Introducing Pat, au ultra-lightweight Ruby gem for postcode->geolocation in the UK.
It’s easy to install:
sudo gem install pat
And easy to use. (Try it from the command-line with irb -r rubygems -r pat)
postcode = Pat.get(“SW1A 2TT”)
postcode["geo"]["lat"]
=> “51.502308″
postcode["geo"]["lng"]
=> “-0.124345″
I hope someone finds it useful.




Monster Mountain
I surprised a few people on Twitter on my birthday when I spent the evening doing this illustration for my kids.
It got me thinking that maybe most people have me down as one type of person when I think of myself as another. So anyway – I should probably start updating this site with some of the stuff I’ve been up to over the years and not really told anyone about, so this might be the first of a few ‘you might not know I do this kind of thing’ posts.
I’m blowing this up really big for the landing in our house.
“Raaargh!” said the little one while she was helping add the stars.