Flood images on Geograph

Some awesome images popping up on geograph covering the floods (for example, see thread, registration required). A particular sequence taken by Jonathan Billinger shows how swiftly things can change for the worse…

5:12pm 20th July 2007, 5:12pm – Evesham Waterside hotel. The river Avon is over the road…
6:28pm 20th July 2007, 6:28pm – a little over an hour later, and the road is flooded but a brave driver might just make it!.
8:03pm 20th July 2007, 8:03pm – after 3 hours though, the road is impassable and the hotel is starting to flood. How bad can it get you wonder?
5:51am 21st July 2007, 5:51am – you wake up early the next morning and this sight greets you! The water is still rising too…
1:51pm 21st July 2007, 1:51pm – less than 24 hours have passed and the water level peaks.
7:04am 22nd July 2007, 7:04am – the next morning, and the waters are starting to recede.

There’s always an inescapable voyeurism with natural disasters like this, and while I feel for those affected by the floods, you can’t help but see images like this and say “wow!”

The Geograph Warm Glow – Now Red Hot!

Geograph’s Geodetic Rock Star Barry Hunter attended the State of the Map conference at the weekend, and noticed something interesting in Ed Parson’s presentation…

That is a map of worldwide KML and GeoRSS feeds indexed by Google. But look, the British Isles are on fire! Could this be Geograph’s infamous warm glow at work?

Pictured right is Geograph’s current coverage map (click for an impressive 1km per pixel version). Each red dot is a 1km grid square where we have at least one photograph.

It certainly looks like there is some correlation between those maps, and shows that our 500,000+ web pages are being well indexed by Google.

Onwards and upwards!

Save Paper with OpenOffice Brochure Printing

OpenOffice can print with a “brochure” layout, so that you print your document with two pages to a sheet, then fold the resulting document in half, staple it, and all the page numbers are automagically in sequence.

Pretty cool if you have a duplex printer, which I don’t.

If you too have a printer which can only print on one side of the paper, here’s what you do:

  • Go to File -> Print
  • Click “Options”
  • In the “Pages” section, uncheck “Left Pages” and check “Right Pages”, “Reversed” and “Brochure”
  • Click OK to dismiss the Printer Options dialog
  • Back on the Print dialog, click “Properties…” and ensure your printer is set to print in landscape mode
  • Click OK, and make a cup of tea while it prints…
  • Now, take the printed stack and turn it so the blank side of the stack is uppermost. Take a peek under the top sheet, you should see it contains page 1. That’s good, as we’re about to print 2 on the back of it…
  • Pop the stack into your paper tray. On my printer, the side to printed goes uppermost, and the top of the sheet is towards the front of the printer. I’m hoping yours is the same, so the blank side of the stack should be uppermost, and if you take another quick peek underneath that first sheet, you should find page 1 is frontmost towards the printer. Good. You’re all set…
  • Run back to the computer, hit Print, go to the Options again, this time, check “Left Pages”, uncheck “Right Pages”, uncheck “Reversed” and check “Brochure”
  • Click OK to dismiss the Options dialog, then OK to print
  • Now dash back to the printer. By this point you will be giddy with excitement
  • Pick up the stack, reverse the order, then fold it over so page 1 forms the front cover
  • Staple it together and smugly hand copies to your colleagues. Job Done

I’m really writing this post so I can repeat this trick in future, but I hope someone else finds it useful!