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There has been much jubilation since Google announced their javascript-based maps API yesterday. I’ve been playing with it a little and have updated the Grand Rapids WiFi google map to use the new API. The web pages produced this way are much more responsive than those using the old hacks, and it’ll be great to see what people produce now we have official support. I’m hoping to shortly release a new version of the WiFi site which allows search results to be plotted on a map (or viewed as a list as at present). Until then, this implementation remains ’experimental'. ...

Yesterday saw another major debt cancellation announcement. Not from the G8 this time, but from a shadowy cabal of supposedly democratic governments. One of the many dreadful injustices tied into the current international debt situation is that indebted governments are not allowed to negotiate ’en bloc,’ while creditors routinely gather into groupings to negotiate together. One of those groupings is the Paris Club, a group of creditor governments that meet in private to decide on policies towards bilateral debt. It has long been a hard organization for interested parties to penetrate, and is just one of many institutions that desparately needs to be opened up so that voters can scrutinise its proceedings. ...

The BBC are appealing for messages. Here’s mine: “Who are you and where did you come from? Or rather, who elected the leaders of these eight countries to make decisions that so deeply affect the whole world. But if you’re going to be here, it’s about time you did something useful. Start by bringing about a truly transparent and effective debt cancellation process, that applies to all of a country’s debts (not 100% of some arbitrary portion) and channels funds to its poorest people.” ...

A couple of months ago I installed Brad Choate’s excellent SpamLookup MovableType plugin to help with the deluge of comment and trackback spam that was hitting some MT blogs that I run. It hasn’t completely stopped the spam for me in the way it has for some friends, but the amount of spam hitting MT-Blacklist is down to about one-seventh of previous levels, which means the amount reaching me is considerably down too. ...

As this blog approaches its third birthday, I’ve decided its time to change things around again. I’m working on a new design which should be a bit cleaner and easier to work with, and I’m going to be emphasising categories more strongly. I’ve also long wanted to use this blog as a place to gather bits and pieces I’ve contributed to other sites — such as reviews of books on amazon and the like — but not wanted to make them front page entries. Today I began doing that. ...

I contemplated reading Hertz’s book a few years ago but passed on it, fearing it would simply retread the same ground as so many others emerging in the wake of the “anti-globalisation” protests. In some ways, I was right, but coming to it four years after publication I found it a useful summary of many of the issues barely-fettered capitalism presents to society, and a fair-handed exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of the corporation-based society we find ourselves in. ...

Today was another day that didn’t leave time for much blogging. But I have been wanting to highlight Martin’s ever so appropriate comment (which was in fact his guess as to my response to the Iranian elections): Ahmadinewhatsit is exactly the kind of leader the US has been imagining Iran has for some time now…

For one current project involving the presentation of a program for an arts festival, I needed a way to present ’next’ and previous’ links within the results of a MySQL query. For example, the user might search for all artists who are sculptors and order the results by the artist’s last name. Ordinarily when building next/previous links I’m working without that level of sorting, and I ended up doing quite a bit of searching to find the best way to achieve this. ...

Former US Deputy Secretary of Defence, now President of the World Bank Paul Wolfowitz has recently begun making his first big pronouncements in his new role. Sharing the strong emphasis on Africa that most big players are adopting in the run up to the G8 Summit, he has been touring the continent and making some very promising calls. According to this piece in the Christian Science Monitor, Wolfowitz is keen to support equal rights for women (because of their focal place in many developing world communities and families, women often play a more crucial role in development than do men), and harmonize the bank’s relationship with aid agencies “to reduce the administrative burden.” In other contexts he has been speaking of the need for western governments to practice what they preach in terms of free trade. ...

Juan Cole’s commentary on Middle Eastern issues over at Informed Comment remains essential reading. I was particularly amused by his response to Ayatollah Khamenei’s suggestion that the Iranian public had, by voting for the hardline candidate, “humiliated” Bush: that in some ways Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad are soul mates. For those of us who have been hoping for a gradual opening up of Iranian society, the election result is rather a blow and, despite the similarities Professor Cole points out, is only likely to increase aggression between Iran and the West in the short-term. ...