Ypsilanti

Audio of the Ypsi Mayoral Debate 4

This entry was posted in politics Ypsilanti ypsivotes on by (updated 6723 days ago)

I have posted the audio of the Ypsilanti Mayoral Debate held tonight at the McKenny Union at EMU. If you are bandwidth challenged I will be posting another lower bit-rate version tomorrow. This first version is about 36MB The lower quality version should be quite a bit smaller. I will also do a multi-part version that can be burned to audio cds for anyone who who doesn;t have a portable mp3 player and doesn’t want to listen on the computer.

BTW Congratulations to Mark Maynard and all the other organizers. The ballroom was packed with probably over 300 people and there were excellent questions. It was a great event and demonstrated that the people of of this community do care about its future.

Bittorrent test for the debate 6

This entry was posted in Announcements [A] technology Ypsilanti ypsivotes on by

I am going to be recording and then posting audio and video of the Ypsilanti Mayoral debate tomorrow. In order maximize availability and conserve bandwidth (video is large especially when you are talking about a 90 minute debate) I’m going to make it available by as many channels as possible. This includes ourmedia.org, google and bittorrent. If you are not familiar with bittorrent it is a peer to peer file sharing technology that works extremely well for very large files. It is perfectly legal and ideally suited to distributing something like this. This will be my first attempt at hosting a torrent tracker. When you use bittorrent you download a small torrent file that points to a tracker site. It then gets the information about the file to download and starts getting pieces of the file. As more people download pieces they also share those pieces. The more people who are downloading and seeding a file the faster everyone can get it. I would like to request your help in testing my setup.

If you are already setup to use bittorrent then please download this torrent file for Azureus, a very good bittorrent client. The file is only 7.6 MB. If it downloads OK please let me know.

If you are not setup for bittorrent and you are running windows, and you want to get the debate this way, please download this setup file for Azureus, install it and then download the torrent file and test the setup. If you are not running windows you can find Mac and Linux versions of Azureus here

Please let me know if this works or if you have any problems. Once I post the video and audio files I’ll put the links here. thanks

Ypsi Mayoral Debate 2

This entry was posted in ypsivotes on by

You may have noticed the little banner in the top left corner, about the debate for the Ypsilanti Mayoral candidates this Thursday at McKenny Union at EMU. My friend Mark Maynard is the instigator. I will be recording and videotaping the event and putting it on line after the event. I am planning on putting the audio up here on this blog as a podcast. If you listen to podcasts already, you can just subscribe to my RSS feed (the orange icon) over on the left sidebar and as soon as I post the audio it will show up in your podcatching software (iTunes, Doppler, Juice, etc.). I’ll put up the link to the video as soon as it’s ready.

Open source and free software in ypsi

This entry was posted in technology Ypsilanti on by

If anyone in the Ypsi area is interested in learning about some of the free and open source software applications that are available let me know. There are a lot of great free tools available that I think most non-geeks are probably not aware of. If there is enough interest I’ll look into maybe getting a room at the Library or somewhere where I could do a little seminar. You don’t have spend 100’s of $ buy software like MS Office or Photoshop and you don’t have to download such software from file sharing sites. You can use programs like OpenOffice or GimpShop. Even if I don’t get enough interest for a group I’d still be happy to give individual advice if you have any questions about programs to use for various tasks. You know where to find me if you’re reading this.

Shadow Art Fair a success!

This entry was posted in Ypsilanti on by

I went to the shadow art fair with Max this afternoon and the Corner Brewery was packed with people. It was good to see so many people turn out to this event. Hopefully this will become a standard fixture on the Ypsi summer calendar along with the Beer Festival, the Elvis Fest, and many others. The city of Ypsilanti may be having some financial difficulties but this city is alive and well thanks to the efforts of an involved community. The city owes a debt to involved people Like Mark Maynard and the other organizers of the art fair, the friends of the Freight House, Friends of Rutherford Pool, Linda French and the other Depot Town business owners and so many others that I can’t name right now. With such an involved community Ypsilanti is bound to overcome it’s difficulties.

Shadow Art Fair! 2

This entry was posted in Ypsilanti on by

Hey everybody! Don’t forget the shadow art fair tomorrow July 15 at the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti. It runs from 12-8pm and features over 30 local artists selling their wares. You can also try out some of the beers being produced at the brewery. Avoid the crowds at that other fair in a neighboring city next week. Support local artists and go check it out. After you’re done you can go a couple of blocks south to Depot Town and have a pizza at Aubree’s or a burger or the great fish and chips at the Sidetrack. Finally you can get an ice cream at Cafe Luwak. If you don’t live in Ypsilanti or haven’t checked out Depot Town you should definitely go check it out tomorrow.

Google’s coming to town

This entry was posted in Ann Arbor Ypsilanti on by

In case you thought parking was hard to find in downtown Ann Arbor before, It may be about to get a whole lot worse. Yesterday it was announced that Google is going to build a new headquarters for their AdWords business in Ann Arbor and hire a thousand people in the area. Although having a thousand new jobs in the area is awesome, they apparently want to build in downtown Ann Arbor and need 200,000 square feet of office space. Where the hell are you go to put another 1000 cars in Ann Arbor especially if some of the proposed sites are used which include existing surface parking lots.

I have an idea, how about Ypsilanti? The Corner Brewery has bought part of the old Motor Wheel plant, maybe the rest could go to Google. Or how about the site of the soon to be vacated Ypsilanti Public Schools bus garage? Or the Water Street site? Or the current site of the former Visteon plant that will soon close? Come on Ypsi needs the tax revenue and there are plenty of spaces that might be suitable. What do the mayoral candidates think? Steve Pierce can you here me?

The pool is now open

This entry was posted in Ypsilanti on by

After various delays, as of today at 1:00pm Rutherford pool is open for the season!! The schedule and rates are:

2006 Schedule and Rates – June 10 to September 6
Schedule

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Monday through Friday
Open Swim 1:00 to 5:00 pm
Family Swim 6:00 to 8:00 pm
Lap Swim 6:30 am, 12:00 pm and 5:00 pm

Saturday and Sunday
Lap Swim 12:00 to 1:00 pm
Open Swim 1:00 to 5:00 pm
Family Swim 5:30 to 8:00 pm

Rates

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Cash or Check only…
Day Pass
Child (1:00 to 5:00 pm) $2.00
Child (6:00 to 8:00 pm) $1.50
Adult $3.00
Senior $2.00
Season Pass
Individual $60.00
Family $125.00
Senior $40.00
Gift Card (Five Punches)
Adult $12.00
Child $8.00

Swim Lessons

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Session Fee (First) $50.00
Session Fee (Second and on) $45.00
ARC-WSI Certified Instructors

See you there!

Local dufus emulates new movie!

This entry was posted in Ypsilanti on by

dufus parksSo some kid must have been getting warmed up for the new Fast and the Furious movie that opens up on Friday. He apparently spent a disproportionate amount of money trying making an old Grand Am look cool not realizing that it is simply not possible. Evidently his driving and parallel parking skills were in proportion to his taste because he managed to miss my rather generously sized driveway, and planted his car in my yard. Evidently the over-sized wing didn’t do much for the car’s handling. The car also has a serious alignment issue now too. Check out the camber on the back wheel. I didn’t get a picture of the rear wheel on the driver side which was completely detached and under the car after riding over the curb.