It's November already? _#

It's been a while folks. Due to the pressures at work at the moment I simply haven't found time to write here. There's no point in making vague promises; let's just see if I can reignite this fire and get back into the habit.

A little summary of my adventures over the last eight or so months:

• We moved offices from Fareham to Petersfield


• I took on new staff - our company doubled in size overnight (!)


• We moved offices from Petersfield to Fareham

I've learnt far more than I ever imagined about running a business in the last year or so. It has been exhausting but thrilling. I hope to write more about this in the coming weeks.

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Watching the Watchers _#

Last night, Google released an update to its Street View system to include new locations across the UK, Netherlands and other European countries.

My home city, Portsmouth, is not on there yet but Southampton is so, clicking through my old university stomping ground I came across this little treat:

First shot: The Google Car may or may not have gone through the first red lights. Who knows... the lights ahead are already on amber.

Second shot: Lights are still on amber. Technically you should be preparing to stop ;-)

Third shot: They're red. Is the driver still going? Watch the two cars in front - a white one and a dark blue one. Also, note the two schoolkids walking under the tunnel.

Fourth shot: The two cars ahead are further away - either they sped up or the driver is slowing down... maybe he stopped after all? Note the two kids are closer too, so it's a continuous set of frames

Fifth shot: The two cars are well away now, already around the left-hand bend. There's no reason to believe from this particular shot that it's a few seconds after the last - the driver might've waited for a green and gone a bit later, right? Well, take a look for yourself at the car behind the driver, and the two schoolkids will still be there. In the distance, cars are starting to come towards our fearless driver...

Final shot: there are more schoolkids running under the bridge, and the oncoming cars are now having to wait for our Google Driver to get out of the way!

Conclusion: well, none really. This is a pointless, but mildly satisfying discovery. Enjoy.

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Google Earth 5.0 _#

Google's 3D world viewer, Google Earth has been updated to version 5.

The headline feature is the ability to view historic satellite photos, as in this picture of Cherque Farm housing estate, near Lee on Solent, Hampshire, UK.

 

[caption id="attachment_720" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Housing estate nr. Lee on Solent, Hampshire UK"][/caption]

In the series of photos, ranging from 1999 (left) to 2007 you can clearly see the construction of the estate over time.

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Gap-aware locators _#

One notable thing about most location software is that it is usually fairly crude.

Most programmers take the easy route and simply work out the distance between two points via a bit of trig. Some smarter programmers are aware of the Earth's curviture and bear this in mind.

Usually - this is as far as it goes. The classic "find my nearest" search is great for most places but is a rough 'as the crow flies' measurement.

Living for a while on the Isle of Wight, I came to appreciate that while this normally works OK, on an island it's a profoundly dumb system.

If, for instance, you live in Ryde (north coast of the Isle of Wight) most systems will recommend a shop in Portsmouth or Gosport before the more sensible option in Newport or elsewhere on the island. A bit daft really, considering to get to the 'closer' shop might be one or two ferries at the least.

Today, I noticed that the Maplin website actually excludes shops which might fall in the radius of consideration, but are much trickier to get to.

Searching for an item from my Fareham (mainland) address gives plenty of options, but the Newport store (10.7mi as the crow flies) is not included.

Similarly, searching from an island postcode gives the Newport store only as an option.

I suspect that - instead of running calculations by travel time - somebody has manually identified island postcodes, mainland postcodes and separated them by zone so only those postcodes in the same 'zone' appear in the search... that's certainly my first instinct (I'd love to think they're doing a full journey check, but I somehow doubt it ;-) )

While it's not perfect (maybe the Newport address could be grouped separately, in case I happened to be going over to the island anyway), it's a step further than most location-based searches out there.

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Texturific _#

Jen has uploaded a nice set of textures to prettify your artwork. It's all available with a fairly open license (use it as you will, but give credit).

 

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Selection of textures"][/caption]

 

 

You can see all the textures from Jen's flickr page.

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