Iraqi Alert!

I had a link to the Iraqi weapons list up on Slashdot, so got some real traffic for a bit in the last week. Was useful, both to see that the system was able to handle the (still small) load, and to increase the stats (I now have transaction time and host IP address logged).

I’ve also moved away from doing attributes for each node and am instead doing elements. It really doesn’t matter that much from code, but it’s MUCH more human readable, and makes more sense I think.

I’m trying to do the Iraqi alert program in VB (wanted to do MFC as that would be quicker for me to develop, but I really need to use the M$ API’s to do this stuff for the sample, as most people won’t have or want to get WFC) and that’s going ok. Got it getting the guest account and logging in, and I’ve written a wrapper to get the data.

I think this app is just going to get the GPS coord (I think I’m going to use marshallsoft’s GPS stuff to do it, as it’s simple), then get a FindNear around that coord for the Iraqi Weapons group. If it gets a hit, it’ll show the pic and a message. It will need to keep track of past hits (so it doesn’t keep repeating – probably only show the alert for the same location once a hour or something like that), and then allow for simulation – hehehe, not many people will be able to actually BE in Iraqi to see it work, so I’ll let the user enter in a test loc – or pick from the list of known weapon sites. I’ll also be adding my office loc in, so I can FINALLY…. FINALLLY!!! See this thing do something location aware. I’m going to need to get a wireless hub, and possibly a laptop to do it, but damit I want to see this thing WORK!