Comments on: another lat/long bug?

another lat/long bug?

andrew cooke — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 14:33:17 -0800

another lat/long bug? i saw the comment about integers only and tried to change mine. but although i enter "-33" the value stays at "-33.4".

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 14:40:39 -0800

you can't get to where you are from anyplace else.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 14:56:06 -0800

did you try -33.0?

By: edd

edd — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:07:27 -0800

Incidentally:
use decimals, not N or W. integers only. - mathowie

So, decimals or integers? I assume decimals are in fact OK since you suggest -33.0 above.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:07:30 -0800

oh. it works now. did you fix something?

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:08:45 -0800

i thought by decimals he meant not minutes/seconds.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:14:54 -0800

I didn't do anything, but I was just guessing that maybe the floating length lat field required the same precision on updates. I've also been working on that page today, so you might have caught a random error while I was modifying it earlier.

By: killdevil

killdevil — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:40:57 -0800

Incidentally mathowie, are Google maps still displaying on profile pages? I don't see them anymore on Firefox 1.5/WinXP.

By: yhbc

yhbc — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:44:17 -0800

I believe he disabled that feature until he could figure out why they (the Google maps) wouldn't work in IE.

By: killdevil

killdevil — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:49:10 -0800

Also, may I suggest that you add some help text near the lat/lon entry textbox on the Profile page? You might direct users to Terraserver (which worked well for me) or a similar resource allowing people to figure out their exact coordinates if they don't already know them.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:57:15 -0800

You might direct users to Terraserver (which worked well for me) or a similar resource allowing people to figure out their exact coordinates if they don't already know them.

Guess what? Terraserver works only in the US.

By: killdevil

killdevil — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 16:06:30 -0800

Ok then -- do any of the existing mapping tools provide worldwide coverage?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 16:33:33 -0800

The one I linked to does, doesn't it?

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 16:43:12 -0800

weird. this is happening again. i'm playing around to try and work out what it is.
hmm. it semes to be just a lag. is the user page cached? it takes some time (a minute or so?) before the updated value appears (but only for latitude, not longitude!).

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 16:44:34 -0800

ok, sorry to keep moaning, but now that i see signal we still don't have a map! (i realise this may be in flux...)

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 17:11:17 -0800

matt, i'm not sure which one you linked to. I think I got mine from mapquest. They conert Postcodes to lat/long info.

andrew cooke - no-one has maps, that is disabled currently. Just lists of who is nearby at the mo. Which is cool. I can't believe there are only 3 near to Oxford tho - c'mon peeps, get coordinated!

By: Plutor

Plutor — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 17:11:35 -0800

andrew cooke: "i thought by decimals he meant not minutes/seconds."

Really, it should accept either. And in a DWIMmy fashion.

By: mmahaffie

mmahaffie — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 17:29:37 -0800

Here's how I got my lat/long.

I used Google Maps, zoomed way in and centered the map window on my house. Then I selected "link to this page," which gave me a URL string (http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=38.763244,-75.142579&spn=0.003648,0.009560&hl=en) which includes my lat/long (38.763244,-75.142579).

Lacking fuss and a minimal amount of muss.

By: dhruva

dhruva — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 18:28:03 -0800

mmahaffie: yeah try doing that outside the US or UK

By: kcm

kcm — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 18:31:26 -0800

are you people honestly bitching about metafilter having a latitude/longitude entry field and your lack of applicability to tools being suggested? if you can't use it, find something that works and proffer it up, yo.

By: wilful

wilful — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 18:36:48 -0800

dhruva: Google earth works.

I have a problem, I can't seem to get it to accept a negative latitude. I'm down here at -37 degrees, and it's saying I'm somewhere off the coast of Japan.

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 19:43:51 -0800

Does anybody feel like writing an app that polls a gps receiver and sends updates to a profile page? We could know exactly how far each MeFite is at all moments from other members. I think that would resolve all the sock-puppet issues.

possible sample profile page:

blue_beetle is 1236.2372 yards away from you and closing at a rate of 3ft/second. Impact in 20.36 minutes. Evasive action recommended.

By: kcm

kcm — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 19:52:45 -0800

blue_beetle: "blue_beetle is 1236.2372 yards away from you and closing at a rate of 3ft/second. Impact in 20.36 minutes. Evasive action recommended."

Has he made any Crazy Ivans?

By: kcm

kcm — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 20:18:10 -0800

hey look, it's ハッカ&#x30FC! I love that guy!

By: mathowie

mathowie — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 20:52:51 -0800

I do a xmlformat() on all the usernames, so someone's got some crazy stuff in their name and it's showing up like that.

By: web-goddess

web-goddess — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 21:43:44 -0800

Actuahh, dhruva, the Google Maps trick works just fine for Sydney, Australia. Now I just need to tell the other Australians to use it so I can tell *exactly* who lives near me...

By: dhruva

dhruva — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 22:16:46 -0800

huh? I still don't see nothing. What am I doing wrong? As far as I can tell, Australia is terra nullis on Google maps.

By: dg

dg — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 22:55:31 -0800

dhruva, I used Google Earth to find the Lat/Long of my house, then used this to convert it to decimal from the olde-worlde format that Google Earth uses. I won't know just how accurate this is until something or other updates, but it seems pretty close.

By: dhruva

dhruva — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 22:58:48 -0800

Ah never mind: I thought webgoddess was talking about google MAPS. I can't use google earth yet, so ...

By: web-goddess

web-goddess — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:55:40 -0800

I *was* talking about Google MAPS. Go to maps.google.com. It's just that there is no map for Australia. You have to use "Satellite". Center the satellite image on your house. Then click on "link to this map." From my URL, I'm "&ll=-33.885478,151.196530". Easy peasy! (No Google Earth for me either; I'm a Mac girl.)

By: mmahaffie

mmahaffie — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 03:41:25 -0800

dg, I'm glad you tracked down that converter. I was too lazy. Also, apparently, I have been conflating lat/long and decimal degrees internally for some time now. I should have known that Maps was giving me dd.

By: twiggy

twiggy — Thu, 29 Dec 2005 08:22:47 -0800

Mathowie:

There are free geocoding services out there that you can easily get basic text using a remote grab (i.e. cURL, wget, etc) and have MeFi "do" the geocoding for people.

Would you like me to send you example code from my site? I use it for my google maps hacking. The language I use is tag based, similar-ish to coldfusion, so I imagine "porting" it should be darned easy.