Joined on Jan 24, 2013
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I'm from Oakland. I live in Oakland. I love Oakland.

 

Creator of OaklandMurals. Author of themacinator. Crazy prolific tweeter on days with City Council meetings. (Check out #oakmtg.) Formerly frequent instagrammer.  Not on facebook.

 

I love Sunday editathons at the OHR. I am going to start going again whenever I can and hopefully others will join!

 

I'm going to Library School. I don't even know if I want to be a librarian, but I'm pretty sure I'd be a good one because I'm obsessed with collecting information. If you're suffering from RCA, you will see what I mean.

Things I like to do here:

Portalize:

This involves lots of TAGGING. I like taxonomies and clarifying tagging by making pages like Wanted Pages, Needs Images Pages, etc. I've been known to drive or walk around based on little hand made notes of neighborhoods that "need images." Yup.

And I'm really into civic stuff like City Council and Public Safety (although maybe not in the straight forward way you might take that to mean...)

I also like Resources.

Things I wish other people would tell me:

Palm trees. What's up with that!! [NAParish responds: Gene has a suggestion from Dennis Evanosky on this page- gk responds- very helpful!]

Arnie Fields. Really, who IS this guy?

Boards and Commissions. I mean, I'll fill this stuff in, but I wish someone who knew more would!

Phil Tagami. Gene Hazzard tells me this dude is bad.  [NAParish responds: "bad" in the sense of "bad ass?"  Check out this article for a bit on that.  "Bad" in the sense that he's a developer?  Check out this article from 2005.  Or maybe just because Gene doesn't like Phil?  Check out this blog post for more on that. -gk responds: all of the above except maybe "bad ass."]

 

Things I want to work on/keep working on:

  • Black Panthers
  • current city council members
  • gang injunctions
  • history of my block (PALM TREES!!)
  • Measure X (strong mayor)
  • murals
  • oakmtg

 

Secret messages:

Thank you so much for all your additions to Neighborhood Groups!! WOWWW!! ~V

2013-03-04: Hi GK, in case you wonder why I’ve gone off on your City Council history page, it’s because it’s (by far) the biggest page I know of on oaklandwiki, and I see how much work has gone into it so far (and how much remains!), and though I have zero interest in political science myself, it’s easy to imagine such a project potentially having future value for others. So please, don’t mind me trying to conform the data to keep it as high-quality as possible; it’s nothing personal – I simply enjoy using RegEx to fight GIGO. Cheers – Mike

@mike- i really appreciate those changes! each time i try to use it it takes a minute for me to readjust, but it is definitely useful. (just don't expect me to understand regex/gigo comment!)- lb

@GK- thanks for understanding. Without getting too technical, I just meant that the principle of “Garbage In, Garbage Out” (GIGO) invariably and increasingly applies as data complexity grows. In other words, what you are assembling is, by now, really more of a database – and such things are only as useful as their data is accurate. Eventually, as size increases, maintenance needs (formatting, data validation, link verification, etc.) will outstrip dealings with the content, so I’m trying to keep the decks clear so you aren’t bogged down and discouraged before you’ve finished adding everything – if that makes any sense! M.

Thanks for tweeting out the accounts of our local, government meetings. I think that we need to include questions generated on twitter as part of the public speaking time.

2013-03-18: Hey, for all I know, vegan pizza isn’t your thing but … you were missed last night! - Mike

@mike- i am so sorry i missed you! i was at the WBC, but pizza (with cheese) is definitely my bag.  hopefully we'll connect soon, i hear you're all about alphabetizing!! 

2013-03-26: Hah! While I knew not to expect pepperoni, I was apparently alone in failing to realize that “vegan” = “no cheese” which would have been a dealbreaker for me! Luckily, I was clueless: I got to meet a $%^&-ton of nice people. And I did get to finally meet you last weekend. I’m really all about laziness: I like to put machines to work (say, alphabetizing) so I can have more time to slack off and think. Hey, when you say bimonthly, do you mean twice a month, or every other month?

The embed functionality is limited because of possible security problems. There's a lot of different types of "embeds" out there, and many use things that could lead to security problems.  I think we may be able to allow the <embed> tag, which we don't currently.  -Philip

Library school, eh? SJ? You don't have to know if you want to be a librarian--so many of my classmates became all other awesome kinds of things. Being an information wrangler is really all you have to be interested in :) Let me know if you have any questions! Oh! And try to take advantage of conference fees as a student! -- piscesruby

yes! thank you for the reassurance- i'm starting my 4th semester and feeling quite down on it. i'd love to talk offline with you- greenkozi at gmail. i don't make thursday meetings very often but love editathons!

Greenkozi! Glad to see you on the Oakland Wiki again. -- gene

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