Windows Tainting

For the first time in several years, I've spent several hours working using a Windows machine.

It's not mine, naturally: it would take a lot of doing to convince me that installing Windows is something I *need* to do. It's on loan to accomplish something that I can only work out in Windows.

Still, I think that it's about time I invested some resources in getting myself a Windows account somewhere, even if it's via RDC or something similar: having this thing in my hands is leading to way too many temptations to fix all the thins that I've written which I'm sure are totally broken in IE.

Of course, to do that, I'd have to open IE.

Maybe I'll skip getting an account on a Windows box after all...

GeoURL Redux

Crossposted to lj_nifty, although I have no doubt that will take ages to be approved, so I'm posting it here too. Also, becuase I find it relevant and interesting.

A long time ago, I posted some code and information about how to add GeoURL information to your journal.

Those instructions are no longer even remotely neccesary, as LiveJournal now supports the ability to set your location via the admin console.

Visit the admin console, and type something like:

set icbm "34.2234,-122.3434"

or

set icbm "34.23234N 122.3432W"

This results in a tag similar to <meta name="ICBM" content="34.2234,-122.3434" />

If you're in the US, you can look up your latitude and longitude using geocoder.us. If you're outside the US, you can search for your address on Google Maps. Once you've found it, double click slightly away from the marker, and click "link to this page". The URL in the browser bar now contains something like: "ll=41.85,-87.65". Copy paste the bit after the "ll=" and before the next &, and paste that into the admin console command above.

Then you can Ping GeoURL and see your neighbors. (Hello, Cambridge!)

"Current Location?"

Current location is cool. I've wanted to upload it myself in various capacities for a long time.

But linking somethign that people will typically type in as free form to Google Maps is stupid. People will type 'Home', and linking that to google maps won't get you anywhere!

So, I went through and fixed my style so that the location would no longer be linked to Google maps, as well as reordering the 'currents' so that location would be on the bottom instead of the top.

So now, when I type 'Home" in my current location, it won't be displayed as "Maps.google.com/?q=Home" -- because it's not. It's home, in Cambridge. Of course, the rest of you will still see the links on your friends pages, but I've never optimized my journal for the users who are reading through friends pages: I've optimized it for *me*, and for my journal view pages.

I can see why this was done, but I think this is a case where the engineers (or engineer *cough* Brad *cough*) should have pulled in their usability person before pushing it live :p It's still a pretty cool little box, but I don't like to see it off to what I see as a negative start. Then again, is there much on LJ that I *don't* see as a negative start? ;)

Updated code is in Entry::print_metadata in my custom layer if anyone wants to crib it.