So I’m please to announce http://torrents.geograph.org.uk/ where you will be able to download the entire archive via BitTorrent!

More details…

We’re going to release the archive as a series of volumes, each containing around 50,000 images and weighing in at around 5GB. The first volume is available now, with a smaller sample volume which allows you to preview how the metadata is delivered.

All the metadata for each volume is delivered as a RDF formatted file called manifest.rdf, which should be self explanatory, here is a sample fragment:
Look

<rdf:Description rdf:about=”00/00/000014.jpg“>
<dc:identifier>http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/14</dc:identifier>
<dc:title>Durdle Door from the east</dc:title>
<dc:subject>Coastline/Beaches</dc:subject>
<dc:creator>Helena Downton</dc:creator>
<dc:dateSubmitted>2005-03-06T10:20:26Z</dc:dateSubmitted>
<georss:point relationshiptag=”is-picture-of”>50.6205085825182 -2.27398572077417</georss:point>
<georss:point relationshiptag=”was-taken-from”>50.6211552007986 -2.26663784055893</georss:point>
<dc:licence>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/</dc:licence>
<dc:format>image/jpeg</dc:format>
<dc:type>http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage</dc:type>
<dc:publisher>www.geograph.org.uk</dc:publisher>
</rdf:Description>

How to download

If you are new to using bittorrent, you will need some software, such as Vuze (aka Azureus) or uTorrent. Once installed, go to http://torrents.geograph.org.uk/ and click a torrent link to set it downloading - easy!

Please seed!

Please seed these torrents if you are able - simply leave your torrent client software running after your download has completed. You’ll be helping others to complete their downloads faster!

If you’re having trouble posting something because pastebin says it looks like spam, post a sample in a comment below and I’ll see what I can do to improve it!

Here’s my first effort, an A2 sized poster based on this Geograph image by Michael Ely. Click for zoomable fun!

Thankyou so much to Michael for helping me towards my fundraising target of £1500.

The images are made from tiles drawn from Geograph images - thanks to the thousands of photographers who made that possible.

Get in touch if you’d like one too!

This mosaic is derived from Three Trees by David Crocker. Tiles drawn from images submitted to Geograph in 2007 - many thanks to the thousands of photographers who made that possible.

Naturally, the above image is available for re-use under a Creative Commons 2.0 by-sa licence!

The mosaic was created with Metapixel and the zoomable version was generated with Zoomify. Suggestions for more celebratory mosaics are welcome!

I had a quick play earlier and as TechCrunch noted, it’s a little light on features right now! If nothing else, the current beta gives a glimpse of how they will manage the privacy issues surrounding a “always on” awareness of your location.

I might see what I can hack together to use it while doing the Trailwalker Challenge later this year!

I recently started doing a Project Euler problem a day as a fun diversion. I found the geohash algorithm intriguing, so it became my “Euler problem” for the day!

Having done it, I’m not sure I’ll find a use for it myself, but if anyone else finds it handy, do let me know!

Download it here.

Here’s a typical graph:

Download: mysql_slave (1 Kb)

EDIT: I wrote this so I could better understand the recovery time of a slave which had 13 hours of updates to catch up on. While it was good for that, it’s less useful for the day-to-day lag as munin will only be polling it every 5 minutes. A better way would be to use mk-heartbeat to get a more accurate moving average.

On the big day I’ll be sending pics and reports to the team blog, and you’ll also be able to send us messages of support via SMS too.

We’re hoping to raise £1500 for Oxfam, so if you can possibly afford it, please consider sponsoring me.

You can keep track of our training and out how to sponsor us on our team blog at http://trailwalker.dixo.net

(Blimey, my first post in months. Must try harder).

Suddenly, the web application we were working on stopped working. It wasn’t possible to log in.

We quickly narrowed it down to a clause in query which checked a users subscription was valid by checking its start and end dates. It looked bit like this:

SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE NOW() BETWEEN start AND end;

MySQL 5.0.22 returned rows, but 5.0.24 didn’t. After scratching our heads, I checked the manual:

For best results when using BETWEEN with date or time values, you should use CAST() to explicitly convert the values to the desired data type. Examples: If you compare a DATETIME to two DATE values, convert the DATE values to DATETIME values. If you use a string constant such as ‘2001-1-1′ in a comparison to a DATE, cast the string to a DATE.

The phrase “best results” make it sound like we’re baking a cake, and that your query results will be fluffier and more flavoursome if you use CAST! What they actually mean is, if you’re comparing different date types, you’re screwed if you don’t cast. You might get nothing.

Sure enough, our start and end columns were dates, and using cast in the query worked just fine:

SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE CAST(NOW() AS DATE)  BETWEEN start AND end;

I couldn’t find anything directly related to this change in behaviour in the changelogs, but hopefully this will help someone out there…