Author Archive for Waldo Jaquith

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New Daily Progress Website

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 27, 2008 in Meta News. 37 Comments

The Daily Progress has a new website, and it’s a big improvement for them. It looks like they’ve abandoned the beastly, totally insecure old content management system that they were using. Articles now have big-boy URLs. At long, long, long last, they have RSS feeds. Stories have tags. The search engine works. There appear to be lots of new features like integrated video, photo galleries, audio, etc. So the good news is very good.

But the bad news is very bad. Their archives are gone. Years of news have simply disappeared. Every link to every Daily Progress article from cvillenews.com (and anywhere else) 404s, even links from just this morning. (WINA used to have a mind-blowingly great site, because they had news stories going back over a decade; it was a treasure trove. That all disappeared two years ago, apparently forever.) The RSS feed exists only in the abstract — it doesn’t actually work, and the fact that the layout has changed drastically means that my screen-scraped RSS feed is broken. So those of y’all who, like me, read the Progress primarily via RSS are out of luck.

The feed should be easily fixable, but the loss of the archives is a real bummer. There’s just no need to lose all of these articles when upgrading to a new CMS. The improvements, though, are great, and I’m impressed. For more about the changes, see the article by the paper’s web guy, Matt Rosenberg.

FOIAed E-Mails Reveal City Dredging Communications

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 27, 2008 in General News. 6 Comments

The Hook has FOIAed e-mail communications from the city pertaining to the reservoir, and they show that city manager Gary O’Connell is actively opposing citizen efforts to consider dredging. The paper’s staff appear to have become quite the experts in water storage and transportation in the past few months, and present a pretty significant series of facts supporting the notion that dredging is a cheaper, simpler option than the pipeline/mega-reservoir plan. Based on these communications, it certainly doesn’t appear that there’s anything inappropriate going on here — it’s more of a case of “don’t bother me with the facts, I’ve got my mind made up.”

Farmers Market is Open

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 27, 2008 in In Brief. 1 Comment

The farmer’s market is open for the season. Huzzah! (Via The Hook) #

Random Shootings Close 64

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 27, 2008 in Crime. 28 Comments

A 20-mile stretch of Route 64 was closed for hours early this morning after four apparently random shootings. Two people were injured (not severely) and four vehicles were shot, all close to the overpass on the C’ville side of the mountain. Traffic was diverted along 250 until just a few hours ago, and schools ~~opened two hours late~~ are closed. Local and state law enforcement responded with helicopters and K9 units. State police are leading up the investigation. If there are any suspects, or if anybody’s been caught, there’s no word.

Given that the overpass exists solely to get to the Scott family farm, which has no other exit other than Route 250, I’d have to think it’d be pretty easy to corral the shooter, at least if he drove up there.

12:30pm Update: There’s a bunch more information out now. Shootings took place at three different locations, off the mountain, all around Yancey Mills/Ivy; the Royal Orchard overpass was not one of them. It turns out that a fifth vehicle was hit, an unoccupied VDOT truck at the Yancey Mills facility. The caliber of the bullets in all incidents appear to be the same (though they’re not saying what caliber that is). The suspicion is that this is the work of more than one gunman, though presumably they’re working together. Police figure the shooters are still in the area, and the whole region is under surveillance. They say it’s safe to drive on 64 now, but looking at the traffic cameras, it doesn’t look like many people are buying that.

The national media haven’t picked up on the story yet, but Virginia media are all talking about it. If it stops with this morning’s string, then people may well remain calm. But if there are any more similar shootings, we can expect to be whipped up into a frenzy by a nationwide media brouhaha.

Planning Commission Rejects Pantops Sports Complex

Published by Waldo Jaquith on March 26, 2008 in Development. 2 Comments

The Planning Commission shot down the proposed Pantops sports complex yesterday, saying it’s just too big given the parcel’s rural designation. The plot would have to to have its zoning designation changed, which would flout the whole idea of growth areas. They like the concept, just not the location for it.

All of these concerns came up here when this was proposed last month, so it’s hard to say that this was unexpected. It’s tough to argue with commissioner Linda Porterfield, who says that while the lot might be designated rural, just look around at Pantops — it’s a little late.

Charlottesville Tomorrow has the full report on the commission meeting.