Did you know some blogs contain ICBM data? That (as I’ve now discovered) is a euphemism for latitude/longitude. Well XHTML Friends now displays a map for sites that provide the data :)

I added some nifty (and I mean nifty) Javascript to XHTML Friends and it bloody worked! It works in FireFox and IE!

I think http://brownab1.miniserver.com/xfn/page/http://photomatt.net is the most dramatic example.

Indexes or indices? If this was anything but an article on databases I’d use indices. Anyway, XHTML Friends was taking about 3 minutes to load a page. I added three indexes to two tables and now it takes a few seconds. I have never seen such a speed increase come from adding indexes to a database. So let this be a lesson to me…

Wohoo! I’ve just “finished” the XFN site. Go take a look :) XHTML Friends

Well if you have a URL you want crawled go to http://brownab1.miniserver.com/xfn/crawl.php.

If you want to have a look at the pages already there in a nice graphical network display, go to http://brownab1.miniserver.com/xfn/image.php.

This displays 26 random sites and the links between them. If you click on a site it “holds” it so subsequent requests always contain this site (this way you can slowly buildup an image of sites that actually link to each other).

XFN stands for XML Friends Network. You basically define human relationships between webpage authors by adding an extra atribute to links.

Well I decded to write a nice XFN crawler/search engine thingy. The crawler part works. I also decided to do a nice graphical representation of the links between sites.

Red is “crush”, blue is “met” and green is “friend” (just three properties I picked at random).

XFN Network

Google are going from strength to strength. Their take over of America is well documented on my old blog, but they the move towards global domination today, releasing UK versions of Google Local and Google Maps. The rest of the world must surely follow.

For those of you who do not believe me and haven’t read my previous posts on the matter, check the following:

• maps.google.com
• maps.google.co.uk
• local.google.com
• local.google.co.uk
• video.google.com
• catalogs.google.com
• froogle.google.com
• froogle.google.co.uk
• froogle.google.de

Google Catalogs is possible the most impressive. Although the fact that Google Maps in America now has (completely free) aerial photo data is cool. One funny thing is to go look at the Whitehouse with the mysteriously edited image erasing it completely (not Google’s doing; in their blog they were just as surprised to find it).

My first exam is in ten days… Galois Theory. Worst one of the lot… but at least I only have seven to do instead of eight.

I’m struggling to find something to write. That’s not to say I don’t have things to write as such I’m just not sure I should share them.

Julia’s letter hasn’t arrived yet…

I’m sure I’ll actually say something interesting next time :P

We impulsively went to Cleethorpes today. By we I mean myself, Ryan and Darren. Not that exciting but still a laugh. We went on lovely illegal imported DDR machines…

On a more personal note (since this is marked personal) I’m awaiting a letter from Julia. Apparently there’s some stuff in it that would be hard to explain by phone. I’m sure it’s not as ominous as it sounds.

Also if you haven’t realised there is a link to the first chapter of a story I’m writing called Reactions on the menu to the right. Go on, have a look (unless you are one of the two people who actually read this regularly in which case you’ve already read it).

Well one can now create an account and login. So far it doesn’t give you anything but it does respect users with regards to what object orders you can perform. i.e. you can’t rename objects that aren’t your own.