I was recently looking at a few links to one of my services - The UK Webcam Map - and found a blog that had discussed the service a year or so ago. The post was on the Mapperz Blog and discussed the map and possible future directions:
So, some nice comments there and an interesting suggestion to take the map further. First off, GeoRSS is a good suggestion - but this was limited at the time by the amount of data released in this format. The UK Webcam Map updated weather icons 3 times a day, whilst GeoRSS was only published once a day.
A GeoRSS feed imported to a Google map to show the weather forecast
The example they give is a BBC Backstage project called BlueGhost UK Weather (see screenshot above). This is an interesting project and one I may well take a better look at in the future. Recently, the way the UK Webcam Map gathered its data became defunct (Met Office site redesign) so a new method is required. It may still mean that there are less updates each day, but it would be an interesting project to develop.
The UK Webcam Map helps predict weather forecast accuracy across the UK
Just to round off this mapping-themed update, I thought I'd finish off with an interesting map I saw via the StrangeMaps Blog. It's a map of world ring roads, placed on top of eachother, to show the varying sizes of these roads across world cities. As can be seen from the map below, a lot are of similar size, but Houston (whose Rice School of Architecture the map was commission by) shows just how big these roads can be with its mammoth effort (in black):
As a very brief aside, it's worth visiting the Rice School of Architecture website - mainly as I rather liked their top menu system and Flash site - shows how Flash can occasionally be used in a stylish, usable fashion:
Rice School of Architecture Menu System
Anyway, back to the road map - I thought it was a nice piece of work, partly as an interesting global comparison and partly as it looks good - a combination that always works well! I'll leave it with the funders of the work to explain the work:
It's nearly that time of year again, where the Edinburgh Festival takes over the city and people flock to visit the huge variety of performances on offer. And as always, the website / booking service is getting a bit of abuse across the web. They say the online booking system is greatly improved this year, but the website still remains the same design (shame). I haven't fully checked this year, but usually there is also a major lack of a decent, interactive venue map.
Last year I decided to tackle this problem head on by creating the Fringe 2008 Map - I did this project as a 24 hour app or Mashed 2008 - and although I've not done anything this year for Mashed 2009, I'm happy to say I've given the Fringe Map a few tweeks and a redesign for 2009.
Screenshot of the newly-designed Fringe Map 2009.
So, if you'd like to take a look at this years map, click the link below. As always, the map is fully interactive, with users being able to update and edit venues as well as being able to sort the map in a large variety of ways, depending on your needs. And just as a bonus, a few of my favourite food/drink venues are on there too, in case you're unsure where's good to go!
And just to show the Fringe website services aren't all bad, I was pleased to see a nicely designed Flash "game" used to promote this year's festival. It's called "The Fringe Thing" and is an experiment-based discovery tool, whereby the "thing" (it looks much like an egg) can be interacted with in a number of ways, with the ultimate aim of finding out what it is. Some of the experiment videos are great fun as well - and although it has no real purpose, it's a nice little app to kick things off :)
The Fringe Thing - Experimental Game [click to visit]
Sorry for the long delay in posting - have been on half of my annual holiday and (unsurprisingly) the blog got deserted. It's not always easy to escape the virtual world so I'm quite pleased I managed - sorry for lack of posts though! :)
I have a number of larger articles in the pipeline but I've had a lot of work on of late and finishing them off is proving more tricky than I'd hoped. So for now, I'm going to reduce my article size and try and post more frequently.
I've got loads of great stuff to share, so I'll get onto it and start posting more regularly for the next few weeks...
After installing adsense onto the site, the next logical step was to set up a Google Analytics account, to help analyse my web traffic (visitor numbers, bounce rate, popular pages etc). It's only been up a few days, but it has already hinted at some useful results:
- One or two stories are much more popular than others
- Visitor bounce rates are quite high
- Lots of people view the site by theme / tag
I'll keep analysing the site and probably do a more detailed post in a few weeks (showcasing what it can do for a small company website), but in the meantime I'll just use some of this info to theme this post.
When I looked at the data, the most popular story this week was one I posted months ago about unusual bridges and bridge-building games. Considering I've done a number of posts on architecture before, I think it might be the gaming-nature of the post that has proved particularly popular.
So, I'm pandering to this demand and going to quickly showcase a couple of cheap, downloadable games I have recently bought. First off, I don't normally buy games (not for PC anyway), I just play free, online ones. And this is the same route I used to find these games as they both started off as free demo / beta versions. Compared to most console games, I think these are both great value for money and hugely playable, so check out the demos at least:
Trials 2 (Second Edition) I've been playing this game ever since its first inception on miniclip, and it has got better and better. OK, now it costs $9.99 for the full version, but it has morphed into a highly-playable 3D version of the original flash game.
Trials 2 was addictive enough, but the second edition has much better (HD) graphics, way more levels, a great variety of driver viewpoints and a really good online competition system.
All you have to do is get to the finish line driving a motorcross bike over obstacles, jumps and moving objects. Only those levels classed as "hard" are really difficult to complete, all the rest it's just a case of finishing as quickly as possible and seeing how you compare against the world!
The website has loads of videos / screenshots etc, but here's one for you right now:
Crayon Physics Deluxe I was about to describe this as a 'Drawing / Physics Game' but decided this might give the wrong impression - it's not a learning tool, just a game that utilises 'real physics' to let objects react like they would in the real world.
The general idea is having to guide a ball to a star, overcoming obstacles by drawing shapes and making machines to help you on your way. This new 'deluxe' version allows you to create axles, wheels and levers, giving the user loads of breathing room for creativity.
The original game also had an impressive soundtrack (albeit one song) and the new version keeps up this theme, as well as adding a new island-based exploration layer to the game.
Bear in mind the original game was out years ago, so some of the technology behind the software may not seem quite as revolutionary, but I think the playability more than makes up for it.
I was in Northallerton a few months ago and found a brilliant leaflet in the pub, offering an exciting venue for tourists and locals alike...
...I'm not sure if it's the state of the woman on the front (her period costume ends up making her look like a tramp...the bagpipes are a nice touch too!) or just the brilliantly simple name, but I had to laugh at "The Shed":
Maybe I'm being a bit harsh or maybe the cover was slightly tongue in cheek, but it looks like a cracking tourist attraction. In reality, The Shed is a small music and arts venue on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors but I prefer the idea of it just being a shed with some woman with some bagpipes nearby :)
Every time I post to this blog, a time stamp is recorded showing exactly when the database was populated. When I display this time on the blog, I shorten it to just show hours and minutes. But the RSS feed I edit requires hours, minutes and seconds and although this info is in the database, to save time I just make up the seconds using a random number.
Now, over 132 posts I have let my brain decide 132 random numbers between 0 and 60. I figured this could be a sensible way to choose lottery numbers (OK, there is no logical way, but this is as good as any!). The numbers that I've selected most frequently must have some special hold over me and are therefore worthy of inclusion in my 14,000,000/1 lottery adventure!
So I extracted all the seconds used in my RSS file and pasted them to excel, where I performed a CountIf function to find the frequency of each number (Excel CountIf Explained). So, my potential magic numbers came out as follows:
Number
Frequency
Percentage
37
8
6.0%
30
7
5.3%
50
6
4.5%
12
6
4.5%
49
5
3.8%
17
5
3.8%
22
4
3.0%
27
4
3.0%
40
4
3.0%
14
4
3.0%
So, I need to do some sorting to get 6 distinct numbers (5 for the euro lottery). Firstly, we can remove the 50 as that's one digit too high to play with. Now we have [37, 30, 12, 49, 17] as our first five numbers and need to sort out a 6th number for the lotto and the two euro-lottery single digit bonus balls from the 3 remaining options.
My lottery numbers in all their glory!
All I did was sort the last 3 numbers by how recently the 4th occurrence was used, giving weight to those sets completed first. This gave 22 as the first set completed (becoming the 6th number) and 27 was next (splitting it up to give bonus balls of 2 and 7). And there we have it, my ludicrous 'system' is in place and I'll buy a ticket for the next few draws (wed & sat for 3 weeks, euro millions for 2 weeks) and see what happens...prepare to be dazzled with my extremely unlikely glory!
My lottery choices and slips for the next few weeks
UPDATE [04/08/09]: This post has been updated in a new article: click here to view it.
As you may have seen, I recently announced the launch of the new RSGS (Royal Scottish Geographical Society) website and all has gone smoothly since then, with a lot of positive feedback.
So it was an extra bonus to have got an official mention in The Geographer magazine, the official magazine of the society. I'm even on the back of Michael Palin, which is surely a good thing! :)
Oh and whilst on this topic, I thought it a good time to take the BBC How Smart Are You? Geography Quiz - Happily, I got 13/14, so I don't feel so bad...no ox-bow lakes though!
Webcams show you the weather live - Coloured Polygons show you an accuracy ratio: - Nice clean map, - Easy to use and update, - Informative and up-to-date. Suggestions? - Maybe a georss overlay from the Met Office (as google maps api supports georss)? [Example is BlueGhost UK Weather] 
