can't wait to do more experimenting!
Wikipedia Loves Art is a scavenger hunt and free content photography contest among museums and cultural institutions worldwide, and aimed at illustrating Wikipedia articles. The event is planned to run for the whole month of February 2009.
The Taft Museum of Art in downtown Cincinnati is one of many museums particpating all across the country.
To join in the fun:
1. Find the goal list for the museum(s) you plan to visit. The goal list for the Taft can be found here.
2. Photograph as many things on the list as you can (make sure you're allowed to) and upload your photos to the Wikipedia Loves Art photo pool on Flickr.
3. Museum staff will award points and choose the best photos to be uploaded to Wikipedia to help illustrate articles on the site.
The prize being offered by the Taft is museum membership for each member of the winning team!
I was inspired by the DIYcity challenge #1, but (selfishly) since I don't drive very much, I wasn't inspired enough to work directly on the TrafficTweet concept.
But in the introduction to the challenge they mention a twitter bot called shakeshack. The shakeshack bot has a very simple purpose in life and that is to retweet reports on how long the line is at a restaurant called the Shake Shack in NYC. This is useful for fans of that restaurant who want to know if it's worth stopping by. If the line is too long (since it is a popular joint) they can avoid it, and if the line is short, then they can make the trip. People who are interested in the info just follow shakeshack. People who are at shakeshack can tweet @ messages to it, and it will rewtweet their messages automatically to the rest.
So, today I had lunch at Chipotle on Fountain Square and I was thinking about how I could really use a similar service for knowing whether or not to walk all the way down there. Fountain Square Chipotle tends to have a pretty long line usually, but sometimes it's short, and on those days, I would want to visit.
So, I found this site called twittbot.com that lets you create a basic retweeting bot like the shakeshack bot and I made an account called fschipotlebot. (Maybe I should have gone with fschipotle. Oh well.) So, if you send an @ message to the bot, it will retweet it to its followers. Any information on line length, etc, is the goal here. Like today I would have tweeted "@fschipotlebot line is almost to the second doors. Looks like maybe a new employee in the burrito-construction team."
Anyway, if it gets used, that will be awesome, so check it out. Using the twittbot.com service was dead-simple (it took me about 30 minutes) and is all this bot really needed. In the future, I'd like to move onto making more complicated bots, that I will probably have to script and run on my own hosting. Let me know if you have any thoughts on other useful twitter bots!
If you're not using Firefox 3 and Ubiquity, this post may not be all that useful to you, but go check them out and then come back here and this might make more sense.
If you are using Ubiquity, you may have noticed that a nice feature is that you can create your own commands from right within the browser. There is a nice tutorial on how to get started on this on the Mozilla site.
The absolute easiest way to create a new Ubiquity command is to make a command from an existing bookmarklet. There is a video here that explains this. Basically, you just copy and paste some code snippets and bam, there's your nifty new command.
Commands I've made using this method are:
The 'page2rss' command:
CmdUtils.makeBookmarkletCommand({ name: "Add to Page2RSS", url:"javascript:location.href='http://page2rss.com?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href);" });
I've gotten so used to clicking the RSS icon in Firefox to subscribe to sites I like, that when I come to a site with no RSS feed I feel really frustrated. So I use this bookmarklet/command that sends the page through page2rss.com which in turn monitors the page for changes and creates a feed for it. Then I subscribe. :)
This last one is one that I actually "wrote". I gradually figured out how the commands are normally written, and made this one mostly from scratch. It let's you type in a song name and it returns a list of songs from the tinysong.com service. I find it extremely useful when I want to hear a particular song. This makes it really easy to go from thinking about a song directly to listening to that song. Much less cumbersome than opening a new tab, browsing to the site, and typing it in there. The command could use a few improvements, but I'm still pretty happy with it.
CmdUtils.CreateCommand({ name: "tinysong", takes: {"song to find": noun_arb_text}, preview: function( pblock, songToFind ) { pblock.innerHTML = "song results..."; var baseUrl = 'http://tinysong.com/?'; var params = {s: songToFind.text, limit: 5 }; jQuery.get( baseUrl, params, function ( response ){ var results = eval( '(' + response + ')' ); pblock.innerHTML = results.Custom; } ); }, execute: function( songToFind ) { var doc = Application.activeWindow.activeTab.document; var url_dest = 'http://tinysong.com/?s='+songToFind.text+'&limit=10'; Application.activeWindow.open(Utils.url(url_dest)); } });
It should be possible to copy and paste these directly into your Ubiquity command editor and they should work right away. Let me know if you try them out.
Here's how I wrangle mp3s and podcasts on a day-to-day basis.
First, if I'm reading a page that has a link to some mp3's and I just want to listen to them, but I'm not sure if I really want to download them, I use something called the 'easylistener' bookmarklet. Here is the bookmarklet itself:
Drag that link into your bookmarks in your browser and then when you're looking at a page that links to mp3 files, all you have to do is click it and a new window will open with an instance of the easylistener player playing the files. Super easy and super useful. Note that the easylistener will also take the url of an RSS feed of a podcast and play it, so it's useful for when you find a podcast and you want to decided whether or not to subscribe to it.
Next, if I really like something I download it for keeps, but if I want to share it with other people I use this great site called HuffDuffer.com. This site let's you build your own podcast of sorts out of mp3 files all across the web. You can manually submit the entries, but the thing I really, really like is the bookmarklet they made. Like with the easylistener bookmarklet, you just click this bookmark when you're looking at a page that links to an mp3 that you want to submit. The bookmarklet for huffduffer is here (you need to sign up for a huffduffer account to use it):
The bookmarklet detects the mp3 file and some info from the page you're reading and pops up a form to let you fill in a description and tag the entry if you want. Then the mp3 is entered into your queue and becomes part of your feed that can be consumed as a blog, podcast, or even xspf. Huffduffer is really smart with tags and such too, so you can get a feed of anything tagged 'music', or 'cincinnati' for example. See the about page for more on this. On huffduffer, I'm dmenninger.
I was really inspired by this DIYcity concept when I first heard about it.
Twitter bots, aggregators, social software, mobile apps - we use these things more and more in our daily routines to make our lives better. But can we also use them to remake our cities altogether? How can these technologies be applied to transform urban spaces, changing them from the centralized, hard-coded things they are today into finely-tuned, fluid, user-operated systems that are efficient, sustainable and fit for life in the 21st century?
DIYcity is a place where people figure these things out by actually building and launching applications that address the problems around them.
I joined the site right away and started a page for Cincinnati. Still looking for other Cincinnatians to join.
One of the ideas on DIYcity is periodic "challenges" that people all over try and meet to solve some problem or create some tool to help people in a given city. The first challenge was to "build a Twitter bot that helps users avoid traffic and get where they're going faster." The second was "Conceive of a grassroots ridesharing system that can overcome the problems inherent in ridesharing and achieve critical mass." Both of those were oriented around transit, but future challenges may be oriented around other ideas.
There was a meetup last week of the New York and San Francisco groups, and they brainstormed a lot of ideas about both their particular cities and DIYcity in general. Some notes from these meetings are on the DIYcity Wiki. There is also a Google Group.
Some of the ideas will apply here in Cincinnati and others won't. For example, we don't have a subway system. Some of the ideas I'm motivated to work on would include: bus tracking, bike-sharing, bike-route mapping, place-based tool-sharing libraries, block parties, building histories, "what's open around here?", providing API's to government data, "who are my representatives?", "what is city council doing right now?", web-based 311, Electronics recycling, After-hours energy use in offices, wifi coverage, parking availability....
That's a long list, and some of the ideas are easier to do than others. I have some ideas on how to accomplish some of them quickly and others are more complex. I know that there are some things out there that I can accomplish by myself, so I'm going to start formalizing some project ideas and giving myself deadlines. I'll keep you informed on any progress I make. I'd love to have some help. Even just having some conversations with other people on this topic would be really valuable.
If you're at all interested in any of this stuff please let me know. Comment here, hit me up on twitter, or go to the DIYcity site and join in.
Basically, I think I'd like to reorient myself more towards doing stuff on a daily basis rather than just reading about stuff. I guess this could be something like a set of New Year's Resolutions. I'm putting this out here for two reasons. One is that if I say in public that I'm going to work on these things, then maybe I'll have some more motivation to actually do them. Second reason is that I'm sort of crying out for help. A lot of these projects would go better if I had someone else to work on them with or at least talk about them with. So here goes...
There are two basic tracks here and there is some overlap between the two. The first is the "offline" realm and the second is the "online" realm.
Making stuff: cooking - been trying to really cook at least one real meal (not pizza rolls) every week bread - been keeping one sourdough alive, want to start another one (or two) beer - made beer once, want to try it again cheese - not huge into dairy, but find cheese-making to be as fascinating as bread and beer making gardening - want to get my hydroponics rig going again and also start a real outside garden if someone will let me use their land local food - been a member of the cincilocavore mailing list and loving it; want to make more of that bison - visit a bison farm and maybe get some bison meat; bison are so awesome CSA - maybe join a CSA (or herdshare) farmers' markets - visit these more regularly despite not being very close to one recycling paper - found some super-easy instructions on how to do this online; want to try it crafting/remaking - i am working on turning a busted ikea hamper into a folding table; needs more work knitting/weaving - i'm fascinated by weaving and would love to give it a try in some spare time composting - tried collecting kitchen scraps but it doesn't work too well if you don't have an outside compost place to take them rapid prototyping - i want to try getting something made from ponoko or similar (also maybe papekura); i'm a big fan of everything bre pettis does
Making online stuff: hereincincinnati blog - update the blog more frequently and let people know it exists hereincincinnati wiki - keep it up-to-date and use the articles in blog posts; maybe reach out to others to help contribute virtual vine st. - tried it with omeka, wasn't really that great; maybe try another cms or roll my own. also, may need to get approval from CMP diycity - started a local "chapter"; need to find others to join in with me; do projects on something other than transit cincymicrocosm - blog needs love; find ideas, blog them. citycouncil2rss - i'd like to streamify the city council agendas and other stuff they do; needs a weekend of planning and doing; also maybe a team to help wikipedia photo hunt - got started with the project, but ran into hangups; need to kick it up a notch or let it die cincinnatiparking.info - figure out a way to get the data into the site "fresh" and automatic
I plan to write a post about each of the things on this list to flesh it out more. For now this is just a starting point and a public reminder to myself that I do have interesting problems to work on.
It's been reported today that Greg Harris has been selected to replace the seat vacated by John Cranley on City Council last week. The talk is that this will give him a significant advantage in November running as an incumbent. If I'm not mistaken Cranley himself was placed on council by a similar maneuver. He was appointed to fill Todd Portune's vacated seat in December of 2000. This process seems to work fairly well then for keeping the people the party wants in power. Honestly this rubs me the wrong way, despite the fact that I don't really have any other beef with Cranley or Harris.
I'm curious about how the committee positions are re-filled. I'm guessing Harris doesn't just take all of Cranely's spots. Cranley was Chair of the Finance Committe and was also on the Economic Development Committee, Law and Public Safety Commitee, and the Transportation & Infrastructure Sub-Committee. Does Harris have to start from scratch and wait to be appointed to a few committees? Anyone know which ones he's likely to join?
It seems like every 6 months or so is a good time to update my sidebar. I've added a ton of local blogs to my reading list in recent months, so the blogroll has expanded quite a bit. In case you're reading this in a feed reader, here is what it looks like now:
This year I've come across more video online than I remember seeing in years past for both candidates and issues in the upcoming election.
CET has a page set up with several videos: CET Election 2008. They have a District 2 Candidate Forum as well as special reports on Issues 5, 6, and 8 - Payday Lending, Casino, and Proportional Representation.
City Council Race 2009 - Follow It On Twitter!
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Five of our nine City Council Members are currently on Twitter. In
addition, seven out of the twelve challengers are on Twitter too. As the
election gets c...
What are we going to do with that Stimulus?
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I thought the topic of the stimulus would make a good post on this blog
since Cincinnati seems to be host to a microcosm of the conversations that
are happ...
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