This August marks the completion of my 7th year in Boston, with the loose exceptions of the 1 month I commuted into Boston from Ashland, and the 1 year I commuted out of Boston to Lowell.

Also this is the link to generate the Google Map.

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The City of Boston uses a Lagan CRM system to create and track tickets and cases. To feed that ticketing system the city offers constituent services in person, via telephone (the meeting was held next to the call center which had ~10 agents active at the time), via the web, and through the smartphone apps. The Lagan system tracks 150-170 types of tickets, but Boston currently exposes only 6 of them through Open311 API (streetlights, potholes, graffiti, 2 types of snow removal, and other); this decision was explained as being driven by the UI needs of the official smartphone apps. The Open311 system is only a data bridge into the Lagan CRM and thus won't support any additional metadata or external decisioning (this dismissed a Code for America fellow's suggestion of voting on tickets).

The API is not currently available. The city estimates 2 - 3 weeks until they have a test server up, and from there they will evaluate whether to give applications access to the live system. The test server will be a sandbox that is either refreshed every 24 hours, has new data streamed to it, or may simulate workflows (e.g. submit, review, comment, close)---it was still in discussion.

In addition to the Open311 API, the city also offers data dumps of its entire ticketing system, offset by 24 hours. Unfortunately, those data dumps don't include the channel through which they were inputted, e.g. it's not recorded whether the ticket came thru Open311, telephone, web or in person. This is allegedly through the city's Data Hub / Data Dashboard, but I can't find it.

The City of Boston is taking a more deliberate and restrictive approach than MassDOT/MBTA in opening up their data, though CRM tickets are clearly different than bus/train route and dispatch data. The university researcher's (Ben Clark) use case for the data was spot-on: determining who is utilizing these smartphone tools, and importantly who isn't. Time will tell how the influence of outside software developers will push the city's implementation---and how will it effect less-technology focused solutions.

I was really excited to meet the Code for America crew as they are bringing a lot of excitement and energy to the gov data scene. I did get the impression that they were unprepared for managing institutional forces: there was a question about why the city couldn't devote more IT resources to the project that were answered with some allusions to Dilbert (without acknowledging that the current capital budget was probably set 14 months ago). Open311 doesn't seem like CfA's primary focus in Boston, but if this was their first City of Boston meeting, I think they learned a lot.

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An Island 94 commenter requested a t-shirt based on the Boston Subway Map I vectorized a while ago. So I set up an at-cost shop through Spreadshirt, and ordered one myself.

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Today the Boston Cyclist's Union (BCU) launched their interactive Boston bike Crash Map, a mapping tool that I've been working on with them to help share and analyze bicycle crash data. They did all the hard work of getting the Boston Emergency Medical Services and Police Department to properly code and release the data---I just helped them clean it, geocode it and put it on a map.

It is an exciting project both because the data is compelling for bike safety and livable streets advocacy, and it required some novel/cludgy engineering. We wanted to create a system that would allow the BCU to access and update the data behind the map, but because of their technical capacity, I couldn't overly format the data or create a CMS database. The solution: Google Spreadsheets. All of the data is stored in a shared Google Spreadsheet that is automatically fed to the map on BCU's website. Google Spreadsheets can even geocode the addresses. I had to mess about with the javascript code a bit---aggregating multiple overlapping incidents at the same location into a single marker was all me---but overall it was a fun project.

Back in March and April of this year we asked Boston Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and the Boston Police Department (BPD) to separate bike and pedestrian crash data to allow us to see where bike crashes are happening. And to theircredit, each department quickly recognized the need and worked with us to meet it, partly by adding bicycle checkboxes to their incident report forms.

Now, not only do we have over six months of data to look at (May thru October 2010), but  it's all plugged into an interactive Google mapcreated by Union member and volunteer Ben Sheldon. Thanks Ben! It will still be a year or two before we can have a large enough sample size to discern reoccurring patterns at particular intersections, but this first six-month glimpse of the data does give a sense of where crashes are happening in the city and a few other interesting things.

Update: The map has been mentioned on WBUR and UniversalHub. I've been told that after releasing the map, there has been a big uptick in BCU memberships and request for info too.

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Police were left closing off surrounding streets whenever winds reached 45 mph

Also interesting description of two 300-ton weights that sit on the 58th floor to damp swaying motions.

via wikipedia. Researched due to an article today about MIT suing Frank Gehry over the Stata Center.

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College Road Trip ipod It’s a nifty looking rock, or rather a collection of different rocks within a sedimentary rock.

It also has some fantastical elements:

Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote a poem entitled The Dorchester Giant that describes Boston’s puddingstone being the result of the abandoned children of a giant flinging plum pudding about:

What are those lone ones doing now,
The wife and the children sad?
Oh, they are in a terrible rout,
Screaming, and throwing their pudding about,
Acting as they were mad.

They flung it over to Roxbury hills,
They flung it over the plain,
And all over Milton and Dorchester too
Great lumps of pudding the giants threw;
They tumbled as thick as rain.

Puddingstone is also to be imbued with magical and protective powers. Herfordshire Puddingstone was used to cover the top of witch’s coffin to prevent her to escape in death.

Update: Here’s the whole poem:

The Dorchester Giant
By Oliver Wendell Holmes (1830)

There was a giant in time of old,
A mighty one was he;
He had a wife, but she was a scold,
So he kept her shut in his mammoth fold;
And he had children three.

It happened to be an election day,
And the giants were choosing a king;
The people were not democrats then,
They did not talk of the rights of men,
And all that sort of thing.

Then the giant took his children three,
And fastened them in the pen;
The children roared; quoth the giant, “Be still!“
And Dorchester Heights and Milton Hill
Rolled back the sound again.

Then he brought them a pudding stuffed with plums,
As big as the State-House dome;
Quoth he, “There’s something for you to eat;
So stop your mouths with your ‘lection treat,
And wait till your dad comes home.”

So the giant pulled him a chestnut stout,
And whittled the boughs away;
The boys and their mother set up a shout.
Said he, “You’re in, and you can’t get out,
Bellow as loud as you may.”

Off he went, and he growled a tune
As he strode the fields along
’Tis said a buffalo fainted away,
And fell as cold as a lump of clay,
When he heard the giant’s song.

But whether the story’s true or not,
It isn’t for me to show;
There’s many a thing that’s twice as queer
In somebody’s lectures that we hear,
And those are true, you know.

.… . .

What are those lone ones doing now,
The wife and the children sad?
Oh, they are in a terrible rout,
Screaming, and throwing their pudding about,
Acting as they were mad.

They flung it over to Roxbury hills,
They flung it over the plain,
And all over Milton and Dorchester too
Great lumps of pudding the giants threw;
They tumbled as thick as rain.

.… .

Giant and mammoth have passed away,
For ages have floated by;
The suet is hard as a marrow-bone,
And every plum is turned to a stone,
But there the puddings lie.

And if, some pleasant afternoon,
You’ll ask me out to ride,
The whole of the story I will tell,
And you shall see where the puddings fell,
And pay for the punch beside.

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Spring came a lot earlier to Washington, DC than it did to New England, but the mercury is topping 80 today in Boston. Above, I’m at the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, DC last month. Below is the one of the multitudinous dandelions that have sprung up around UMass Boston.

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Boston received its first real bout of inclement weather yesterday. Walking home after helping a friend put together a website for childhood leukemia patients, parents and survivors and in between helping push out a couple cars and not breaking my neck, I snapped these.

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I purchased a new pair of jeans last weekend. In fact, I got the exact same brand (Carhart), style (relaxed-fit) and size (34–34) from the same store (Jones Department Store, “Jonesy’s” in Southie vernacular) at the same time of year (Novembrish) as I did last year. I also bought a new cap too. I don’t want it to seem like I don’t make progress in my life but the cap is identical too, to one I got last year (it matches my mittens) on the same expedition. Its progenitor was lost to the Boston Public Library one cold March morning.

Buying pants is always exciting for me; I never even owned a pair until I was 13–in San Diego one can get away with that. My mom likes to tell the story of my middle school principal saying to her after eighth grade promotion (for which I was en-panted), “I never thought I’d see the day with Ben in pants.”

In side note, it was pouring rain last Saturday when I went out to Southie to buy the jeans. Jonesies is far up on East Broadway; and while I caught the #9 bus there, I walked/swam back.

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