another lat/long bug?

December 28, 2005 2:33 PM

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".
posted by andrew cooke to Bugs at 2:33 PM (31 comments total)

you can't get to where you are from anyplace else.
posted by quonsar at 2:40 PM on December 28, 2005

did you try -33.0?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 2:56 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by edd at 3:07 PM on December 28, 2005

oh. it works now. did you fix something?
posted by andrew cooke at 3:07 PM on December 28, 2005

i thought by decimals he meant not minutes/seconds.
posted by andrew cooke at 3:08 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:14 PM on December 28, 2005

Incidentally mathowie, are Google maps still displaying on profile pages? I don't see them anymore on Firefox 1.5/WinXP.
posted by killdevil at 3:40 PM on December 28, 2005

I believe he disabled that feature until he could figure out why they (the Google maps) wouldn't work in IE.
posted by yhbc at 3:44 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by killdevil at 3:49 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by dash_slot- at 3:57 PM on December 28, 2005

Ok then -- do any of the existing mapping tools provide worldwide coverage?
posted by killdevil at 4:06 PM on December 28, 2005

The one I linked to does, doesn't it?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 4:33 PM on December 28, 2005

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!).
posted by andrew cooke at 4:43 PM on December 28, 2005

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...)
posted by andrew cooke at 4:44 PM on December 28, 2005

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!
posted by dash_slot- at 5:11 PM on December 28, 2005

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

Really, it should accept either. And in a DWIMmy fashion.
posted by Plutor at 5:11 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by mmahaffie at 5:29 PM on December 28, 2005

mmahaffie: yeah try doing that outside the US or UK
posted by dhruva at 6:28 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by kcm at 6:31 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by wilful at 6:36 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by blue_beetle at 7:43 PM on December 28, 2005

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?
posted by kcm at 7:52 PM on December 28, 2005

hey look, it's ハッカ&#x30FC! I love that guy!
posted by kcm at 8:18 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 8:52 PM on December 28, 2005

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...
posted by web-goddess at 9:43 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by dhruva at 10:16 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by dg at 10:55 PM on December 28, 2005

Ah never mind: I thought webgoddess was talking about google MAPS. I can't use google earth yet, so ...
posted by dhruva at 10:58 PM on December 28, 2005

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.)
posted by web-goddess at 11:55 PM on December 28, 2005

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.
posted by mmahaffie at 3:41 AM on December 29, 2005

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.
posted by twiggy at 8:22 AM on December 29, 2005