IT, Geo and Biodiversity stuff
  • Is Google inspired by geo:truc? Proba...
    Is Google inspired by geo:truc? Probably not, but…

    When I made the new version of geo:truc a few weeks ago, I kept the palette of colors that geo:truc has had before: a lot of dark greys, red links and red logo (here is a pi [...]

    Read more
  • A new new design for geo:truc

    I wasn’t happy with the design I did for the version 3, so I made a new one I hope you’ll like it. I fixed a few bugs as well.

    Read more
  • Fixing Ubuntu 11.04 after a problemat...

    As I wrote earlier, I had problems installing Ubuntu 11.04 on my laptop, but after som fights I managed to have a computer running Natty Narwhal. But not everything was fine [...]

    Read more
  • Transparently compressing JS and CSS ...

    When I develop a web site, I usually configure it to compress the content before sending it to the end user. Downloading resources such as HTML, CSS and JS files is then sma [...]

    Read more
  • geo:truc generates microdata (geocoor...

    A small update on geo:truc, but it will hopefully help webmasters. Following the announcement of the creation of schema.org, it is possible to get an address and/or coordina [...]

    Read more
  • geo:truc generates web pages with Goo...

    For a while now, geo:truc has provided a snippet of code for embedding a map as an image in a web document. As of today, it generates a complete web page with a dynamic map [...]

    Read more
  • Short URLs in geo:truc

    A small and quick post to announce that now geo:truc now works with short URLs (in the link section) instead of long and unreadable ones. It means that instead of providing [...]

    Read more
  • Google +1 Experiment
    Google +1 Experiment

    Doing a search on Google yesterday, I could see what my Twitter contacts are recommending (check the picture). Of course this raised my curiosity, and I wanted to look at t [...]

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  • An Ubuntu 11.04 install story

    Two days ago Ubuntu 11.04 was released. I didn’t want to upgrade my system that day, but this silly box announcing a new Ubuntu release when I logged into my system te [...]

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  • geo:truc v3 is here

    A new version of geo:truc has been released today. It has so far the same functionality as the previous version, but now geo:truc uses Google Maps API v3 (finally). The new [...]

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Is Google inspired by geo:truc? Probably not, but…

Jul01
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Korbinus

geo:truc, as taken from Google previewWhen I made the new version of geo:truc a few weeks ago, I kept the palette of colors that geo:truc has had before: a lot of dark greys, red links and red logo (here is a picture giving you an idea).
But after some time, I began to dislike it and the last week-end I started to work on the new design: I kept the dark toolbar, the red links and I added a horizontal grey stripe under the toolbar and change the background color to white (very very light grey). I released that last night.

And guess what? At the same time, Google is rolling out a new interface for its products, with a dark toolbar, red links, a grey stripe under the toolbar and a white background. Mmm…

Well it’s so funny (and a little bit frustrating) that I couldn’t not blogging that :-)

Posted in geo:truc, Life - Tagged ,

A new new design for geo:truc

Jun30
2011 1 Comment Written by Korbinus

I wasn’t happy with the design I did for the version 3, so I made a new one :-) I hope you’ll like it.

I fixed a few bugs as well.

Posted in geo:truc - Tagged

Fixing Ubuntu 11.04 after a problematic installation

Jun16
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Korbinus

As I wrote earlier, I had problems installing Ubuntu 11.04 on my laptop, but after som fights I managed to have a computer running Natty Narwhal.

But not everything was fine though: there was no time-out in GRUB2 and starting daemons like Apache didn’t work.

For the first issue, my laptop could display GRUB until I pressed the enter key. Setting the timeout in /etc/default/grub was useless. Obviously the install wasn’t fine so I corrected this by reinstalling GRUB:

#sudo apt-get install grub2 --reinstall
#sudo update-grub

I’m not sure the last line is necessary, hopefully apt-get takes care of updating GRUB, but it’s better to write one line too much than having a system which can’t start.

The other issue was starting daemons. Ubuntu doesn’t use anymore the System-V init but another system called Upstart. But Apache and MySQL didn’t start at boot time, and when I wanted to start them I got Warning: Fake initctl called, doing nothing. As above, the install was corrupted and I had to reinstall upstart:

sudo apt-get install upstart --reinstall

My computer is better now, but I might reinstall more packages as soon as I have other issues.

Posted in IT, Life - Tagged , , , , , ,

Transparently compressing JS and CSS files with PHP

Jun11
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Korbinus

When I develop a web site, I usually configure it to compress the content before sending it to the end user. Downloading resources such as HTML, CSS and JS files is then smaller and thus faster.

It is possible to configure this in the .htaccess file (in case the server runs Apache) as well as it is possible to program it in PHP.

Unfortunately, it looks like my web hosting company doesn’t allow the former, so I had to take the PHP way for compressing resources in geo:truc.

The PHP code for doing this is rather simple:

if (substr_count($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING'], 'gzip')) { //does the client accept gzip compression?
  ob_start("ob_gzhandler");                                   //then starts a gzipped output buffer
} else {                                                      //otherwise
   ob_start();                                                //start a simple output buffer
}

This works fine: write a PHP script, put the code above in it, and it’s done! It works with HTML files, and it’s possible to use it as well with JS ans CSS files, although they need to start with this snippet and have a .php extension.

But how to do when using different JavaScript libraries that are now commonly used? A new .php file for every new version of jQuery? It sounds fastidious. And how to make it transparent, i.e. not passing a URL like http://www.example.com/js/compress.php?file=jQuery.js ?

READ MORE »

Posted in geo:truc, IT, ReSource Compression - Tagged , , , ,

geo:truc generates microdata (geocoordinates)

Jun03
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Korbinus

A small update on geo:truc, but it will hopefully help webmasters. Following the announcement of the creation of schema.org, it is possible to get an address and/or coordinates as a snippet of HTML code enriched with GeoCoordinates.

As usual, simply find a place you like, go to the combo box titled Code, and choose GeoCoordinates (microdata) and a pop-up window will appear with the code you need.

Posted in Geo, geo:truc, IT - Tagged , ,

geo:truc generates web pages with Google Maps code

May14
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Korbinus

For a while now, geo:truc has provided a snippet of code for embedding a map as an image in a web document.

As of today, it generates a complete web page with a dynamic map embedded in it. Simply find a place you like, go to the combo box titled Code, and choose Google Maps. A pop-up window will appear with the code you need. Copy it, save it in a file and off you go! You can of course edit it and add/change what you want.

Update 2011-05-15 10:31: Here is an example of a web page with a map created with geo:truc: http://www.geotruc.net/gmapexample.html

Posted in Geo, geo:truc, IT - Tagged , , ,

Short URLs in geo:truc

May12
2011 Leave a Comment Written by Korbinus

A small and quick post to announce that now geo:truc now works with short URLs (in the link section) instead of long and unreadable ones.

It means that instead of providing users with an URL  such as http://www.geotruc.net/?ll=47.787926,4.680176&z=7&mt=3, geo:truc provides users with http://www.geotruc.net/a549k9.

The complete URL is still displayed in the address bar once the user has landed on the home page.

Enjoy!

Posted in geo:truc - Tagged , ,
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