editor

Blockbuster was a necessary evil. I was listening to a Yale University podcast recently and part of it explained how Blockbuster is the reason we have cheap DVDs now. Back when Blockbuster started (and those of us old enough to remember will affirm), VHS movies cost between $80 and $120 each. Blockbuster convinced the Hollywood studios that there was more money to be made in moving a large volume of cheaper movies rather than a smaller volume of expensive movies. That said, I haven't rented anything from Blockbuster in probably five years. Netflix and AppleTV FTW!

I envy the metric assload of free time he has.

Public Input on County Hazard Mitigation Plan Sought Harris County is updating its Hazard Mitigation Plan, which proposes public programs to reduce deaths, injuries, and property damage from the natural disasters most likely to occur in the county. The public is invited to review the draft plan and suggest changes or additions. The document is on line at http://www.hcoem.org/documents/PublicReviewDocument.pdf . Comments may be made through this link http://www.readyharris.org/go/survey/1829/1823 . The comment period closes on September 30th. Actions such as increasing size of certain drainage facilities, purchasing early warning equipment, and hiring additional emergency personnel are proposed in the plan. Policies addressing community growth, protection of natural resources, and public awareness and outreach campaigns are other measures that could be included. Participants are Harris County, 23 municipalities in the county, and the Harris County Flood Control District. When the public comment period is over, the plan will be revised and will be submitted to state and federal agencies for review. The plan may also be reviewed at Houston TranStar, 6922 Katy Rd., Houston, Texas and comments may also be submitted to Harris County OHSEM, 6922 Katy Rd., Houston, Texas 77024. Mitigation planning offers many benefits, including: . Saving lives and property; . Saving money; . Speeding recovery following disasters; . Reducing future vulnerability through wise development and post-disaster recovery and reconstruction; . Expediting the receipt of pre-disaster and post-disaster grant funding; and . Demonstrating a firm commitment to improving community health and safety. Harris County OHSEM welcomes your input.

So... some guy who admits he's a stalker had posted a music video on YouTube about KHOU television's Lucy Noland. It's either very creepy, or a mediocre PR stunt for his new album.

I don't normally mention celebrity stuff on HAIF, but Patrick Swayze was from Houston. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Swayze

Report Shows SafeClear Tow Program Continues to Cut Freeway Crashes A new study of the City of Houston’s SafeClear incident management tow program shows that it continues to have an impact on reducing freeway crashes in the city, saving drivers millions of dollars in collision costs and helping reduce freeway congestion. The report, conducted by researchers at the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University and at Rice University, shows that Safe Clear cuts approximately 120 collisions per month, saving the driving public more than $4 million each month in associated costs. The report also shows that the program is meeting most of its established goals. In 2008, the report says, 89.8% of tows were responded to within the goal of six minutes, just shy of its 90 % goal. “When we look across the country there is nobody that’s doing a better job at getting to stalled vehicles and cutting crashes,” said Dr. Tim Lomax, with the Texas Transportation Institute, one of the principal researchers on the SafeClear project, which was launched in 2005. “We’ve worked hard to make this program the success that it is, saving people money and time.” said Mayor Bill White. A copy of the report is attached. It can also be viewed online at http://www.houstontx.gov/safeclear/ .

Does it look like this?

To continue this off-topic King of the Hill detour -- It wasn't technically the last episode. The people who make King of the Hill made more episodes than Fox ordered. So there's a few (two or three I think) that never aired. I would expect they'll be on DVD.

I bet they're different materials. My guess is that the old windows are wooden, and the new ones are something more energy efficient. But you'd think that a little paint on one or the other would make them look the same.

Yeah. And the sun visors echoing the old building's roof lines are silly. Sun visors? In San Francisco? And they're not even contiguous.

Chenevert wins. It was, indeed, a DNS change. For those interested in a technical explanation -- I used to have thehaif.com 302 redirected to the forum from my domain registrar. The main reason is because it was free. But we've been having some trouble with that in terms of reliability. Sometimes the redirect would land at a url shortening service for some reason. So I finally coughed up the five bucks to have the DNS go straight to the forum server. Hopefully taking the middle man out of the chain will make everything faster and better and easier for everyone and also resolve the Google-click problem.

I was wandering around San Francisco last week and found what I call "FrankenBuilding." This is what happens when you have a perfectly nice historic 11-story building and plop a 12-story RItz-Carlton Residences on top.

Hermann Park Sunset, originally uploaded by J-a-x. Jax nailed the perfect shot of Hermann Park.

You should think bigger than biking distance from Rice. If Rice is your theoretical base, then you have the entire length of the Red Line as your job market. Check the Medical Center and downtown to see if there are any custodial jobs.

Gone. For now anyway. Money's been tight lately and I couldn't justify spending $30/month on something that didn't (and wasn't intended to) generate any revenue. I had big plans for it, but like so many plans for HAIF -- I have more plans than time to implement them. I know a lot of web sites have legions of volunteers helping out with various sections, but I've never been very good with organizing people.

There are quite a few people on HAIF with experience protesting their appraisals. Hopefully you'll hear from one of them soon.

HAIF has taken kind of a strange turn over the last six to eight months or so. Instead of a few people (five or six) dominating and commenting on every discussion, what we now have is a larger number of new and recent members who participate in a greater number of smaller discussions. I patrol all new user registrations to keep an eye out for spammers. It used to be that people would register, but then just read the messages. We would get maybe one or two people a week who would register and immediately post a comment or take part in a discussion. Now, it's more like three or four people a day who join and immediately start posting. I think the reason for that change is a change in the social dynamic noted above. New users are less afraid to express their opinions and ask questions than they were before. There's less chance of them being shouted down in non-political threads. Again, I think this is related to the fact that we don't have a small gang of bullies jumping ugly with every new post like we used to. How did that happen? I think it's a combination of two things. One, I started sanctioning experienced users more often for poor behavior. Some were of the opinion that they could do whatever they wanted on HAIF since they were long-time members. It was a perception shared by many, and one of the top complaints I used to get. After a few of the higher-posting members were slapped with Moderator Preview for bullying other users, they decided that HAIF wasn't fun anymore and moved on. This is related to... Reason two -- the change in View New Posts. As we went through the transition from the old form software to the new, there was some flakiness in View New Posts. As it was before, it was a great way to constantly monitor the forum for instant changes to threads and to jump in on the tail end of dozens of threads with little effort. That made it a great tool for those who would impose their views on the masses in a ruthless manner. When View New Posts changed, it became harder to conduct such stalking, and gave the bullies another incentive to move on. At the beginning of the year, I'd guess that 5% of HAIFers were responsible for 40% of the new posts. Now I think that disparity has largely disappeared. Sure, there are always going to be heavy posters, and that's fine. But we don't have the sort of people who feel obligated to weigh in on every single thread no matter how little they know about the topic. Gary is right -- overall traffic on HAIF is down. There are a number of reasons why: The annual summer internet slowdown. Bad economy has people spending less time online. The majority of HAIFers HAIF from work, and many people have lost their jobs, or are afraid of losing their jobs. There are still lingering effects from hurricane Ike. We haven't quite recovered to pre-Ike traffic levels. Lack of external promotion of HAIF (which I hope to partially address with the new HAIF cards) About six good, regular posters moved on because they were being harassed by others. More aggressive promotion of TV and newspaper web sites. Less media coverage. There used to be a mention of HAIF in a radio, TV, magazine, or newspaper about once a month. Not so much anymore. The switch from .info to .com killed us in the search engines. The forum software can be difficult for people with very old (think Windows 98 and earlier) computers. The site appears visually heavier than it used to (it's not), which seems to have scared off dial-up users. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have become a competing time-sink. We're still Houston's leading internet community. Heck, we're 30x larger than Houstonist. What Houstonist does in a month we do in a day. And while traffic is down, overall posting is up. I'm encouraged by this. Hopefully more people will contact me about HAIF cards and help spread the word about HAIF and we can return the site to its 2008 peak.

Rest Yourself, originally uploaded by data5amurai. Data5amurai shot this pastoral scene in Sam Houston Park, showing how the natural and built environment can coexist.

That has nothing to do with the new forum software. I made a change to the www.thehaif.com domain name to make it faster and more reliable. It will take a couple of hours for your ISP to catch up to the changes. The main site is actually http://www.houstonarchitecture.com/haif/ and is what you should have bookmarked. TheHAIF.com is merely a shortcut. So "ugh" yourself.

I'm glad you mentioned this. I thought it was a problem with my computer. I've spent most of the day looking into it and made some changes that I hope will fix things in a few hours. When/if it happens to you again, please let me know. If you know how to take a screenshot, you can e-mail it to editor@houstonarchitecture.info . That would be very helpful. But again, hopefully in a few hours that bug will be fixed. The new HAIF is a lot more Javascript-focused. If you're using an outdated browser like IE6 that doesn't have complete Javascript support, slowdowns are not unexpected. If you're able to, switch to Safari or Firefox, which both run rings around IE in terms of Javascript performance. Overall, the weight of the pages has been reduced from the old HAIF, and thus their load time on slow connections should be faster. As noted in another thread, the change in size from the old header to the new one is exactly 22 pixels. Unless you're browsing on a netbook, it should be pretty much the same size. The only real difference is the new one is far more colorful and stands out more than the old one.

DA's Program Secures 191 DWI-related Arrests for Labor Day Weekend Houston, Tx - The Harris County District Attorney's Labor Day Weekend "No Refusal" enforcement program resulted in almost 200 DWI-related charges, with nearly 20 percent of those against drivers with prior DWI convictions, District Attorney Patricia Lykos announced Wednesday. This "No Refusal" program was the first operation utilizing new state laws that no longer require prosecutors and police to obtain warrants to draw blood samples of intoxicated motorists in certain situations. It was deployed during overnight periods that extended from last Friday night through last Monday morning (Sept. 4-7). Brent Mayr, Chief of the District Attorney's Vehicular Crimes Section, reported on the results during that period. Six drivers charged with DWI had mandatory, warrantless blood tests after they refused to voluntarily provide blood specimens. A judge authorized search warrants to obtain blood samples from another 30 of those charged. Overall, prosecutors filed 191 DWI charges, with 35 for repeat DWI offenses. The "No Refusal" deployment was available for use by all police agencies in Harris County. Blood samples were drawn at facilities provided by the hosting law enforcement agencies, the Houston and Pasadena Police Departments. "This operation was a double success - it took intoxicated drivers off the streets, and it was deterring others from getting behind the wheel," Mayr said. "We are committed to protecting the public from intoxicated drivers. If you drive under the influence, you are going to get caught. Refusing to provide a sample will not prevent you from being charged." Mayr said "No Refusal" procedures have been recognized by the highest appellate courts as legitimate, constitutional tools in enforcing DWI laws. The newest statutes allow officers and prosecutors to use qualified medical personnel to draw blood samples from intoxicated motorists with children in their vehicles, or who have prior DWI offenses, or who are involved in crashes with injuries requiring medical attention. More No Refusal operations are expected for upcoming holiday periods, Mayr said.

When we switched from .info to .com a lot of search engine results got dropped. It's taking a while for the search engines to re-learn HAFI and its connections to other sites on the net. I've gotten that on occasion -- but only from Google, never from inside HAIF or from any other web site. There's something about Google that's shooting clicks to weird places. I think it might have something to do with the previous owner of the domain. For me, usually all I have to do is go back and re-click the link and everything is fine. I really don't understand what the problem is, and not surprisingly, there is no method of contacting Google about this.

Heat of the Night, originally uploaded by data5amurai. Data5amurai uses HDR to enhance, not overwhelm, this dusk photograph of downtown Houston. Too many people abuse HDR technology, but in this case it is used well.

Telwink says it all, "Nothing screams Hillcroft/Harwin like this 70's cube." Ask him to tell you about how he risked his life to get a photo of the building's top floor.

Got an e-mail today from Kirk Farris with a video from KTBU about Frost Town. <object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="420" height="338" id="kickWidget_38668_25528" ><param name="movie" value="http://serve.a-widget.com/service/getWidgetSwf.kickAction"></param><param'>http://serve.a-widget.com/service/getWidgetSwf.kickAction"></param><param name="FlashVars" value="affiliateSiteId=38668&widgetId=25528&width=420&height=338&autoPlay=0&kaShare=1&mediaType_mediaID=video_774315" ></param><param name="wmode" value="window" ></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" ></param><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" ></param><embed src="http://serve.a-widget.com/service/getWidgetSwf.kickAction" name="kickWidget_38668_25528" width="420" height="338" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="window" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" FlashVars="affiliateSiteId=38668&widgetId=25528&width=420&height=338&autoPlay=0&kaShare=1&mediaType_mediaID=video_774315"></embed></object> Linky: http://www.myhoustons55.com/_Frost-Town-A-Neighborhood-in-Transition/video/774315/38668.html