Asheville Transit Needs Your Comments to Keep Weaverville and Black Mountain Routes

Dear Transit Patrons,

As you may have heard the future of Route #28 (Black Mountain) & 54 (Weaverville) is uncertain at this time. We do know that the routes will operate in their current configuration through the end of October 2009.

Currently there is a collaborative effort underway to retain these services. Asheville Transit (City of Asheville), Mountain Mobility (Buncombe County) Black Mountain, and the French Broad River Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) are working with NC Department of Transportation to maintain the state and federal funding necessary to continue to operate these routes.

At this time ridership on Route # 28 & 54 continues to grown rapidly, with ridership in 2009 for the Black Mountain route at 55,000 riders and Weaverville Route #54 with 27,000 riders in 2009.

If you feel so moved, please consider writing a brief statement detailing the benefits that these routes have for your and your transportation patterns, then sending it to iride@ashevillenc.gov.

Please feel free to forward this message on to others who may have concerns with this loss of service.

Sincerely,

Asheville Transit

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Julie Atallah, Bruisin’ Ales, 828-252-8999
julie@bruisin-ales.com

June 5, 2009

“Beer City Bash” to be held at The Orange Peel on June 26

ASHEVILLE, NC—Bruisin’ Ales, The Orange Peel, and The Mountain XPress are sponsoring the “Beer City Bash” on Friday, June 26. The bash is a celebration of all things beer in Asheville. The event is a victory party for the local beer community, who rallied to win an Examiner.com poll by Charlie Papazian, founder of the Brewers Association, author, and one of the most recognized names in the world of beer and brewing.

The poll was an informal vote for “Beer City, USA” and included other notoriously large beer cities, such as Portland, OR; Denver, CO; and Philadelphia, PA. Asheville was the smallest city by population in the poll. In the end, Asheville tied with Portland, OR—a city five times the size claiming the co-title.

The Orange Peel in downtown Asheville is hosting the “Beer City Bash.” For the event, all draft lines at the venue will feature locally-brewed beer with all area breweries represented. Tickets are $10 per person (ages 21 and over), including two 9 oz. craft beers of your choice, a raffle ticket for giveaways, and live music. The music line-up features the bands Rat Jackson, Wilsin and Floating Action. The bash starts at 8:00 p.m. Doors at 7:30 p.m.

Proceeds from the event will go to the newly-formed Asheville Brewers Alliance and Arts2People, both non-profits that benefit the local community.

Tickets are available through www.ticketweb.com, 866-468-3399.

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Interesting Video on the Threat that Sprawl Poses on the Environment

Gopher 1, Josh 0

I finally got all the tomatoes planted last night.  For the most part I planted tomato in buckets (due to limited yard area and worries about possible soil contamination), but when I got home today, two out of the three tomatoes I planted in raised beds were missing.

I was able to quickly identify the culperet as it didn't stray far from the scene of the crime (it was busy destroying the neighbor's lawn at the time I discovered the damage).  The tell-tale gopher-esque teeth marks on the remaining stem of the tomato plant confirmed my suspcisions.

I did some quick research on humane and safe gopher repellents and deduced that perhaps I could try lining my garden beds with a mixture of Tobasco sauce and water.  It seemed like a good idea to put the mixture into a Super Soaker in order to expedite the process (in turns out that the force at which the Super Soaker discharges the mixture aerolizes the combination and produce a mace like substance).

My own personal discomfort aside, we'll see how the plan works.  So far the gopher has left the corn, squash, and beans in the other raised bed alone, but there is no telling if he is just waiting for it to ripen.  I'll try to remember to post an update about how the plan works out.

Ecofont

Ecofont is an environmentally-friendlier typeface intended to save toner by making the font more or less hollow.  As you can see from the graphic above, the font has holes to cut down on the overall footprint.  When the font is printed in it's actual size, it is intended to appear just like any other font.  Check it out at www.ecofont.eu.  An added bonus is that Ecofont can be downloaded for free.

Answers

Ever wanted to know the answer to a question, but haven't been able to find an answer through standard search methods?  Yahoo and Google both have their own brand of question and answer websites, but Mahalo allows for cash payouts based on the answers provided to questions.  I believe the site is in Beta at the moment, but it seems to be extremely effective (and quick) at providing users the answers to their questions.  Users can strengthen their answers with references and the individual posing the question gets to select what they feel is the best answer for their question.  I have used it just for some general opinion questions with desirable results.

Change.gov

The  coming Obama administration has opened up a new venue for individuals to pose questions and provide feedback.  I for one am pretty stoked about this level of openness and the variety of ways that the administration has embraced technology.  Hopefully this will continue throughout his tenure and democracy will be further extended to individuals rather allowing organizations and corporations to maintain their stranglehold on our government.

Check it out on the Change.gov website or go directly to questions page at http://change.gov/page/content/openforquestions20081229/.

On the same line FrontSeat has generated a series of pages where users can suggest possible goals and changes for the Obama administration to implement.  Check it out at http://obamacto.org/.

Projects

Well now that school is over, there is finally time to work on side projects.  If anyone is interested, I am working on two side projects at the moment.  I am trying to put together a social community of sorts centered around military veterans in the Asheville area.  You can check it out at www.ashevilleveterans.com.  I am also working putting together a similar resource for "urban chickens" in the Asheville area.  You can check that out at www.ashevillecitychickens.com.

Social-based Internet Technologies as a Means of Public Participation

I wrote this paper for a class a couple of semesters back and thought I would post it on the internet in case others were interested in the topic. Check out the link below.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgs6623s_266c4x4kzch

Social-based Internet Technologies as a Means of Public Participation by Joshua Peyton O'Conner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.triggerhippie.com.

Community Development Project - Sideline Issues 2.0

Just an update on my last post about attempting to contact the police department. On Monday I received an e-mail from City of Asheville IT Department stating that the Police Department e-mails should be working. I resent my e-mail to police@ashevillenc.gov on Monday and sent the same e-mail to internet/police@ashevillenc.gov (one of the e-mails specified on their site) this afternoon. Both appeared to have gone through okay. I will post the response once I receive it.