media

The Albuquerque Journal Website

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Over at NewMexiKen, there has been a discussion about the Albuquerque Journal’s awful, awful website. Someone called it an embarrassment to the community, and I agree. I’m not going to waste time collecting screenshots to make my point. I’ll just add here that my latest effort to read a couple of articles online reminds me – if I could only forget, but cannot – just how freakishly awful the Albuquerque Journal website is.

Check it out for yourself. Scan the first page. Notice how it loads in fits and starts. Try to grasp the layout – what’s important on this page? Can you figure that out? Can you relate this page to the front page of the paper itself? Follow a link – any link. Have you ever seen another site like this one?

As a blogger, I like to quote directly from sources on the Web. The Journal website makes this very painful, in part, because it uses linefeeds instead of paragraph codes – quoted text runs together badly. Yeah, it’s a nerdy gripe and the Journal could not care less about pleasing bloggers, but it contributes to my belief that whoever works on this site has never seen another website anywhere. I’m reluctant to beat up a 14-year-old who gets minimum wage, but the Journal could and should do much better than this, especially after so many years of the same awful stuff. Send that kid to classes. Buy him a Dummies book. (Sorry, kid, I know your bosses don’t give a shit.)

photos, Picasa

Trip to Guatemala 2010

Trip to Guatemala 2010

Eight friends traveled for 12 days in Guatemala at the end of February and beginning of March, 2010. Our trip was organized and lead by Dr David Mehlman, ornithologist & friend, with the help of Bitty Ramirez-Portilla and Miguel Marin, among other local guides and hosts. Our primary motivation was, ostensibly, birding plus visiting some Mayan ruins. Read my journal and see other photos: http://www.mjhinton.com/wild/?p=627 .

Location: guatemala
Date: Mar 17, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 130

View Album
photos

Bosque del Apache, New Mexico

Bosque del Apache is a magical spot not quite 100 miles to the south from our door. Bosque is located close to the Rio Grande but is a largely artificial wetlands, capably managed to attract tens of thousands of bird in the winter, including massive flocks of snow geese and sandhill cranes. The cranes and geese, in particular, fly out at dawn and in at sunset in wave after wave of birds. Even without the birds, the bosque is beautiful, surrounded by mountains in every direction.

Merri and I went to the bosque at the beginning of December, 2009, with our neighbors, Joe and Sally. We didn’t take our annual expedition and moveable feast with other friends at the end of December. We did return to the bosque on a perfect day, February 1st, 2010. For the very first time in 25 years of trips several times per year, we walked one of the 6+ mile loops, which offered us even more birding opportunities than the bosque does on a slow drive. Of the 300 plus pictures I took, here are 35.

Bosque del Apache
click for 35 pix
& fullscreen slideshow
NADA - New American Dark Ages

Wanna see what happens when you drown Government in the bathtub? Visit Colorado Springs, CO

No, that’s not the new advertising slogan for Colorado Springs – there’s no budget for advertising. CS is home to the Air Force Academy and Focus on Family. I won’t miss it when it dries up and blows away.

Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many – The Denver Post 

COLORADO SPRINGS — This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

"I guess we’re going to find out what the tolerance level is for people," said businessman Chuck Fowler, who is helping lead a private task force brainstorming for city budget fixes. "It’s a new day."

Some residents are less sanguine, arguing that cuts to bus services, drug enforcement and treatment and job development are attacks on basic needs for the working class.

Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many – The Denver Post

It’ll be interesting to track the back-pedaling and flip-flopping on the Right. Like when they say Duhbya wasn’t *really* a conservative. Yeah, right.

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams