Avast! I been reminded by me shipmate that it be Talk Like a Pirate Day! Be no bilge rat & do your bit.

So have yourself a grand ol’ day and remember to keep to the code.

[tags]Talk Like A Pirate Day[/tags]

Google Maps seems to be having problems with it’s satellite images. Even at minimum zoom it’s showing the “sorry we don’t have imagery at this zoom level” messages.

Not sure why, I haven’t seen anything around the usual tech blogs mentioning this, I imagine it’s just a temporary breakage.

Update: I just checked, and Google Earth is working fine for all the searches I did.

Update again: Seems all is well again. It had been down for over 24 hours.

[tags]Google Maps, Google, Satellite, Google Earth[/tags]

Australian motor racing legend Peter Brock has been killed in an accident while taking part in the Targa West rally in Western Australia, motor sport officials have confirmed. … West Australian police say a car competing in the Targa West rally crashed into a tree at Gidgegannup about 30 kilometres north-east of Perth about 12pm.

drive.com.au: Peter Brock killed in crash

Gidgegannup, a town I imagine very few people had ever head of, has suddenly been thrust into the news, and thanks to Google Maps, we can all see where it is too.

What a week. First Steve Irwin, then Peter Brock.  My deepest condolences to his family, this is going to hit everyone hard.  And can someone please put a gag in Germaine Greer’s mouth before she says something else stupid, like how car racing is a horrible polluting sport and the trees have taken their revenge.

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Today we are pleased to announce that geocoding has launched for both Australia and New Zealand. What this means is that you can now convert specific Australian or New Zealand street addresses into latitude & longitude so you can plot them on a map. Go ahead and try it out on Google Maps.

We are looking forward to seeing a flood of creative mashups come out of Australia and New Zealand. There are already a lot of great examples out there in diverse areas such as real estate, adventure tracks and even Australian Football League stadiums. I personally can’t wait to see the ski fields of New Zealand and the best beaches in Australia mashed up!

Australia and New Zealand Get Geocoding

I can’t really add any more to this than “Cool!”.  Domain has recently launched a beta of using the Google Maps as mentioned by the Google post, I think we’ll see a whole lot of Australian sites start this now. Yay!  Kudos to the Domain guys for getting in first!

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The things people email to you:

Kopi Luwak or Civet coffee is coffee made from coffee berries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Common Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The animals gorge on the ripe berries, and the undigested beans are excreted. This process takes place on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago, in the Philippines (where the product is called Kape Alamid), in the country of Vietnam, and the coffee estates of south India. Vietnam has a similar type of coffee, called Weasel Coffee which also comes from the droppings of coffee beans after weasels eat robusta coffee cherries.

Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling up to $70 USD per quarter pound, and is sold mainly in Japan and United States, but it is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though supplies are limited.

 The sad thing is, I now want to try some.

tags: Coffee, Civet, Kopi Luwak

Next Firebug

Since FireBug 0.4 shipped at the end of May, I haven’t written a line of new code for the project. I wish I could have found more time for it, but it was a busy summer for my other projects.

During that time, I’ve gotten to actually use FireBug quite a bit, and made a long list of things that tick me off. Plenty of users have sent in bug reports and feature ideas in that time, as well, so I’m sorting through them all now and plan to spend some time knocking off as many as I can.

If you’re a FireBug user, and there is any particular feature that you’re wishing for, now would be a good time to let me know in the comments, and maybe it will get bumped up the todo list.

FireBug has become pretty much indispensable to me as a web developer.  Combined with the Web Developer Extension, I have the ability to test, manipulate and interrogate any page I’m working on.  The JavaScript debugger is amazing, and the ability to find out, and change, the properties of any object on the page, at the HTML, CSS & JavaScript level has truly changed the way I debug code.

Go give him some kudos and any suggestions for the next version.  Also, full marks to Gijs Kruitbosch for using his Google Summer of Code sponsorship for FireBug.  It’s yet another testament to how great this extension is. 

tags: Mozilla, Firefox, Extensions, FireBug, Web Developer