Quite a score for our reader “Ajay”, who I think is the first to spot that the Mumbai terrorist attack bears a very close resemblance to the coup plot in Frederick Forsyth’s The Dogs of War, which makes it the third and possibly fourth case of someone actually using Forsyth’s book as a practical handbook.…
Read More the world’s deadliest novel strikes againSo I’m trying to make a little Google Map overlay, that will reload data from a remote server every time the page it contains loads. Obviously, I read the documentation, look at examples, sign up for a Google API key. But it’s not working, and I’m getting error messages that the API key is “for…
Read More Google Maps API IssueHere is the presentation I delivered at OpenTech 2008: | View | Upload your own I’d publish the text, but I didn’t prepare a text:-) Anyway, the ViktorFeed is a development of basic python scripts I’ve been using for some time to collect data on certain aircraft movements through Sharjah and Dubai Airports. Both of…
Read More The ViktorFeed: DocumentationBack in 2004, this blog went to the European Social Forum – we weren’t that impressed, but we did call it “the Caesar’s Palace of Ranting”. I’m not sure what the equivalent for the UKUUG’s OpenTech 2008 would be; there was plenty of ranting, but a sight less committee wank, more practicality, even if no-one…
Read More OpenTech 2008: It’s like the ESF, with code…Unity is on to something with this rant about government Web sites. But I think we can take this a nudge further. Essentially, if you’re visiting a government Web site, you’re doing one of two things; you’re either engaged in some sort of transaction with the government, or else you’re looking for some sort of…
Read More Government Websites: Considered DireGoogle is, essentially, a honking great unix system whose command line interface is addressed through URLs. This came to mind preparing the embedded map for the G3 Systems post; Google Maps autogenned a slightly different location than the view I wanted every time, although I could link directly to the right view. So, of course,…
Read More Google: the world’s favourite command lineThis tale of Google Earth being used to monitor violence in Darfur, as well as this, raises an interesting point. In his memoirs, Richard Holbrooke tells of how the Bosnian War parties were hugely impressed by the mapping software running on computers the US State Department brought to the conference – they could pull up…
Read More Diplomacy by visualisationThe new map of the Middle East crazed wingnut Ralph Peters came up with needs a bit more battering, I think. Specifically, as well as the fact that even though in the text of the article he accepts that the Israelis ought to go back to the Green Line, and on the map he blithely…
Read More Ralph Peters: ManiacMaps are nice, aren’t they? So let’s have a look at a few maps of Iraq. This one shows Iraq’s administrative divisions, its roads and its rivers. Note especially that there are essentially two major roads between Baghdad and Basra. One runs along the Tigris valley parallel to the Iranian border. The other runs just…
Read More Talk to Iran. Now.I sincerely hope this is a final situation map. Sorry about the last one going missing.
Read More Let’s hope it’s the last one