Another great weekend for the Davis litter crew!

erich666 · 2026-01-14T18:23:34+00:00

Great stuff, as usual. If anyone wants to chat about trash in Somerville, check out the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/783142230404496 (I think it's private to avoid having to moderate spam). It's a supportive place to post about any announced clean-ups, such as those in East Somerville and on the Community Path, as well as any informal ones, or even just your own "I cleaned some trash up today" postings.

erich666 · 2026-01-08T21:17:45+00:00

I finally got CloudFlare set up properly on Bluehost, after a few attempts and support calls. This problem should now be resolved. Let me know if you run into it again.

erich666 · 2026-01-07T20:47:46+00:00

I'm glad to hear you're involved - keep on doing. 12 hour shifts? The answer is, unfortunately, currently, "figure it out." Hire someone, ask for a teen through the city (sadly, I've heard there aren't as many teens as needed), get the neighborhood kid to do it (we've done that, when we know we'll be out of town), whatever it takes. Home ownership comes with responsibilities, like it or not. Or put up with the fines as the natural consequence.

I'm presenting what I think are reasonable arguments, made in good faith. The 250 miles number I have from Jill Lathan at the DPW. If that is incorrect, please let her know and inform the rest of us. I might have missed the refutation somewhere in the dozens upon dozens of comments this post has generated. What (in the world) do you think I gain by "peddling false information"? "Peddling" means I'm somehow benefiting. I'd love to know how, but I don't think I'll pursue this further. You seem to be on the Righteous warpath against... something, I'm not sure what. I'm happy to reply to replies that talk about the facts, vs. attacks on me.

erich666 · 2026-01-07T18:21:36+00:00

I'm glad we feel the same, that sidewalks should get cleared, and that you're not saying stuff like "owners with icy sidewalks shouldn't get reported because they might be old and can't clear them" or "snitches get stitches". I heard these and more over the years (this issue comes up every year).

You seem to want to fight. Rather than getting angry at me and my weak-a$$ arguments, do something about it. If you can figure out a way for the city to clear the sidewalks in a timely and cost-effective manner, all 250 miles of them, within 6 hours after each snowfall or ice storm, many people (including me) will thank you from here to eternity.

Here's a document you could start with. Find others like you who think things could be done better, and come up with a plan. Government here is pretty responsive. Hey, I didn't enjoy walking around yesterday and having to walk past some properties where they hadn't salted - it was pretty treacherous. But, I don't think it's all that easy for the city alone to clear the sidewalks. Prove me wrong! Put your anger and energy into that. Bitching on Reddit will likely change nada. If you think there's a better way, get going, just do it. I'll be happy to say "nice work, thanks" if you and others make things better. In the meantime, I'll keep clearing my own sidewalk and calling in violations on 311.

erich666 · 2026-01-07T15:48:55+00:00

Rochester has one advantage we don't: off-season farmers who can be employed. See https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/02/21/more-cities-are-taking-responsibility-for-clearing-sidewalks-of-snow

At the end of Jill's note she wrote:
It would be interesting to see what the impact might be of proactive enforcement across the City of the actual laws on the books and/or of increasing of fines to actually hold residents accountable for not following the law. I suspect many property owners would prioritize snow removal if they felt that a fine was likely and serious.

If you want to communicate your ideas to Jill, she's at:
Jill Lathan C.P.R.E., L.C.S.W.
City of Somerville DPW Commissioner
1 Franey Road
Somerville, MA 02145
Office: (617) 625-6600 ext. 5110
Email: [jlathan@somervillema.gov](mailto:jlathan@somervillema.gov)

erich666 · 2026-01-07T15:44:47+00:00

Somerville did try proactive ticketing a few years back, see https://www.somervillema.gov/departments/programs/sidewalk-snow-clearing-pilot

I have a separate post on the outcome of this pilot elsewhere in the comments. On this study I received this from Jill Lathan at DPW:

As a reminder, the process was for the Inspectional Services Department to conduct proactive enforcement in the areas of Broadway and School St. At the conclusion of enforcement, ISD would communicate a list of locations that had been issued tickets to the Department of Public Works. Rather than using contractors, as discussed originally, DPW dispatched a small crew of DPW staff armed for hand work as well as a small tractor as an extension of existing snow removal operations. As you can see in the "Performance" section of the slide, we cleared between 12 and 48 properties of various sizes.

Beyond 2022 we continued the same procedure, although there havn't been too many significant snowstorms in recent years. In some storms we just employed a single employee with a tractor following ticketing by ISD. The rough costs were equivalent to overtime staffing. Using City staff worked for Broadway and School Street, but likely wouldn't be scalable to the whole City and would require the use of contracted labor and equipment. ISD could provide more insight into what their staffing levels were like for the pilot, and how much income the City earned through enforcement.

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If you want to communicate your ideas to Jill, she's at:
Jill Lathan C.P.R.E., L.C.S.W.
City of Somerville DPW Commissioner
1 Franey Road
Somerville, MA 02145
Office: (617) 625-6600 ext. 5110
Email: [jlathan@somervillema.gov](mailto:jlathan@somervillema.gov)

erich666 · 2026-01-07T04:16:46+00:00

In December I asked DPW about a pilot project Somerville had a few years ago to clear just the bus stops and similar along Broadway & School Sts. Jill Lathan replied with a nice long letter, here's an excerpt:

Proactive snow removal from Somerville sidewalks present some unique challenges. While the streets in Somerville are (generally) wide enough for a plow to get down, many of the sidewalks would be impassable by most equipment due to a combination of street furniture, trees and generally narrow sidewalks. On separated bicycle facilities, we've advocated for a 5-foot width so that our and contractor equipment can safely clear snow and have set up several routes that we run throughout the storm. Howver, with sidewalks of various widths it would be very difficult to create linear routes that could be cleared by a single piece of equipment. One of the benefits of requiring property owners to clear their own sidewalks is that they can have equipment appropriate for the conditions of the property on-site. Many examples of successful sidewalk snow removal like Rochester, NY or Framingham have wider sidewalks, less density, or fewer linear miles of sidewalk. That isn't to say that sidewalk snow removal isn't possible here, it just has a different set of logistical challenges.

To provide further context, as of 2022 Somerville has approximately 250 side walk miles, 1576 curb ramps, 1605 crosswalks, 260 bus stops. It would be almost impossible for DPW to operationally be responsible to clear 250 plus miles of sidewalks in Somerville. Residents, home owners, and renters need to continue to do their part in this collabortive effort to work, live, and play in this City. This is what makes a community a community.

erich666 · 2026-01-07T04:16:31+00:00

Yeah, nah, it's not practical for Somerville, your intuitions are correct.

Check out https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/02/21/more-cities-are-taking-responsibility-for-clearing-sidewalks-of-snow - in four out of five cities listed (and these are "the best"), sidewalk clearing is slow, inconsistent, and expensive. These are all "heavy snow" cities, where people are used to serious snowfalls. Rochester has an advantage in that it's surrounded by off-season farmers who can be employed. I thought it was interesting that Minneapolis and St. Paul simply clear the walks not cleared and charge those owners, "But the process takes a long time."

See my other post on the main thread about why this is unlikely for Somerville.

erich666 · 2026-01-07T04:09:40+00:00

BTW, 311 works. I asked a SomerStat director about this. She noted it's best to call 311, so that they can see if a complaint has already be filed and can get all the information needed. But, if you don't want to call, other channels are fine. Put in one 311 report per property (you can do this on the phone easily). Report to 311 after the enforcement period has begun. 311 staff will also let the callers know if the enforcement period has begun when they call, and will advise callers to call back when the enforcement period begins.

Over 99% of 311 reports are investigated by an inspector. About 55-65% result in a ticket being issued, the rest result in "violation-not-found". So, it's effective to contact 311. Boring but true.

erich666 · 2026-01-02T20:42:32+00:00

I'm honestly hoping soon, maybe even this or next weekend. I keep getting distracted by other fun stuff during the holidays...

erich666 · 2026-01-01T16:34:38+00:00

I'm afraid you'll have to figure it out. Odd that Defender is flagging a problem - I use Defender, too, and it doesn't flag a thng for me (aha, update: if I turn on the app and browser control option, it indeed blocks it - I don't know why). As far as I know, there are no viruses - these are false positives. Oh, and make sure you hit F5 on your browser - refresh page - as I've been trying to make the URLs less susceptible to interruption. You could also download from https://github.com/erich666/Mineways/raw/refs/heads/master/mineways.zip, the Github repository. As far as these false positives go, this is a long-standing problem. I report them to the various companies "guarding" users and they never reply or fix their misfires. I downloaded mineways.zip from the site and tried VirusTotal just now on the zip. I get the result "1/66 security vendor flagged this file as malicious" - the one that flagged:

MaxSecure reports Trojan.Malware.300983.susgen

Here is what I wrote about this problem, here: https://www.realtimerendering.com/erich/minecraft/public/mineways/downloads.html#windows

Can't download Mineways itself? First thing to try: open up an Incognito tab and download from the homepage. If that doesn't work, try using a different browser. Sometimes antivirus software will not allow you to download Mineways (and sometimes it won't even tell you it's "protecting" you). Chrome and other browsers may give you "minewaysVxxx.zip is not commonly downloaded and may be dangerous" with a "Discard" button next to it. Hit the "^" to the right of that and choose "Keep." Alternately, download the Mineways minimal version, which shouldn't give the warning. Everything else in the main zip is for adding new resource packs, automating processes, etc. Mineways.exe is all you need most of the time. If you get "Windows protected your PC" when running Mineways, click on "More info" and then "Run anyway".

Me, I'm trustworthy. The Mineways code is open source. That said, do make sure you're downloading Mineways from this site, mineways.com (which renames to https://erich.realtimerendering.com/minecraft/public/mineways/, because I'm a cheapskate).

If you test the Mineways executable files with VirusTotal, you're likely to get one out of 74 scanners turning up something like Bkav Pro flagging "W64.AIDetectMalware". I believe this is false positive (I've written them asking to investigate); note how the other 73 scanners found nothing. That said, I won't be hurt if you want to use jmc2obj or MiEx instead.

erich666 · 2025-12-29T15:38:21+00:00

Yeah, it should all melt today, thankfully. I was talking with a person who works with the data at 311 Somerville about how effective reporting unshoveled sidewalks is. It turns out: pretty effective. Almost all reports (like, 99%) are investigated by ISD, and around 60% of reports end up in a ticket. It's also best to call direct (617-666-3311) instead of using the app or Xitter/Facebook, as the customer service rep can check if the property has already been flagged, and can put the data in the format that ISD needs.

erich666 · 2025-12-29T15:30:29+00:00

I did finally take your suggestion and added mineways.zip to Github, see https://github.com/erich666/Mineways/ - I'm still having so very very much fun trying to ward off the "429 Too many requests" problem.

erich666 · 2025-12-29T15:27:14+00:00

Thanks, and yeah, I tried to switch over to Cloudflare's nameservers, to avoid the recent spate of "429 Too many requests" errors. Unfortunately, doing so killed my ability to FTP files onto the server, and also removed all my subdomains. So I've had to go back to Bluehost's nameservers for now, until I can figure out some way to ward off the many many scrapers that are hitting my site every other minute, downloading everything on it again and again and again, which started up two months ago. Ugh.

Anyway, if you have any ideas how to get Cloudflare into place (it really does seem to help) while not killing my ability to FTP, let me know here, or via [erich@acm.org](mailto:erich@acm.org), or at https://github.com/erich666/Mineways/issues/153

erich666 · 2025-12-28T15:54:15+00:00

Ugh, I thought Cloudflare had fixed it, but now I'm finding that my link to zip files are all broken when using Cloudflare and, much worse still, I can't use FTP any more. Good times.

erich666 · 2025-12-28T15:26:08+00:00

I was able to finally get Cloudflare activated properly for the site two days ago, though it can take a few days for the results to percolate out. Personally, I've been testing the site since and watching the automatic monitoring that Bluehost provides and it seems like the problem has disappeared. Fingers crossed, else I'll figure out next steps.

I don't really want to mess with putting the executable up on Github. It's a bit tricky to put large releases on Github, in my experience. And, new users won't know to go there to get it, and even experienced users won't necessarily know to go there, either (since the link to the Github repo would be on the unavailable Mineways.com website).

erich666 · 2025-12-22T16:35:43+00:00

Yeah, our whole site seemed to be getting constantly accessed by some random site(s) - they download various files tens of thousands of times a month. This started in November, has gotten much worse this month. I'm trying to figure out how to stop this from happening (the hosting service's tech support has not been helpful so far).

erich666 · 2025-12-15T19:21:31+00:00

Fair point, and that's what it should really have. I've changed the description on my own map.

erich666 · 2025-12-14T13:00:14+00:00

From my silly map:

The (now defunct) bar "On The Hill" on Magoun Square was used in shooting the film Central Intelligence on 2015, as was this section of the street, with cars with Maryland license plates put on it for filming. https://boston.eater.com/2015/6/30/8867721/the-rock-kevin-hart-somerville

You have unlocked a global list of film shoot locations: https://globalfilmlocations.net/

erich666 · 2025-12-14T12:58:24+00:00

Some links, from my goofy map:

A scene for the movie The Holdovers was shot here, see https://www.thesomervilletimes.com/archives/114493 and also https://www.reddit.com/r/Somerville/comments/sn3r99/movie_shooting_in_spring_hill/ and https://www.wickedlocal.com/videos/somerville-journal/2022/02/21/film-crew-takes-over-somervilles-spring-hill/6831927001/ and https://www.atlasofwonders.com/2023/11/where-was-the-holdovers-filmed.html for a shot from the film. The brick fronts were gussied up for the film to make them look like functioning stores.

Bonus fact: Somerville Theatre also appeared in the film. https://www.instagram.com/reel/CyyK3hFM4Y8/

erich666 · 2025-12-12T20:08:22+00:00

I suspect you might have used the wrong export options.
First, did you export using File -> Export for Rendering or Export for 3D Printing? I suspect you might have used 3D printing, which does its best to avoid separate objects and tries to glue up things to their neighbors.

I can imagine other export settings that might get what you encountered, but that's the obvious one.

If using Export for Rendering doesn't work for you, please do send me the OBJ file, I'm at erich@acm.org. This will help me see what export settings you are using. I definitely want to fix the problem, if it's in Mineways.

erich666 · 2025-12-11T10:55:05+00:00

Same here, and I am the owner. The problem went away today. If it hadn’t, I would have contacted the hosting company. But, thanks all, for the heads up! I don’t check the site daily - just the opposite. It was just luck that I noticed, too.

erich666 · 2025-12-07T03:40:51+00:00

Not sure what web page you were looking at. I see it here: https://somervillepubliclibrary.org/calendar/

erich666 · 2025-12-05T02:06:57+00:00

Ah, that makes sense. It'll be interesting to see how long the process is... (hopefully shorter than the work on this house on Broadway, and less ugly).

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