December 16, 2009
If you’re at all like me, you forsake Internet Explorer long ago and switched to Mozilla Firefox, but eventually got fed up with the constant updates and bloating.
So you switched to Google Chrome, which is lightning fast. Unbelievably fast. Kenyan marathoner fast.
That is, it’s fast when it works, so long as you’re connected to a fast dedicated line. Such was the case for me at work with my laptop, but I bring it home connect to the ethernet and I get bunches of “This web page is not available” errors, and have to constantly refresh pages to get them to load. My wife, connected through wifi, had even more problems loading pages.
At first we blamed our aging wireless router. Then I realized that it wasn’t a problem in IE or Firefox (which I still use to test web apps cross-browsers). It was a Chrome-specific behavior. It would try to load a page and if the Internet tubes showed the slightest clogging the browser would just stop trying.
So I looked “Under the Hood” and found the benign-sounding option to “use DNS pre-fetching to improve page load performance” enabled. I unclicked that sucker and the Internets are blazing fast once again.
Posted in technology 
No Comments »
November 23, 2009
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinal’s investigation into the culture, politics and laws around drinking in that state, “Wasted in Wisconsin,” has been awarded a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “Lifesavers” public service award.
Additionally, the state Senate just passed a bill “requiring more drivers to install ignition interlock devices on their vehicles and to make some fourth drunken driving offenses felonies,” according to the Journal Sentinel. The state Assembly passed a similar bill, and leaders hope to send a version to the governor soon.
I had the good fortune to analyze data for the series and write one of the 72 (one for each county in Wisconsin) “Sobering Reminders” about someone who had been killed by a drunken driver.
The series also won a 2009 Peter K. O’Rourke Special Achievement Award.
Some of my contributions:
Posted in awards, data No Comments »
November 18, 2009
I’m learning to hunt — so what started out as me toolin’ around on the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency website turned into an excuse to make a neat map of public hunting land within striking distance of Memphis.
Turns out there’s actually quite a bit of land out here: more than 370,000 acres of Wildlife Management Areas or refuges are open to hunting in West Tennessee.
Check out my Google Map mashup, and let me know what you think.
Gun season starts Saturday!
Posted in Memphis, maps No Comments »
October 18, 2009
This time around The Commercial Appeal tackles violent crime on the neighborhood level. Kristina Goetz examines the Clementine neighborhood, which I identified as having the most violent crimes July 2000-May 2009, and 39 other neighborhoods which account for 10 percent of the violent crime in Memphis.
Read the story here and don’t miss the rest of the True Crime series.
Posted in Memphis, True Crime, data, public records No Comments »
October 12, 2009
This past weekend Commercial Appeal reporter Cindy Wolff explored the trends in pet adoption and euthanasia at Memphis Animal Services.
I did the data analysis for the story and the thing that struck me instantly was the 79% euthanasia rate for dogs and cats last year. Damn. At least it’s down from the 82% in 2006.
Makes me sad though to think that could have been the fate for Pippi, our lab/something mix who Cindy rescued and convinced us to adopt.
Posted in Memphis, data No Comments »
