This is What You Get When You Mess With Us

I’ve Made a {} of It

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I’ve been riding my bike to the Metro to head into DC to attend the Flatiron School. I’m not particularly “strong” or “physically fit.” I’m not good at “balancing” or “riding in straight lines.” But parking is $5 a day and, you know, the environment. So I bike, which means I worry about getting rolled over by a middle aged dude in an SUV. The lane I ride down is pretty vacant first thing or last thing. So if I was run over, it would be a good long while before someone found my body.

I came across a Twitter bot, @HowsMyDrivingNY. Tweet a license plate at the bot, and she will respond with chapter and verse on speed and red-light camera violations in the 5 boroughs of New York. There is also a web-based front end.

I wondered how it was done. I suspected that the city of New York publishes traffic and parking violations in an easy to parse format and I was right. The raw data can be downloaded in a number of format, as well as a JSON API. The data is not updated in real time.

Turns out that my county, Montgomery County, MD, publishes a similar data source, with a comparable JSON API, updated every day with data going back 5 years or so.

Putting the Twitter API to the side for the moment, would I have the knowledge to iterate over this data, take which information that I want, and present it in a useful way? Sure.

The JSON published is an array of hashes. 1.5 million records long (as of this publication) and it is updated every 24 hours but the county government as part of their open data initiative. This data set does not include Personally Identifiable Information (PII) as the NYC set does, which I consider to be good and right, but it gives us enough data to make some good decisions about the relatively safety of a particular intersection, a route, or even the make and model of an automobile

The County’s public data initiative is driven by a tool called Socrata, which makes public the parameters that can be passed to their API. For example, if you wanted to paginate your results.

Using something like the Ruby Class CSV I can write the elements from the parsed hash to a CSV file. I could then use that CSV file, including Date of Violation, Latitude, Longitude, Car Make and Model, to build a map of Traffic incidents in and around my route to the Metro.

Here is the method that I created (h/t to Nick and our Star Wars API lab) to parse the JSON, and put out the data I want into a CSV file:

def moco_details
  raw_data = RestClient.get('https://data.montgomerycountymd.gov/resource/4mse-ku6q.json?$limit=5&$offset=0')
  parsed_data = JSON.parse(raw_data)
  parsed_data.each do |event|
    arr = []
    arr << event["latitude"]
    arr << event["longitude"]
    arr << event["description"]
    arr << event["make"]
    arr << event["model"]
    arr << event["color"]
    CSV.open("traffic.csv","ab") do |csv|
      csv << arr
    end
  end
end

And here is the resulting CSV from the method above:

39.1187633333333,-77.182455,DRIVING VEH. W/O ADEQUATE REAR REG. PLATE ILLUMINATION,TOYOTA,CAMRY,RED
39.1187633333333,-77.182455,FAILURE TO DISPLAY REGISTRATION CARD UPON DEMAND BY POLICE OFFICER,TOYOTA,CAMRY,RED
39.1163733333333,-77.2057483333333,DRIVER FAILURE TO OBEY PROPERLY PLACED TRAFFIC CONTROL DEVICE INSTRUCTIONS,TOYOTA,CAMRY,GRAY
39.1187633333333,-77.182455,DRIVING VEHICLE ON HIGHWAY WITH SUSPENDED REGISTRATION,TOYOTA,CAMRY,RED
39.0298833333333,-77.1263516666667,DRIVER USING HANDS TO USE HANDHELD TELEPHONE WHILEMOTOR VEHICLE IS IN MOTION,MAZDA,GX5,GRAY

From here, I would post the CSV to a globally visible web site (such as this one) and take advantage of the Leafletjs – a javascript framework for the creation and management of web-based maps – and some an associated CSV plugin, to turn that file into a map with markers and descriptions. Visually, then, I would have a good idea of where there are traffic problems in my neighborhood.

This is surely not as interactive as the Twitter bot leveraging NYC data, privacy considered, but an interesting exercise in using public data to highlight safe areas and troubled areas. This exercise is kind of the long way around the Horn, however. The County data source does have an available GEOJSON API that is processed natively by LeafletJSavailable as well, this could be done much more simply. Surely more to come.

My Kung Fu

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One of the benefits of having a kid is the opportunity to read with them: brand new books; stories you have known all your life; stories you wished you had read. It’s a chance for you to grow and learn as a family.

Before reading it together, I had known the broad outlines of the Zen koan, Banzo’s Sword. It’s the story of a young man, desperate to impress his father, finds the sword master Banzo and insist Banzo train him. Banzo agrees. The young man asks how long it will take to become a master. Bazo tells him a lifetime. Too long, the young man says. He tries to bargain with Bazo, offers to be his servant, and with every offer the time to mastery grows. Eventually, the young man realizes that he can’t get to mastery without putting in the work and being patient. I recommend that you read Bazo’s tale here.

This is also the plot to Karate Kid.

***

I fell in love with the X-Files in it’s second or third season, in dark basement in Centreville, Virginia. A friend introduced me to Mulder and Scully and the Consipracy through her brother’s library of VHS recordings off the air. We went our separate ways – college in different states – but I kept up with the X-Files until the end and I have all seasons on DVD – except, strangely, Season 4.

Viewers may remember the The Lone Gunman. Byers, Frohike, and Langly were allies of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who ran The Lone Gunman, a publication that explored conspiracy theories (i.e., Lee Harvey Oswald was either a patsy or part of a larger conspiracy, the was filmed by Stanley Kubric on a soundstage in Hollywood, Extraterrestrials walked among us. ). They provided what could be charitably described as “operational support” for Mulder and Sculley, including legwork, photography, and hacking/phreaking, in service of the Agent’s search for the truth in the alien invasion conspiracy.

Sometimes they got up to their own shenanigans.

I do prefer the one-off X-File episodes over the Conspiracy, if only because the Conspiracy was bleak. Check out Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space” or Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man.

It Sure Is.

Another, Unusual Suspects is the Mulder/Gunmen origin story. In a scene with a character, “Holly,” who is running from the Cigarette Smoking Man, when she asks him about his hacking skills, Frohike tells her that his “Kung Fu is the Best.” The phrase, a kung fu film trope and well-worn in-group code from the black-trench-coat-and-combat-boot nerds, struck in my brain. I liked it so much at the time that I added it as my signature on my home printed business cards.

I seriously I thought that was sufficient to will myself to success (whatever that means) without having to actually put in any work. I had no patience. Success as a writer would find me.

***

I’ve had a lot of jobs since college and no explicit plan other than to be a kick ass novelist: Sales Associate, early morning chyrons for major market TV, secretary, program coordinator, and secretary. I thought the novel would come by magic and my future set. Eventually I decided to turn the only skill that I spent any time actually working on and turn it into a corporate career. I took a certificate in Technical Writing and through the power of nepotism found a job doing that for a small software company.

And over the last 13 years the job grew far outside that specific title. The knowledge I built up writing about our software products made it natural that I should also do pre- and post- sales. And live trainings. Marketing material. Trade shows. We were part of a much smaller company then and everyone did what they needed to do to move things forward. Honestly, I really liked it. I like having a skill or knowledge people appreciate. Still, nearly everyone who’s ever known me longer than 5 minutes thinks it strange that I’m a damned good capitalist.

I had no explicit plan. I took opportunities as they came (opportunities that are only available to a select few, I remind myself; I’m a stupid lucky human being) and eventually found something I genuinely liked to do.

My kung fu is just okay.

***

That friend popped up on my radar a few years ago. I happened upon an article she wrote about her distrust of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop. We reconnected on Twitter. Soon, she found global internet fame from her piece on Brigid Hughes, the second editor of the Paris Review, and how she was erased from the history of that publication by that publication and, among others, the New York Times. She advocates for the remembrance and recognition of women in the arts, especially those who have been edited out. She started a quarterly journal and a bookstore, as a single mom, an American living in the UK.

And if you were not paying attention, while her success might seem as the work of magi, she has made a series of explicit choices large and small that move her to her goal. Choices invisible to all but those who care the most. But as she will tell you – and has told others who make the same assumption – she’s put in the hours building her knowledge, skills, and “brand.” She’s put in the work on her kung fu.

***

This is not the same scale. I’m not shining a light on long suppressed, yet fantastic, women authors. I want to build software that makes life just a little bit easier. I don’t want to disrupt life; I want to help smooth out the bumpy trail so we can all get to where we need to be.

I’ve put in 13 years. I’ve got some skills. My kung fu is not the best. Not yet.

I starting my third week of a 15 week Coding Boot Camp at Flatiron. With the support of my family and an okay from my supportive boss, I am taking Vacation/Leave to learn to code, to add that skill to my set of tools. When I finish, I will be armed with the skills to help me be closer to that kung fu mastery that I wanted to advertise on that cheap business card nearly a quarter century ago.

To some, this may seem like a giant, brave (or insane) leap into the unknown. To all those who love me the most, this is the next, small logical step in my pursuit of happiness and some kick-ass moves.

2019: No Resolutions

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I drive down Georgia Avenue towards DC nearly every day and meet one or more of these drivers each journey: 20 in a 35; Ride-a-Tail; Stops for No Discernible Reason; Slows for Turn But Does Not; Slows for Turn With No Signal; Swerves into Adjacent Lane Because a Bus/Pedestrian/Uber has Stopped in Theirs (Obviously); Crosses Three Lanes of Traffic to Get On Beltway; Turning Left from Lane Marked ‘No Left Turns;’ Still Reading Text 10 Seconds After Green.

These drivers make me angry. Furious. I gesture. I shout. I roll down my window to scream toothless threats into the wind until my face is wet with spit.

They’re doing this to me.

They are hurting me.

No, of course they’re not. Like me, they’re just trying to get through the day without falling through an open manhole or slipping on a banana peel. They’re thinking about work. Their sick Aunt. What to make for dinner.

I’m a person of greater than modest means. Still: Getting out of bed, making coffee, dressing myself & the kid, driving to school and then work, working, doing work that matters, reading a few pages on the can, trolling Twitter and FB for pictures of your beautiful tropical holiday between stories describing of our impending political/environmental doom, buying groceries, feeding myself, the family, bath time, 3 books and a song, paying bills and doing dishes, watching a little TV while locked into work email with a customer just starting her day in Asia, holding my tiny family close, clacking out 200 words… that’s all I can squeeze out most days. That’s success. I don’t owe the universe more than that.

Women who do it solo1, likely with more children and far fewer resources than my family, are the only people who can every rightly claim to be “owning” this life. That they don’t collectively say “Fuck this” and seize the halls of power is a testament to how steep – and exhausting – are the barriers we demand women surmount before the day even begins.

Some of you, though, are ethereal beings – pixies, imps, demi-gods – who can push out a novel or a business or music in the spaces between the events that take up a normal day. Do you have a staff? Shadow henchmen? Office space that sits on the periphery of time-space? Maybe you don’t. Is there an accounting at the end of the day that is suppressed, omitted from the public record? I’d guess yes.

In work and life, I can over promise and under deliver. Sometimes I try to connect with people and I fail. I try again and fail again and that failure carriers a great weight. We’re all just trying to muddle through the day. I’m (mostly) succeeding at my core responsibilities and the core is fucking hard.

You know that.

Driving down Georgia, I know nothing about the souls of those drivers, if they are good or bad people. I can think: “She’s self-involved. He hates his family. Maybe that guy’s a Adolf Hitler and Hugh Hefner chimera wrapped up in a $5000 suit, a JD and an S-Class.” But I don’t know. I do know that I am deeply distrustful of any system that applies a value to a human being. I do know that humans make mistakes and and are exclusively focused on just getting through the day.

You don’t know, either. You think you know the specific quality in people creates conflict, but you don’t know.

I forget anniversaries. I miss conference calls. I say the “right” thing the wrong way. I drift over into your lane while singing along to the Beatles. I am human. I make mistakes and spend 99% of my brain cycles trying not to trip over my own mess.

You might call this privilege. Ok.

Expecting perfection and attributing anything short of it to a trait other than “human” is to set yourself up for unending misery.

Good luck in 2019.

  1. Know it’s exclusively women. Take a good think on why you object, Men, when anyone makes that evident observation. ↩