MaisonBisson

It’s MySQL spatial data week here, though I am spreading out the posts to, um, ease the pain (or boredom). Anyway, here are some commands/functions I don’t want to forget about later:

Start with an existing table called geometry, add a spatial column and index it:

Insert some data; think in terms of POINT(X Y) or POINT(lat lon):

Get those X,Y coordinates back from the table:

Get points within a bounding rectangle:

I announced the bSuite 4 public beta not long ago, now I’ve just posted a new version to SVN that addresses some of the bugs and fleshes out some of the features. I have yet to update the bSuite page, but here’s a preview of what’s new or changed:

• Additional stats reports
• WP2.5-style tag input tools on the Page edit screen*
• WP2.5-style category selector on the Page edit screen*
• WP2.5-style excerpt input on the Page edit screen*
• For multi-author sites: ability to grant edit permissions by role for each page (with a configurable default)
• An “include” shortcode that makes it easy to show content from one post or page on another.

About the new shortcode, use it like this:

[inclu``de post_id=“1234” url=“a url to a post or page in your blog” field=“post_excerpt”]

One of post_id or url is required; field is optional and defaults to post_excerpt first, then to post_content if there is no excerpt.

*Why would you want to input tags, set categories, or add an excerpt to a Page? They help readers find and explore our content. What’s so wrong with that?

MySQL has some powerful, and perhaps underused spatial extensions, but the most interesting functions are still unimplemented: “Note: Currently, MySQL does not implement these functions…”

Among those as-yet unimplemented functions is DISTANCE(). Alternatives can be found here and here, though neither is clean or simple. I wonder if a simple MBRContains() is good enough, though…

Found in the MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual:

• Related(g1,g2,pattern_matrix)

  Returns 1 or 0 to indicate whether the spatial relationship specified by pattern_matrix exists between g1 and g2. Returns –1 if the arguments are NULL. The pattern matrix is a string. Its specification will be noted here if this function is implemented.

(emphasis mine.)

Stuck with PHP 5.1.6 on RHEL or even CentOS (and a sysadmin who insists on using packages)? Need JSON? I did. The solution is easy:

yum install php-devel<br /> pecl install json

The pecl install failed when it hit an 8MB memory limit, and I was clueless about how to fix it until I learned that the pecl installer ignores the php.ini. Turns out the best solution is to use the pear installer (which does follow php.ini settings):

pear install pecl/json

WordPress was released to the world five years ago today. Celebrate in SFO, Sydney, or with me at whatever bar I find myself at in New Hampshire tonight. DM me with any ideas.

“Gun control is like trying to reduce drunk driving by making it tougher for sober people to own cars.” via

Anglia Ruskin University is in Cambridge, but it’s not Cambridge University. It’s likely that none of us would even know of Anglia Ruskin‘s existence if it wasn’t for Naomi Sugai, but she’s not interested in promoting the school.

She’s got complaints, she’s fed up, and she’s taking her case to YouTube.

Well, she took her case to YouTube, and then she got suspended. The video that’s up now doesn’t seem suspension-worthy, but the Telegraph story suggests there’s a different version that may slander an ARU administrator, and that’s the reason ARU gives for suspending her.

It was only after I’d taken my seat and David Weinberger began his ROFLcon keynote that I realized there was a box of t-shirts at the side of the room with a sign over them that said something along the lines of “FREE: t-shirts from worn out memes.” Thinking that the internet might be old enough now that the old memes might be resurrected in some ironic way, I almost jumped over Jessamyn to rifle through the box and claim a prize. What stopped me was the realization that with about 500 people in the room, anything left in the box must be really, really past its expiration date.

By the time I did get to look in the box, all I found were snakes on a plane t-shirts. And then all my anticipation disappeared with a sigh as I realized snakes on a plane really wasn’t worth resuscitating.

That was before I had a few drinks, remembered I had this old video, and decided to give it a go anyway.

Sure you played Asteroids and Defender, but did you play these?

It turns out that, like most everything else, barbed wire shows up at auctions. Not just shiny new stuff, you’ll find used stuff too. Expect it to be at least a little rusty, and look out for clumps of hair or other things stuck to it. Whether that adds value or not is unclear.

Where could we look to find out? The Antique Barbed Wire Society‘s Barbed Wire Collector Magazine might be your best source. Twenty five bucks will get you a six issue subscription. Don’t think there’s that much to know about the stuff? Take a look at these bundles and think again.

Some whine about movies on Flickr, others about the switch to Yahoo IDs, I simply want better rendering of transparent PNGs as JPGs.

I asked for it in 2004, before YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, or Revver appeared on the scene, and before MySpace and Facebook added video sharing as a feature. Four years later they finally added it. Neil Rickards should get credit for creating the theme of “long photos” (Neil called them “moving photos”). And anybody who was around then isn’t the least surprised at how angry some are now about the new feature (see sarcastic response to that).

Atlassian’s Crowd SSO and IdM solution has the kind of online pricing you’d expect for word processing software. I don’t know if it’s any good, but it’s a sign that identity management getting boring.