See me over at SoapBlox/Chicago

I'll try to be posting Edgewater stuff here. But for the moment my efforts are over at SoapBlox/Chicago.

New vendor for voting technology selected.

See Dan Johnson-Weinberger's DJWInfo here

It's Sequoia. See Here their announcement.

Dan says it's good in that it allows Irish-Style ranked balloting for the top two spots. I see if it does more. Stay tuned

Meta-Blogging

Meta-Blogging is blogging about blogging.

99.99% of bloggers are at the mercy of their host when it comes to the design of their blog. Living in that 0.01% is pacified over at jScoop. He (odds are but one often doesn't know when it comes to blogging. He's mentioned a girfriend [could be a Lesbian, of course] and I've seen references to Paul in some of his coding or somewhere).

Lets start that sentence over. He is literally creating his own blog software. Why, you may ask. Ahah, you have just entered the Meta-blog zone.

My biggest grip about Blogger.com, the host of this blog, is that one cannot comment on comments. Nested commenting. If a commenter makes an outrageous statement and is followed by 5 more commenters who are quite sane, you have to make a reference to that offending comment in your comment. But worse so may everybody else in addition who may want to comment on your comment to the comment.

You get the idea.

There is one more major issue in the blog world. It won't happen here at my blog because nobody cares, but it's trolls. Trolls are commenters who are extremely uncivil. The more popular your blog the more they are attracted. Eventually they can drive away the civil commenters who made your blog popular in the first place.

Scoop the software of the so-popular DailyKos (That's my diary page over there) has resolved both of those issues. Comments can have nested comments and comments can be rated. Good ratings can generate "Trusted User" which further give one the power to tag Trolls. If enough Trusted users tag a troll comment it disappears. Trolls hate it when they can't get the attention they crave.

Could jScoop be in my future. We'll see. There are more Meta-Blog issues that come into play. We'll save that discussion for another installment of Meta-Blogging.

Empty storefronts owned by the CTA

At several CTA stops in the Edgewater Neighborhood we have empty storefronts. Often these storefronts have been empty for years. Recently at a Edgewater Glen Association meeting it was suggested that it is red-tape that is holding up our having a better neighborhood and more income for the CTA.

I have just left a comment on Carole Brown's blog to that effect. Carol Brown is a CTA official who has started here own blog.

Carole Brown's Blog is here.

Anyone care to comment?

Rogers Park Montessori Begins New School Construction

Well, it's real when they move heavy equiptment and start pounding stakes with ribbons on them into the ground. This is real groundbreaking as opposed to the official "Ground Breaking" ceremonies.

Wouldn't it be nice if the RPMSschool website would keep it's community updated with pictures. Even cooler would be if they added the architect's plans. And most cool would be a blog-like comments area. As we say in the blog-world: IMHO.

I was going to upload a picture here but I think I would have to pay Blogger to do that. So here's a link to a picture. The happy woman in the picture is RPMS's senior pre-school teacher with 30+ years.

Picture of Rogers Park Montessori School new site at 1800 W Balmoral

Why is LSD 45mph on the Southside but 40mph on the Northside?

It's just bureaucratic indolence but still. For a number of years now we Northsiders have been putting up with the swing speed limits: 40mph Nov through March; 45 April through October.

Do you remember why? Because the salt would be bad for the new planting in the new spiffy medium. Well, lookie now. The southside LSD has a new spiffy medium, with new spiffy plantings. But did it get the 40mph treatment? Appears not.

We have a legitimate complaint here folks.

Voting Machinery Alert

Deadly Earnst has some new information about new voting machinery in the works for Chicago.

What do we want?

1. Paper trails (duh!)
2. Accuracy
3. Capable of Condorcet compliant Instant Runoff Voting.
4. Open source code owned by the city.

The last will likely be the hardest to get. (BTW what does David Orr have to say about the topic. Anyone, anyone, Ferris?)

Time to extend the Lakefront Bike Path is Now.

Sometimes change comes all at once in a big project. Other times it's small steps. The big project answer to Edgewater's traffic problems is the extension of LakeShore drive north. But there are small step improvements that could be done in the short term at anytime.

I will discuss those traffic solutuions at a later date but for the moment let me say that one of those solutions involves pedestrian underpasses along Sheridan road between Hollywood and Devon. The most natural points for those underpasses are at Berger Park at Granville and Thorndale Beach and Parks at Thorndale.

It's especially a natural now that Thorndale has a park on both sides of Sheridan. Which brings me to my real topic of discussion, bike path extension and not the big project, the in the lake version.

Now while the lake is down and the connection between Thorndale beach and Ardmore beach (sorry, I don't go for naming beaches after people) is wide is the time to move some rocks a build a paved extension of the Bike path to Thorndale.

There's another reason. Remember when they had Sheridan torn up for sewer work. Well they changed Thorndale to be both directions between Broadway and Sheridan and they eliminated parking east of Winthrop. That is now the point where the bike path should be leaving the lake to move to Kenmore and Winthrop, not narrow one way Ardmore.

Add the underpass with room for bikes and viola' we have make a significant, even if not the big project, improvement, for both bikers and pedestrians.

Local politics.

Here

Over at DailyKos I castigate myself for not doing enough on the local political scene.

I really don't care for this blogger software and if I were serious I would make a much greater effort at getting somthing else set up. I suggested to Mr Lawrence (sorry his first name eludes me at the moment) over at ECC that they host a scoop site.

The other place that needs a scoop site is the Schakowsky/Osterman/Smith/(Ronen?)/Volini storefront complex south of Bryn Marw on Broadway.

Well we can dream. And some of us can get off our butts. Starting right here I guess.

Here's a local Edgewater neighbor with a blog, who also hangs out at DailyKos:
http://maslovsrag.blogspot.com/