Here's to Pleasant Surprises

It's been a busy week or two lately. You may have noticed a lack of posting here, but be sure I was busy elsewhere.

Last week at this time I was starting a short midyear conference of the National State's Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), in Annapolis. I'm communications chair for that group and so spend the conference taking notes and developing an on-line, cloud-based repository of conference stuff.

And when I returned to the office, it was to a release of 2010 Census redistricting data for Delaware, which I am working my way through as lead staff (the entire staff, to be honest) of the Delaware Census state Data Center.

So I was looking forward to this weekend; to a nice dinner out with both our girls and to ferrying daughter #1 back north to Villanova after her mid-term break. But old-lady nature threw me a curve and hit me with a fast-moving sinus infection that settled over the roots of my upper left molars for an effect like an un-ending explosion.

I'm on the mend though. And this morning came across a pleasant surprise in my RSS Reader feed (took me a while to get here, didn't it?). Yesterday I added a new blog, that of the proprietor of a new bookstore that has just opened here in Lewes called biblion. reading back through her entries, I found one from a week ago that included, as a one-off gesture to a friend, an embedded performance by
Rodrigo y Gabriela of their guitar duet Tamacun.




I've been a fan of this pair ever since hearing them interviewed on NPR a few years back. They are from Mexico, where they played heavy-metal rock before dropping out of that scene and travelling around Ireland for a time, where they earned their living playing more traditional music. They play a fusion of folk musics with a rock and roll abandon that I quite like.

This tune is on my iPod and gets much use when I'm writing, the rhythms and fast pace seem to help my fingers keep up with  my brain.

Freedom. Exercised.

The news out of Wisconsin this past week has been fascinating for many reasons. It's been interesting to see the tensions of our political, social and economic challenges play out on a normally civil mid-western stage. And the turmoil in the middle east adds a depth that helps us keep it in some perspective.

That it's taking places in Madison adds personal interest. I was there in the fall of 2007 for a national GIS Conference and used the occasion to tour the state capitol. It's a lovely building and was fully open to the public when I visited.



This same spot has been filled with Wisconsin folks lately, exercising their right to speak. Here's a view from this weekend.



I like this.

Success! I Fixed A Google Maps Mistake. Now, For the Next One...

I got word from Google Maps today that they have accepted my correction to the location of the Judy V charter fishing boat. Google had shown it as a business located on the street outside our house, but it's actually based at the Indian River Inlet Marina, south east of here.

We live on Inlet Place, in Lewes. The Indian River Inlet Marina is on Inlet Road, south of Dewey Beach. Unfortunately, the road data that Google Maps has for Delaware doesn't include Inlet Road, so we tend to get identified as the location of things at the Inlet. For a short time, the offices of Delaware Seashore State Park were found (by Google, anyway) at our house. I think I sent a correction on that one as well.

I can't remember when I submitted the Judy V correction, but it's probably been less than a year. Back in April of last year, I gave a presentation on GIS and on-line mapping to a class of the Delaware academy of Lifelong Learning. I used my correction request as an example of what to be careful about with on-line maps.

It's not Google's fault, really. They are an aggregater of other data. They use state, federal or private sector aerial photography for their "satellite" view. They use crowd-sourced information for reviews of businesses and photos of places. And they use publicly available GIS data for roads, cities, waterways and the like. That Inlet Road is not on their maps yet speaks to a failure of what-ever mapping company they are using to provide road data to pick up Inlet Road.

For the record, the Delaware DataMIL, which serves statewide road data for Delaware, does have Inlet Road.

Now that the Judy V's place-marker has been moved, I see that Google identifies our house as the local headquarters of the Coast Guard.

I guess I need to get back into correction-suggestion mode.

This is Molly Lewis. She Made This Song Which I Really Like (For Several Reasons)

Let's start with a few basic facts. I am, and have been for a while, a fan of Stephen Fry. He's a hugely intelligent and terribly interesting writer, actor, director, etc. I first found him when he and his then performing partner Hugh Laurie (who I also really like) put together a TV series of PG Wodehouse stories (I love PG Wodehouse's writing too).

I also like quirky music, idiosyncratic singer-songwriters, and female vocalists. And I like real songs; too much of music these days is just an excuse for elaborate stage shows and dancers. There's nothing wrong with dance, but I like musicians and singers who play and sing songs.

So this evening I found this, by way of MetaFilter. It's by Molly Lewis and is a sung open letter to Stephen Fry, who is gay, proposing a combining of genetic material to improve the human genome.



I understand Mr. Fry heard this when it came out last spring and was charmed. I just think it's cool.

A Walk Around Killens Pond

I spent part of Saturday afternoon walking around Killens Pond. Daughter #2 wanted to spend the day at Lake Forest High school, watching a high school swim meet (which her school won, I think). I decided to use that as an excuse to spend some time at Killens Pond State Park with my camera.



Afterwards, I spent some time at the new Kent County Library, working online via their free wifi (thanks, very much) until it was time to pick up my daughter again.

Is That Mr. Bill?

I'm a huge fan of Craig Ferguson and his Late, Late Show. Recently, as I was watching him do his twitter and e-mails segment, I found myself thinking about Mr. Bill, an early feature of the old Saturday Night Live.

You Have a Right to Free Speech, But Have Responsibility Too

Shirley Sherrod is suing Andrew Breitbart for libel. I think she has a case. Breitbart was served papers during the Conservative Political Action Conference the other day, according to a story on the  conference in the New York Times.

Andrew Breitbart, the owner of several conservative Web sites, was served at the conference on Saturday with a lawsuit filed by Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department employee who lost her job last year over a video that Mr. Brietbart posted at his site biggovernment.com. 

The video was selectively edited so that it appeared Ms. Sherrod was confessing she had discriminated against a farmer because he was white. In the suit, which was filed in Washington on Friday, Ms. Sherrod says the video has damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work. 

Mr. Breitbart said in a statement that he “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech.”

Everyone has a right to free speech, but we also have a responsibility to speak truth. Libel is libel. It may certainly be spoken and you may certainly be sued for it.

The Waves of Justice are Ridden Slowly?

Former Rehoboth Beach lifeguard Michael Scanlon was back in the news this week. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison on Friday for conspiracy in a hideously complicated case tied to the Jack Abramoff bribery and corruption scandal.

Scanlon had pleaded guilty back in November of 2005. I remember being struck by the local paper's headline, "Rehoboth Beach lifeguard pleads guilty to conspiracy." I thought it a sample of how a local newspaper -- all local media, really -- tried to keep a local focus on the news. I was a little charmed, if also scandalized, by the idea of a jet-setting lifeguard.

November 2005 seems a generation ago. Back then we were deep in the mire that was the Bush administration. The Abramoff scandal was the tip of an iceberg that only agonizingly slowly knocked some sense of how bad things had gotten into the public's mind.

It turns out that Scanlon has spent his time since then living up to the terms of a plea agreement that has seen him help bring the slow, but certain, tides of justice to bear on a collection of corrupt bastards. I guess it takes time.

Harsh. Based on Reality. But Ultimately Wrong

The excellent Letters of Note blog today has posted a late 1967 letter from a record company executive to one of the managers of the Grateful Dead, scolding the band for their unprofessional behavior in the studio during the making of the album Anthem of the Sun.

I think it is funny as hell to read this now. Here are some bits:

...the most unreasonable project with which we have ever involved ourselves.

It's apparent that nobody in your organization has enough influence over Phil Lesh to evoke anything resembling normal behavior. 

With their attitudes and their inability to take care of business when it's time to do so would lead us to believe that they never will be truly important.

The Dead were certainly weird in those days. Anthem of the Sun is one of their more out-there and experimental efforts. But it has some gems, including attempts to capture their astonishing jamming of that period on pieces such as The Other One (cf. 1968 version and 1989 version).

It's not surprising that music industry folks thought they would fade away. Looking back over the long history of the band (they continued until the death of Jerry Garcia in 1995), it's clear that the Grateful Dead were never going to fit comfortably in the music industry. They didn't make product, they created an atmosphere in which music could come into being. Sometimes it was pretty lame, but mostly is was fabulous.

Letters of Note adds that the producer referred to in the letter eventually quit the project; "apparently the final straw was a request by guitarist Bob Weir to create the illusion of 'thick air' in the recording studio." I remember reading or hearing about this -- I think in Phil Lesh's memoir Searching for the Sound  -- as an example of Bob Weir's inventiveness. Lesh says, if I remember who said this, that what Bobby was really going for was the sort of compression that is now a standard tool in all recording studios. It didn't exist in 1967. They hadn't invented it yet. But Weir knew it was needed.

A Winter Walk on the Beach

We had sunshine and blue skies today, so I took advantage of the change in the weather to walk the beach and the boardwalk in Rehoboth Beach this morning.

I was out early, but the tents and signs and flags were already going up for the Polar Bear Plunge to take place in the afternoon. By the time I was done and headed out of town, the town was filling up with plungers and their friends. But I still got some quiet alone-ish time on the beach.

Columnist Slams Redskins Owner and I Cannot Disagree With Him

I am a Redskins fan. I have been since the 1972 season, when I was 10 years old and first learning about the game of football. It should be no surprise to football fans that I am not happy with the current ownership of my team. And neither is Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten.

In his column, Memo to Dan Snyder: Thank you for your stewardship of the Redskins, Weingarten starts with the fact that Redskins owner dan Snyder has been trying to get a reporter fired for having written an unflattering article.

I just want you to know you have my full support in this matter, as I support everything you have done during your stewardship of the Redskins. You rock. I wish you good health and long life and hope you run the franchise for many, many years to come. I say this with utmost sincerity as a lifelong fan of the New York Giants.

I know you are taking some criticism today from carping media types. They seem to think that you are not only behaving like a petty, vindictive bully but also that you are being strategically stupid - by bringing a vast new audience to a three-month-old, otherwise-obscure alternative-media piece, which can be found here.

I cannot disagree with what Weingarten has written. Except that thing about the Giants. Don't much like them.

A Lightning Trip to Wilkes-Barre

Karen and I made a fast trip to Wilkes-Barre with our eldest this weekend. We'd planned it a while back around a hockey game our daughter's boyfriend would play there. His game was cancelled, but we made the trip anyway, giving the two of them a chance to see each other and us a chance to spend time with them as well. And Wilkes-Barre is a place we had not yet seen.

Daughter #1 is a freshman at Villanova and her young man is at a prep school in Kingston, PA, across the river from Wilkes-Barre. He's a talented hockey player, and a good kid. We missed the opportunity to watch him play, but took the pair of them out for excellent steaks at the Ruth's Chris Steakhouse that is part of the new Mohegan Sun Casino at Pocono just outside Wilkes-Barre.

And we had a bit of a walk-around in Wilkes-Barre in a gentle, pretty snowfall. We were surprised by what we thought was a grand-looking mosque, but turned out to be the Irem Temple, designed in the "moorish" style more than 100 years ago as an auditorium for the local masonic lodge. It has a wonderfully-decorated front door, but appears to be deteriorating badly.

Word Clouds From the State of the Union Speech

NPR is playing with some of my favorite on-line tools this evening following President Obama's fine and inspiring State of the Union speech. They've asked folks, via twitter, to respond to a very brief survey asking for three words in reaction to the speech. and they are running the results through the wordle word-cloud creator.

First, here's a quick word cloud of the speech itself.

The NPR 3-word reaction survey used a simple Google Documents form and collected about 4,000 responses in the first half hour after the speech. Clearly, people either tickled by, or annoyed by, the President's salmon joke dominated the resulting word cloud.

I somewhat prefer the preliminary, test version they did with the first few thousand responses. NPR is also creating different word clouds based on different segments of their respondent community.

I Guess "Flat Featureless Former Cornfield Estates" Was Taken

Driving down Delaware Route 30 from Gravel Hill to Millsboro today, I spotted two new subdivisions with nonsense names: Stoney Ridge Estates and Kingston Ridge.

Sussex County Delaware is distinguished by its flatness. We start at sea-level and rise gently to around 40 feet above sea-level. Gravel Hill itself is one of the few places even close to worthy of the name "hill" (other than the landfill). It goes up to about 50 feet above sea-level for very short stretch.

The nearest "ridge" is a two-hour drive to the north, in northern New Castle County.

By the way, "Stoney" Ridge? This is essentially a large sand-spit of a peninsula. One thing we don't have a whole lot of is stones.

I Am Easily Amused

I spent a bit of time today at work checking out a new on-line data exploration and mapping site from the GIS company ESRI. Community Analyst was announced as part of a federal government GIs conference (I was watching via twitter). It is a promising tool and may be a real success.

But this brief post isn't about substantive things. No, this post is about the silly little things that amuse me.

Community Analyst is in beta testing. The makers are looking for feedback. As a dutiful data freak, I immediately looked for the feedback link and found the first thing to comment on: it is a "feeback" link.

What I wanted most of all at that point was to be the first to have noticed. And I was!

I got a kick out of that.

From the Archives: Punkin' Chunkin'

punkin 3
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

In the old days, Punkin' Chunkin' was a small, homey affair. We used to attend it back when when we were first married; back when they held the thing just north of Lewes at the Eagle Crest Aerodrome.

In those days, the "big guns" were rotary-arm hurlers and giant metal slingshots. None of the compressed-air canons that they use today.

In those days, there were some "special" chunkers. Here, for example, is the famous "illegal mortar" chunker which made a few appearances. And there was a pilot who flew over several times, heaving pumpkins out of the cockpit.

These are photos from an old desk drawer I've started sorting through. I've been scanning a few and adding them to an archives set.

A Quiet Evening at Home

Polly digging the fire
Originally uploaded by mmahaffie

Sometimes, the best thing to do is build a nice fire, load up the crockpot, turn on football and/or an awards show, and settled in with wife, kids and cats for a quiet evening.

"The King's Speech" is as Good as They Say It Is

Karen and I went to see the movie "The King's Speech" this afternoon. It is a really good movie; well written, well acted, and inspiring.

Colin Firth plays Bertie, who eventually became King George VI of England after his brother abdicated. Bertie's problem is having a crippling stutter at a time when public speaking, amplified by the new radio technology, is needed to lead England in World War II.

Geoffrey Rush plays Lionel Logue, an Australia speech therapist living in London, to whom Bertie goes, reluctantly, for help. The movie is the story of their relationship and efforts to fix the stutter.

We were surprised to find the theater stuffed with folks for the matinée. It may very well have been a sell-out, which you don't usually expect on a Saturday afternoon. Having seen the film, though, I guess I know why.

In Which I Shut Down my Tumble Blog

There’s nothing wrong with Tumblr, it is a perfectly good blogging tool. The problem is that my experiement with Tumblr -- What Fell Out -- has negatively affected this blog, my more established web property, which I have been writing since 2004.

I had originally started the tumble blog as a place to put things deemed too small for a formal blog post. But the nature of blogging is changing. Shorter items, photos, qoutes, links to other content are becoming more common and long-form article-writing has waned.

Twitter has emerged as the go-to tool for quick thoughts and links. Facebook is where we place personal notes. I need to go back to more frequent, if shorter, blog posts on my main site.

Time to Reorganize Some Things, I Think

I have personal experience of the byzantine nature of state and county government in Delaware, yet I'm still surprised that not all libraries in Sussex county are part of the same system.

The Sussex Co. government posted a tweet this am:

Due to winter weather, Sussex County's libraries -- Greenwood, Milton and South Coastal (Bethany Beach) -- are closed on Sat., Jan. 8, 2011

I use the Lewes Public library. Is it open today? I doubt it, but wonder why that information isn't included.

Wouldn't it make sense to have one library system so that that tweet could have read:

It's snowing like bastard out there. All the libraries in Sussex County are closed. stay warm, dudes.