Link Blog
German Cities Ponder Banning Google Cars. Some idiotic politicians in a few German cities have fallen for the "burglar's charter" lies about Street View, and are considering banning the cars. If they do, it'll be their loss, and no one else's.
Tags: streetview | Posted on 3 October 2008
Run App Store Apps in Background (Jailbreak Required) Another reason to Jailbreak your iPhone. Now, if only Apple would stop releasing new iPhone software the day after I jailbreak my phone, I might get to use some of this stuff…
Web Inspector Redesign. Safari's Web Inspector is much improved, and almost rivals Firebug, despite being a wee bit clunky in places. Availible in nightly builds now.
Meet The Facebloke. Silly Facebook-in-real-world sketch from BBC Three (No, that's not a typo, it's really BBC Three, not collegehumor).
Get Extra Sleep with iNap. I wish this had existed back when I often got the late night bus from Glasgow to Edinburgh, and missed my stop every time.
Tags: iphone | Posted on 18 September 2008
Meme Breaks 1.0: scratch for great justice. Blackstar + (Internet memes x Scratching) = Genius. Only complaint is the premature end of the video.
Tags: music | Posted on 15 September 2008
The escalating breakdown of urban society across the US. Article by David Simon (The Wire) about Baltimore's continuing problems,
Tags: baltimore, society, thewire | Posted on 12 September 2008
django-cms.org. A drop-in Django based "CMS" system with hierarchical page structure and template tag support.
Tags: django | Posted on 11 September 2008
Swype keyboard for touchscreens. New input method from the inventor of T9 whereby you draw a wiggly line over a keyboard, passing through the letters of the word, and it guesses the word you were going for. Looks great in the demo, but I'm dubious of it being a more natural input method than the iPhone keyboard.
Tags: ui | Posted on 10 September 2008
Google and censorship — setting the record straight. Ogle Earth highlights the persistent misinformation and shoddy journalism in all the "Google Earth censors the world" stories.
Tags: googleearth | Posted on 8 September 2008
New Ghostbusters Film? A new Ghostbusters film will be either the greatest film ever or worst franchise reanimation ever.
Tags: film | Posted on 8 September 2008
My Django Talk at OGN8. As the talk was always going to be a dull sales pitch for my favourite web framework I made all the slides as LOLcats. They stole the show from what I was planning on saying, but hopefully l made at least one person slightly more likely consider Django for their next project.
The slides are available here: http://oxford.geeknights.net/2008/aug-27th/talks/microslot-JamesTurnbull.ppt
Oxford Wikimania 2010. Planning site for the bid to host the 2010 conference for Wikipedians in Oxford. There's also a Facebook group you can join.
Django cheat sheet. Edinburgh-based Mercurytide have released an updated version of the Django cheatsheet which is applicable to the new 1.0 release.
Tags: django | Posted on 4 September 2008
PC World - 10 Amazing Google Earth Add-Ons. New PC World article, written by myself and Alex, that highlights 10 of our favourite Google Earth overlays and visualisations.
Posted on 2 September 2008
jQuery Site Redesign. Blog post on the new homepage design with ~150 comments that all basically say the same thing: "Nice redesign but what the fuck were you thinking with the rock star stuff?". Users will always moan when you redesign, but I have to agree that the cartoon graphic and awkward slogan ("Be a Javascript Rock Star!") are completely wrong. Now where's all the know-it-all designers who usually comment on this sort of thing with their own mockups?
Posted on 29 August 2008
WolfenFlickr 3D. Browse Flickr images as a level from Wolfenstein 3D. Bizarre but brilliant.
Tags: game, javascript | Posted on 29 August 2008
BBEdit 9.0 Release Notes. I used to adore BBEdit, before TextMate came along. I've read most of the release notes, and there doesn't seem to be much to bring me back (except "Ponies" of course). Barebones even get a dig in: "…the (badly chosen, IMO) 'txmt:' URL scheme"
jParallax. jQuery plugin for parallax scrolling images within a div. Not sure what I'd ever use it for, but still very cool.
Tags: jquery | Posted on 27 August 2008
Google offers Gears for Safari beta. Beta version of (Google) Gears for Safari.
James Turnbull develops websites with Django, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Ajax and other trendy web technologies.
James is developer and co-author of the popular Google Earth "things-to-see" website, Google Sightseeing and the spin-off book Not in the Guide Book. He also sometimes posts blogs to Rotacoo.
Posts from Google Sightseeing
Pool of Fire
Here in the deserts of Turkmenistan the satellite imagery has captured an amazing shot of a 200-metre wide churning pool that is spouting a pillar of smoke and flames.
These are the Korpedje oil fields, and this is an active upwelling of oil that has been abandoned since 2002, which may have been when it started [...]
Posted on 6 October 2008
Site News: James May’s Big Ideas
Regular readers of Google Sightseeing, and especially those who own the book, would probably enjoy last week’s James May’s Big Ideas.
The program opened with May visiting Russia to see miniature Ekranoplans, a popular sight from the book, and also featured fantastic archive footage of the Orlyonok class Ekranoplan flying along the water.
May has obviously [...]
Posted on 5 October 2008
Toronto Music Garden
Tucked away on the lakefront of Canada’s largest city is the Toronto Music Garden.
The park, which opened in 1999, was designed to represent the different elements of Bach’s Suites for Unaccompanied Cello and was a partnership between landscape designer Julie Moir Messervy and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Six distinct areas represent the dance movements of the Suite [...]
Posted on 3 October 2008
The Sapphire Mines of Madagascar
In 1998, the tiny truck-stop village of Ilakaka in Madagascar was transformed into a bustling mining town, and one of the most dangerous places in the country. The reason for this dramatic change was the discovery of massive sapphire deposits in the valley.
Browsing the area from above you can see thousands of small mine holes [...]
Posted on 2 October 2008
MUSAC, León
In the city of León, Spain, you’ll find MUSAC, or rather the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León.
The Castile and León Museum of Contemporary Art opened to the public in April of 2005 and showcases a wide range of visiting contemporary art exhibits; none of which are permanent. What is permanent is the [...]
Posted on 1 October 2008
Recent Flickr Photos
