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Jessica is now back, safe and sound. Her trip to Poland and the Czech Republic was great, and we have about 2.5 Gigs of digital pictures from the trip. We’ll put up some of them for everyone to see as soon as they’re all white balanced and such.

As for the me, I’m at the end of the first phase of the campaign’s new website construction. We have been hard at work making a website framework that will allow us the kind of flexibility we want to build the tools we need for a new kind of campaign. It will be open source and the project website will be announced at the same time as the new site is launched.

Also, a word on podcasts. I stopped producing them regularly all of a sudden, which I apologize for. I am rethinking the format and will start them up again soon, with more interviews and guests. It is pretty exciting to see our podcast feed in the new Apple iTunes directory, though!

That’s it for now, look for the new site soon.

Scott

I just got back from the Pleasanton Tri-For-Fun Triathalon. It is a 400 yard swim, 11 mile bike and 3.1 mile (5K) run. Wow – for someone who a) hasn’t done a triathalon in probably 8 years, and b) hasn’t swum (swimmed? swam? – probably swam…) 1 yard in several months, I was doing pretty well, I thought.

This is how much thought I put into this race – I got interested around the time Jessica did her lake swim – it seemed like fun. I was actually both a distance swimmer and cross country runner in high school (though that is about the last time I have done either of those distances), and I guess most Triathaletes don’t come from a swim background, which gives me a bit of a lead. Whereas biking is generally easiest for most – I am much stronger in the other two events.

Case in point – I sign up for the Triathalon on Tuesday. Wednesday I realize that I in fact have no bike. I don’t even have a mountain bike. I came to this realization oddly while training on the stationary bike in the gym, and thinking that I can’t actually compete on one of those. So, Friday (yesterday – the day before the actual race), I walk into the Dublin Cyclery Bike Shop, to purchase a bike. Which, by the way – is just a great shop. Everyone was really friendly and helpful and the guy didn’t even look at me oddly when I told him what I needed the bike for. No “perhaps you should have owned a bike before you registered for the race” looks anywhere to be found.

So, for the guy who has now owned a bike (and I don’t mean this bike, I mean a bike…) for less than 24 hours, who figured out how to shift gears last night before he went to bed, I can’t tell you what a thrill it was, and how thoroughly prepared I was for it, when the front tire of my bike went flat about 9 miles into the 11 mile bike leg. Also, how much fun it is to walk a bike back to the finish line. Luckily, I didn’t have to walk all 2-3 miles, since the course was designed so I was at the opposite side of the park and could just cut through it. So, my time doesn’t really count. However, I did end up coming in behind people I had been riding with (as I passed several of them on the run), so if anything, my time is probably a little slower than I might have had (Though, not everyone else had a nice leisurely walk to rest up a bit in the middle). At any rate, it was good fun, good exercise, and a time to beat in the August one. After I learn how to fix a bike.

If the pictures aren’t too embarrassing, I might post some later.

Back to working on the campaign software and materials!

I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. Independence Day was also Jessica’s birthday, but unfortunately you can’t wish her happy birthday right now, as she is on her way to Europe with the Jewish Labor Committee’s Holocaust Teachers Program. In Europe, she will be visiting Poland and the Czech Republic to study with leading Holocaust scholars and visiting the camps. Hopefully she’ll have some time to see a bit of the less sad sides of Warsaw and Prague as well.

From the JLC’s website:

In Poland, we will spend time in Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin, where teachers can still touch history. They can see traces of the former death camps, gas chambers and crematoria. They will visit the Jewish Historic Institute in Warsaw, a worthwhile museum with important archives, Holocaust materials and exhibitions that attract many international scholars and educators. Teachers will listen to prominent historians from Yad Vashem and Lohamei HaGeta’ot, as well as to testimony from survivors still living in Poland.

In the Czech Republic, our group will visit the infamous Theresienstadt concentration camp, where the Nazis brought Jews from many countries. This camp was supposed to be a German “showcase� for the International Red Cross; in reality, it was a camp of suffering, of pain, of death and most of all a transit stop to the gas chambers of Auschwitz for thousands upon thousands of men, women and especially children.

After Prague, we will travel to Washington, D.C., for three days of evaluation, lectures and workshops at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The pattern of telling people about this trip is almost always the same : “What are you doing this summer?” – “I’m going to Europe” – “How much fun, what are you doing there?” – “Visiting the ghettos and death camps of the Holocaust” – ”… oh, um … yay …”

In reality, Jessie has been studying this for quite a while now, and has used it as a case study for her units on human rights and genocide in the 20th century. We both feel that it is very important to teach these subjects meaningfully to her students, and I am very proud of her for being accepted to this program. It has been over 60 years since Auschwitz (one of the camps she will be visiting) was liberated, and there are only so many more years we will have first person witnesses with us.

So, wish Jessica luck and I’ll keep everyone updated on her adventures.

Scott

I have been becoming more and more interested in the opportunities and promise of municipal wireless access lately, and I found out that Ripon has begun deploying a wireless network across the entire city.

From the article, the network would provide :

- real-time monitoring of city wells and pump station data can be collected and sent to public works supervisors and mobile field units;
- government vehicles fitted with the high-speed mesh will benefit from the systems’ built-in position and location capability enabling the deployment of an Automatic Vehicle Location system without the city having to purchase GPS equipment. This will allow dispatchers to task the closest mobile police units to incidents and allow them to keep track of the units during critical incidents and .emergencies;
- allowing remote access to information generated by Geographical Information Systems (GIS) mapping of hazardous material storage areas, utility infrastructure locations and the development of tactical plans for commercial building responses.

The project is being spearheaded by Chief of Police Richard Bull, and will cost about $550k, with possibly $75k awarded from Homeland Security funding. Lockheed Martin will be deploying the Motorola MESH network hardware.

I think this is something we need to see across the whole district. We are starting to chip the tip of an iceberg of opportunity here in letting our government function better and more efficiently. It also provides individuals more information and control in their government and businesses with new models and opportunities.

They see the citywide wireless network as a way to improve efficiency, to allow city workers and police officers to do their work more effectively from the field.

In the future, it is also envisioned to provide VoIP for city departments, hand held PDA access in the field, Fire Department uses, and possibly civic access.

I will write more extensively about the promise of municipal wireless for our district in the near future, but for now Micah at the Rasiej campaign does a pretty good job of providing an overview of that vision.