Almost a Windmill

windmill (almost)
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

The University of Delaware's new wind-power windmill is almost complete. This was erected late last week on the edge of the Great Marsh behind the College of Marine Studies campus on the edge of Lewes. It awaits installation of the windmill blades. It's pretty exciting.

Dream Interlude #1: Fire Cat

I had a curious dream last night about a fire cat.

In the dream I was attending some sort of gathering -- conference? wedding? -- at a chalet-style hotel in which there was a very large hearth with a very small, smoldering pile of embers. It was some sort of meal time.

I went to build-up a fire from the embers, adding small bits of kindling and a few larger pieces of split wood. The fire took and started to grow into a nice, comfortable little blaze and I turned back to the meal and my companions.

After a moment though, when I looked at the hearth, I saw the fire shrink down to embers and then to ash. The ash formed itself into the shape of a small gray cat, curled around itself as if for a nap, with just a slight glow of heat at its center.

I tried again, but every time I started a fire, it resolved back into this comfortable, sleeping cat.

I have no idea what, if anything, this means.

Sometimes You Just Get Lucky

A new lunch choice in Dover Delaware
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

I grabbed this photo today at lunchtime and I am very happy with how it came out.

This is the new edition of the Lunchbox, on Loockerman Street, in Dover. It has just reopened under new management.

The sunlight was hitting just right, and I managed to get a shot without cars or people. My cellphone camera gave me an almost painterly look that I really like.

Once I saw the result on-screen, I did a very slight crop and boosted the contrast just a tad while deepening the shadows a bit.

Here's a Sign of Something We Sometimes Do Wrong

There's a story in the news in Delaware this evening about a request that the state regulate who can perform marriages (Officials want list of clergy who can perform weddings). It includes this interesting paragraph:

The state used to keep a list of clergy who were registered to marry people. But when the employee who maintained the list left her state job, no one picked up the task.

That's a typical mistake that we make, and I'm sure it's not just state government. In almost any organization, there are things that get done just because someone started doing them. And they can become integral to the mission of the organization, or important to a partner.

But if they are not made a part of the regular business of the whole organization, there is a risk of failure when that one  person leaves.

If there is something worth doing in an organization, it must be documented and made an official part of a job, not just a person's approach to that job.

Meet Cousin Arthur

Astonishingly, I have found a connection, albeit a very distant and tenuous one, between my family and that of one of my cultural heroes: Arthur Adolph Marx, known professionally and with great affection by millions as "Harpo."

As I'm sure I have mentioned in the past, I use geni.com to manage my genealogical research. Geni allows users to create databases of their family trees and is set up to allow linking of trees that have common members. In that way, family trees grow via crowd-sourced genealogy.

And Geni posts daily featured profiles of popular figures from history or popular culture. Users can check to see if there's any connection between the family trees of those personalities and their own.

This weekend, they posted the profiles of four of the five Marx Brothers. Since I am a huge fan, I clicked-through to check. I was shocked to find a connection.

I discovered that Harpo Marx is my first cousin nine times removed's husband's seventh great niece's husband's ex-wife's ex-husband's ex-wife's ex-husband's ex-wife's sister's ex-husband's brother.

As I said,"very distant and tenuous."

The connection goes back to my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother on my father's side, Wibroe Griggs, who was born in 1593 in Buckinghamshire, in England. Wibroe's  niece, Sarah Pierson, was my first cousin, nine times removed. Sarah's husband's seventh great niece was Frances Seymour, a New York City socialite and the second wife of the movie star Henry Fonda. She was mother, by the way, to Peter and Jane Fonda.

This is where the connection depends on the serial marriages of Hollywood folks. Henry Fonda was also married to the actress Margaret Sullavan (Later married to a Kenneth Wagg) who was also married to the agent and producer Leland Heyward who was also married to the socialite Nancy "Slim" Gross who was also married to the Director Howard Hawks who was also married to the actress Dee Hartford whose sister the actress Eden Hartford was once married to Harpo's brother Groucho Marx.

I realize how absurd this "connection" really is, but I have to say I have always felt an affinity for the Marx brothers.

Looking at Villanova

church at villanova (edited)
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

Last weekend we were in Massachusetts to look at Boston University. This weekend it was Pennsylvania to look at Villanova. Colleen needs to choose between these two for her next four years.

Friday, she had a chance to sit-in on a class and we attended a fascinating presentation on teaching philosophies by a panel of professors. And we ate dinner with three students; we tried to ask them as many questions as we could think of.

Today was a huge "Candidates' Day" with a few thousand potential students and their families wandering around campus. There were more presentations, and discussions, and tours.

This will be a tough choice for Colleen. Both Villanova and Boston University are great schools. We can't decide for her, but we are very proud to see her making the choice.

Looking at BU

Looking at BU
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

We are just back from a lightning trip up to Boston to let Colleen visit Boston University. She's deciding between BU and Villanova; we'll be up on the Main Line next weekend to visit Villanova.

We drove up after work and school on Thursday and spent Friday listening, talking and walking around campus. We had a fine meal Friday night at an oyster bar/restaurant in Kenmore Square -- Eastern Standard. There I found Narragansett Beer which we used to drink when I was at Colby College, in Maine, 30 years ago.

A Delaware Population History

I went all geeky for the Census. Not that that was really a change for me, of course. My default approach is geek-lite, as you well know.

In any case, in the run-up to Census Day (this past Thursday, in case you missed it), I ran a daily series of Census history tweets, reporting facts from each decennial Census and reporting on the counted populations of Delaware and the three Delaware counties.

I also created a Google spreadsheets table of those census counts, adding a decennial Census' results each day. The table above is from that spreadsheet.

A very cool by-product of all of this is a collection of links to scanned copies of the Delaware portions of historic Census publications back to 1790 (the first US Census).

These are fascinating glimpses into the official, and the bureaucratic, history of the nation. What was important? Who was counted, and how?

This exercise has helped me to better understand the joy that historians must feel in digging back into the past through documents and artifacts.

Know Your U.S.A.

I've been tweeting a Census history series lately, reporting on one decennial census each day through census day (April 1). I got to 1940 today and found three promotional films posted on YouTube. They encourage 1940s USians to be counted as a civic and patriotic duty.

Let me recommend the Census Bureau's Through the Decades web site, it makes fascinating reading. I particularly enjoy the scanned historic Census publications they offer.

And I've been posting a decade-by-decade record of state and county Census counts for Delaware. I'm including links to the scanned publications that cover Delaware.

Golf in 2010: Game 1

Plugged
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

With the weather on the warm, it was time to head out and play golf again. Andy and I went to Old Landing Golf Course to play this afternoon.

The course was still quite wet. In some places, any ball descending at all would plug into the ground, limiting bounce and roll.

I didn't play particularly well, though I should bear in mind that it was the first game of the year. I scored a 116.

Thank You, Alex Chilton

Alex Chilton passed away today. His first hit, The Letter, was a perfect pop tune. And his later work has always appealed to me. For some reason, though, this song has always been a favorite.

Sounds of spring

early peepers, late woods
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

Yesterday evening, i did some driving around on small roads north of Georgetown while daughter #2 was at her dance class. I found myself on a winding road through a very wet woodland and listening to many many peeping frogs.

It's one way we know that springs is on the way.

Here's Something I Think You Should Do

Take a moment and go to the FCC's broadband web site and use their broadband testing widget. That will help them build a map of broadband access around the country.

A part of the overall stimulus package is funding to improve Americans' access to the internet via broadband -- to ensure access to rich content, audio, video, and really fast data transfer. To spend that money wisely, the feds need to have a clear picture of where there is strong broadband and where there is not. They need a detailed map of broadband access. They need geospatial data about it.

Think for a moment about the pissing match between ATT and Verizon in those annoying cell-phone commercials. It comes down to dueling versions of maps of  "3G" access. Which one is right? Can we really take ATT's word, or Verizon's word? Not really.

That's why we need independent information on what is the true broadband picture. Where is wired access? Where is wireless?

Many of the states (including Delaware, over at DTI) are working on broadband mapping using federal grants to gather data from providers and work with the public. In support of this, the FCC has created, and this week released, a widget that combines collection of "where" information (the geospatial part) with existing broadband speed testers (the data part).

I heard an announcement of the new widget at this week's mid-year conference of the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), in Annapolis. The new Geospatial Information Officer (GIO) at the FCC is the former GIS coordinator of California, Mike Byrne, long a respected NGSIC member. He announced plans for the widget on Monday and sent word on Thursday that it was live.

I've written different versions of this post on the NSGIC blog and on my State of Delaware GIS coordination blog. But this widget isn't just meant for GIS geeks, it's meant for all of us.

So take a minute or two and test your speed. Help the feds use actual data to spend our money wisely.

Stickers, Stickers, Everywhere

You may have noticed a small red sticker has started turning up in my flickr photo stream lately. You may be wondering, "why?"

Well, here's why.

My friend Learon Dalby works in the Arkansas Geographic Information Office (AGIO). They developed a logo for their office a few years ago and recently had it printed onto stickers that they have started handing out to friends and fans and folks in general.

The logo, and the sticker, of course, include the motto "Putting Arkansas on the Map!" That led Learon to ask whether it might be possible to get Arkansas on the map in some other states too.

Discussion ensued which resulted in my firm stance AGIO could get pictures of the logo taken in all 50 states using various social media outlets and personal connections. I am also hoping to get a few from the territories.

So Learon has been handing out stickers to friends in other states and we are dutifully posing them with landmarks in our states and sharing the photos, and locations, back with Learon.

Expect them to appear on a map sometime soon. We're GIS geeks, this is what we do.

Going... Going...

It's been a month since the Blizzards of 2010 in southern Delaware. Starting on February 5, we had two rounds of heavy snow.

The storms left us shoveling out driveways and piling the snow along the sides.

I piled most of our driveway's snow on the side of the driveway that is usually downwind in our neighborhood. My theory was that that would reduce drifting. It mostly worked. It also meant that we had a large long ridge of snow down one side of the driveway.

It stuck around for a while. This shot is from March 4. Even after a warm-up and lots of rain, there was still a small snow bank.

By this morning (March 6) the end was in sight.

Finally, this afternoon, we saw the very last of the snowbank.

I like snow, but I'm glad to see the last of it for this year. I hope.

OK Go? Go, OK?

This has been all over the web today. It's really very cool. So I thought I'd post it too! OK Go, who did such a cool dance on treadmills a while back, have now topped themselves.

Have We Lost Wordle?

If you've read my efforts here, or on the DGDC News blog, or on the NSGIC News blog, you'll know that I am a fan of Wordle, a lovely little web tool that is used to create word clouds from blocks of text. This morning, I read on TechCrunch that Wordle has run into trademark trouble. Someone already owns the name "wordle" and they want it back.

I use Wordle to creat graphics that illustrate points I'm trying to make. For example, here is a word cloud I made from the abstracts for presentations planned at the 2010 Delaware GIS Conference:

I used this in a series of posts introducing the various presentations. I've also used Wordle-generated word clouds in presentations, in e-mails, and as a representation of my work duties that is posted on my office door.

So, the thought of losing this tool makes me sad. The developer has posted a request for pro-bono legal advice. That's all there is at wordle.net just now. As far as I know, that site was never a money-making proposition.

I hope an accord with the trademark-owner can be reached. Or, at least, that the-site-formerly-known-as-Wordle can come back under a new name.

Update 1: Phil Bradley's comment points to his own post on this (Wordle Closed - alternatives) which includes a list of other word-cloud tools. It's very helpful.

Update 2:  Richard James has let me know that Wordle is back, at least for now. And the TechCrunch post has been updated with a link to a twitter campaign to save wordle.

Lessons in Civics and Satire from Jon and John

Jon Stewart and John Oliver performed a perfect satire of the current Congressional Health Care debate on The Daily Show last night.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Bipartisan Health Care Reform Summit 2010 - Government Unity
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Vancouverage 2010

Another Twitter Conjunction

Every once in a while things line up unexpectedly in my twitter stream. This evening, for example:

Twitterer Liz Purcell was celebrating her joy in watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, a great web-series by Josh Wheedon and starring Neil Patrick Harris. At almost the same time, Harris, who tweets as ActuallyNPH was wondering why he was watching Curling.

That's Cory Groll sandwiched in between. His tweet was a bit more serious.

Welcome to the Blogosphere, Governor Markell

Our Governor here in Delaware, Jack Markell, has just launched his blog. He used the occasion of our recent doubled blizzard and the response and reaction from people within state government.

Last week, he had sent all state employees an e-mail thanking us for our work during the storm (no credit to me, the emergency personnel and the snow-plow folks are my heroes) and asking us for our stories of survival and assistance from or for our neighbors. He sent a follow-up today saying that he'd heard many stories that inspired him. he gave a few samples and then announced his blog.

As he explains in the first posting on his blog, much of what he heard back was about the sung and un-sung heroes among the state workforce.

For that reason, I’m launching my blog today and dedicating it to our very hardworking employees across Delaware.  I’ll be sharing stories from citizens and colleagues about acts of bravery, as well as important issues that affect us all.

I think this is a great thing. The Governor already has a twitter account (@governormarkell) and is perfectly up-front with the fact that he splits the posting duties with a few members of his staff; tweets that end with *B are from Brian Selander and those that end with *F are from Felicia Pullam. Both Brian and Felicia, by the way, maintain their own very interesting and useful twitter accounts.

I will assume that posts on this new blog are probably a team effort as well. That doesn't mean they are any less the thoughts of Governor Markell; it is, after all, his blog. And knowing him just a little, as I am happy to say that I do, I would not be at all surprised if he did a lot of the writing himself.

In any case, this is another source of information from our Governor. That is a good thing.