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iPhone Geolocation Bookmarklets

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:33:15 GMT

Very few websites have implemented the new javascript GPS geolocation features that were intruduced with HTML 5. However, there are a few sites that use latitude and longitude directly in their URLs.

I first wanted a quick way to get my current latitude and longitude while looking at Heavens Above. It’s a great site that allows you to find visible satellites based upon your current location. Here’s the bookmarklet that I created:

javascript:navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(g){c=g.coords;z=c.altitude;z=z?z:0;d=new Date(2009,0,1,0,0,0,0).toLocaleString().substr(-3,3);window.location="http://www.heavens-above.com/?lat="+c.latitude+"&lng="+c.longitude+"&alt="+z+"&loc=iPhone&tz="+d;},function(){alert("Permission denied.")});

Copy this to your bookmarks, and then when accessed on an iPhone, it will directly load the site with your current location entered!

I had to jump through several hoops here. When the altitude is not available (when only using cell-tower triangulation), the javascript code returns null. The website only supports numeric values, so z=z?z:0 replaces the null with a 0. Secondly, the website needs the local timezone, but unfortunately it only accepts a small subset of the three letter codes (and not the numeric offset from UTC). Even worse, the daylight savings version of the code (EDT/CDT/MDT/PDT) are unsupported – the site just assumes that you follow the trend (sorry Arizona). So I grab the code from January 1, 2009 (when daylight savings is not in effect), and parse the three letter code from that string.

For most sites, you’d only need something of the form (The NOAA’s weather forecast, for example):

javascript:navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(function(g){c=g.coords;window.location="http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat="+c.latitude+"&lon="+c.longitude;},function(){alert("Permission denied.")});

Now if only I could find a way to save the javascript bookmark to the Home Screen, I’d be set!

Minor Truetype Font Editing on a Mac

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:36:03 GMT

With the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft included six new fonts that they commissioned for the occasion. They are the new defaults for Vista and Office. They’ve also made them available for Mac through Office as well as a handful of free (as in beer) utilities. I got them by following these instructions.

These new modern fonts are explicitly designed for display on computer screens with ClearType. Although Apple has a different philosophy on font rendering, the same basic premise is used in OS X. Besides all that (or, rather, because of it) these fonts are very pretty.

But there’s a problem, and you can see it in the image above. When packaging these fonts up for the Mac, Microsoft goofed on the baseline for Consolas. The icon previews below show it much more obviously.

In short: it’s annoying. And wrong. And the fix is after the break.

Adding an OptiBay to my MacBook Pro

Sat, 26 May 2007 21:14:43 GMT

Well, I finally decided to risk voiding my warranty for the luxury of double the disk space. I have a 160GB hard drive installed in my MacBook, but I’m constantly squeezed for space. I never use my internal CD drive (the last time was over two months ago… and it was actually my house-mate that needed it), so the thought of occasionally using an external CD drive is much more pleasant than lugging an external HD around all the time.

MCE Technologies sells a decent-looking package called OptiBay for a little too much money that takes the internal optical drive and replaces it with a Hard Drive. You can do it on most any Mac laptop. I searched around online quite a bit for reviews and experiences, but it seems as though nobody has done a formal review. So, I figured I’d photograph and document my experience as I went.

New Site

Sat, 12 May 2007 01:49:24 GMT

Well, I finally got my act together and put together a website. I have a chronic problem of half-completing projects and then just leaving them languishing. I’m particularly bad with domain names — I get an idea for a site and snatch up some witty and apropos domain names… only to never fully develop the idea into a working site. Part of my problem is that I keep making my plans more and more intricate until it simply becomes impossible for my limited skill-set.

The impetus for this site is three-fold (and it therefore will have three sections once completed)…