VanPortlander

I don’t.

But perhaps someone does. Today while reading an article on everyone’s favorite local media site we all love to hate, I came across the advertisement shown at right.

Curious, I clicked through to the Blogger Application, and was presented with a form to give them my contact information, neighborhood, and a text area to fill out “Why you want to be a blogger”.

This is the first I’d heard of their program; I’m guessing they’re going to try to launch some sort of neighborhood blog network. Will they have any success? Maybe, but with Portland already having an active blog scene, I’d guess that most folks who want to blog are already doing it. Still, I’m all in favor of an increase in bloggers, and if OregonLive wants to try to provide the infrastructure to get this going, more power to ‘em. I just hope they can execute their local blog network in a better form than much of the rest of their site.

I wonder, will I have to enter some random birthdate and gender every time I want to read a neighborhood blog post?

They say all politics is local, including the upcoming Washington state primary election (February 19th). But here’s what you may not know as a Washington state voter: your vote in the Democratic primary election is meaningless. Not in a figurative sense, in that Super Tuesday will be over, but in a literal sense: the Washington State Democratic Party is choosing to select all of its delegates via the caucus process, ignoring the primary election entirely.

The Republicans trust the voters halfway, and will select half their delegates via the popular primary election, and the other half via caucusing. Those caucuses occur on February 9th.

Find out more at this Seattle Times FAQ.

For the past several months I’ve used a Blackberry to read a lot of content during my commute. One thing that has become apparent is that local newspaper websites aren’t created equal when viewed from a mobile device - some work just fine and some downright suck. A few thoughts on some of the biggies:

• OregonLive - Quite good. Despite the fact that their full version website is horrible, their mobile offerings are quite nice. No real ads/graphics to clutter things up.
• The Columbian - Sucks. Their page layout is such that on a mobile device with a small browser, generally one gets zero actual story content on the first page of an article. Only after scrolling through all the ads does one get to click through to a second page to hopefully get some content.
• Portland Tribune / Local News Daily - Good. There’s a few obnoxiously oversized graphics, but generally articles load on the first page and are easy to read.
• Portland Mercury / BlogTown PDX - Mostly good. The Merc tends to be graphics-heavy in their postings which is great on a regular client PC, but doesn’t always translate gracefully to a mobile device.

Perhaps in a future post I’ll talk about other local mobile goodies…

Last night, firefighters battled a 2-alarm fire at the Value Village in Vancouver. That’s a lot of Vs. Vanyway, I shot a few photos at the scene. I arrived after they had knocked down the fire, so the photos I shot are mainly outside operations with no visible fire. View all of the photos on Flickr.

There’s been a fair amount of play on some local blogs about the fact that the Clark County Republican Party got caught with some false information about Barack Obama on their website… namely that they were linking him to the Islam religion as a means to “smear” his image.

OK, I got it, that’s not cool. Bad ‘publicans.

But… here’s my follow up question, and one that I’m curious why I haven’t seen asked by any of the sites that are making a big deal out of the issue: so what if he were Muslim? Is that a disqualifier from being President? By working so hard to discourage the Islam rumors are Democrats implying that if he were Muslim that it would be legitimate to question his “ties” to the religion?

I’m curious… is it cool to slam the religion, but not cool to lie about it?

Gay rights are a huge issue in Portland and have been the subject of a bunch of recent Oregon ballot measures, but when it comes to government, apparently Washington edges out California as the state with the most openly gay lawmakers (according to the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund).

Five minutes. 20 slides that advance every 15 seconds. Burning ideas from bright Portlanders.

That’s Ignite Portland.

The first event in October drew a full-to-capacity crowd to listen to some smart local folks talk about a bunch of random topics. Ignite Portland 2 is being held February 5 at the Bagdad Theater. They’ve announced the lineup of presenters and topics include imagination, rockets, biodiesel, and how to be an undercover hooker. Head over to the Ignite Portland website to learn more, or RSVP for the event.

It’ll be an awesome evening of ideas and networking. Thanks to some generous sponsors, attendance is free. I hope to see you there!

Over at WalkingPortland, the latest blog entry is paper-based. An interesting take mixing old with new.

With yesterday being one of the coldest days of the season, it was a great day to head out to the Oregon Zoo with the family. My wife and daughter love the animals, and it gives me a chance to take some photos of something a bit furrier than my usual subjects. While I was a bit disappointed to see a bunch of new mesh fencing that has ruined the photo opportunities at the elk and wolf exhibits, I found a few creatures that seemed content to hang out and pose for the camera.

As you’ve probably heard, TriMet has put the brakes on a plan to either eliminate or shorten the hours for Fareless Square. They obviously bungled the public (sorta) input process and now they say they’re going to do some evaluation comparing Fareless Square to crime data before making a decision.

That might not be the best plan.

Last week on this blog I asked my one question about the link between Fareless Square and the violence. Folks like Amanda Fritz took time to go to the hearing and attempt to make their views known. Today I had a thought: it’s all irrelevant. We’ve been asking to see some correlation between Fareless Square and crime on MAX. That’s the wrong question to ask.

The question that should be asked is whether a simple change in fare structure would act as a deterrent to those who would end up committing a robbery or assault. Even if there was a link between Fareless Square and crime, would instituting a $2 fare actually keep anyone from getting mugged? I doubt it… the folks who are going to beat someone aren’t going to be put off by a fare evasion issue. Given the very sporadic fare inspection, a slight change in fare structure isn’t likely to reduce violent crime. For the fare change to be effective would require a significant increase in fare inspectors or security personnel on the trains… which likely would act as a deterrent.

If TriMet wants to boost security to fight crime, that sounds like a reasonable plan. But to suggest that a $2 fare is going to keep someone from committing a violent felony is laughable.