Mmmm... GIS Extensions

March 03, 2006 by Eric Richardson

This may make no sense to you, but just know that it's cool:

houston=# select AsText(the_geom) from buildings where id = 10;

MULTIPOLYGON(((
    3118897.96530012 13838758.1691906,
    3118951.74016637 13838841.8891787,
    3118993.06800402 13838848.7768498,
    3119057.74463768 13838808.25588,
    3119076.59247451 13838796.0172187,
    3119025.06695632 13838713.7759229,
    3118980.06661619 13838703.7761855,
    3118897.96530012 13838758.1691906
)))

houston=# select AsText(transform(the_geom,4326)) 
    from buildings where id = 10;

MULTIPOLYGON(((
    -95.3738909490995 29.7518641865238,
    -95.3737133770184 29.7520897224611,
    -95.3735825199263 29.7521051310476,
    -95.3733827457042 29.7519882370035,
    -95.3733245703251 29.7519529896557,
    -95.3734949130464 29.7517313269132,
    -95.3736376422065 29.7517076774085,
    -95.3738909490995 29.7518641865238
)))

Top data is in the NAD-83 Texas South Central coordinate system. Bottom data is your standard WGS-84 lon/lat. Using PostGIS.

Ah For the Days When These Weren't Part of Web Development

March 01, 2006 by Eric Richardson

I mentioned a few weeks back that I had made some JS code that crashed Firefox on Linux. If you're on Linux you can actually see this live now. Just go to the new Downtown L.A. Interactive Map, click on "Select a Search Type" and select "Residential Buildings". That'll pop up an interface to refine a residential search. When you select something under Type it loads some more options in under Price. Firefox 1.5 on Linux instead just bombs.

On a different site I'm working on (this one's a personal project, not a work thing) I've apparently made some javascript that creates a memory leak under that same Firefox on Linux. — Continue Reading...

Slightly Less Bad

February 25, 2006 by Eric Richardson

Far be it from me to claim to have anything but distain for Internet Explorer, but I have to say that the IE Developer Toolbar is really cool. It's certainly made cross-browser developer quite a lot easier.

Tracking User Interactions

February 25, 2006 by Eric Richardson

One of the more interesting things (to me at least) that I did in the process of launching the new map application was add tracker calls in the database to reflect usage that normally wouldn't get reflected in the stats. I'm using Google Analytics for this, and I hadn't realized just how easy it was.

In the map application it's important for us to know about user interactions. How are people using the map? Are they doing searches? Are they clicking the map links to find buildings on the map? Are they clicking on the map to find info about buildings? — Continue Reading...

If Only I Didn't Keep Coming Back

February 24, 2006 by Eric Richardson

Every time I go to install qmail I cringe (the Rick Moen rant I linked to back then has moved here). I've run qmail for a long time, probably since the late 90s. I like the fact that I usually end up installing it and then pretty much forgetting about it.

But, well, I sort of have to forget about it because I can never understand how to stop it. Inevitably I end up letting the server just run, and when I finally do have to kill it for some reason that involves me tearing my hair out while trying to kill svcscan processes that keep restarting everything I stop.

Yet somehow I keep ending up with qmail. I can't escape it.