Get People to Food to People

Transportation systems for schools have high utilization at peak times and no utilization at others.

The Gothamist reports "Real Seniors Take School Buses To Buy Fresh Food"

This has been a recurring issue for me for a couple of years now: how to use things like transportation systems more intelligently.

Other things to fix:

• Integrate scheduling for county-based transportation systems in Southern Illinois (now only 5 days a week, inter-county complexity in routes/fares/extra fees/etc.
• Examine more efficient utilization of transport (for example, to pick up or deliver food) and manage health and safety issues through "intelligent boxes"which have telltales regarding handling of foods. These could even have features to allow only a certified operator to open the box (e.g., with a little bluetooth app for the food person at either end).
• Design for multi-use (buses with removable seats, etc.)

Ok. Time to weatherstrip the front door.... chilly day here.

Oh yeah. Most of the code for this exists in open source, I'd wager. Google Apps work too.

Nomadic Computing Approaches

Just how lightweight and cheap cost-effective can computing be?

I've resurrected an HP-620LX as a starting point... and have gained experience in stretching the capabilities of the Concord IQ Mini (which, as a USB attached camera surprises me for a thing bought from a rack at a Rite-Aid in 2000 or so for about $20.)

I look at some things as vade mecum... in lieu of true reference I settle for pencil stub and quartered paper. Also in the getaroundtoit plan to use vade mecum or equivalent as a text reader once I take the time to get (just) smart enough to fiddle with it.

But the little HP affords (admission) solitaire (I promise I'll stop after one more game) and the ability to read materials from gutenberg.org et.al. so I can get smart on rereading Hamlet (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern actually do have a few lines more than I recalled) and gems like Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses.

[NB: Friends will notice that my phobia of being stranded in a place with nothing to read remains constant as Polaris.]

The keyboard is a bit of a learning curve, and short trimmed fingernails seem necessary (but not sufficient) for results at any kind of speed.

At least I have a charming redhead to support me in my various geekly quests.

Other role models for this: Steve Robertsand his many projects around nomadic "systems" and players to be named later... I gotta get the Sunday Paper.

-30- for now.