vmx

2009-11-17 22:35

The final wrap-up of the FOSS4G 2009, my presentation on “Geodata and CouchDB” is available online in several formats. It should also be of interest for people who are new to CouchDB as huge parts of the talk are an introduction into CouchDB.

• The raw slides as PDF (licensed under CC-BY-3.0-de).
• The slides with comments as HTML (licensed under CC-BY-3.0-de).
• The slides with audio (or at blib.tv). It’s the recording of the actual talk at the conference. Thanks Alex and FOSSLC for recording it (licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0).

Categories: en, CouchDB, Python, geo

2009-11-11 22:35

It has been a very long outstanding bug (officially it was a missing feature) in OpenLayers that annoyed me from the first time I’ve been using OpenLayers. I’m talking about ticket #39: “Allow pan-dragging while outside map until mouseup”.

Normally when you drag the map in OpenLayers it will stop dragging as soon as you hit the edge of the map viewport (the div that contains the map). Whenever you have a small map, but a huge window and a loooong way to drag, it can get quite annoying, as the maximum distance you can drag at once is the size of that viewport.

But yesterday it finally happend. A patch to fix it landed in trunk. A first rough cut was made at the OpenLayers code sprint at the FOSS4G. Andreas Hocevar reviewed the code and made a more unobtrusive version of it (thanks, again).

Try these two examples to see the difference. Click on the map an drag it a long way to the right and back to the left again (you might need to zoom it a bit to see the full effect):

• default behaviour
• documentDrag behaviour

As it is a new feature, it isn’t enabled by default (and only available on current SVN trunk, it will be available in OpenLayers 2.9). To enable it on your map, just use the following code to add the documentDrag parameter to the DragPan control (you obviously need a recent SVN checkout).

Update (2009-11-18): It got even easier with r9805:

// Use default controls but with documentDrag enabled.
var controls = [
    new OpenLayers.Control.Navigation({documentDrag: true}),
    new OpenLayers.Control.PanZoom(),
    new OpenLayers.Control.ArgParser(),
    new OpenLayers.Control.Attribution()]
map = new OpenLayers.Map('map', {controls: controls});

For a full working version have a look at the source of the documentDrag example.

Categories: en, OpenLayers, JavaScript, geo

2009-11-02 22:35

This one goes out to all the people that want some news from me. I’m finally back in Germany, but getting home wasn’t as easy as excpected. Now I know why you really should be at the airport 2-3 hours before your departure.

I have to admit I wasn’t too early at the airport, probably 2.5 hours prior to my departure, as everything on my previous flights went smoothly every time. But this time there was something different.

Originally I wanted to stay only for s week, but I decided to extend my stay to two weeks. This was about 7 weeks ago. Everything seemed to be alright, I got my new flight details via email (as I did for other flights as well).

Houston, we have a problem

“Sir, have you changed your booking recently?”

“Hmm, well, no, errr, no, sorry I changed it about 7 weeks ago.”

The conversation went on for a bit, with the conclusion that I neither have an e-ticket number, nor that I’m listed on the flight. There's only a booking with mine name for last week’s date. Excellent.

So I couldn’t check-in and the lady at the counter couldn’t do anything. I should contact my travel agency. Aaaaalright, it’s not a problem it’s 5:30 am in Berlin (where my travel agency is). If I can’t reach them I should go to the service point.

Dialing from Australia

I’ve always wondered, why international phone numbers start with a “+”, when I always need to call “00” instead of the plus anyway, why not appending it automatically.

I couldn’t call out from a call box. Whenever I was calling 0049 I got an error message. But luckily the madame at the service point told me that Australia has a different dial-out code (international call prefix) . It’s 0011.

So I was finally able to call the agency. Still plenty of time, 70 minutes to departure. And there was actually someone there. After another call and $20 spent, it was clear that it was the fault of another company that does the actual booking and that Qantas can’t access their stock of tickets.

A glimmer of hope

“You are already the third one today where the changes of the booking weren’t done properly”, the guy at the Qantas service point said. “We need to get you on the flight quickly, check-in closes soon”. Still 40 mins to go. So I got a new e-ticket and checked-in. That’s it for me, the Qantas people will try to find out what went wrong.

Getting through all the airport stuff seems to take longer when you are in a hurry, but I was right on time for the boarding. And obviously, I made it.

Lessons learned

• Get your e-ticket number
• Be early at the airport
• If someone screws it up, you are likely to make it, though
• Different countries have different international call prefixes

Categories: en, life