http://blog.robin-marshall.net Web + Multimedia Engineer from Wellington / Carterton, New Zealand Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:05:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A big project I was responsible for at a previous employer kept me pretty busy, with several commits to the repository every day. I had a change log script setup to keep a regular change log updated so stakeholders could see the progress of changes. Just before I left the ... http://blog.robin-marshall.net/webtech/visualising-a-software-project/ Last week Google Streetview launched in New Zealand. I knew this because not only was I working in mapping at the time the country was being captured, but also because on the ride home from the best pies in NZ, we saw a Google car driving down the main street ... http://blog.robin-marshall.net/webtech/google-streetview-made-me-famous-the-end-of-privacy/ I've been running a $15 portfolio at iPredict for about a month now, and in spite of actually losing money on sensible predictions, I'm really pleased with it. Why am I losing money? Well, when PM.LABOUR shares were low I bought 20 of them, I held on to them figuring ... http://blog.robin-marshall.net/webtech/ipredict-a-new-zealand-prediction-market/ The 25th birthday of Gnu and the Free Software movement gives me hope for the future of humanity. Stephen Fry discusses the “good science” of free software, how sharing knowledge is simply the right way to go. Ironically, I make a living from commercial software, but it is the free ... http://blog.robin-marshall.net/open-source/stephen-fry-says-happy-birthday-to-gnu/ Another Twitter Bot, perhaps a little boring of me, but maybe useful to Auckland Twitter users. Based on the Wellington version I made previously, just a slight tweak to the bounding box. http://twitter.com/AuckRoadAlerts A note to AA - if you don't like me doing this, just let me know and I'll take ... http://blog.robin-marshall.net/webtech/auckland-road-alerts-twitter-bot/ It seems AA have updated their site using the GeoSmart Mapping API. I noticed they use an AJAX request to grab a JSON encoded object that neatly describes all the information I need. The JSON object not only breaks the incident data down into component parts but also includes NZMG ... http://blog.robin-marshall.net/webtech/wellyroadalerts-twitter-bot-back-in-business-thanks-to-json/ I'm interested to see the next Ubuntu 8.10a release introduces 3G networking. It's pretty exciting to think that an operating system that moves as quickly as Ubuntu will be running on mobile devices. As a web application developer, I see that the mobile browser is a great way to provide ... http://blog.robin-marshall.net/webtech/ubuntu-intrepid-ibex-has-focus-on-3g/ ReadWriteWeb has an article from a few days ago that discusses the introduction of a universal edit button for wikis or pages which allow user editing. From what I can tell, it would appear in the browser in the same way that the RSS feed button appears. I'm not 100% ... http://blog.robin-marshall.net/webtech/universal-wiki-edit-button-demystifying-wikis/ After my last post, I realised I hardly ever drive to Wellington anymore anyway, trying not to burn any more hydrocarbons. Perhaps a more political version than WellyRoadWorks, but certainly more interesting to me, is this twitter feed I created which shows the oil price change whenever it moves up ... http://blog.robin-marshall.net/webtech/oil-price-twitter-feed/ Trying to explain what's cool about Twitter to a colleague yesterday, I put together a small script that scrapes the road alerts from AA Roadwatch and posts them to a twitter feed. Why? Well Twitter is unique in that as well as being a social messaging platform, it also acts as ... http://blog.robin-marshall.net/webtech/twitter-as-mashup-message-queue/