Archive - 2010
March 28th
Ned Lamont Addresses Bloggers in New Haven
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 03/28/2010 - 08:15Friday evening, Connecticut Gubernatorial Candidate Ned Lamont met with a group of about a dozen bloggers and staffers to discuss various issues that the state and the campaign faces. Friday was also the day that New Haven, along with over a thousand other municipalities, filed their requests to become cities where Google would test gigabit Internet.
Ned's company, Lamont Digital Systems, has been providing cable services, including high speed Internet to colleges and universities for over twenty-five years, and so I asked him his thoughts about the Google gigabit Internet effort. He wouldn't say a lot about what his company is doing, or planning in the future and only noted that they provide high speed internet connectivity to college campuses and it is up to the college campuses how they make that available to students. He did note that companies would be wise to study what students are doing with the Internet on college campuses as a good indication of the future of digital.
In terms of the efforts by New Haven to become a Google test bed, he noted the superb research institutions in New Haven and what a great boost gigabit Internet would bring to the area for research as well as for economic development. He went on to say that the state needs to be looking at how it would promote digital infrastructure across the state, not only in big cities but in rural areas as well.
When I asked about what could be done to improve the infrastructure in Hartford, he noted that many agencies look like they are still in the 1970s and technology in Hartford needs a major overhaul. He asked why there isn't more sharing of computing resources and information in Hartford. Improving the technology infrastructure, in the long term, would reduce costs, improve service and also improve government transparency.
Included in his ideas for more efficient technology in Hartford, Mr. Lamont suggested that the state government should do more electronic group purchasing, and should allow municipalities to join in on the electronic group purchasing for additional savings both in Hartford and at the local level.
Unfortunately, he noted, addressing many the technology problems in Hartford requires upfront spending, and during these difficult financial times, it is hard to make these sort expenditures. When asked about what can be done for the near term financial problems he spoke about elimination of longevity pay and more furlough days, two items that the Senate Democrats included in their deficit mitigation package. He spoke about eliminating some of the deputy commissioner positions and seeking recurring cuts, instead of simply one-time budget transfers.
Since this was a meeting with bloggers, and not the traditional news media I asked him his thoughts on media consolidation. Mr. Lamont did not seem especially concerned. He stated he was much more concerned about it fifteen years ago, but that now, with the Internet, people have much more choice about what news they receive and that there is much less central control over the news. He encouraged people to read from a wide variety of sources.
In closing, Ned Lamont noted the importance of projects like GoogleHaven. Most importantly, he said we need someone who will challenge the status quo. He did that, taking on the cable companies when he started his own company. His campaign in 2006 challenged the political status quo, and he hopes to get an opportunity to challenge the status quo in Hartford.
March 27th
Playing with Drupal Themes and Video
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 03/27/2010 - 18:27I’ve been using Drupal since 2002 and building my own sites in Drupal since 2003. I find it a great environment to work in. Over the past few weeks I’ve spoken at a couple different Drupal gatherings in Connecticut, and this is a followup to some of those discussions. Earlier this month I spoke at the Connecticut Drupal Group. Mostly, I spoke about some of the history of Drupal, especially as it related to Ecademy, DeanSpace, and CivicSpace. It provided a good opportunity to talk about various aspects such as multisite configurations.
Later, I spoke at the Southern Connecticut Open Source Users Group about Drupal. It was a well attended group that I adjusted to the level of the participants, who were mostly well versed in computers but had not done much with Drupal.
Since then, I’ve had a few frustrating Drupal projects cancelled, but I’ve done some interesting things.
March 26th
Tired
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 03/26/2010 - 15:23That’s how I’m feeling right now, tired. It may simply be that I didn’t get enough sleep last night. It may be this ever changing early spring weather. It could be the political landscape or things going on in friends’ lives. Perhaps it is all of these things, but they all boil down to me feeling really tired.
I was thinking of writing a blog post further exploring the idea of leading by example. Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post about the First Selectwoman of Durham setting a good example in her use of social media and environmentally friendly clothes drying.
I thought a striking contrast would be to the bad example that Rep. Eric Cantor set when he talked about threats and violence against members of Congress for their support of the Health Care Reform legislation. He accused democrats of “dangerously fanning the flames” for speaking out against these threats and violence. It sounds an awful lot like the friend of a man arrested for domestic violence defending his friend by saying that if his friend’s wife hadn’t spoken up against previous domestic violence, his friend wouldn’t have hurt her so badly this time. It is tortured logic that defends perpetrators and Rep. Cantor should be ashamed of himself. His report of a bullet through a window of one of his campaign offices also fell flat as it turns out it randomly fired in near an area of Richmond that has had problems with gun violence. Cantor, speaking about other acts of violence suggested "It is reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain”. Yet it seems like this is exactly what he has been doing.
Meanwhile, I’ve been talking with my daughter about issues about bullying at her school. At a previous board of education meeting, Superintendent Stella spoke about the programs the school would be doing to make it safer for all students. The discussion went on to include comments about not only how bullies and victims should deal with bullying, but also what bystanders should do, and how to stop bullying from becoming a problem in a school. One of the things that I note is that students’ behaviors are often learned at home, and I wonder how many bullies have bullies for parents. How do we address bullying by adults? This takes me back to my thoughts about Rep. Cantor. He sounds an awful lot like one of those elementary school bystanders that knows bullying is wrong, but does nothing against it, perhaps even because of some sick sense of solidarity with bullies.
For a different aspect of leadership by example, Connecticut Gubernatorial Candidate Dan Malloy sent out a press release yesterday saying,
"I'm calling on the Governor to do today what I'd do if I were Governor. Call the legislative leaders into a negotiating session and allow members of the media (traditional and new media both) to sit in. I'd put my ideas on the table, and I'd ask each of them to do the same. I'd see how far apart we are and then I'd start trying to move us to consensus, and I'd do it in public.
He went on to say that some people might deem his call ‘grandstanding’, but he calls it leadership by example, and I tend to agree with him on this one. Everyone has been watching to see who will come up with what ideas to deal with the deficit. There have been battles about how the House and how the Senate will approach the issue and none of them have been any bit as transparent as we need.
So, we have some politicians that seem to think violent rhetoric is not really that bad. We have some politicians that are trying to solve a very big difficult problem without being very public about it. It all makes me very tired.
March 25th
#N900 – The Maemo Community Council Elections
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 03/25/2010 - 10:12The Maemo Community, that is, the community of people using devices like the Nokia N900 and its predecessors is holding elections for its community council. Instead of looking at this like a beauty contest of geeks, I thought, as an old political organizer and blogger, I would look at it from a political standpoint. For my regular readers who are not interested in geek politics, feel free to skip this. However, if you are interested, read more below.
March 24th
Wordless Wednesday - Quilting Retro
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 03/24/2010 - 08:42
Okay. I'm going to cheat again and not be completely wordless. Last weekend we went to the Hebron Maple Festival. They always have a great quilt show there and both Fiona and I took a lot of pictures of the quilts. You can see them here.
It was hard to pick one for Wordless Wednesday, but in the end, I chose this one, in part because it made me think of one of the blogs I really like to visit:
