Disqus - Latest Comments for Nixta

Re: Hot-Water Pie Crust

Nixta — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 16:49:34 -0000

Thanks for the extensive write up!

If I have trouble finding lard, could I use tallow or would you recommend against it?

Re: Priority Pass Drops Another Restaurant From LAX

Nixta — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 07:24:27 -0000

When I ate at Campanile recently it was clearly a royal pain to process the payment. They had a separate system and it was slow and took up a lot of the bartender’s time. I imagine that was a big part of why they dropped out.

But it was shabby anyway. They need to do more with lounges at LAX.

Re: Insane, shocking, outrageous: Developers react to changes in Google Maps API

Nixta — Tue, 15 May 2018 09:40:54 -0000

Oh we're still here, better than ever :)

Actually the developer subscription (which is free) does way more than the Google APIs.

You can even use esri-leaflet if you don't like the full JavaScript API.

Re: Stack View Constraint Conflicts When Hiding Views

Nixta — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 11:14:02 -0000

I'm curious: Do you see this with Xcode 8.3.3 or 9? A colleague is seeing this with 8.3.2 but not 9 and I'm not seeing it at 8.3.3. And I wonder if Apple are just saying that this is OK now; that a UISV-hiding constraint wins in a priority draw because they want UIStackViews to be easier to use.

Re: Packing Bytes in Swift

Nixta — Tue, 17 May 2016 08:20:18 -0000

Nice breakdown. Thanks for writing this. But I'm confused why the precondition for minimum size is > rather than >= or do you always have at least two points? I'm sure I've just missed something.

Re: Chris Hogan on PostGIS generalization

Nixta — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 17:56:46 -0000

Also, if you're an Esri user, ArcGIS Server (and ArcGIS Online) can further generalize on the fly to avoid sending more points than you could see. Still worth cleaning data sensibly though before publishing.

Re: Simply GIS

Nixta — Mon, 24 Aug 2015 00:38:02 -0000

Gotcha. I'd still probably find myself stubbornly regex replacing stuff for way longer than anyone with a brain would…

Re: Simply GIS

Nixta — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 09:26:46 -0000

You couldn't use a text editor for that?

Re: Create Maps Online: A comparison of 6 webmap providers

Nixta — Mon, 20 Jul 2015 13:12:39 -0000

BTW, you can use an ArcGIS Online Developer Subscription to do all that for free. You get 50 credits a month (forever, no limited trial), which is plenty for what you're talking about. Head over to https://developers.arcgis.com, sign up there, and then use that account to log in at https://www.arcgis.com. Hope that helps!

Re: MapBox’s OpenStreetMap editor

Nixta — Thu, 09 May 2013 13:07:15 -0000

When Pete Batty first told me to add some data in OSM a few years ago, I nearly puked. I just couldn't see how so much data had actually already been added by people. Kind of made me sad about all the wasted man-hours - must be up there with Angry Birds and Simpsons Tapped Out.

Was also a bit skeptical but this looks phenomenal.

Re: Don’t Be Hating on Mercator

Nixta — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 01:26:06 -0000

The hipsters are doing what now? Did they run out of pickle juice and fixies?

Re: Apple's Map Data is Missing Large Features - Spatially Adjusted

Nixta — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 21:16:07 -0000

Yeah. You know, I recall being able to match up a lot of crappy OSM in NYC (much of which has been fixed now) back to TIGER. Perhaps an old OSM snapshot was a big starting point?

Re: Apple's Map Data is Missing Large Features - Spatially Adjusted

Nixta — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 20:27:42 -0000

Small bits of NYC are craptastic too. Most streets are there but digitized pretty badly in places. I was trying to place the source and I think you're right. I haven't seen it in a public map for a few years around here though.

Then, bits are geo-ok but categorized all wrong.

Prefer it to the default Google map for style and POI clutter though.

Re: Slightly Off Topic: An iPhone, an iPad and a Mac Air walk into a bar ...

Nixta — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:29:10 -0000

I use my iPad and iPhone for most things now. The problem is if I'm developing I just really need that laptop (and that's almost all I need it for). I prefer reading RSS, watching video, reading mail, and browsing the web on my iPad, so I might find myself working on my laptop and referencing doco on my iPad at the same time, therapy be damned! Of course I always have my phone on me too, that's nothing to do with it.

While using all three at once at a conference is a bit much, owning and traveling with all 3 is totally understandable. For me, the laptop is the begrudgingly brought along 3rd wheel.

Re: In-flight smartphone use: “Airplane” mode or completely off during takeoff and landing?

Nixta — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:32:25 -0000

But alas they still don't do it. It's as if they don't listen (actually, they probably don't). Maybe we're at the point where we need to turn to The Onion to do a piece about people being too stupid to listen to things that might save their lives, and what the correct etiquette is for "correcting" people when they get it wrong :)

The last time I saw the person next to me just shut the screen off, it turned out that she was a really smart, educated, driven professional. I kind of gave up at that point.

Re: In-flight smartphone use: “Airplane” mode or completely off during takeoff and landing?

Nixta — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 16:54:19 -0000

But how do we persuade people who just lock the screen and drop it in their bag that that's not turning it off? They don't even know Airplane mode exists half the time!

Re: Editorial: tablets aren't the 'third device' I'd hoped for... from a productivity standpoint, anyway

Nixta — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 15:01:59 -0000

Enterprises are rapidly deciding that it's often more cost effective to use these iOS and android devices than specialised devices.

Of course many of them aren't using these tablet devices because it takes time to replace them.

In the case where the device needs to be ruggedised the argument is less clear, but it is usually by far the better option to build software than commission a whole device. EMTs and firemen? Less likely. Doctors and IT Pros? Absolutely. Redlands Police Department in CA uses iOS devices, replacing numerous specialist devices.

Before you lambast an opinion, get some facts together. That applies to the article too, which sounds more like Andy Rooney than an educated opinion piece.

Re: And That’s That.

Nixta — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 13:34:38 -0000

I'm really sorry to hear that Notificant is no more. I use it all the time, but I do confess that I worried that it would be hard to sustain. It's a great productivity tool, but for a problem that most people don't realize they have. A big big crying shame. I'm truly sorry for the stress you went through, but like you said, good lessons learnt.

I really would like to keep using it though.

Are you sure you don't want to make it open source?

If not, would you be willing to let me build for my own personal use, reconfiguring to use my own server? I've got always-on macs, Apple iOS developer credentials, a hosted linux machine etc.. It wouldn't be a commercial thing, but I turn to Notificant all the time and frankly it'd be a great exercise in Mac/iOS coding (which I'm just picking up) to do this.

Re: Doctor Who: Punchdrunk's The Crash of the Elysium - interview with the writer

Nixta — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 14:37:05 -0000

I was about to lambast you for being a grumpy old internet troll, but then remembered how utterly dire those episodes were and how they nearly put me off. You're quite right.

It's pure chance I bothered watching the next one, and pretty much expected to turn it off after 5 minutes and walk away for good, but the next few redeemed the show for me.The writing, production and casting seem so much better now. It's grown quite a bit. There are still the odd duff bits here and there, but you expect that with different writers and directors the whole time. It's unavoidable. In general though, superb.

Re: Fight Information Overload With Trimit on iPhone

Nixta — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 10:16:13 -0000

Why didn't you just post the summary? I just wasted 2 minutes!

Re: The scoop: Apple’s iPhone is NOT storing your accurate location, and NOT storing history - GeoThought Blog

Nixta — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 11:30:05 -0000

Indeed. And you can draw all sorts of non-specific conclusions by doing so.

Having read the posts my only remaining gripe is that the information is (typically) unencrypted. While that's not a problem for people like Pete and Sean who know how to secure a network and keep people out of their files (or check the option to encrypt backups), it's not a good situation for your everyday iOS user.

I'll concede though that at least until the precise nature of the data is known (it appears not to be exact tower locations, but perhaps the result of some calculation based on them, according to Sean Gorman: http://blog.geoiq.com/2011/... ) then we can reserve the right to question its use. But many have now demonstrated that actual phone location is not being stored, and that it's in fact arriving from Apple, not being sent out, so even if tower locations *are* being used in triangulation, they're still not tracking me in a way that I would consider troublesome.

And that might ultimately be the point here: it's about how much you care about the privacy of your location. I share my location with every tweet. I make no secret of where I live. If you want to find me, I bet a Google search will give you my address, and you won't need to analyze a set of undefined geodata to do it (zip code is not enough). To me, knowing that I was within a mile or 5 of some cell tower is irrelevant.

Re: The scoop: Apple’s iPhone is NOT storing your accurate location, and NOT storing history - GeoThought Blog

Nixta — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 07:35:41 -0000

Wow. You really didn't read the blog posts, did you?

Re: Criterion Collection now streaming on Hulu Plus, maybe Sanjuro and Hanbei will settle differences (update: Netflix and Hulu won't)

Nixta — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:48:45 -0000

At this point, with Comcast back on board, the only argument for $8 a month being too expensive is if your TV viewing is a lot of live sports. Otherwise, you're out of your mind.

Re: http://howithappened.com/post/1091714108

Nixta — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 18:57:45 -0000

100% of the universities I've attended are in the top 1 of this list. Beat that!

Re: Jailbreakme.com thoughts, a couple of weeks in

Nixta — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 14:16:09 -0000

Yes. And in fact I thought I'd already made that change. Hmmm. I must have got distracted by the missing Camera icon.