woo hoo for anniversaries

October 15, 2004 by Eric Richardson

One year ago today I created this site's first RSS feed. That still makes me very late to the party, but I thought it was kind of random that I happened to notice while it actually was the anniversary.

Wifi: The post in which I preemptively diss Pershing Square WIFI

October 15, 2004 by Eric Richardson

So the CRA awarded the Pershing Square wifi contract a little over a week ago. I didn't know until I saw this little Downtown News blurb. From the DN:

City officials last week selected Verge Wireless Networks to provide wireless Internet - or Wi-Fi - access at Pershing Square. The Baton Rouge-based company was hired for $25,000 by the Community Redevelopment Agency and the Recreation and Parks Department, which manages the block-long park bounded by Fifth, Sixth, Olive and Hill streets. The Wi-Fi service will be free during the day, with additional subscriber services available at a cost in evening hours.

Oh, great, pseudo-wifi. It's "free" but your "free" service is "limited." What does limited mean?

Allows you to surf web sites on the Verge Wireless Hotzone, surf web sites on the Internet, and check e-mail using the Hotzone AirMail system or your own e-mail program. Requires a user name and password to login. Restrictions include: 128K bandwidth, no VPN access allowed, no MP3 downloading or high bandwidth video.

That's the description for their FreeConnect service, which I assume is what will be offered during the day in the square. Now, the during the day part is kind of odd. I don't know if they really scouted out the area before they decided to throw that into the contract. Pershing Square is closed at sunset (I think sunset... at night, though).

But aside from that, I read the limitations on the free service to mean that they're going to be restricting your outgoing ports, probably to just 80 (http), 443 (https), 25 (smtp), 110 (pop3), and 143 (imap). If they aren't the only real limit they can have is the bandwidth (which is completely legit... I don't mind people doing that). Also it would appear they're filtering web content (to a small extent... they claim not to be able to restrict access to specific sites, etc) to be able to block mp3 downloads and video.

All this to say... I won't be going to Pershing Square to use the wifi any time soon (err... assuming this is January and test service is there). I told you just a few weeks ago how the library's wifi service was worthless. This appears to be little better. I just hope they don't suck the Biltmore into their web of restrictiveness and charging.

ah politics

October 15, 2004 by Eric Richardson

Michael Moore spoke on campus last night. I didn't go. Partially, that's because I was still just knocked out exhausted from being up most of the night writing, but mostly it's that I just don't really care about what Moore's got to say. Kathy went to some of it, and thought he wasn't really a good public speaker. He stood up there and made fun of Bush, made fun of the protesters, and said republicans win because they get up in the morning and work hard while the democrats have only seen a morning in they're still up from partying the night before.

Of course most of the people there lapped it right up.

Sometime in the next month the school's bringing in General Wesley Clark. Now that's someone I would go see.

weekend events around downtown

October 13, 2004 by Eric Richardson

There's a lot going on downtown this weekend, so I thought I'd take a second to point out a couple things:

  • Saturday and Sunday the Brewery art complex is having their Autumn Artwalk. Kathleen at blogging.la posted a good tease for event. I've never made it up that way, but it should be cool.
  • Saturday night Artistsalon is hosting "the big picture" in the Spring Arts building, just a couple blocks up the street from me. It's art, it's short films, it's music -- basically it's a crazy amount of cool stuff going on in one place on one night and it's all just a $5 cover. Come out and help Jason lose less money.
  • Sunday is the Grand Avenue Festival, taking place on, uh, Grand Avenue, outside the Disney Hall. Food, music, and much much more. Hey, they're shutting down a big section of street. We might as well get to use it for a change, instead of just getting annoyed at having to take a detour.

Of course my Saturday is going to be dominated by ASU coming to town to put their #15 ranking on the line in the Coliseum. 12:30pm start, and it's an ABC regional game. I'm afraid I'll get out of that too late to hit up the Brewery event on Sat, but I might try to squeeze both that and Grand Ave. in Sunday. We'll see.

DLANC: Meeting Number Two

October 13, 2004 by Eric Richardson

I went to my second neighborhood council meeting last night. My first meeting was a good gentle introduction to the whole concept. Last night, though, was for real.

A big topic of the night was conflicts of interest and the question of whether a paid lobbyist should be allowed to have a position on a neighborhood council. Now, this was all in the comment section, so there wasn't a vote or anything (not that I'm sure we would even have the authority to do so). That said, the position that I think many people agreed with was that you can't go around saying people can't be on the board for this or that reason without getting to the edge of a very dangerous slippery slope. Yes, a person should recuse themself from any vote in which they or a company they represent has a financial interest. Yes, they should be very upfront in revealing when they're being paid to lobby for something. No, they should never take money to lobby their own council. But of course they can still be very valuable members of the group. If they're stakeholders in downtown they need to be allowed to have a voice.

Whew...

In other news:

  • Roy's Restaurant is looking to open a location downtown at 800 S. Fig. It's an old bank branch location that's been shuttered for many years.
  • We get business cards. I need them.
  • We had a big debate over whether to spend money on someone to take minutes at board and executive committee meetings. The money had been approved previously, but a motion was made to reverse that decision. Here we actually had a vote with role-call. I voted no to keep the money in place. I like seeing good minutes. It makes me have less to write down during the meeting.
  • I have to turn in a "professional bio" for the new DLANC website. It should be fun making that up.
  • During discussion Ed Marzec used some word I didn't understand, so I wrote it down. I don't have my notes with me here, but I'll post an update on that when I get back to them and can look it up.

Next week is the next AACE meeting (here are my notes on the last one). Tuesday, 6:30pm, City Hall. Check out the AACE yahoo group if you're into that sort of thing.