Simiya

Posted by: Peter | June 1, 2010

New Orleans 2010: After Katrina, before the BP oil spill

A picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is worth a thousand pictures, but what if you only had a singe word to describe my volunteer visit to New Orleans? What would it be? There are many superlatives such as “amazing”, “wonderful”, “unbelievable”, and “incredible” but they they are too commonplace. How can you compare incredible ice cream with an incredible experience? To many, there are incredible cities, for me New Orleans isn’t one of them.

From a distance it is incredible, but it becomes very real when you explore it even in the limited way we did. The city exists as a mosaic. Fragments separated by neutral grounds, geography, and history but slowly fusing at the edges due to the common experience of Katrina. There was a collage on the floor of the Entergy Innovation Center that I visited that expressed it well.

The mosaic was fascinating to me. The independence of the grassroots efforts within each community, the drive of the entrepreneurial spirit and the exuberance of the city officials to revive the city were all palpable. And yet it was simultaneously troubling. For example, as community efforts become stronger, how will they influence the city’s future? Is the mosaic brittle or strong?

It is said that Michelangelo mocked da Vinci over the grandeur of his vision to create a giant bronze horse. Michelangelo was young, how could the older da Vinci ever have had a worthwhile vision? The same is happening in New Orleans today. Young enthusiastic entrepreneurs are arriving to redirect the city’s rebirth adding another set of hues, textures and creativity to what currently exists. With this new influence, will the mosaic splinter further or will it fuse even more to create a blended work of art?

I wonder about the commitment of New Orleans to the most badly affected areas of the storm. In many places the Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parishes seem like house cemeteries with foundation slabs marking the tombs of homes that once stood. What was urban has become suddenly rural. The slabs form a mosaic of their own. Closed schools and businesses bode ill for the long term fate of those areas becoming metropolitan centers again, but hope lies in the efforts of many of the projects we visited and in which we participated.

I don’t think anyone has the single answer to these questions, but we should all consider playing a part in the city’s revival. The internet now offers so many tools to not only organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible, but also to facilitate dialog which is now essential. The US experience in New Orleans, the mistakes and triumphs can be used to model the responses for many similar societies around the globe. Those affected by disaster, those that are on the verge of rapid growth due to the enabling influence of the internet and those that have to reinvent themselves due to shifts in industry or demographics.

A chance discussion with Mayor Landrieu provided insights into the future of the city and role of information technology as the axis around which many initiatives orbit. The need for and importance of cloud initiatives for the city’s future was made patently obvious. Facilitate communication and the city will figure out the rest. It is not that simple, but it is a step in the right direction.

I was most affected by the St. Bernard Project. As Zack Rosenburg, its co-founder says, “these are good people, there is a lot of work to be done, and the problems are solveable”. It was deeply satisfying to assist in their and other programs. The outreach work I saw was wide ranging and provided tangible assistance to many.
But what struck me as an Internet professional was the limited use of the web in most of the non-profit organizations I visited that was very eye opening. The fact that the older members of the team were unaware of the potential was to be expected, but the what was educational for me was how younger staff were only familiar with the web as consumers of content, not as the developers of it. The Internet was a productivity tool, an educational tool, but largely unheard of as a planned strategic tool to further the aims of the project.

Fun wasn’t lost on me at all. I thoroughly enjoyed a campy vampire tour and a swamp tour guide’s quirky commentary was both lightly entertaining and very thought provoking near the end when a heartfelt recollection of the storm’s impact him nearly evoked tears. As the foundation for deep friendships, the bonding with other other volunteer members of my team was priceless. There were so many different points of view radiating the creativity to help and learn from the city. I also hope the initial contacts I made with those who have chosen New Orleans as their home will thrive and so make my 2010 experience forever memorable and the inspiration for may return visits.

I have lived through many hurricanes, none as deadly as Katrina. The visit was humbling and evoked a great sense of empathy within. The mosaic of stories triggered my own memories of survival, sadness, healing, satisfaction and resurgence. New Orleans has the advantage of being a part of a larger society and now as part of such a society I want to contribute further and hope more opportunities like this will be available for me to look, listen, learn and ultimately help.

Now the growing environmental and economic calamity caused by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico poses more questions to ponder. How will this affect the recovery of the city and state from the impact of Katrina? Only time will tell.

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Posted in Non-Profits

Posted by: Peter | May 1, 2010

Joomla Search Engine Optimization for Non-Profits

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to strategies that you can use to improve the likelihood someone will find your website pages when using specific sets of search phrases or key words in a search engine. Here are some tips specific to Joomla that can be used by your non-profit or non governmental organization (NGO).

Page Titles: Your SEO ranking can be improved by creating descriptive web page titles that include the important keywords you think people will be using to search for your site. Here’s how you can easily make some simple changes.

Individual Articles: It is important that each page you create has a descriptive title that include the important keywords you think people will be using to search for your site. By default, when Joomla creates an article it gives it a web page title that is the same as the name of the article. It is easy to change the title, just edit the article as you would normally and then change the title in the “Title” box at the top.
Groups of articles: In Joomla it is possible to have your articles included as one of many articles in a menu. In this case Joomla defaults to giving the menu web page the same title as that of the menu title. Unlike an article, you do not change the menu’s web page title by changing the title of the menu. This is a confusing part of Joomla. The menu’s web page title is changed under the “Parameters (System)” section.
Your entire web site: It is also possible to add a universal prefix or suffix to your site with the Joomla Title Manager Extension. You could use this to automatically add your non-profit’s name to every page on your website.

Search Engine Friendly URLs: By default Joomla URLs have special codes in them that are used to keep track of the articles you create. This may be good for the Joomla database, but unfortunately this does not make the URLs very easy to read. The biggest disadvantage of this is that the URLs don’t contain any keywords in them that can be used to make SEO easier. Fortunately, Joomla has a search engine optimization (SEO) section on its global configuration page that can be helpful. It converts the codes into keywords that match the page titles of your articles. This video shows you what to do.

What the video doesn’t show is that you may have to edit the .htaccess file in the home directory of your web server. The two most common modifications that will help to get things working are

Activating or commenting out the line

Options +FollowSymLinks

Modifying the path for the RewriteBase line. If you have installed joomla in your root directory then this can remain, but if you install in a /joomla subdirectory of your main site you will need to modify it to look like this by mentioning /joomla specifically

RewriteBase /joomla

Install a Joomla editor extension that uses intelligent links : The advantage of the Joomla URL codes mentioned before is that they never change if you change the ordering of your menus or the titles of your articles. With friendly URLs this is not so. This can be a problem if you use URL links between articles. When the article title changes the friendly URL also changes and the link to the friendly URL will now break. The good thing is that you can still use the original URL with the codes to get to the original article. The default Joomla editor has no method of telling you what the codes are when you use friendly URLs, but the JCE editor does. Install the JCE editor extension, and make it your default editor in your Global Configuration page. Edit your links using the editor and it will give you a list of all your articles and this will make your post friendly URL updates much easier. Links in articles created before you used friendly URLs will already have the codes and so will still work OK.

Create a “Page not found” 404 page for Joomla: You don’t often think about it but it is important to have a way to find all content on your website. This is especially important when friendly URLs are just added to your site and URL names change. The content is still there but just in a different place. This tutorial shows you how to create a custom 404 error page, but the real value comes with adding a Google Custom Search Engine box to the 404 page so people can search for the content in the new location.

Sitemaps: Search engines often rely on a sitemap file that lists the URLs of all your pages of your website. Install the Joomap Joomla extension and register the sitemap it creates with the major search engines. Also add the link to the sitemap URL in your robots.txt file in your website’s main Joomla directory. An example of how to do this can be found on the sitemaps.org website.

Analytics: Register with Google Analytics. It allows you to get an idea of the search terms people are using to reach your site and you can then try to add more pertinent keywords to the articles on your site to make them easier to find. You have to make some modifications to your site to get this done properly. First use Google Analytics generate the piece of HTML tracking code specific to your site. Next, add the code to your Joomla template’s index.php file that is used to generate all your site’s Joomla pages. The index.php file can be edited using the Joomla Template Manager via the “Edit HTML” link at the top of the page.

Section and Category Names: You may or may not want to include the Section and Category names in the URLs for your site. If the names are descriptive like in an online Newspaper you may want to display them. If you are just using the categories to make the content more manageable with the possibility of frequent name changes you may want to hide them. You can change these settings in Article Manager where there is a “Parameters” link on the main page.

I hope these tips have been helpful. Please let me know if you have any comments.

The St. Bernard Project of New Orleans, Louisiana

I will be volunteering with the St. Bernard Project in New Orleans, Louisiana to help their efforts to rebuild the city after hurricane Katrina.

It is a noble cause led by Zack Rosenberg who speaks here about the challenges and rewards of the work they do.

Should you ever forget, the impact of the hurricane on the region was great and created great suffering during the storm.

Though the St Bernard Project aims to rebuild the homes and lives destroyed in 2005, there is still a lot of work to be done.

Your presence, time, effort and donations will help to make this once vibrant city breathe a sigh of relief.

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Posted in Everything Else

Posted by: Peter | March 1, 2010

How to Survive a Bicycle Death Wobble

If you are an avid cyclist, and like to rocket down hills and live to tell the story, you should read some more. There are also some good lessons for motorcyclists too.

I bought a 2005 61cm Fuji Team Super Lite bicycle on Craigslist two years ago and decided to use it on a regular one hour lunch time loop in Brisbane, northern California. The ride circled San Bruno Mountain, and at its peak on Guadalupe Canyon Parkway reached 700 ft above sea level. Riding eastward, the road dives to 40 feet above sea level while only covering an extra mile of distance. It is one of the windiest roads in the Bay Area with foggy spring gusts from the Pacific Ocean often reaching 50 Mph. The road is as smooth as silk, and you can easily hit 40 Mph with little effort while getting a picturesque view of Oakland, South San Francisco and the shallow bay in between.

One day I was riding with my group and very near the bottom of this steep descent, at a speed of about 35 Mph, I was hit by a sudden burst of wind. It rocked me and I noticed that the bike began to shimmy. I tried to control the to and fro vibration of the handle bars by stiffening my arms, but it only got worse. Soon it became a very bad wobble and with each swing of the bars, the situation deteriorated. I desperately tried to brake to slow down, but the danger only increased, even at increasingly lower speeds. When I reached close to jogging speed, I jumped off the bike and began to run like a man possessed. Only divine intervention prevented me from stumbling and meeting certain injury on the asphalt. As you can see from this video it can be very violent.

Previously I had a similar experience on my 63cm Trek Madone while igniting the western descent of Hicks Road in the Almaden Valley of San Jose, but at 25 Mph, not close to 35 like in Brisbane. I braked and the bike only began to behave itself when its speed reached a complete stop. I thought nothing about it till the Fuji incident.

Both bikes, though having different frame sizes had very similar dimensions when you compared the distances between the seat, bottom bracket and handle bars. I had used a heavier Trek 7.3 FX on many occasions before without incident on the same route and I decided to do my research.

There are many terms for this characteristic wobble or vibration. In biking forums they call it a speed wobble, or death wobble. In motor cycle forums they call it a tank slapper. At certain speeds the vehicle not only becomes unstable, but a sudden jolt close to the natural frequency of the frame can create a dangerous situation for the rider.

I replaced my wheel set with a heavier pair, the general instability was still there, but it was less. I adjusted the seat, added a longer stem to create a more relaxed stance and added thicker tires. I also trued the wheels, and that helped very noticeably with general stability improving too but even so, the problem was still there at very high speeds. I added heavier wheels, without much further gains. The Fuji, unlike the Trek, has much more responsive, lighter steering which may have contributed to the problem more than any other factor. Even on slight descents, the light weight Fuji was more fidgety.

Reading more and more I eventually discovered this close shave video on YouTube with motorbikes:

Notice how the rider with the wobble hits a bump, the front wheel hits the ground at a slight angle and then the tank slapper wobble starts. The rider loosens up and then regains control of the motorcycle. In this other YouTube video the rider fights the wobble and pays the price.

My strategy for the lunchtime ride changed. I was much looser when gripping the handlebars and firmly rested my thigh against the top tube of the frame to dampen the vibration before it started. I also slide my sitting position back till my hip bones aren’t resting on the saddle at all. This makes my thigh placement easier and also makes my center of gravity lower and shifted to the rear in a way that makes me feel more secure. Since developing this little technique in all downhill rides, my experiences have been much better. I have since discovered an article on this wobbling tendency on Wikipedia which mentions five contributors to the shimmy including the center of gravity, and dampening factors. I also mentions the stiffness of the front wheel and firm tracking by making sure your front tire isn’t under inflated. Some people say they rise off the seat a little to get a similar dampening effect, but I’m not so sure as raising your body off the seat makes the bike more unstable in general.

The result of trying this method was a much more pleasant ride and as my confidence rose I was reaching the high speeds again, though I tried not to break cycling’s Usain Bolt world record like before. It seems so counter intuitive that at high speeds you get more stability by loosening your grip on the handlebars, and especially in the biceps of your arms, but it works for me. I eventually sold the Fuji bike as I felt it was too light with unstable steering that was too loose. My Madone and custom cyclocross are much better bets.

If you have had a similar situation, let me know how you feel.

The Sociological Curse of Interactive Internet

Will we be the victims of the sociological curse of interactive Internet? Will we become electronic vegetarians consuming only the most essential social interaction? I think too little has been written of the impact of a pervasive connectivity will have on our lives and how it will affect face to face human interaction. We won’t withdraw to social avatars and usernames to assure our anonymity. We will selectively withdraw from the Internet to maintain our sanity. Here is why.

One interesting area for me is in the use of book readers and tablet computers. Bonnier R&D has examined how interactive layouts could change on tablets to make them more intuitive and acceptable to use by a larger audience. When voice recognition improves it would be easy to imagine one of these devices in a coffee shop overhearing your conversations, continuously searching for information depending on the context of your conversation. Can’t remember the name of a movie with those actors? Well it will be visible right there on your electronic secretary lying face up on the table. It would search the web, your email, your social networking accounts for that data. It would be interesting, but it would also be interesting for the other person at the table too. Now they would have a synopsis of your life history in the context of the conversation. You’d have to configure your tablet for friend mode, associate mode and stranger mode.

What happens when your TV becomes internet savvy with clickable apps and a camera like your cell phone? Video conferencing with your family and friends would be great, but what about wrong numbers? Would you want them peering into your house? Society would have to establish a protocol to allow others to video conference with you. Would you automatically video conference with all your friends? It is easy to imagine simultaneously streaming high definition TV and video conferencing to your TV set. Would you want all your friends to see inside your house all the time? How would you selectively turn on and off video depending on your mood without seeming rude? Would people even bother with turning it on in the first place? Maybe we’d all become expert liars.

The amount of data bandwidth this would require would be immense. How would data networks handle this? At the moment ISPs such as AT&T and Verizon interconnect with each other in strategic data centers, or peering points, in large metropolitan regions. To relieve the pressure on these locations, repeatedly viewed static content such as popular video files and product images are often temporarily stored on servers within their network so the user can get a speedier local copy rather than getting it from the original website. This won’t be as easy with streaming video that will have to be live. To achieve the same effect, ISPs will have to find ways to spool, or continuously store the next few minutes of video coverage, so that viewers watch a slightly delayed broadcast from a neighborhood server instead of direct from the broadcaster. The benefit to the broadcaster is that they only have to engineer a solution to stream to each of a few hundred ISPs. The ISPs will have to deal with their thousands of customers, but they can create a similar system with tiers of spooling caches in each metropolitan area and neighborhood. This works with single streams going to many people. What happens when video becomes more intimate and social? Peering at the neighborhood or metropolitan level becomes a very real possibility. Congestion will also happen in the airwaves as in some areas the towers will be overloaded. Getting data out of the air and on to a wire or fiber optic cable as quickly as possible will be necessary. Every new device expected to connect to the network will have to be vetted for its data usage intensity. It is a very real engineering challenge.

While the network engineers are dealing with that problem what about the product design engineers? With an intelligent TV, would you really need a multi-button remote? One would be enough to poke virtual buttons on the screen. They should also try to devise some method to automatically detect all the entertainment devices in the home and allow you to add them as icons to your TV screen. Having a party and you want to activate your PlayStation with surround sound while playing a game on the Wii while watching the news muted all in split screen mode? It should be possible with one remote with one button. Would you like your TV to automatically turn off when guests arrive and only have it show photos of your latest vacation or your wedding? If there is an argument in your living room, should the TV continue to show the football game or begin to exude soothing melodies of Chopin with pastoral scenes as a backdrop?

What about social engineers? If someone could hack into your TV when it was on, they would have access to the equivalent to closed circuit TV inside the home, they would know where you are and whether anyone was home, and they would be able to do this from the comfort their bedroom. Blackmail would become easier. To counteract this possibility, home owners could protect themselves by converting their TVs into surveillance systems too.

It is true that humans are social beings, but has evolution prepared us for this revolution? Will we now need an application to categorize each electronic communication avenue available to us and auto-censor our relationships depending on the context? Will electronic communication be so pervasive and easy to use but so hard to control that we decide to ignore it totally? We will probably find ourselves with multi-purpose devices and pay a premium for the ability to automatically turn select features off based on life changes and circumstances instead of having them on all the time. Will some of us become electronic vegetarians, eschewing the most complex forms of intrusive communications? If it becomes overwhelming, I probably will. Only time will tell if others will follow my lead.