This, That, and the Code

I’ve encountered a problem that it appears the Google maps API can’t resolve, but the yahoo maps API seems to.

If you try to reverse geocode a postal code using the Google maps api it never seems to give you the city the postal code is in, but the Yahoo API does.

So for the time being I’m going to be using the Yahoo API to reverse geocode Postal Codes and Google to reverse geocode everything else (Google’s daily limit is 50000 and Yahoo’s is 5000).

I’m going to read the terms of service but it looks like I’m going to plug into the yahoo one for postal codes.

Woot!

I got this working today I’d share it.

It’s definitely a work in progress, but I figured I’d get it out there so that it could illicit some feedback.

Until I can sit down infront of a windows box to fix it, it only works in firefox.

http://graph.machete.ca/

An alternate user interface for a plain old Chat System.

http://mice.machete.ca

I’ve coded this website to demonstrate that web interaction need not be boring. It’s based on “TheBrain” which when I wrote this page was only a desktop application.

http://www.machete.ca/slips/

I forgot that I’d written this a while back. It’s a zoomable user interface written in flash.

Eventually I wanted to be able to edit in place, and to a certain extent you can. The bottom left panel is a drawing area.

http://zoom.machete.ca

It works, just didn’t like having it written in flash.

As yet another proof of concept I’ve implemented a **zooming calendar system**.

It’s an attempt to retain user context even when drilling down into the details of an arbitrary interface. Calendar just happens to be a slick demo.

Thoughts?

http://calendar.machete.ca/test/2007/11/

Here’s my prototype for a modeless website WYSIWYG.

http://www.machete.ca/mui/

It doesn’t persist, it doesn’t have many commands, and it’s not exactly pretty. But what it does have is something I haven’t seen online before.

I’m hoping to turn it into a “muscle memory editor”. This is so beyond thought through that I’m not even sure if it’s useful, but it is neat.

Hope someone finds it interesting.

Allain

Of all the web languages I’ve had the pleasure, sik :|, to code in, PHP still feels right for most of the things I do.

For one thing, it doesn’t force me to do things in any one particular way.

If the problem space makes thinking in an Object Oriented way logical, then I do that. If it makes writing a library of functions the simplest solution, then I can do that too. PHP is only as complicated as the problem space requires.

Even PHP’s Object Oriented System is decent. With things like magic methods and the SPL, other than in syntax, it’s on par with any of Java’s non-enterprise solutions.

Hope someone agrees,
Allain