Timeline Project Community - Open BETA

June 21, 2009, 8:12 pm

If you are interested in contributing chronological/geographical data to either:

You can now sign up for an account and start entering data.

I still have a list of features that I would like to implement and the project is still very much in BETA. I would appreciate any suggestions or corrections you might have. You can email me at .

Permalink - Comments - Tags: Development,World War Two,Napoleonic Wars

New Moon - Stephenie Meyer

June 14, 2009, 9:00 pm

Most irritating protagonists ever. Persistantly, self deprecating, vacuous, idiocy nauseatingly obsessed with pompous, zealous, self rightousness.

It is part of the author's job to evoke an emotional response in the reader, but I think exasperation is probably not what Stephenie Meyer was going for.

Permalink - Comments - Tags: Books,Review

Sony Service Fail vs Apple Service Win!

June 4, 2009, 12:15 pm

I have two colleagues at work (Nick and Brad), both doing development pretty much all the time on their respective laptops and consequently, very dependant on them. Both work on the train for longish commutes and need their batteries to last the trip.

Sad Sony Story

So a few months ago the battery in Brad's Vaio started to die and he contacted Sony about a replacement. Since that time Sony has provided a customer service experience worthy of a paranoid conspiracy theorist's diary. They have been evasive, contradictory, but mostly just unresponsive. Three months later, and with his failing battery giving shorter and shorter operating times, Brad was told that his battery had arrived at head office. He just needed to provide his credit card number and they would send it out. Brad did so and two weeks later has heard nothing, that's right nothing from Sony. Despite multiple emails, Sony has simply ignored him.

Update : Brad did finally get his battery, several weeks after the assurance that it would arrive tomorrow.

Happy Apple Story

A couple of days ago the battery in Nick's laptop started dropping in power alarmingly and so Nick took it into the George St (Sydney) Apple Store. The guys at the Genius Bar plugged an iPhone into the USB port, ran a funky diagnostic app and declared the battery was fried. They promised a replacement within a couple of days. Two days later Nick gets a call and goes down to pick up his brand new battery.

I am usually not prone to writing cranky get off my lawn style letters, but the contrast between these two cases just cried out for some angry walking stick flailing. Not sure what Brad will do next in his quest to get a new laptop battery, but evidently it shouldn't be this hard.

Permalink - Comments - Tags: Development

Create Timeline Data Point

June 1, 2009, 1:33 pm

I have been making some good progress on my Timeline Project Community mode work. The thumbnailed image is a screenshot of the data point creation web form (click it for a detailed screenshot). I have tried to streamline the data creation process as much as possible. I see the data entry process as follows:

Select the project. Currently this is just World War Two and the Napoleonic Wars.
Enter a short title.
Find an appropriate article on WikiPedia which describes the data point in question. Alternatively the user can just select default which will use an appropriate root page.
Select a start date and, optionally, an end date for the event in question.
Type a brief description of the event (more detail can be found in the WikiPedia link).
Determine if the event can be described with a single location, a line (for fronts and borders etc) or a shaded region.
Based on the previous type, either type in coordinates or draw on the Google Map.
Select appropriate Tags for the data point. Tags are just identifiers to qualifier and sort data points. The primary tag decides what sort of icon to put on the map (land combat, naval combat etc). The other tags supply more information about the vent. One or more country tags describe which nations were involved in the event.

So that is basically it, hopefully pretty straightforward, with the real effort being the research to create a data point in the first place.

Permalink - Comments - Tags: World War Two,Development

Twilight - Stephenie Meyer

June 1, 2009, 9:00 am

Teen, Vampire, Romance. No way I am in that demographic. Well, maybe just a little bit.

With a hint of my own personal favorite, the argument from personal incredulity:

Well, where did you come from? Evolution? Creation? Couldn�t we have evolved in the same way as other species, predator and prey? Or, if you don�t believe all this world could have just happened on its own, which is hard for me to accept myself, is it so hard to believe that the same force that created the delicate angelfish with the shark, the baby seal and the killer whale, could create both our kinds together?

Pretty much where this argument belongs, in a book about Vampires.