Thursday, November 20, 2003

Community Information Technology Initiative

Here is a new initiative I am working on with the Municipal Art Society. The Community Information Technology Initiative at http://www.myciti.org/ is an online mapping program being used by five pilot New York City Community Boards to aid in community planning, development and emergency management. I am having a great time with this project! In fact, in honor of GIS Day, I had the pleasure of attending a NYC Council hearing where they issued a proclamation recognizing the importance of Geographic Information Systems to the city and presented official copies to several organizations that I am affiliated with, including GISMO, a user group, the Municipal Art Society and NYPIRG's C-MAP initiative.

The website that I am working on for the American Museum of Natural History is coming along well. There was a meeting on Friday that I couldn't attend, but word was that the directors only had criticized the content, not the design. I did get a chance to sit down with the department head today and it seems to be on track. Yay!

By the way, I'm still waiting for that Turkish recipe. Maybe I'll have to scout around Epicurious.com....

Friday, October 03, 2003

Some things I am looking for:

Program that takes XML tree data and displays them in a pretty tree diagram. It would be great if I could control what part of the tree it shows by collapsing/expanding nodes, allow me to color code the display of the lines, nodes & terminus labels to metadata coded for each node, etc. Is there code for taking XML data and importing to Flash? That would also be great. Would it be hard?

Examples of interactive mapping on government/community-focus websites.

An easy recipe for Turkish smoked eggplant/baba ganouj. I'm having this really BIG craving....

If you come across any of these things, email me!

Wednesday, September 24, 2003

New Projects

Fall seems to be a peak time for business networking and new projects. I am starting new projects for the American Museum of Natural History and the Municipal Art Society, and I still have time for one more. A few neat possibilities have come up, as well as a whole slew of networking opportunities. Do I have time for it all? I guess it's time to boot up the old timesheet program...there are advantages to having worked in accounting.

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

AMNH Ornithology Department Field Expedition Website Launched

I just launched a new website for the America Museum of Natural History's Ornithology Department. The site describes a field expedition to Mt. Tay Con Linh to study biodiversity in a remote, mountainous region in the north with links to research papers and a slideshow of bird specimens that were collected in the region. Please visit Mt. Tay Con Linh - Vietnam 2000 and let me know what you think!

Thursday, September 11, 2003

Another Beautiful Day in New York City

Walking the kids to school today, I realized what day it was and how much the weather resembles 9/11/2001. It was a bit warmer then, so that helps put things in perspective a bit. My sister in law called this morning at around 7am (our time) saying she just woke from a bad dream and asked us to be careful today. She is in California.

8:46 and 9:06 went by without incident, so we are resting easy. I don't know of anyone who has actually worried out loud about something happening, but we are all thinking about it, aren't we? I've been trying to tune out all the irritating siren noises on the street that on any other day are barely noticable. Hope everyone is well. Prayers out to anyone out there who suffered a loss, have military friends overseas or are just plain emotional today.

Monday, August 18, 2003

Blackout 2003

It was just after 4pm. I was on the M104 coming back with my girls from the JCC Day Camp. Everything was normal on our ride back, but when we got off the bus at 88th & Broadway, we realized the streetlights were out. I thought it was just on the one intersection and told the girls to hold my hands as we crossed Broadway, since no one appeared to be directing traffic.

As we crossed 89th Street, I started noticing that all the lights were out in the stores along my block and crowds of people were standing in the sidewalk looking around nervously. I turned the corner into my building and the lights were out. Someone said the whole city was down. Elevators weren't working & the lobby was dark. Another person said he had just walked out of the elevator 10 minutes earlier, so I knew it had just happened.

I had to walk up nine flights with the girls. Emergency lights were lit on every other flight. They were very dim. We passed some men walking down who said everything was out as far as Ohio. I was getting very worried about another 9/11, terrorist strike, nuclear, etc., but stayed calm. We reached the 9th floor, but it was pitch black and I had lost count, so I had to leave the girls in the dark & walk down to the last flight that had light to check the floor. Went back up and they were still there, pretty calm. The hall on our floor was dark except for strips of light under the door. We felt our way to the end of the hall & tried the phones, but they were dead.

A while later, some of our neighbors came home. One neighbor had her daughter's family in from Atlanta for the week. Luckily, her son in law had a Blackberry & I was able to email my husband, who was really ticked off, because he had promised himself after 9/11 to keep a scooter or roller blades in his Tribeca office, but of course he never got them. He walked home in about 2 1/2 hours, emailing his street location every half-hour.

So we spent the afternoon playing with my neighbor's grandkids. Another neighbor came around looking for his wife. He was pretty shaken up: His wife is pregnant and he had no idea where she was. The girls were pretty oblivious. They carried flashlights in the hall & told everyone that they were camping. My 6-year-old found a pick-up Yahtzee game down the hall. Felt like dorm living again.

When we got the news that it was just a power issue and not a terrorist act, we were relieved. But we were expecting my in-laws to fly in from Florida on Friday morning & didn't know what they were going to do. They found a later flight through Boston & we had a great time. They are here now for their last couple of hours in town.

We woke up Friday morning around 6am, because there were some loud-talking men outside our building. Power was still down and now we didn't have water. We worried for about ten minutes when power suddenly came on. My 6-year-old woke up a bit later and immediately told me to get pencil and paper to write down our emergency backup plan. She actually thought it was going to be up to us to get the power on for the city and wanted to make a map from our house to the power station so we could get to work. What a citizen!

One thing we learned: a well-stocked emergency bag comes in handy. We had extra batteries, but not enough candles. We learned that it helps to keep the short wave radio in the emergency bag. Still need to find that. We learned that Blackberrys are pretty vital for communicating in a blackout. We learned that my husband's grandmother was OK and probably better prepared than we were. We finally learned the first names of our next door neighbors. We learned that New Yorkers are the best! (Well, we already knew that).

Friday, July 11, 2003

Knowledge Management and Social Networks

While trolling the Social Networks board at Ryze I discovered a couple of interesting links to articles on Knowledge Management and Social Networks which was the topic I was pursuing and a side link on Weblogs as Filing Cabinets, both posted on Dave Pollard's How to Save the World blog.

Summer Memories

(It's 100 degrees and I'm feeling nostalgic)

Little League games
Wyler's Italian Ices
Big, white, puffy clouds
Any song by Chicago
Gazing up at the sky through the leaves of an apple tree
Lake Michigan
Kids' laughter and splashing sounds
Chuck's pool & country music from the 50s
Colorful, wet beach towels, draped over a fence
The ice cream truck song
The phosphorous smell of sparklers
After sunset, when everything is blue