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.
We’re all deciding who to vote for. Wouldn’t it be great if you could email all of your local candidates to see what they say about the issue you are interested in?
Well, here’s a web application that does just that. It’s “beta” at the moment (took me 4hrs on a sunday night) and will be improving over the next few days:
I along with many others have been particularly amazed at how the Digital Economy Bill has been rushed through. Here’s a little mashup I’ve made that collects some facts and figures, links and tweets about the Commons process that was involved in passing it:
It’s called Debillitated.
Here’s a screengrab:
I’ve posted the source code (which is a bit messy in places), and there are links at the bottom of the site to all of the tools I used to build it and get it online. Make your own!
I just emailed this to my Posterous, but it deserves to be here too. I was asked on Facebook why I’m against the Digital Economy Bill. It’s complicated with lots of thorny issues, but here’s a very quick rant on the subject:
I’m fundamentally against all of our internet connections being ’sniffed’ by our internet providers for potential copyright infringement, and against the government having any ability to disconnect people or to block websites.
The sudden arrival of Clause 18 without discussion in the Lords is the main problem. It allows web censorship at a government level by enabling them to force ISPs to block certain ‘locations’ (too many questions on what a ‘location’ might be).
This is censorship of the internet and is not a power that a UK government should wield in my opinion. Why is it okay to disconnect someone on suspicion of ‘copyright theft’ but not being discussed for far more serious crimes, for instance? What will happen when our local cafes can no longer offer free wifi, or a family member breaks the rules and shuts the internet account for the whole family? And why is okay for ‘rights holders’ to force expensive court costs onto people who are accused of filesharing without proof. Faced with thousands in costs many people will just roll over. The result – corporate censorship of dissenting voices. Wikileaks.org will be its first
casualty.I’m encouraging everyone I know to write to their MPs to ask for a proper debate on this important issue – so far it’s only been through
the Lords (the non elected bit), and is currently going to be pushed through under ‘wash up’ on Tuesday without _any_ debate by our elected representatives.So yes – I’m against the entire bill being put through in its current state because it is flawed and an irresponsible abuse of process to
push it through in the least democratic way possible by a government in its final throes.Shame on them for treating all of us who understand how the internet works with such distain.
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.