Maps « Notes from a small field

Pic and Mix

August 10, 2009 at 22:02 | In Life, the Universe, and Everything | Leave a Comment
Tags: atom, council, datapower, developerWorks, feeds, kent, logs, Maps, mashup, mdm-server, mix and mash, travelogue, twitter, uig, User Interface Generator, user modeling, websphere

Unfortunately decorating the bathroom is higher up the to do list than blogging at the moment — I’d rather be blogging as I’ve yet to gas myself typing on a computer! — so I haven’t had a chance to mention some cool and interesting things that have been cluttering up my list of open browser tabs. While I wait for the paint fumes to subside before going to bed, here are a few of them, in no particular order…

First from the Mix and Mash Blog, and giving this post its title, Pic and Mix project from Kent County Council: I wonder if Eastleigh do anything similar.

From John’s Random Musings, Exposing your WebSphere logs as ATOM feeds: definitely want to give this a try with MDM Server.

From knolleary.net, Twitterlogue: wish twitter had been around when I was in New Zealand. Brilliant.

From developerWorks, Leverage DataPower SOA Appliances to extend InfoSphere Master Data Management Server security capabilities: looks interesting but I haven’t had a chance to read it in detail yet.

And finally, also from developerWorks, two new articles for the user interface generator:

Britglyph detour

January 10, 2009 at 20:02 | In Life, the Universe, and Everything | Leave a Comment
Tags: a3057, art, britglyph, geoglyph, m271, Maps, romsey, uk

Britglyph is a project to create a modern variation of a geoglyph, representing John Harrison’s Chronometer H5 in the form of stones left at locations across the country. It’s such a great idea that I’ve been following the progress since the beginning of December- I think I first found out about the idea when @britglyph started following me on Twitter. No idea why, and no idea why we’ve all been going on our mini adventures. I think the most likely explanation is that we’re all insane!

Today, on the way to Wickham (which is actually in exactly the opposite direction from my house!), I finally made it to my nearest marker, outside Romsey. I had some stones left over from an earlier project to secure a sat nav in my car’s cup holder…

…which wasn’t that successful as it turns out. Luckily a baked bean tin is doing a great job instead. Not the most exciting stones…

…but then it wasn’t the most exciting of locations- basically a motorway roundabout at the top of the M271! The stones are actually on the road island where the Romsey Road joins the roundabout, rather than right in the middle of the roundabout. At this point the same police car had driven past three times so I decided against fighting through the undergrowth. That could have been a fun explanation!

Still a few unclaimed markers if you have a stone and nothing to do tomorrow!

Giveup vs. catchup

May 28, 2008 at 22:58 | In Life, the Universe, and Everything | Leave a Comment
Tags: buglabs, eurovision, Maps, mashed, mdm, morris dancing, secondlife, twitter

I haven’t read many blogs lately (I blame Technorati favourites going AWOL… erm, and I’ve been a tad busy). I could do the same as Kelly and declare blog bankruptcy but I thought I’d try something different. I’ve had a skim through and these look kind of interesting:

Let me know if any of them are worth reading properly!

Mapping the future

April 3, 2008 at 23:20 | In VU | 7 Comments
Tags: FreeEarth, IBM, Maps, metaverse, OpenSim, Poly9, secondlife, virtualworlds, VU

I’m a bit of a fan of maps, even strange ones, and I’ve been wondering lately about a world of virtual worlds and how that might look on a globe, with each virtual world represented by countries, with continents of related worlds. So a continent with countries for the Second Life grid, corporate grids and Open Sim grids for example. Beyond just looking cool, I think mapping out our virtual world – be that social networks, information/tags, 3d environments – in a visual way will make it more accessible. Still checking to see if someone has done it already but if they haven’t I’m thinking FreeEarth might work for a little experiment…

Just thinking out loud.

Canteen Mash

March 12, 2008 at 15:12 | In Ones and Zeros | Leave a Comment
Tags: cars, commuting, expenses, gas, Maps, mashup, mashups, petrol, travel

Over lunch we were discussing how it would be handy to know whether a paycut would be covered by cost savings of a shorter commute. A mushup to do the calculation for you seemed pretty doable, and you could use the same thing to find out how much money you’d save working at home a couple of days a week. Oh yes, and the environment etc.!

Well, it seems that there are at least a couple of mashups already that do part of the job. Unfortunately both these examples are a bit US-centric and don’t take in to account PAYE (so now I’m being UK centric!) but they’re a good demonstration.

I also discovered that the OS now have an API! Looking through their FAQ, they (or more likely their lawyers) have some funny ideas about how the web works, but still, better than not supporting mashups at all.

Perranporth, Cornwall

October 6, 2007 at 11:09 | In Life, the Universe, and Everything | Leave a Comment
Tags: Maps, Photos

Only six days in to October and I’ve remembered to update my monthly wallpaper- sometimes takes most of the month before I realise it’s time for a change! This month’s Ordnance Survey wallpaper is Perranporth, Cornwall.