American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House - Jon Meacham

April 26, 2013, 9:37 am

Fascinating history of a complex, powerful and sometimes malevolent force in the history of the United States.

but Jackson was not a president of consistent principle. He was a politician subject to his own passions and predilections.

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Mapping of The Far Side of the World Complete

April 17, 2013, 1:27 pm

My map of the events in The Far Side of the World is complete. Most of the voyage was replete with references to well known rivers, capes, islands and atols making this map easier than most. I am probably least happy with the back and forth around Valparaiso (where I tried to stay true to the references in the book but was left feeling unsatisfied with the results) and the last dogleg around the prodigious storm that hit the Surprise directly after Jack and Stephen's rescue.

It has been six years since I last read The Far Side of the World and I had forgotten much and thus enjoyed mapping this volume all the more. Completing this map in ten months means I am beating my average by a couple of months and am now on track to finish the series in a bit under seven years. Hurrah!

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CLGeocoder is not an Opera fan

April 15, 2013, 6:22 am

I realise that Reverse Geocoding is a pretty tricky problem and probably will always be a work in progress, but the CLGeocoder bug I found today was so amusing I had to post. Things like this make this API less useful than it otherwise could be.