Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Media Bias Hits a New Low.

Hey lookit, the 20th anniversary edition of Men's Health! They're going to review 20 heroes of health and fitness! Who could they possibly include? Oh, I see, they have the greatest golfer of all time ... okay, golf's not my top choice as a fitness challenge, but Tiger Woods, he's a specimen, so a good pick ... at #2? They have the greatest cyclist, and perhaps the most noteworthy endurance athlete, of all time ... at #3? Whoever beats out a Lance Armstrong must be a frickin' stud.

Who could be #1? Forget about awesome athletes from the past two decades, who else was noteworthy even this year? Michael Phelps? He did win more swimming golds than anyone in history this Olympics. I think there were a few baseball players who made headlines this year. Looking back, some names come to mind. Someone like say, Michael Jordan? I understand he won a few basketball games and even played a little baseball. I can think of a few boxer's names. Some triathletes, powerlifters, martial artists, football players, soccer players, marathoners, alpinists and rock climbers, tennis players come to mind. How about hockey and field hockey? Cricket, anyone? Divers, scuba divers, gymnasts? Motocross, skiing, skating, skateboarding, snowboarding, MMA? At the street level, who could pick a few Crossfit mutants? At the other end, most astronauts were and are incredible benchmarks of health, fitness, and intellect. How are they going to only choose 20? How are they going to choose #1?

Oh, I see. Let's choose the empty suit socialist. Our health and fitness hero smokes a couple packs a day. Can he do a pull up? Can he run a mile without stopping to cough? Even I can pwn his skinny ass fighting, f**king or footracing.

Tell me now how there's no media bias on the left. I can't hear you because I've wadded up this rag's cover and stuffed my ears with the paper.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Google Does It Again.

Toss out that MySQL book. The only thing you need to store location data is Google Maps.

My Maps is a feature that lets you create your own mashup on a map. Once a map is created, it can be shared with a link, or in Google Earth with a KML file. And now, it is also available via RSS–GeoRSS, to be more specific.

While viewing any My Map, click the RSS link to see the GeoRSS version of the map. In addition to all the other information about points on the map, such as business name and address, you get latitude and longitude coordinates.

This RSS feed can then be read in by any script you write instead of making a database call. The Google Maps API can even call GeoRSS files directly, loading all your locations in a single line.