Gargoyle's Perch

Ok so I am going to be posting this in a slew of places so some of you will see this multiple times.

Becky and I are now engaged to be married.

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So today is my birthday  and it was pretty laid back. We  when for pancakes, and a movie in the morning... and then for most of the rest of the day I finished the book FEED by Mira Grant (aka. Seanan McGuire).

Let me just say that wow this is an amazing book.  It weights in around 600 pages and I wouldn't have cut one of them out.  I am not sure how to explain this book.  It is in a world where the Zombie Apocalypse happened 20 years in the books past and the ramifications that that would have on our society.  I found the characters were well developed and I cared about them.  If you are looking for just another zombie horror book this one is not for you.  If you are looking for an awesome story set in a Zombie world you will probably enjoy this one.

Also of interesting note to me. There is a very important event in the book that happens on June 20th.  I don't want to give spoilers on it so I won't say what it is.  But now I will probably think about this book every birthday because of that event.

So I don't say that a lot.  But really I can't think of a reason for them to do what they are doing.

Let me explain.

I was using their reverse geo-coding service.  That is I give them a latitude and Longitude and they give me their best guess at what the address is there.

So I get it all worked out for the US.  I was easily getting the street, city, state, and postal code.  Then I figure lets see what happens if we go to Mexico.  And I start getting all these undefined varibles.  I do a little diagnositic work on what is going on.  It seems that Google returns a different JSON structure of elements depending on what country you are in.  Examples always help so:

In the US to get the city from the data you would have something like this:
response.country.administrativearea.subadministrativearea.locality.localityname

In Mexico to get the city from the data you would have something like this:
response.country.administrativearea.locality.localityname

This also happens for the street address (throughfarename) and the postal code

Then I check on S. Korea... yeah they use a different tree from US and Mexico.

All of them have the same names for the end elements so I can still find the information I want by having the javascript walk the tree and pull based on name.. but really this is data that should be well structured so I can just pull it without having to spend the programming cycles walking the tree to find the information.

I am sure there is a reason for this that I am not seeing.  Also this isn't documented anywhere I could find on the google maps api documentation pages.  They give examples of how it returns in the US.. but not anywhere else.  So yeah google can be stupid.

Went and saw the newest potter movie last night.  I was amazed with the number of previews that showed before it.. I think it was around 20 minutes worth.  Not complaining, just seemed like they tacked on a few extra this time.  As for the movie itself.  I liked it.  They changed a few things that made the book into a better movie.  They had to cut a lot of sub-plots, but that isn't surprising considering the weight of the book this is coming from.  They made one change at the end that I think weakened Harry's character.  Also the way the scene was shot they missed a huge chance for some of the other characters to shine.  And I was very disappointed they didn't put in the funeral.

So I say it was good, the best one that has come out yet and kept the theme of the books getting darker and darker.

So I have been negligent in posting what i have been working on lately here.  So for those who aren't  on facebook or twitter  I have posted my newest art stuff on my website here: http://www.gargoylesperch.com/3dArt.php   For those of you too lazy to hit that link  Here is the newest one from it.



Besides that there are Fairies in Armor and† fake alcohol bottles

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/pixar-up-movie-2468059-home-show

Wow.. that was a weekend.

Got to meet Jim Butcher and Seanan Mcguire in the same weekend.  Not to mention See Concerts by Vixy and Tony, and Tom Smith!    Also I picked up on another Filker I had not previously know about named S. J. Tucker. 

Got to see a Q&A with Jim Butcher.  A reading of Seanan upcoming novel (I am so buying it).  Wow.. just wow.

I will probably be going back to Duckon next year, it is a small con, but worth it.

So it is official, I get to keep working till the end of Aug, and possibly longer depending on how things go.  So that is my personal good news.

Then I found lots of cool stuff today on the nets.

First a Musical about a lonely Vampire. http://www.janahoffmann.com/angels/2009/06/04/the-loneliest-vampire/

Then we have the cool tech of the day.  Regrowing eyes: http://gizmodo.com/5277456/stem-cell-contact-lenses-cure-blindness-in-less-than-a-month

And lastly (this one is NSFW), I saw this picture: http://scottchurch.livejournal.com/767318.html  My first thought when I saw it was wow those are some nice falls.  My second thought was.. well we don't need to give that much detail.

So Happy friday everyone.

Some of these tricks are amazing.  I present you with the video highlights of US Pole Dance Championship 2009:

http://www.phillyd.tv/2009/05/07/pole-dancing-to-the-extreme/

No nudity.  but they are dancing on a pole, so you figure out if it is safe for your work.

God I wish I would have thought of this.

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=7364963

*the video trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbRuKbOSqao