GrinGod [dot] Com

Since the recent update to Google Earths images of Guernsey I have started creating extra layers. The first of these to be released is recycling points in Guernsey. I’m not certain the recycling points are up to date but it is the best that I have been able to find so far. It currently only covers paper, steel cans, aluminium, glass and textiles but as I get better information I should be able to extend the layer with other materials.

Other layers that I have got in the works include Monoliths/ancient monuments, fortress Guernsey (German, martello towers and other fortifications) and churches (it started as churches with ringable bells).

Update:
Just to make sure there is no confusion I thought I’d clarify the license for the recycling kmz file. I have released it under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. This means that you can download, modify and re-distribute the file for free. So long as you indicate where you got the original from (here!) and that you’re not doing it on a commercial basis. If you do want to use it in a commercial product please contact me and I’ll arrange a dual license.

Technorati Tags: google earth, guernsey, kml, mapping

I loaded up Google Earth this morning to take a look at where Christchurch Priory is and, as usual, first took a look at Guernsey to confirm that Google still hadn’t updated the imagery for this area. To my complete astonishment Google has updated the images of Guernsey.

Although the images aren’t at a terribly good resolution, at least it is possible to see just about the whole island, rather that it being covered in cloud or cloud shadow. Unfortunately none of the roads are marked, and some of the parish/area names are in the wrong places.

After months of waiting for either Google or Digimap to supply clean images (Google won this race) I can finally start creating all the layers I have been planning.

Open mapping, it seems, is coming to Guernsey

I found out today that the Guernsey Press is testing an online edition of the newspaper.  I don’t mean a new version of thisisguernsey.com, but an online reader for the actual print paper.  Whilst this, at first glance, seems to be a move in the right direction they really need to look at the way they’re doing it.

Firstly, it seems that it will only be available to Internet Explorer users.  I presume they’re going to be using some proprietory ActiveX control for viewing the paper. This is a really bad move if you ask me, whilst IE 7 is an improvement in past version it still falls short of the mark and many people prefer alternative browsers (Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konquerer).

Secondly, it seems that they’re planning on charging £10/month for the service.  Which, if you exclude Sundays, works out at about 36p per day.  This is only 4p less than the physical paper costs.  Quite how they can justify this price when they don’t have to cover the costs of the physical paper (raw materials, distribution, machinery, etc.) is beyond me. 

Thirdly, it isn’t very well written.  On the login page, every time a key is press, when the password box has focus, a javascript funtion is called to see if the enter button is pressed.  This is totally redundant as any half decent browser will provide this functionality for free.  If that is how the login page is written I dread to think what the rest of the site is like.  I have another reason for concern about the programming of the site but I need to contact the developers before I make it public.

The Google Earth layer for Guernsey that I created has finally been updated a bit. This update just adds a couple of extra images and straightens up a couple of the existing ones. I’ve also added a new layer that contains a network link to the layer, if you use this new network link you will always get the latest version of the Guernsey layer as I update it.

I’ve been meaning to blog about Google Earth, Guernsey and Digimap for a couple of weeks now - yes I have seen you Digimap guys visiting my site! What I wanted to blog about was a mysterious meeting I had at the Digimap offices. A while back I was contacted (via a third party) by Digimap and was asked if you want to go for a meeting with them. No information was given as to what the meeting was about so, like the curious person I am, I went along.

Not knowing whether I was going to get a rollicking for using thier images, a job offer (for my great work on the Google Earth layer ;)) or some other reason I was, understandably, rather aprehensive. In the end it turn out to be them wanting to get to know the person behind the Google Earth layer and also a bit of a PR excercise… if I’m writing about Digimap they want to make sure that I know that they’re the good guys.

A couple of interesting points did come up in the meeting however:

• Digimap is (I think) a subsidiary of the States of Guernsey but has to be completely self funding, therefore they need to sell the data in order to cover the cost of collection the data - no open source mapping in Guernsey using Digimap data then!
• Digimap has contacted Google and Navteq offering Guernsey data but both turned down the offer saying they had sufficient coverage of Guernsey to not need new data.
• Google Earth is soon going to have 60cm (IIRC) images of Guernsey - lets hope half the island isn’t going to be covered by cloud again!
• Digimap try to do as much imagineering as possible - again this si contrained by the need to be self-funding.
• Digimap will continue to monitor this blog for new ideas for them to try.
• I can continue with the Google Earth layer using their images.
• If I was I can host their images stitched together on my site for better alignment in Google Earth (I have written conscent).
• If I wish they will try to provide better images for me to host for my Google Earth layer.

Once again I have had to remove a page from my website. This time it seems that a certain person thinks I have a grudge against them and the fact that my page came up as the third hit on Google was detrimental to their professional status. The page itself was simply reporting an event as I witnessed it and I have no personal control over the way in which Google sorts search results.

To show that I have no personal vendetta against this person I have remove the page, although the Google result will still show up and there will still be a cached version on Google and probably a copy in the web archive… that is beyond my control.

Should the person in question like to offer a thank you for my efforts to remove the post and should they wish to sit down and discuss their technical abilities I would be more than willing to (for a beer). But from this point on I consider the matter of my former post over and the hatchet buried.

This isn’t really one to joke about but it reminded me about a game a Phrixus used to have on his PC.

A female ex-postal worker has shot dead six people at a sorting office in California, before committing suicide. Its official, going postal is back in fashion. “Going postal” is the term originally coined in the USA for disgruntled ex-employees that return to their previous work place and proceed to kill their ex-colleges.

It’s not a very nice thing to do but whats more scary is that it must have happened with such frequency (with-in the US postal service) for there to be a term to describe it.

The original Postal game is still available as well as “Postal 2: Share The Pain” and “Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend” from the gopostal.com website.

Several people have ask me (as is the custom for western people at this time of year) what New Years resolutions I have made. It seems that, to most people, not making resolutions is absolutely unthinkable but this is exactly what I have done. However, I have managed to get myself into a rather paradoxical situation.

A year or two ago I got fed up with making New Years resolutions only to forget about them or break them within the same week. I also decided that New Years day is a complete abitrary point in time to be setting a resolutions to better yourself, surely a better time would be your birthday or, if you’re a christian, christmas day (the day Christ was born to change the earth for the better) or Easter day (the day Christ die to save us from our sins).

So I set myself a experiment to test a hypothesis. My hypothesis is that it is not possible to keep a New Years resolution and therefore it is pointless to make them in the first place. The way a I would test my hypothesis was to make a New Years resolution to never again make a New Years resolution. As a result my paradoxical situation is this:

If I make another New Years resolution I will have proved my hypothesis right and it is therefore pointless making New Years resolutions as you can never keep them. However, if I never make another New Years resolution I will have proved my hypothesis wrong and it is possible to keep New Years resolutions and therefore you should make them.

Disclaimer: This is only meant to be a bit of fun. I haven’t been spending the last few years in torment over this situation and it really doesn’t both me whether I break New Years resolutions or not… I just think this is a neat explanation as to why I don’t make New Years resolutions.

Those that work with me know that I’m a sucker for a mash-up (good or bad). Many people also know that I’m a fan of BoingBoing and Cory Doctorow. So when Cory posted a story on BoingBoing about Dean Grey Tuesday it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I decided to join in an change the background colour of my website from white to grey.

Happy Dean Grey Tuesday everyone!

According to Sony it is perfectly alright to pirate software!!!

Unless you have had your head buried in the sand you cannot fail to have heard about Sony faux-pas with the rootkit software that came with its latest offerings on the audio CD market. It turns out that Sony CDs have been shipped with DRM software that was installed on PCs and Macs when the CD was inserted into a computer. Not only did the CD install DRM software but another piece of software, the rootkit, was installed to hide the DRM software. This rootkit has already been used by malicious uses to create a virus that can remain hidden from Anti-Virus software.

Things get even better through. Sony has released a utility to allow users to remove the rootkit from their computer (the DRM software remains), only the rootkit is not fully removed. An ActiveX component is left on the computer which can be used by a malicious website creator to force a reboot of the users machine. It is beleive that the ActiveX can may also be used to run malicious code on the users computer but a proof of concept of this has not yet known to have been created.

So how does this make it ok to break software copyrights? Well, somewhere in their DRM/rootkit Sony is including the LAME MP3 encoder. I’m not entirely certain what it is being used for but the LAME encoder is released under the LGPL. As far as I can tell (the LGPL and GPL are rather complex) for your software to make use of LGPL software your software license must be compatible with the LGPL, i.e. you must release the source code for your software. As far as I know the DRM/rootkit is not released under an LGPL license and therefore Sony is breaking the LAME encoder copyright (or left as the case may be). This would seem to be an endourcement by Sony that it is OK to break copyright.

Right… I’m off to download as many Sony tracks as I can before the BitTorrent networks are shutdown
I’ve not provided links in the article as frankly there are far too many so here are a couple of round-up articles posted by Cory Doctorow on BoingBoing:

• http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/17/sony_rootkit_roundup.html
• http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/14/sony_anticustomer_te.html
• http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,69601,00.html

Update:
It seems that the LAME encoder is not the only software copyright that Sony is breaking. Apparently they are also using DVD Jon Johansens FairPlay code that was written to break Apples iTunes DRM… how ironic!

Update:
Cory Doctorow: Mark sez, “This website tracks the class action lawsuits surrounding the Sony BMG Music Entertainment/First4Internet XCP Rootkit. Additionally, it offers information about how individuals who do not wish to wait for the class action can sue Sony in their local small claims court.” Link [From BoingBoing]

I know its a little late in the day but Damien and I have been having a bit of a rant about what the title should say about a product/event. The reason this came about is because I was saying that the TennerFest website is down at the moment becaues I’m trying to find somewhere to go out to this evening.

So what do I mean? Well, the title of the event is TennerFest because when it started serveral years ago the idea was that you could go to any participating restaurant in the Channel Islands and have a meal for £10 (a tenner). As time has gone by, however, more and more restaurants are offering meals for £12.50 or £15. The title of the event suggests all restaurants implementing the event will do so for a tenner…. the implementation is eposed in the title. However this is not the case and therefore the title is miss-leading.

They really should have chosen a better title which would allow more freedom of implementation for the participants such as:

• FoodFest
• FeastFest
• StuffYourselfFest

Damien has more on the Exposing Implementation subject, so keep an eye on his blog.