It has been a good Sunday. Lots accomplished. For one, most (not quite all yet) readers are reading this on the new server. It works very well and the transition was smooth.

I've been listening to some of the sessions from Bloggercon III. A commentary about the Podcasting session by people who were there said it's moderator (Adam Curry) was a bit of an elite. Thank you. I'm pretty sure Dave Winer will never consider it valid feedback but he should. Aside from terrible audible that makes some of the sessions almost unlistenable, the thing that has been driving me nuts is how the self-proclaimed "un-conference" is so much more elitist and snooty than the pedestrian trade shows and conferences put on by vendors.

What does all that mean... for me it's simple. I want good information. BloggerCon imposes a strange (to me) anti-commercial bent. This is supposed to mean you don't talk about your own product. There are countless times where people talked about their own products. However, when a very useful vendor started talking about how they use their own product to solve the problem being discussed, the elitist powers were there to squash them. Too bad I almost learned something.

Podcasting pet peeves

So I have some pet peeves with podcasters. First of all the name of your show belongs in the Album field. It's just plain rude to put "birds sitting in the window." As the name one day and something else the next. iTunes (and my iPod) now say there are countless albums... Also, it should remind us that just because somebody creates content does not make them an expert on the tool. For example the iPod is a great recorder for podcasts. And contrary to the repeated comments on The Daily Source code, it fast forwards and rewinds easily - just the same as every CD player I've ever used.

So the perfect gizmo that I want is a holder, that holds two iPods side by side, provides power, and uses one to record. A small mixer/fader would allow mixing the second iPod with the live microphone input. A small 2-3 pound recording studio to go. Now if I just had the time to do it.

Blogging tools aren't there yet either

There's a lot being done on the production side of podcasting. Please let's not forget we don't have good tools for blogging yet. There are some good fragments out there. There are bits and pieces that look good. There is not a single solution that works as it should. Dave Winer has the right idea. Life is an outline. There are subheads and there are links to nodes, but a perfect blogging tool will integrate with my workflow not create a second, parallel flow. Today I write a memo and if I want to then copy part of it to the blog. Same with an email etc. But it should be a flag on a paragraph or document that says send it to my personal blog or send it to my work intranet blog.

Tuesday evening began with a scheduled meeting of the Sandy-Mesquite Development Association. Nancy Knight was the sole board member present and no meeting was held because of the lack of a quorum. Knight did, however, read from correspondence relating to the pending appeal before the Nevada Supreme Court. The case stems from attempts by Vidler Corporation to privatize the water in the Sandy Valley area and export the water to other areas.

At 7:30 the Sandy Valley Citizens Advisory Council meeting was called to order by vice-chair Keith Kram. Board members Melissa Barbre and Joanne Jolls were present along with council secretary Cynthia Zalsman. The county staff representative normally present at Citizens Advisory Council meetings was absent because of a conflicting meeting elsewhere. After the pledge, approval of agenda and past meetings the council took up the issue of appointing a board member to represent the council on the Clark County Growth Management Task Force. Discussion included uncertainty about who was going to serve on the board and insufficient information for continuing board members to make a commitment to serving on the committee. As a special call meeting is scheduled for November 30 the council tabled this item to that meeting.

Kram read several notes from Munhall in lieu of staff reports. These included:

• Sandy Valley Fall Cleanup will be this Saturday, November 13. Republic Services will not be providing separate metal bins as they have in the past. Metal waste will be mixed with all other waste and the bins may fill up faster. In order to dump for free citizens will need to bring their trash bills or have their names checked against a list of republic subscribers.
• The Clark County Commission has approved funds for biding on design of the senior citizens center. Community input will be needed on design requirements and preferences.
• Applications are being accepted through December 5th for residents interested in serving on the Sandy Valley Citizens Advisory Council. More information and applications are available on this page.
• The third car crush is being discussed by the company and the county. More details should be available at the next Citizens Advisory Council meeting.
• No update from Commissioner Lynette Boggs McDonald about the formation of the ground water board.
• A lack of topics to be discussed led to the cancellation of the final Chairs' meeting on December 8th.
• There was a hearing Tuesday about the property with the accumulation of cars on Quartz. The judge gave them another 45-day extension. The party states they are attempting to move the cars out of state.
• Commendation to council member Joanne Jolls who sat through six hours of county commission meetings to have the community voice heard on an application for a temporary use permit. The Sandy Valley Citizens Advisory Council had recommended denying the request. Later the planing commission approved the request and the county commission ultimately approved a more restrictive version of the request than initially requested.
• No representative from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department was present for the update agenda item.

The floor was then opened for public comment. Several community members brought up concerns about vandalism in the park and drag racing on Quartz. Several people mentioned the idea of surveillance cameras in the park and confronting the vandals. The idea of fencing the park was raised and it was brought up that county policy is now that they do not fence the perimeters of parks.

The meeting concluded at 8:00 pm with an announcement from Zalsman that she and Ann Weber are doing the work for the Sagebrush and that articles need to be in by the 15th to be guaranteed consideration.

The council will meet again on November 30th.

I'm not sure where the problem came from but upon upgrading to Drupal 4.5 my site kept throwing errors here and there. It was trying to do an insert into the Menu table to create the custom menus. But the table wasn't configured properly.

  pid int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',<br />
  path varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',<br />
  title varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',<br />

These three fields were missing from the menu table. After they were added it seems very happy and all is well.