Today on Martin Luther King Day, I participated in Day On, yet another great Portland tech community event: local geeks gathered at CubeSpace to volunteer to help non-profits with technical issues. A couple of dozen folks showed up to offer help, and though only a few folks came by to ask for assistence or asked using the Day On website, a great time was had by all, and we hope the event will continue and grow.

I was one of several folks who got to help Dean Suhr of the MLD Foundation, a resource for families affected by Metachromatic Leukodystrophy; one page of the Foundation’s website displays a Google map showing families affected by the disease, and the map display wasn’t working right. I was able to find a workaround for a problem in a map-display library, and I’m hoping to work with the library’s developer to help fix the underlying problem.

After I showed Dean my fix, I got an unexpected bonus: Dean mentioned that he was considering using Google Maps’ “clustering” feature, which allows a single symbol to represent many individual map tacks when zoomed out to show a large map area — it’s a feature that helps reduce map clutter when a map holds a lot of symbols.

Dean had thus far elected not to use this feature — instead, when zoomed out, he’d used a smaller version of the butterfly symbol that represented each family, to help each individual family show up better on the big map. As he told me this, I thought about the effect of the disease on Dean and his family, multiplied by each of these families, and thought that Dean had already chosen the perfect representation (and said so).

I was lucky to be able to volunteer today, lucky to meet Dean and help a little with the Foundation’s site, and especially lucky to make that connection between the work today and groups like Dean’s who help so many people. Tomorrow I’m getting up early to head back to CubeSpace to watch the Inauguration with more of my Portland tech community friends, and I feel even more strongly that I’m lucky to be part of such a terrific community.

…on Portland On Fire.

I just got a Chumby, primarily to let me create this widget to run on it: it’s a clock that displays predictions of when the Portland Streetcar will be passing the stops nearest my home. Green dots are northbound; red are southbound. Armed with this, I know exactly when I need to leave the house to avoid a long wait.

(I wrote this using OpenLaszlo – I started with a “clock” demo of theirs, and added some dots and a bit of data retrieval. Click here for this widget in its own window.)

Gina noticed a leftover half burrito in the fridge just now. She asked where I’d gotten it – I told her it came from Loco Loco, a food trailer on Alder near 9th. Then I admitted that I actually prefer Loco Loco’s burritos to Olé Olé’s or Cha! Cha! Cha!’s. Then I realized what I’d said.

You’re not a geek blogger until you’ve written a post live from somewhere out in the world: greetings from Phone Company Park, section 308. At this point, the local boys have a nine-run lead over the Cubs; they established this lead early, by scoring five runs in the first 14 minutes (and that’s counting the Cubs’ half of the first inning). Mr. Bonds has walked three times: pitched around once, and the regular way twice.

(If Danger had HTTPS access to my stuff, I’d have posted the photos I just took, but I don’t want to send my password over the ballpark’s WiFi network.)

(Update: photo posted.)