This afternoon I experimented with my first effort at photo stitching, using a program called Hugin to piece together the view from my window. Click for greater detail.
As you can see, it’s hardly a perfect job. But I think it fits together well enough. The most obvious flaw seems to be the shift in color that splits St. Vibiania’s in half. I’m a long way from a photo expert, but I suspect that’s caused by the automatic adjustments my camera makes as it saves images in jpg format. There’s probably some easy way to avoid that (shooting all of the photographs in a manually selected adjustment scheme, or RAW format), but I’ll leave figuring that out for another day. But if you are an expert, or if I’m totally off base, please feel free to chide away. I’m eager to learn.
This Memorial Day weekend marked the formal launch of California’s War Dead, our database of the state’s casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s the result of a lot of hard work by many people at the paper, a large share of which had already been carried through the years by our many obituary writers.
The site intends to allow users to explore the data using a variety of criteria (for example, you can quickly look up fallen troops by hometown, high school or marital status). And to learn more about individuals by reading their obituaries from our back archives. Choice quotes have been selected to “pop” out of the individual profile pages and visitors are encouraged to leave memories and thoughts as comments.
Besides all my coworkers who pitched in to make this happen on a tight deadline, thank yous should be extended to all the great developers in the Django community. They not only provided the Web programming tools that made this idea possible, but also the leadership that showed me how the tools can be used to make journalism for the Web, not just on the Web. The same goes for all the people in the NICAR community who, by leading by example, have pushed me to keep learning new things and have the courage to take chances outside of journalism’s well worn comfort zones. Personally, I just hope that first group can forgive me for ripping off their ideas and that the second group doesn’t resent my getting the opportunity to do things like this without having to put in the once requisite 5 to 10 years on the cops-and-courts beat.
If you’re stretched for time, or maybe doubting there’s anything new to be learned about the war, let me promote a couple spots that might interest you.
Over the course of assembling the data, I was surprised to learn how many immigrants to California have died. It’s more than fifty, from Mexico and the Phillipines and South Korea and a number of other places. Check out the lists here. A fascinating story is of Sgt. Rafael Peralta of San Diego, who enlisted the same day he received his Green Card and died in Fallouja, Iraq, when he sacrificed himself to save his compatriots from a grenade attack. His profile is here and the story of his heroic death is here.
The most rewarding part of the project for me has been to see how quickly we’re getting great, thoughtful comments submitted by friends and family members of the deceased. One of my goals in the design was to give their writing equal footing with our previous reporting. It can be heartbreaking to read, but I’m proud to have helped make something that people think is worthy of such sensitive information. Examples I find particularly moving are the memories shared by the family of Sgt. Jason J. Buzzard of Ukiah and Corporal Christopher D. Leon of Lancaster, who I’m honored to know better now than I did before our commentors contributed.
It seems natural to expect that spending so much time with casualty data would have a numbing effect. But I think that’s only the case when we let the very real people we’ve lost remain numbers in a casualty count or unknown names on a page. It’s the stories that bring them to life, and my experience has been that the more stories you hear, the less numb you feel. The pain is in the details. A moving example is Teresa Watanabe’s obituary of Lt. Mark J. Daily of Irvine, who was inspired to join the war by the political writing of war advocate Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens has since gone to write a moving response to learning of Daily’s readership, and sacrifice, that you can find here.
Finally, I’d suggest checking out the video of California’s Riverside Cemetery by the LAT’s Saatchi Cunningham. Riverside is home to dozens of veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, the top resting place in the state.
Evidence is mounting that my blog is considered too hot for a variety of Web filter programs. Another screenshot — this time submitted by a friend at an anonymous American newspaper — is displayed below.
Today our A1 features Rich Connell’s look at the effectiveness of all those automated red light cameras positioned around Los Angeles. Here’s the nut:
In Los Angeles, officials estimate that 80% of red light camera tickets go not to those running through intersections but to drivers making rolling right turns, a Times review has found.
…
One of the most powerful selling points for photo enforcement systems, which now monitor 175 intersections in Los Angeles County and hundreds more across the United States, has been the promise of reducing collisions caused by drivers barreling through red lights.
But it is the right-turn infraction — a frequently misunderstood and less pressing safety concern — that drives tickets and revenue in the nation’s second-biggest city and at least half a dozen others across the county.
Our web package includes some hot tape put together by Rich, an awesome interactive explainer by Raoul Ranoa, the now perfunctory Google Map, and my own little goofy idea: portable downloads for TomTom and Garmin GPS devices (check out the roadblock halfway down the main story).
Loading the points into your device will not only map them on your dashboard monitor — but you can also easily program your system to give you an audio warning as you approach upcoming lights. And in that same soothing computer voice that already tells you when to turn.
I’m not sure how interested readers will be in this sort of product, but it seemed like a fun experiment. And since Rich had put in a great effort collecting the data from LA’s many fragmented municipalities, it seemed like we had to look for some extra yard to go for.
The technical part is pretty easy. Both manufacturers have handy developer guides that — once the data is prepared — only take a couple hours to suss out. Here’s TomTom. Here’s Garmin.
Any thoughts on other newspapery data projects that might work for GPS? The most dangerous intersections? The location of famous landmarks around town?
I must admit, I’ve fallen in love with that amazing video of Bill O’Reilly flipping out during his old Inside Edition days. Especially the hot remix. So, in homage, I’ve cut down the first 20 seconds into an mp3 file that should be easily portable as a ringtone to your smart phone of choice. Be it iPhone, Treo, Motorola, Nokia or LG.
Just right click the file below and save it to your computer. After that, you’re on your own.
As you can see, some of us are from other places. Like me, for instance. I was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
And maybe I’d like a t-shirt of my own. And maybe my hometown has its own bizarre logo. And maybe I’m not that concerned about copyright laws. And maybe there’s a crazy Web site that lets you design and print your own t-shirt in a matter of minutes.
And maybe you have 13 bucks to spare and want one for yourself. So just click here already.
