Category Archives: Technical Entries

It’s alive!

Posted on February 11, 2010 by William Lachance

>>> import neocoder >>> g = neocoder.GeoCoder(“greater-hrm2.db”) >>> g.get_latlng(“14 Johnson, North Preston”) SQL: select firstHouseNumber, lastHouseNumber, length, coords from road where name like ‘Johnson’ and firstHouseNumber = ’14′ and placeName like ‘North Preston’ limit 1 (44.73895263671875, -63.464725494384766)

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Projects for 2010

Posted on January 2, 2010 by William Lachance

Hurrah, 2010 is upon us! One new years resolution I have set for myself is to blog more about what I’m working on. I’ve learned over the last year that the audience of people who care about your projects in … Continue reading →

Posted in hbus, Technical Entries | 2 Comments

Icon metaphor fail

Posted on August 21, 2009 by William Lachance

Started to use a new piece of hardware at the Navarra office today, which resulted in the following gem being added to the GNOME notification area. Would anyone care to guess what the following icon is supposed to represent?

Posted in GNOME, Technical Entries, Usability | 3 Comments

iPhone hackathon 4 charity: Halifax edition

Posted on July 28, 2009 by William Lachance

I think it’s fair to say that Halifax’s first iPhone hackathon for charity was a big success. The idea was pretty simple: get a group of people (developers, marketers, artists) together over a weekend and try to produce as many … Continue reading →

Posted in Technical Entries | Tagged | 7 Comments

Creating a google transit feed for fun and profit

Posted on April 23, 2009 by William Lachance

People frequently ask me how I manage to collect and input the data that is used by hbus.ca, given Metro Transit’s intransigence. The “bike and GPS” angle is well known by now, but what about the rest of the process? … Continue reading →

Posted in hbus, Technical Entries | 4 Comments

Maps URLs on mobile Safari

Posted on February 2, 2009 by William Lachance

I’ve been experimenting a little bit with maps urls on the iphone. If you’ve read Apple’s web developer guidelines, you’ll know that URLs of this form will automatically redirect to the maps application: Halifax, Nova Scotia <a href=”http://maps.google.com/maps?geocode=&q=Halifax,Nova Scotia”>Halifax, Nova … Continue reading →

Posted in Technical Entries | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment