Small Streams

Taking It in the Shins

I know it could be worse, but I do have a complaint about the remodeled Giant Eagle store. I have a couple actually. Calling the thing a "Market District" is a problem. Having to walk a half a mile to get a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread is a problem. But the real problem are those carts with the cupholders. I don't have a problem with the cupholders, but if you're pushing the cart along and happen to take a longer than usual stride, WHACK, you get hit right in the shins.

I'm wondering if I'm the only one in the world that this happens to. I'm currently reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, and finding out how certain civilizations evolved due to their environment. It makes me imagine that in a few generations there will be a short-strided people that takes over the planet, and a less advanced people who must shop in convenience stores or spend all their time piling all their groceries on their head.

Connecting the Dots to a T

Joe Grata writes in the P-G that estimates for the North Shore Connector continue to rise but PAT and others still want to go ahead with spending nearly half a billion dollars to build a tunnel under the Allegheny for train service to the Pirates and Steelers games.

But Allegheny County will get some help paying for it.

The final cost breakdown for the $435 million total project showed $348 million from the federal government, $72.5 million from the state and $14.5 million from the county, paid in installments through 2011, when the 1.2-mile line would be completed and open.

So it just won't be us paying for it. It will be them, also. Just don't forget that we're also them.

Let's hope that the "they" that want the North Shore Connector, PAT, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, favoring politicians, contractors, and developers, know what we'll get. Perhaps it will work out wonderfully. Perhaps we'll get multimodal entertainment and shopping center that alleviates the problems of downtown parking. Perhaps the project will be so successful that we'll get light rail to North Side and North Hills residential areas.

I still have a problem with the tunnel. I hope it's cheaper than a bridge. Driving and riding on bridges and looking at bridges is very Pittsburgh.

Technorati Tags: Pittsburgh, transportation

Don't Do-It-Yourself

In any venture, one makes choices whether to build or buy. Is it worth the time or effort to do it yourself? Do you have the money to pay someone else to do it?

Fortunately, with GoogleMaps there are a lot of third party participants with another option -- get it for free. Google Map Maker and Platial have been mentioned. Pitt researcher Chris Briem suggested QuikMaps, which I've found is a little lighter on its feet than the other two.

I haven't figured out how to make an InfoWindow, or to add photos, or how to plug in geocodes (if that's possible). But as for quick, it lives up to its name. I wonder if anybody out there has created a matrix comparing different mapping software. Sounds like hard work to me -- but if someone else has done it, I'd love to see it.

By the way, Pittsburgh Mappers are also blessed with MapHub.

XML Formatting with Spreadsheet

I've been using spreadsheets for twenty years. Mostly just to add figures. Sometimes to put in a mortgage formula, print out an amortization table. I've always wanted to maybe do some projections, "what if" scenarios. What if the price of sugar went up? Would diabetes go down? With a spreadsheet I suppose you can model it in such a such a way.

But recently I found a tool that made me forget about complex modeling algorithms. Ever since I've found out how to concatenate -- put cells together with a formula -- I don't feel the need to model. I can just put things together. Now instead of adding 1 and 1 to make 2. I can add 1 and 1 and make 11.

It's kind of like having a bonus set of Lincoln Logs or Lego come with your software. As a matter of fact I can imagine sticking various cells of Lego together and being illustrated in another cell.

But that's for someone else to do. Right now, I'd like to illustrate concatenation, and how it can help you format documents into XML.

The formula for the answer two is "=B1+B2" and the formula for the answer 11 is "=C1&C2."

To create a tag, you can come up with a formula that looks something like this:

This method is less useful in practice than it is in theory. You can save xml files with many database programs, or use the programming language php to work your data into shape. Excel in Office 2003 supposedly has a widget that turns a spreadsheet into usable xml, as opposed to older versions of Excel which will save an xml, which creates a bunch of unuseable tag names that you can't rename in Excel.

One way around the problem would be to use a text editor and do a search and replace.

Or to use a script to change the first column to the location tag, the second column to the day tag, the third to the time tag, etc.

Or perhaps bag spreadsheets all together and use a text editor and grep . . .

Or some perl or php . . .

But I like spreadsheets. They can be manipulated. They make the connection between the computer screen and some idea of how you believe things in the world are. I'd like someone to make a 3-D spreadsheet. Big Pillows you stick in a grid that glow when you stick them in correctly.

Technorati Tags: googlemaps maps

InfoLayerGood

With GoogleMaps you can match any number of points on a map with tabbed infowindows. This can be helpful if you've got lots of information to include on one point.

Technorati Tags: googlemaps maps Maphound Pittsburgh

O Brave New World!

That has such gizmos in it.

I spent some time yesterday going through Engadget and Gizmodo. The big news is that the 100 dollar laptop has hit the streets. It's closer to 130 dollars now, but that's nearly a tenth of the going price for a laptop.

I'm beginning to think that in the future everything is going to cost $130. Digital camera, $130. Sound recorder with decent microphone, $130. Video recorder, ditto. Put these things together with an ISP, a domain name, and a host, and you're in business. Actually you don't have to have the ISP you can go anywhere there's free wireless, and there are probably work arounds for the host situation also. In any case you can become a production giant for less than $600.

Another new media happening has been the Yearly Kos meeting that got some play in the mainstream media. You know you've made it when Maureen Dowd needs to snark on you.

But the hardware and personalities in the blog vs. mainstream media conversation sometimes gets in the way of some interesting undercurrents — that is, the growth of repurposed data, the semantic web, Web 2.0, what have you. I've now been reduced to calling it the taggy-feedy thing.

Perhaps old school reporters and editors are less interested in having a hundred comments, a dozen or so backlinks, and thousands of web bots searching, scraping, and syndicating, but it's just what comes with the territory now.

Schenley Plaza

Have already visited Schenley Plaza twice since its opening last weekend. I'm still a little nervous about whether will people will take to it or not. The grass is lush. The food stands have decent hoagies. The carousel is delightful because of the strange statuary rides -- my favorite is the rabbit, the weird, Edwardian rabbit. We also saw Zany Umbrella Circus, fewer acrobatics in the current show, which I didn't miss. The circus has a great grasp of certain unconscious resonances, in this case a kind of gypsy, shtetl, East European-ness that's evocative but doesn't get in the way of the circus-y stuff and the narrative-y stuff.

With continual programming, the Schenley Plaza could attract people. I hope it continues to attract people without programming (or formal programming, that is). My only two criticisms, is that I wish they'd made room for the food vans, and that there should be some places of refuge. Prospect and refuge are two things that people want in a park.

In a previous post, I'd written about my doubts about the park, and one of my main concerns was the need for Pitt to do something about the sterile Forbes Quad area. They've done something, created some greenery, added some tables and chairs. I still am not sure if it's messy enough. There's still a lot that says "Keep off the grass." For instance the metal angles on the planters that keep skateboarders off. Then again, I think those metal angles are an elegant solution to what could be a problem. The changes at Forbes Quad and Schenley Plaza will surely be worth a case study.

Technorati Tags: Schenley Plaza

He Went to Paris

Looking for questions to answers he'll never know.

Anyway, the man we know as Cliff Clavin and the Piggy Bank in Toy Story movies had quite a nice interview with the P-G's Barry Paris.

John Ratzenberger certainly has a way of ingratiating himself with local journalists. He knows the lingo, he knows about Carnegie Mellon's bagpipe program, and he knows the Sheriff.

He also goes on to explain his fascination with the work of Fred Rogers, particularly the segments on making things.

"When people ask me what I really want to do, I say my dream is to take over where Fred Rogers left off," the actor says. "My curiosity is about how things are made. I made sure my kids understood there was a process to making a bow and arrow or building a boat -- everything."

More information about Ratzenberger's tinkering fascination and his book We've Got It Made in America can be found at his website.

Technorati Tags: eutechnics