Please excuse a quick self plug. I launched a new site yesterday, Richmond Sunlight, that makes it simple to keep up with the General Assembly. Their 2007 session started today, and they’ll carry on for the next 45 days. The site is blog-like and heavily collaborative: you can post your thoughts about a bill in the form of comments, vote on whether or not you think a bill should pass, pingback from a blog, tag bills with relevant keywords, etc. Take it for a spin. I hope you find it useful.
News and meta-news about Charlottesville, VA, since 2001.
Sideblog
Police announced this afternoon that their investigation into what was initially believed to be a fatal fire on Rugby Avenue is now a homicide investigation. #
The Virginia Supreme Court has denied George Huguely’s appeal. His second-degree murder conviction will stand, WRIC reports. #
In a carefully worded story, and not citing specific sources, WTVR reports that forensic evidence belonging to Jesse Matthew Jr., the main suspect in the disappearance of Hannah Graham, matches forensic evidence collected during the investigation of Morgan Harrington’s 2009 murder. #
In the wake of Hannah Graham’s disappearance, and the evidence that came from private security footage, city officials are revisiting the question of installing security cameras on the downtown mall. #
Both Charlottesville Registrar Sheri Iachetta and former Electoral Board member Stephanie Commander have turned themselves in to the police on
foursix and four felony counts of embezzlement, respectively. #Ten years ago, the National Institutes of Health budget doubled and schools like the University of Virginia built massive new research facilities. A decade later, those buildings remain largely underutilized. NPR visits UVA in this story on the effect of federal binge and spurge spending in the sciences. #
In 2012, Council approved a new student housing complex on West Main—now some council members are questioning whether what they were shown matches what was built. #
The Architectural Review Board has approved a bike-themed mural on West Market, below the McGuffey Art Center, although at least one member expressed concerns that it might look like the bicyclists were riding away from Charlottesville’s downtown. #
City Police Chief Tim Longo is meeting with city leaders to work on protocols regarding the use of military surplus police weapons in Charlottesville. #
A 100-year-old Colonnades resident received military honors for her service in the WWII Women’s Army Corps #
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Archive for Sideblog »
Great site Waldo. Well done.
wow, awesome site. Did you create it yourself or is this based off something else? Regardless, very impressive. The content’s excellent as well, but it’s hard not to geek out about the site itself.
The only reused components are the JavaScript and the Flash graphs. Everything else is from scratch, but it’s pretty simple.
Thanks!
Fabulous. Thank you.
Excellent work.
Great job Waldo, I can see I will need a lot of time to go through your great work, as it is very thourough! Thanks!!!
I’m glad so many people are finding it useful. It was fun to put together. :)
You’re fun is a pure pleasure for us!
Addictive. I’m not sure if I should thank you or not…
Excellent job, Waldo, this is very useful.
I love the site and have forwarded it to many MH advocates (even those on the wrong side of things ), but today I found that one of my 2 comments had disappeared overnight and also two tags I was using had disappeared from the tag list on the home page. Is this a feature of the website or something I did?
I routinely go through and prune tags, removing any tags that aren’t liable to help anybody because they’re inadequately descriptive (“laws,” “new”), tags that make a value judgement (“sucks,” “unconstitutional”), tags that are inaccurate, or tags that use words that simply aren’t helpful to people. I suspect that’s where your tags went. Having seen your remark on Richmond Sunlight about a missing comment, I combed through the log files, my admin comments RSS feed, and the database, and there’s just no record of any comment having existed that now does not. You made a few comments there in the past day or two, and all of those are still present.
Oops. I plead kidney brain. I wrote a post on my blog about a bill and thought I had written it as a comment on Richmond Sunlight. My apologies and again, oops.
I completely see your point about tags, what one person sees as an accurate description of a bill may strike another as a value judgement. I have put in some descriptive tags that are less controversial.