Entries from September 2008 ↓

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. My first reaction to being up north was “Holy crap, I can walk outside and not instantly have to take a shower!”

Two weeks after moving into our apartment, it finally feels like home. Took a while to get the couch, bookshelves, refrigerator, desk chair…we’re still waiting on the mailbox keys. These things take time.

There are a lot of new things to take in:

I’ve been doing a lot of job interviews in Lower Manhattan. We live in Kings Bridge Heights, which is almost as far north as you can get and still be in the City. So it takes me about 45 mins to get where I’m going. Then, since I’m already in the area, I spend some time getting lost, taking the wrong trains, window shopping and just taking in the local scenery. I’ve spent hours wandering around Broadway and Canal St. in the last few days.

Our first couple of days here I got really excited every time we had to walk up or down a hill. Gimme a break, we don’t have hills in Miami. (Unless you count Mt. Trashmore.) I’ve learned the truth about hills: walking uphill sucks.

There is also the delightful surprise!-this-is-a-deadend-actually-it’s-a-flight-of-stairs-in-the-middle-of-a-street phenomenon. A street will literally turn into several flights of stairs before turning back into a street. Wha?!

Straws. How come every bottle of Mountain Dew or Becks has to come with a straw? I don’t want a straw. The bottles are too tall for the straws. Since my beverage was sealed until I opened it, I’m really not THAT concerned about touching my mouth to the rim. Straws are just another thing I have to find a garbage can for, along the with the bag and the receipt.

The subway system itself is a magical world filled with the possibilities of getting lost. Really, really lost. Never mind that I’m not familiar with the city, stick me underground and the only directions I’m sure of are up and down. Emerging into the sunlit world once more, it’s only Google Maps Mobile that keeps me from spending even more time wandering aimlessly around.

New York is the dirtiest, meanest and simultaneously most wonderful place I’ve ever been.

I recently joined the Spot.us group on Facebook. I’ve met David Cohn and heard him talk about Spot.us as well as following his blog for quite some time now. His idea is intriguing, and I’ve been pretty excited to see how things might work out for him.

From his message to the group, here are three successfully funded stories:

The first example of Community Funded Reporting came from a fantastic reporter Alexis Madrigal who examined the infrastructure of ethanol in the state of California. I feel confident that it is the most exhaustive look at the subject to date.

The second example is ongoing: The SF Election Truthiness Campaign. We raised $2,500 from 74 small donations (average $33) to fact-check political advertisements for the upcoming SF Election.
Just today PBS’ MediaShift blog wrote about it.

Our most recent success story is underway right now: Chris Amico will look into the environmental concerns of cement kilns in the Bay Area.

Sounds like things are going really well for David so far, (congrats!) and I hope to see the project grow and even expand to other areas!

Well, the adventure has begun. Today I made it from Miami to Fort Myers, where Kyle has been staying.

The truck is loaded, the cats are (slowly) getting acquainted, and we’re wrapping up the final details before heading out tomorrow morning.

You can follow our adventures at “Sink, Florida, Sink.” (Look up the lyrics, it’s an Against Me! song.)

Here’s the first response this month:

TNTJ: Review of The Journal and Courier Web site | By Daniel Victor.

VERDICT: I give it a B-. If your priority is to quickly scan and access the news of the day, this site does it better than most out there.

What it lacks, though, is the kind of innovation that will push the newspaper’s brand forward. It has to better package its Web-only content and show why the site can become more than a place to stop for news.

I think it’s interesting that the question was interpreted as “critique the Web site.”

I work for my local paper and am moving soon, so unless someone else is willing to switch with me as Daniel and Meranda did, I’m staying out of this one.

This weekend a friend and I will be moving to New York City.

Though the truck and hotels are reserved, we have no place to live and no permanent jobs. (We do have appointments in both areas immediately following our arrival to the city.)

We’ve both lived in Florida for most of our lives. We are, as all other journos, negatively affected by the sucking wound in the journalism industry.

The obvious solution was to pool our resources and head to journalism mecca.

Risky, stupid, ballsy, whatever.

To my mind, this is what journalism is all about. One thing isn’t working, go balls to the wall and try something new. It’s the perfect way to force both of us to strengthen our weaknesses, branch out, and gain that all-important experience.

We’ll be blogging about our trip at an as yet unknown location. I’ll post that as soon as we get it together.

Meanwhile, freelance writing and web work, New York and northern New Jersey papers, beware the onslaught of cover letters!

When I set out to learn a new programming language, I usually take baby steps:

• Read as much as possible about the language
• Find the experts online and see what they’re saying/doing
• Find and work through beginner tutorials
• Come up with an idea to build something on my own

It usually takes a good 3 months or so before I get to that last step.

I didn’t get that luxury with AS3. A few weeks ago, I started watching the AS3 tutorials at Lynda.com. I had been assigned to rebuild The Miami Herald’s 60 Seconds project.
The current project is written in AS2. All the bits and pieces are internal. My mission was to rebuild it in AS3 and make it load information from an XML file so that it could be updated easily.

I started out with a series of classes: one to load the XML, one to parse it, one to define the thumbnails, etc. These classes were refined and rewritten until I got the thumbnails to load into the screen, much as they do in the original version.

It’s taken me 3 weeks to get that far. Google is my best friend. The next few steps:

• fix interface so that when more videos are added, the screen will scroll left and right to show the additional videos
• clicking on a thumbnail will go to large version of video with description etc, pulled from XML
• add commenting, feedback and rating functionality

Right now, I can’t even begin to figure out how that’s going to get done. But it will, and I’ll learn a lot from the experience.

Check my Del.icio.us bookmarks for AS3 resources.