Front Page Repair - Upcoming updatesSome of you may have noticed that the Drinktown main page was not working. To be honest, I never did till yesterday. But checking the page on my parents computer last night I noticed that while the individual cities would come up, the introduction page did not.
So as a Christmas present to the page, and to myself, I spent ten minutes late last night revising code so that the page would work. Why it didn't work on their computer I'm not really sure, but I never noticed because it was working on the computers at my library, and on my laptop. Anyway it works everywhere I can find now.
There will be some updates coming shortly. Hopefully a full restructuring of the database to make the searching easier, definitely more ways to plot out the specials.
If there is anything you would like to see in the New Year, let us know.
Patrick
Work when no work was promised.
I said I was going to take a break from the site, and focus on finals. Yeah, that didn't happen.
I had been planning to eventually add the Chicago CTA data to the page. Thankfully Ed Knittel at tastypopsicle.com gave me permission to use his data. That meant that with a small code patch pulled word for word off one of the tutorials allowed me to load this upgrade in an hour.
It was an hour where I wasn't studying, I admit, but even I need a break immediately after each final.
Patrick
Okay, my first post on the Drinktown Blog!
I just wanted to post that research is underway to add Seattle - about 36 bars and restaurants have been identified and tagged. Now I just need to find time to flesh out my info...
D
The Galapagos Islands?Any one who used the page between 5 and 6 today (12/5/05) may have noticed an error message, or that the page wasn't working correctly. This was entirely my fault. I do not plan on doing any major code revisions currently, but a few of you have had the courtesy to suggest a few bars via our
submissions page. Unfortunately during the process I accidentally deleted all the North latitude numbers and moved all the bars to the equator. Oddly enough the Galapagos islands are due south of us, and everything got moved there.
Maybe they should be the next region to get a specials map.
Patrick
Big mention today on
Chicagoist.
A thanks to the folks over at
Chicagoist who put up a big mention of the page today. I had sent them the page a before Thanksgiving, and they have been one of the big supporters who encouraged the code rewrite and the improvements that made the page better.
If you were sent there from there, welcome to our page, please tell your friends and make some suggestions. If you've never seen their page, please go on over for your Chicago news and commentary.
I'm headed out for the weekend, to study, relax, and maybe ice-skate downtown.
Patrick
Major Code Re-write:
I finished a major code revision yesterday. Pretty much scrapped my self-designed code to follow the template of the
Blackpool Community Church google maps team. The new code is faster, more streamlined and as far as I can tell compliant with IE, Firefox, and Netscape.
There are some changes though. First the page now displays a maximum of 50 pins at a time. The specials on the opening page are random, and after you move the map, or filter, the map only displays specials that are within the bounds of the viewing area.
So that acutally allows you another means of filtering. Just zoom into the area you want to see, and if no specials appear, then there are none that match your selections in that area.
There are no imminent code updates, though I will keep updating the specials database. I am hoping that I get some suggestions via the page that let me know what people would like to see. Then I can add features to the page that are needed.
Patrick
