archive for 2008
A while back Lothian Buses fitted some fancy GPS tracking to all of their fleet enabling real-time tracking. Then LCD screens appeared at (selected) bus stops giving you a list of incoming buses and their ETA. All very clever. Then, at last they launched a web site which gave access to the same data: mybustracker.co.uk.
I think that making the website resemble the signs from the street is a poor design choice. Why not work with the medium you are presenting information over (the web) rather than trying to make it resemble something else? They constrain information into a tiny space, put it in a stupid font, make the background looks like all lcd-y, use excessive popups and it takes forever just to get to the basic information.
In shock news, this isn’t just a whiny post with no actual action. I present the beginnings of a “Bus Tracker API”. Think of it as a “cleaning” of the data for a fresh beginning. If we can get clean data out of the system then we can build a clean interface on top of it. My API is REST-ful and inspired by the flickr API. I have one method so far “bustracker.departures.getNext” which takes one parameter: the bus stop code. It shows you all of the incoming departures for a given bus stop. Here it is working for the stop nearest my flat. Feel free to change to bus stop code to another one by digging around the Bus Tracker website. I’ll hopefully have some other, more useful methods done soon and maybe some nifty google maps visuals…
Update: Source code now browsable at: http://code.google.com/p/bustrackr/
Penguin are releasing a new Bond novel entitled “Devil May Care“. Guess who’s writing it? Yes, Sebastian Faulks. It’s released next week and it could be awesome.
I can’t believe this hasn’t been more widely promoted but the Ordnance Survey is finally opening up it’s data for use on the internets. Their new Open Space project allows a Google Maps style interface to their (usually tightly restricted) mapping data. I do like the design of the OS maps, a nice alternative to Google. I’ve knocked up a quick demo centered on Edinburgh.
The new Bond covers from Penguin are gorgeous:
Animoto generates “shorts” compiled from your photos and set to music. They render lots of fancy effects, using your photos, apparently in time to the music. Pretty neat!
- Brilliant if, like me, you’re a child of the eighties
- A french co-production that adds to the mix nicely
- Genuinely touching
- Great 80s tunes and synchronised dancing scene
So apparently Matt and Tre have negotiated a deal where all past south park episodes are going to be streamable free online. Pretty damn shiny. Unfortunately this isn’t available in the UK yet and we can redirected to this hilarious page.
IT Services company based in central Edinburgh seeks honours graduate with computer-related degree for wide-ranging role in software application development for business.
Essential:
- One or more of: PHP/Python/Perl/C++
- SQL
- Good problem solving skills
- Good communication skills
See the full job posting for more details.
Some awesome guy has posted an episode of The Net online. The Net was a bbc show that started in 1994 that was sort of a Wired magazine on TV. It was way ahead of its time and had a brilliant “Net Cetera” feature at the end of every programme. This was where they would quickly flash screens full of information, URLS, telephone numbers etc that you were supposed to record and then play back in slow motion. Brings back memories…
I had a bit of a muck around with the Google Chart API last night. It’s very neat, you just make a request to google with your chart data and parameters all encoded in the get request, you get back a jpg image. I’ve used the API to generate a nice “spark line” graph of my blog posting frequency from July 2002 to the present. You can see it at the bottom of my index page.
- Rather similar to a lot of other Will Ferrell movies
- Incredibly similar to a lot of other underdog-team/small-town/sporting/crisis-of-confidence movies
- Awesomely funky soundtrack
- Some nice slow-mo basketball shots
Slightly comedy nazis, some good underground/resistance banter, Carice van Houten is gorgeous, Verhoeven’s usual excessive violence.
Surprisingly dark, Costner pretty good, I was pleasantly surprised.
The Consolevania review of African Safari had us in absolute stitches at work the other day. Well worth a read for a laugh, that fence is long.
Happy New Year!
So yeah, this is one of of those “catch up” posts for the new year that everybody seems to be doing. It seems my last post all about me was over two months ago when I moved into my new flat. Slackness.
What has happened since then you ask?
- I went to Prague – lovely city. Weather wasn’t great and we attempted to visit the Jewish Cemetery on the Sabbath (skills). Lost Ian a couple of times, drank Bekerovka and developed a taste for Mojitos.
- My sister visited for a weekend – we climbed Arthur’s Seat, went to the Samhuinn Halloween thing and general did touristy stuff
- Met a Girl
- Spent Christmas at home with the family. Got lots of shiny things including socks, chocolate and booze.
- Listened to a lot of Girls Aloud
- Spent Hogmanay in the Opal Lounge with friends – terrible food, but they compensated us with an extravagant amount of free Moet, wine and cocktails
- Played far too much Scrabulous on the all-encompassing world destroyer that is Facebook
- Went to Edinburgh Zoo for the first time – Honey Badgers rock! (so do penguins)
- Played Crysis (omg shiny), BioShock, Halo 3 on the 360 and just bought the RockStar back catalogue on Steam
- Assisted in the making of Tapas and had a great evening eating said Tapas accompanied by Mojitos