That was what happened with the State Library’s Family History Bookmarks, within 24 hours of the changes to Delicious and without prior preparation, I had a customised version of Semantic Scuttle up and running.

The first service the State Library used for it’s bookmarks was Magnolia. When disaster struck, we recovered as many bookmarks as possible and shifted to Delicious. Fully expecting a service run by Yahoo, to be reliable and stable. But just incase we automated backups the bookmarks.

When Yahoo announced they where selling Delicious, we did some investigations of the alternatives including Diigo and Scuttle. But as the likely purchasers indicated they would not significantly change Delicious. We decided to stick with Delicious, knowing that with our regular backups and import opportunities offer by other services, we could have an alternative up and running quickly. Which we did.

Why Semantic Scuttle, two reasons:

1. Hosted in house we have full control, and after Magnolia and Delicious, the key users wanted that security.
2. Tag clouds, they might be passe for most, but to navigate a large number of family history resources, they just work and Semantic Scuttle has some nice options buried under the hood.

So why am I writing this too weeks after the changes to Delicious and creating the solution. Well like a typical web geek, work was nice and easy. My own bookmarks, where in a little worse state, I had not backed them up for months, so it took a little to get myself to get motivated and organised to create my own personal bookmarking service, bookmarks.nickcowie.com.

Still a few things to do, upgrading the sidebar on this blog (though as usual I am threatening to rebuild the whole blog). Look at modifying the Delicious plugin for Firefox to see if it will work with Semantic Scuttle, amongst others, but in the meantime I will use the bookmarklet.

With LibraryHack and the State Library of WA day of hack approaching, I needed a demo, a quick look at the datasets that the State Library of WA made available. I settled on the Krantz and Sheldon architectural photographs. As this was a small set of photos, I did not have to search through a whole collection of 50,000 images looking for a suitable theme, as this dataset already had a theme, the work of Krantz and Sheldon in Perth in the 1960s and 1970s. Fortunately most had some basic geolocation data, such as addresses.

The original concept was to produce an animation, using CSS3, HTML5 and javascript, showing the Krantz and Sheldon photographs alongside the current Google Streetview. I have not had the chance to animate the sequence yet, so it currently manual.

The first problem was finding the right tool for the job. Fortunately a quick search turned up Using Google Maps to show a streetview of a house based on an address by Jordan Clist.

The javascript allows you to give it an address in and returns both a google map and street view image for most locations. I say most locations, because some locations will not return street view images for an address. Even though a street view does exist for that building, it just does match the address, like 16 Hensman Street, South Perth.

The next issue was while you could get a StreetView for an address, the image does not always suit your needs. A quick look at the javascript found 3 variables you could pass StreetView to change the angle, pitch and zoom. So the javascript was quickly modified to allow me to pass the heading, pitch and zoom variables to StreetView and return a image that more suited my needs.

The next process was the time consuming one. Pumping addresses into StreetView then manually adjust the heading, pitch and zoom to get the preferred view. I quickly found:

• not all addresses return a StreetView;
• some addresses return great images of trees obscuring buildings;
• you can get a StreetView from corner … and … and ;
• often it was necessary to go up or down the street and adjust the heading to get a suitable image.

Still it is far from perfect, it is almost impossible to replicate the original viewpoint of the Krantz and Sheldon photographs from StreetView. Not all photographs had addresses, and you could not get images of all building from StreetView. It would of been better to go take photos of all the building from the original viewpoint. Still if you want to see the current results, the square version for Safari, Chrome, Webkit, Opera and Firefox 3 and the funky circular version for Firefox 4 and IE9.

Creating one is fairly easy, first you need a short domain name. With the likes of .be, .in and .it being readily and cheaply available it is fairly easy to get a short domain name, I settled for n1c.it.

Next you need hosting capable of supporting PHP and MySQL, which is anywhere capable of hosting WordPress. I happened to have one available.

Download the GPL licensed Yourls and install it. The installation process is as complex as WordPress use to be. Create a new MySQL database if necessary, create a new MySQL user if necessary, modify a config file by changing settings which is documented then upload the files to the server and go to the admin URL and login in. Copy the preferred bookmarklet to your toolbar and you are ready to go. Seriously all done in 5 minutes and I missed a quote mark in the config file the first time round.

Once back at work, my usual blogging time on the train trip to and from work disappeared, as my MacBook Pro died and I started riding to work more often.

I need to start blogging on a more regular basis, I looked at what I do on a regular basis and are passionate about. Food, cycling and web development and decided that I should try and blog more about what you can get for lunch under $10AUD. For those that don’t know me that well, I work in Northbridge, Perth’s Chinatown with probably 100 restaurants within 3 blocks, I enjoy lunch it is my big meal of the day and while I am watching what I eat, I have managed to lose 9kg in 11 weeks. Mainly through consuming 2500 calories on active days that I burn over 3500 calories. The big surprise for those who do know me is that after 15 years, I have started eating meat again.

So hopefully you should start seeing more regularly posts about things I am passionate about, food, cycling and web development.

I will not submit it, because Dave has not accepted any new submissions almost two year, my demo is far from the visual standard of most other design and I broke one major rule the CSS does not validate.

There are no hacks in the CSS just lots of browsers specific declarations like:

-moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 7px rgba(0,0,0,0.66);

And even worse Microsoft specific declarations, which break the W3C rules for CSS

filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.dropshadow(OffX=5, OffY=5, Color='#AA666666', Positive='true');

As I said in my presentation, the important thing to know about validation, is why your code does not validate, if you know that, then validation is irrelevant.

The aim is to show how you can use CSS2 and CSS3 to improve the experience of visitors using modern browsers, while not blocking access to those people still using older browsers like IE6. I want to convince the audience, that you can build sites that do not have to look the same in all browsers.

I will be looking at what CSS2 and CSS3 you can safely implement now. The main provision it must not break IE6. It does not have to work in IE6, just have a safe fallback position.

The presentation is not aimed at people who read Surfin Safari, CSS3.info or similar sites and then go off an experiment with what they have been shown. That is what I do

I know I will be covering those I covered indepth before like opacity/transparency and <a href=http://nickcowie.com/2008/font-face/”>@font-face. Are there any other CSS2 or CSS3 properties you would like to see me cover? Otherwise I might go all shock and awe with transitions ;-)

I am fan of procycling an particularly the grand tour events, the Tour De France (TdF), Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana. It all started years ago when I started cycling and SBS started showing selected stages. I quickly realised it is not the best cyclist that wins, but a combination of cyclist, team and strategy and I was hooked.

Back then, I did not look for information online while watching the TdF. I would always catch up the next morning with the results and preview that day’s stage. Over the years that has slowly changed. Last year, while watching the Tdf, I used FriendFeed to talk to cycling fans and kept up to date with various websites. Even managed to find streaming video to catch stages before SBS started broadcasting and some stages of the Vuelta.

However, everything changed at the Tour Down Under when Lance Armstrong introduced Twitter a large number of top professional cyclists. Once you found them you get a better understanding of what is happening and finding out the news quickly. For example Levi Leipheimer broken wrist and having to abandon the tour, the same way most news outlets did by a Lance Armstrong tweet. Again today’s abandoment by Tom Boonen via a Steven de Jongh tweet.

In addition to riders, you have twittering team managers, mechanics and other personnel, cycling journalists as well as other cycling fans. The big advantage of being in contact with other fans on twitter is you can find resources quickly, including streaming video, I watched every stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré and Giro this year, thanks to Twitter. When races did not have streaming video or audio, there was a twitterfeed of what was happening in the race.

A few tips

Search on #procycling hashtag, find the hashtag for the event, for the Tour de France it is #tdf and open a search window in tweetdeck to follow a race.

Follow Steephill and Cycling Fans for the latest resources.

Go follow some procycling twitters and you will often find that procyclists follow other procyclists.

I have been using an inexpensive no name backpack to carry the necessary baggage (work clothes but not shoes, cycling clothes for trip home, tools and spare tube) for the ride to work for the last couple of years, and it has done the job.

However, I start riding the recycled single speed to work and that did not have mounts for drinks bottle. One of the reason I bought that specific noname backpack was it could also be used as a hydration pack. So I tried to use it as a hydration pack, and it did not work for me. The tubing was in the wrong spot, the provided bladder pack was difficult to use, the mouthpiece leaked and my CamelBak 1.5l bladders did not fit the pack.

Then purely by accident I saw the Crumpler Yee Ross on the Crumpler web site, a Crumpler backpack that can be used as a hydration pack. So I went to my local Crumpler store, check it out and walked away after purchasing last year’s model (more on that later).

A few days later it was pressed into service as a hydration pack with a CamelBak 1.5l bladder and it performed exceptional well, the routing put the mouth piece in the right spot and the CamelBak 1.5l bladder did it’s job providing me hydration. It was also far more comfortable to ride in than the noname backpack. The weight was well distributed, the shoulder straps where in the right spot for me and did not dig in.

I started using the Yee Ross as a regular backpack for all my other commutes and I am completely sold on it. The comfort factor has it.

Pros

• Comfortable, even with a moderate load.
• Works as a hydration pack with a variety of bladders.
• It is a Crumpler it will be durable.

Cons

• Smaller than most backpacks, need to pack carefully.
• Tight squeeze sliding a MacBook Pro in, not a problem with the Acer Aspire One though.
• It is a Crumpler ;-)

There is a difference between last year’s model which is made from thicker more durable material, has a waterproof pocket and wider belt straps than this year’s model which comes in more funky colours. So if you want one and I recommend last year’s model for durability and practically I would head into your local crumpler store now. I have owned mine for 8 weeks and I would highly recommend it.

This is my infamous bag that has been reported to the local Crumpler store on more than one occasion, because I had the audacity to stencil my blog URL on it, to clearly identify as mine.

Three years ago, I bought a Crumpler bag on the recommendation of a couple of friends, to protect my then laptop, an ancient and battered Ti Powerbook from my daily adventures. I had used at least four other bags, but none had the durability, protection or usefulness offered by the Part and Parcel. The fact it was a full blown courier bag, that I could use while cycling really swung it for me.

Shortly after purchasing the Part and Parcel, I was heading to Web Directions 06, so to clearly identify my bag from the other crumpler loving geeks at the conference. I created a stencil and using a small foam roller and acrylic paint put my blog URL on the top flap. I did not even get to the first workshop on the first day, without seeing an identical bag. I sat down to breakfast at a nearby cafe and at the next table was an identical bag sans URL.

Over the three years, I have used the bag with a number of different laptops, including the current MacBook Pro. The Part and Parcel must be doing a good job, because the MacBook Pro is far less battered than Ti Powerbook was at the same stage of it’s life.

The bag has been used on an almost daily basis to take a laptop to work. Except when I am riding most or all of the way in. I started using the Part and Parcel to carry clothes (a change of clothes for work, no shoes and cycling clothes for the return trip) and emergency tools for my 90 minute plus, 42km commute into work. The problem was after an hour or so, I would start losing sensation in my left shoulder, which had the bag slung over. This is the shoulder that has suffered a couple of major fractures and nerve damage in the past dozen years, so it should not be the same for you.

I bought an inexpensive backpack for the long cycling commute and continue to use the Part and Parcel for everything else, including the regular ride to the station with laptop.

I have used the Part and Parcel for a lot more than lugging a laptop, it has been used to carry a variety of objects various distances by foot and by bike and it does the job well.

Pros

• Durable
• Practical
• Looks good

Cons

• Not that comfortable after an hour with moderate load.
• Too popular.
• Brand fanatics

Conclusion

I am very happy with the Part and Parcel, it is a practical and durable courier bag that doubles as a laptop bag. And yes I would recommend it to anybody who needs a laptop bag and particularly anybody who cycles.