Archive - Apr 2010
April 26th
Google Maps and Drupal Location
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 04/26/2010 - 10:18One of the things I’ve enjoyed working on recently, has been using Drupal modules for location and Google Maps to present information in a new ways. As an illustration, I’ve set up a page on the Adopt CT First website, to show where there are various shelters and adoption events in Connecticut.
Before I get into the geekiness of how I set this up, let me tell you a little bit about Adopt CT First. The goal of this new group is simple. It is to get people who live in Connecticut and are looking for a new pet to check their local shelters first. By getting more people aware of local shelters, we can hopefully get more dogs adopted, and less killed. We can get more people to make sure their pets are spayed or neutered so the population of the shelters doesn’t continue to grow, and we can encourage others to become more involved with helping at local shelters.
April 25th
Projecting Onto Means of Communications
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 04/25/2010 - 08:37There are no accidents, but sometimes a cigar is a cigar.
I’m on a mailing list that recently has had some communications problems. People have written emails to test if the list is working and have responded in various ways. Others have talked about their feelings when messages are not responded to. I wrote an email to the list sharing some of my reactions to the discussions there and this is a version of that message adopted for my blog.
I've been fascinated by some of the discussions on the list over the past few days and thought I would add another one of my typical, out of left field, responses.
When it comes to text based computer mediated communications, people often comment about the disadvantages that a lack of non-verbal cues presents. On the other hand, some argue that having just text makes it a much richer environment for exploring projections. I've been fascinated by this viewpoint and always enjoy hearing discussions about this. Yet it struck me this week, that there may be projections not only on the words, but on the form of communications itself.
This line of thought started as I wondered why we have these various bursts of "Test" messages. What are they really all about? Are they reflecting some sort of need to stay connected in this world that seems increasingly connected via online communications? Years ago, I would not have expected to hear from people in Austria and Australia. If by some chance, I had established a connection like that, I suspect that a delay in communications of a few days would be less likely to be noticed. Before the days of air mail, a letter would take many days to make it half way around the world. A delay of a few days would be unlikely to be noticed, and I would also suspect that I would have been more likely to expect messages to get lost in transit. I probably wouldn't have sent a letter back saying "test". Now, if we don't hear something we quickly suspect something is amiss and often quickly become frustrated.
I've also found, especially in my younger years, that if someone did not respond to me, I quickly assumed it was because of some flaw of my own. People didn't respond because they didn't like me. Yes, I struggled a lot with my own insecurity when I was younger, and perhaps it comes back to haunt me today. When I send an email to the various mailing list and get no response, I am still perhaps more likely to assume it is because I said something stupid, than to assume it is because there are problems with the mailing list servers, or perhaps even, that it is because other people on the list are really busy with other things. Yes, I want my words to be more important than server problems or other important things going on in my friends’ lives. The same applies to my reactions to no comments on my blog.
As a technologist, I have made mistakes adjusting settings on servers and made it difficult for people to get their messages through. Perhaps these were accidents. Perhaps they were the result of me being too tired, distracted or inattentive to make the correct serve configuration adjustments. Yet at the same time, to the person wondering why they haven't gotten a response to their emails, it may be because of mistakes by me or other technologists and not a reflection of some character flaw of the person sending or receiving the email. The undelivered email might not be an accident, but it might not be a cigar either.
When technology doesn't do what we think it should do, it might not really be telling us anything interesting. However, or responses to problems with technology may be very rich material to explore to learn a little bit about ourselves.
Thoughts?
April 24th
The Crazy Aunt in the Attic
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 04/24/2010 - 19:33Coming up in a few days, there will be there will be a special celebration highlighting Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro’s twenty years in Congress. She was there in 1993, the last time the congress attempted to pass health care reform. She was there for twelve years of Republican control of the house. This year, she was there as Congress passed health care reform. “This is why you go,” she told bloggers this afternoon, “these opportunities are once in a lifetime”.
Yet throughout the whole process there has been a lot of misinformation spread. Rep. DeLauro is addressing this in different ways. This morning, she held office hours at the Woodbridge Library where she spoke one on one with constituents about their concerns. Still, even after health care reform has been signed, some people are more concerned with the process than the substance of the reforms and many people do not yet know what is in the law that affects them.
The office hours in Woodbridge are just a beginning of the effort to get people to understand what has actually been passed. After the office hours, Rep. DeLauro spent time talking with bloggers about health care reform. On Monday, she will be visiting the Quinnipiac University’s School of Health Sciences campus in North Haven from noon until 1 pm to discuss its benefits with young adults. She will also be speaking with small business owners, doctors, senior citizens and others that need to know what the changes really mean for them.
As the health care legislation was being crafted and debated in congress, much of the media failed the American people by only focusing on the process and a lot of the important issues never made it into the papers. Yet some bloggers did focus on the failures of the current health care system such as insurance companies calling domestic violence a pre-existing condition.
So what has made it into the health care legislation? Rep. DeLauro has always had a keen interest in food and nutrition issues. Part of health care reform includes a requirement that fast food restaurants with more than twenty-five stores list the calories in their food. Rep. DeLauro worked closely with industry groups to come up with acceptable legislation. It is an issue that Rep. DeLauro has worked long and hard on saying that she “was the crazy aunt in the attic” on the issue. Yet by simply making a little more information available, customers can make healthier choices about the food they purchase.
Yet there is so much more that needs to be done on food safety. Currently, only 1% of food imported into our country is inspected, and we are importing more and more food. Currently, there are fifteen agencies that deal with food safety at the Federal level. Rep. DeLauro believes we need one agency with that oversight.
Yet what about possible loopholes in the current health care reform? Rep. DeLauro spoke about the insurance companies immediately trying to find loopholes instead of trying to find what is best for the people of our country. Through vigilantly watching the insurance companies, this search for loopholes was exposed, the companies were shamed into backing off, and additional legislation is being pursued to better regulate the health insurance industry.
Much of this, as well as problems in the financial industry illustrates why self-regulation does not work, Rep. DeLauro maintains. Congress needs to take its responsibility for oversight much more seriously.
Unfortunately, it used to be that we had media that took oversight seriously as well; media that understood its role in making sure that we have the informed public that Jefferson said was necessary for democracy. Rep. DeLauro noted that when she started in Washington, the New York Times had a Connecticut stringer in Washington and the Connecticut Post, the Hartford Courant, and the New Haven Register all had people in DC. Now, there is no one left in Washington covering the Connecticut delegation.
Where are people getting their news today? Current media outlets tend to focus on the professional wrestling theatrics of politics and not on informing the public or serving the public good. To a certain extent, bloggers and online journalists can fill some of the gaps that have been left, taking advantage of the Internet as a means of reaching people. Yet this illustrates why Net Neutrality is so important, and Rep. DeLauro is a strong supporter of Net Neutrality.
Yet even if we manage to have informatory news instead of cheap entertainment masquerading as news, other problems remain. One of the biggest is the role of money in politics and Rep. DeLauro supports efforts to bring about meaningful campaign finance reforms.
Perhaps, with a rise of citizen driven informatory news and meaningful campaign finance reform, people can learn more about what is really in the health care reform act and other legislation. More importantly, it might be able to bring a little bit of civility back to our public discourse. If it takes a crazy aunt in the attic to lead the way, so be it.
April 23rd
Subscribing to New Drupal Posts
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 04/23/2010 - 12:28I host a lot of Drupal based websites, and one of the things I like about Drupal is that there are half a dozen ways to do just about anything you can imagine with a Drupal based website. It is also one of the things that I dislike most, trying to figure out and configure the best way to do things in Drupal. As an illustration, yesterday, I tried to find the best way to add subscriptions to a Drupal based website that I run.
April 22nd
Does Your Town Kill Dogs?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 04/22/2010 - 08:40The odds are that you live in a town that kills dogs. Here in the United States, estimates run from 2.7 to 10 million dogs that are killed each year. There are many reasons dogs get killed in shelters. Some dogs are just too sick to save. Others may be too aggressive. Unfortunately, many are killed because no one wants them.
Many states do not track the number of dogs killed by animal control officers, but the Connecticut Department of Agriculture does track some of this information. Here in Connecticut, around 2,500 dogs picked up by animal control officers are killed each year, or about 13% of the dogs that get picked up. This appears to be less than many other states, but is still a problem.
Perhaps the most important thing to be done is to make sure that your dog is spayed or neutered. Beyond that, getting your next dog from a municipal shelter or a rescue group that works closely with local shelters can help reduce the number of dogs killed because of overcrowding in shelters.
Also, knowing how your town is doing, and encouraging animal control officers to work closely with volunteer rescue organizations can be a big help. According to Department of Agriculture numbers, over half of the dogs euthanized in Connecticut come from the state’s largest five cities. Yet looking more closely, there are some interesting numbers to note. The largest city in Connecticut is Bridgeport, which euthanized seven hundred dogs in the 2008-2009 reporting period. Yet Bridgeport, which is only ten percent larger in population than Hartford, killed nearly seven times as many dogs as Hartford.
There are many things that could contribute to this. Bridgeport does impound three times as many dogs as Hartford does. However, some of this may be because Hartford animal control officers work closely with volunteer rescuers to find homes for the impounded dogs. Dogs impounded in Hartford are much more likely to be adopted than dogs in Bridgeport.
To make the point even more strongly, Stamford, the fourth largest city in Connecticut, which is 15% smaller than Bridgeport only euthanized ten dogs during the same reporting period, or less than 2% of the dogs they impounded. Stamford makes a strong effort to be a no-kill pound, and it is reasonable to assume that these dogs were either too sick or too dangerous to be adopted out.
Stamford adopts out over thirty times as many dogs as they kill. Wallingford has a similar success rate as does North Branford and East Hartford, and several smaller towns. On the other hand, there are several small towns that euthanize dogs and during the reporting period did not adopt out any. Though you cannot tell if the one dog euthanized in a town was because of illness, or lack of adoption.
For the large cities, Waterbury, New Britain and Manchester are the cities where dogs are more likely to be euthanized than to be adopted. A good group of volunteers has emerged in New Britain to help address the problem there and the numbers appear to be changing. It appears as if Waterbury and Manchester are two of the municipalities that could really take advantage of better coordination with volunteer rescue organizations.
Yet it isn’t just the large cities that people need to be concerned about. Derby, with a population of only twelve thousand euthanized twice as many dogs as they adopted out. It may be that there is a good reason for this, but it illustrates the need for people to ask questions of their local animal control officers and to look at their own communities first.
So, before you buy a dog at the local pet shop or from some breeder, or before you visit some large expo spending thousands of dollars to ship shelter dogs in from out of state, make sure you check out the local shelters and rescue societies. You just may find the dog of your dreams. You might even feel called to help other dogs at these shelters find their forever homes.
