User talk:Hessophanes/Regiohashing

Suggestions & Comments

May I suggest adding the data for Category:New Brunswick, Category:Nova Scotia & Category:Prince Edward Island next? They have their own maps on the category pages, so would be easy to add. Category:Rhode Island would be easy too. :)

Sure, but I really like recognizable shapes, so I'd first create a map of Canada (as the toplevel region) and then add its subregions bit by bit. I see that Robyn has created a map for British Columbia as well, so we already have 5 of 13 in easily convertible format... we can make the subregions as small as anyone likes (e.g. Australia:ACT is only two grats), but I'd like to make the regions large enough so that you know which part of the world you're looking at without knowing the URL. That said, I'm not very satisfied with Germany, because it looks quite distorted (due to its average latitude of 50N)... I'll build a Europe map soon, I guess. Hessophanes 11:09, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

1) Very nice work. As soon as my personal regional data doesn't look as pitiful as it does now (only 3 graticules) I'll add it to my page. 2) For people having problems recognizing the country: You could write the region and subregion names somewhere on the top. 3) If you build a Europe map, will Europe be a region or will it just be the background picture? Europe-Germany-Niedersachsen would be 3 different levels, this would probably mess up your code. 4) Difficult question: What are the borders of Europe to the east? a) Leave out Russia (except for the Kaliningrad region) and Turkey. Easy to make the file but there will be complaints. OR b) Turkey up to the Bosporus, Russia up to the Ural (Geography of Europe or the picture here). Danatar 18:37, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Heh, thanks - my list of visitied graticules is even shorter, but I had to create an example... - Well, I already had something like (2) in mind (I have mentioned the flag idea in the format description on the page itself), but I'm slowly running out of space up there with all the counters (oh, reminds me, I should upload my new version, I've implemented half of my current todo list while I was off). There are other possibilities than the top bar, though. (3) would need some reorganization in the code, but I've been pondering this for some time, too, so I've always made sure that it wouldn't be that hard to change. The problem is that there probably is no fixed hierarchy structure that would suit everyone - for Europe, nation:state or (for smaller nations) only nation would be enough, whereas North America needs at least one level more to give its regiohashers a fair chance. I haven't decided yet how I'll implement this and am open for recommendations (rephrase subregion= to accept subregion=subregionA:subregionA1:subregionA1a, drawing the borders in different colours, and counting the remaining graticules for the smallest subregion that hasn't been completed yet?). (4) is another tricky problem; I'd stop at the Ural Mountains, I guess. Russia would be split then, but I don't think this is a problem (unless someone wants to try to complete Russia). Hessophanes 22:33, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

I am so pleased with how the Australian version of this turned out, it's just great. I'll be on hand to help create more of these, as I think it really would be sweet. I'm working on NZ now, but that'll only take a day or two, so if you have sections of Europe or somewhere else you want done, let me know. If you don't I'll just start with...South America? Regards, Wol -- UnwiseOwl 03:49, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi! NZ will definitely be a great addition. I can't work on the tool at the moment because I have to meet a crucial deadline later today (and there's still a lot of coding to do), but I'll work on my agenda once I've found a bit of free time. All the encouraging remarks prove that my mind isn't completely insane (yet). Thanks! Hessophanes 23:17, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

South America is done (User:Joannac/South_America and User:Joannac/South_America2). My wiki page wouldn't save if i put them all into one page. Hopefully this is clear enough for you to parse, like you did with the Australia map? --joannac 10:25, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I just noticed: REGIOhashing? Missing an 'n' there in the title... - Wmcduff 00:58, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I'd say it stands for regio-nal, instead of region. Might be a germanism, we've got a lot of regio and interregio trains here. -- Relet 01:07, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

regio, regionis (f), latin for region, area, domain - Danatar 09:04, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Not to be confused with regihashing, which is geohashing wish a member of royalty. --excellentdude 01:04, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Those crazy Australians have been at it again. I hope you find User:Joannac/North America‎, User:Joannac/North America2‎ and User:UnwiseOwl/Canada to your liking.

Regards, UnwiseOwl 09:12, 24 October 2008 (UTC) (on behalf of Joannac as well, of course.

What happens if we fix an error in these maps (for example, I just added a Canadian grat that had been missed)? Should we leave a note here for you? --joannac 21:59, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Would be great - I haven't written a script yet that automatically polls the wiki, so minor changes might escape my sleep-deprived eyes when I check the pages now and then. Don't worry about Canada though, I've just added it to my todo list. ;) Hessophanes 01:13, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Howdy, Hessophanes. After a relazing couple of days, Joannac and I have been back at it. Good luck with User:Joannac/Africa, User:Joannac/Africa2, User:UnwiseOwl/Africa and User:UnwiseOwl/Africa2. Asia could take us a while.

Regards, UnwiseOwl 12:21, 28 October 2008 (UTC), on behalf of himself and Joannac.

Hessophanes, don't forget to add the Svalbard, Jan Mayen, Franz Josef Land and Novaja Semlja parts from my first Europe map to the world map. But don't use all of the first map, there were errors in the southern parts. Danatar 13:52, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, but then I'd have to add these graticules as part of the Europe map (because I don't edit the world map directly, but have my tool generate it as the union of all other maps). Will do so when I make the next data changes, probably tomorrow evening. Hessophanes 01:31, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Uh, I have to create a Russia only map anyway, so those sections that are part of Russia could be part of that, which my save you some effort in that Regard. Anything bigger than Russia just won't fit in a wiki table, so I'll be doing it separately from the rest of Asia some time very soon. - UnwiseOwl 01:57, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Call it "Arctic Europe" or "Arctic Ocean", so the Europe map can stay the same and the World map will be correct. Perhaps Greenland would fit in there, too. - Danatar 11:24, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Greenland won't quite fit, but if I take it off then Russia will. We'll give you Greenland at the same time, but it'll be on a different map. Shouldn't mess with what's already there for Europe though, I hope. -- UnwiseOwl 12:35, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey Hess, I think you need to add another digit to the top left...We seem to be maxed out in the world map. Sorry 'bout that. - UnwiseOwl 01:43, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

No problem, easily fixed. World counter shows 11057 now. Hessophanes 01:13, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

User:Joannac/USA1,2,3,4,5. Yeah, if I had planned it better I might've gotten it on 4 maps. But those stupid little states on the east coast... --joannac 12:22, 14 November 2008 (UTC), on behalf of UnwiseOwl too, ofcourse

Connecticut done. Sorry about that (and to any hashers in Connecticut) --joannac 23:47, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Also DC. I'm amazed it fit on one of my existing maps. Doesn't it border like 4 other states? :) Also, fixing this got me to 1337 edits! :D --joannac 23:58, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi, again! Thanks again for this great tool, but I think it might be down. When I try to create an image, I get a mostly blank page that just says, "Sorry, server error." at the top. Is it just me? --excellentdude 06:54, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

You were right - don't know what happened though. Anyway, it's back up! Hessophanes 07:05, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! --excellentdude 07:25, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

State Of Development

Just a short heads-up for all you industrious continent mappers: I'm currently reworking the code to support arbitrary region nesting and to keep prerendered maps in RAM across CGI invocations, so I can't include any more maps until the code is in usable shape again. Just pile up the finished maps on my verandah; your work is not in vain, it just might take a few days longer. Thanks!

Ok, I really have to remove Imagemagick from the pipeline. While I'm looking for the best way around it, I couldn't refrain from teaching my tool how to glue all the parts together to form a world map. (There is no query parameter yet for this because it would take ages on the server I'm hosting this.) Enjoy!

US States

Several US state regions are not correct. The region for Florida for example, only has two squares, and Alabama has only nine. Delaware looks like Wisconsin; maybe the some states are attached to the wrong key? New Jersey and Michigan are correct. Also, subregions seem to be correct (I only checked AL and FL). If you'd like, I can go through these at a later date and verify/troubleshoot -- Jevanyn 18:36, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Huh? http://130.149.11.99/hesso/xkcdregio.cgi?region=US:FL looks ok, certainly more than 2 squares. Although, there's a random square to the right of FL I think I left in accidentally. --joannac 21:09, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

But not http://130.149.11.99/hesso/xkcdregio.cgi?region=FL , which is what I looked at first. I did some linkification above. Are US states not supported as top-level regions? Don't change anything yet, I'll run through all 50 this weekend. -- Jevanyn 16:23, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, do keep us updated. Btw DE is Germany :) I guess Hess needs to come up with more unique identifiers. Could get messy :( --joannac 22:38, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Doh! And AL would be Albania. I guess you have to use US:XX for a US state, even if it does make for a huge map. Not all of them work for top-level maps (Aside from AL and D, how many collisions are there?) Any chance of leaving Alaska out for US, unless the user specifies US:AK? -- Jevanyn

I also saw three graticules across the bottom of Nova Scotia were added to Maine (or Maine has started smoking :-) And Hawai'i is missing, I'll throw that at you in a few minutes. (pls leave this off the main US map also, as with Alaska?) -- Jevanyn

For states that aren't recognized as top level regions since somewhere else already has that two letter code (example: DE is Germany, not Delaware), just write "Delaware" in the link where you would write "DE". That way, you don't get the huge US map, and you get Delaware. Same thing for Alabama, etc. The only thing I haven't figured out is West Virginia. WV is already taken, and if I type West Virginia or West_Virginia or WestVirginia it doesn't work. --excellentdude 15:17, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Example: http://130.149.11.99/hesso/xkcdregio.cgi?region=Florida is Florida but http://130.149.11.99/hesso/xkcdregio.cgi?region=FL is Flevoland, Netherlands

Btw, "region=West Virginia" should work perfectly - it does here (Opera converts it to "region=West%20Virginia"). Refer to the "?about" list when in doubt. Hessophanes 03:29, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Ok, about time I clarify this mess... I'm sorry that I've been pretty much offline for the last months, but I've managed to break my wrist and typing is a bit complicated while my arm is in a cast. ;) Well, have a look at http://130.149.11.99/hesso/xkcdregio.cgi?about - it lists all available regions _and_ their codes. ISO matching is done on a first-match basis (I thought it said so somewhere), so if an abbreviation is ambiguous you cannot tell which one will match. (Well, ok, actually you can, at least momentarily, because matching is done in the same order as the "about" list... but you can't rely on that ordering being stable.) To disambiguate either add a parent region or spell out the full region name as it appears in the above list. Oh, on a sidenote: fixed Florida, added Hawaii. (Had to remove the apostrophe due to my input charset constraints, and I added it to the US map because Alaska is in it, too, so Hawaii doesn't increase the map size anyway...) Hessophanes 03:25, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Small error

When using the "wikiuser=..." option, a number of expeditions are not included in the results. After some testing with several user names, I assume that only expeditions in 2008 are evaluated, but those in 2009 are neglected. Probably some glitch in the parsing function? --Ekorren 15:37, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Ehm, indeed. And the whole tool must have been down for some time, I just found out by chance... both fixed now. I should setup a cron job to periodically check the CGI, as the server is not used for many other things and I might not immediately notice when it goes down. If you (all of you) spot more mistakes or unexpected downtimes, just poke me through my userpage. Hessophanes 01:14, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Example

What does the counter in the upper-right mean? Number of days since your first geohash? -- Jevanyn 17:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Either that, or number of days since the algorithm was displayed. I can't remember which. I think if you put your username in, it's the number of days since your first expedition; if not, then the number of days since the comic was published. --joannac 21:06, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Confirmed. -- UnwiseOwl 23:31, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Outside of the region...

...the neighbour count is shown, but not the mine sweeps themselves, which looks a bit odd: e.g.: http://130.149.11.99/hesso/xkcdregio.cgi?region=DE&wikiuser=relet -- relet 01:15, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Yep, that looked a bit strange indeed - randomly displaying expeditions outside of the selected region was never the intention. Bug fixed, state looks OK now. Hessophanes 02:11, 7 January 2010 (UTC)