Global Positioning Lookup

August 2, 2004 2:34 PM

How about a longitude/latitude lookup? (I was planning on cloaking my identity for this question but I dithered too long and lost my chance.)
posted by timeistight to Feature Requests at 2:34 PM (20 comments total)

crap, I never got around to telling you arthur, but I did upload the last of the zip-to-lat/lon converters you sent me. IM me and I'll give you the URL if you want to start the conversion process.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 3:16 PM on August 2, 2004

So what's the gain of lat/long over zip code? Internationalization?
posted by smackfu at 3:28 PM on August 2, 2004

yup.
posted by quonsar at 3:32 PM on August 2, 2004

Yay!
posted by dg at 3:43 PM on August 2, 2004

Don't cheer yet, dg. My code's f*cking up.
posted by timeistight at 4:01 PM on August 2, 2004

I'm gonna cream.

Oh. Wait.

No, I'm not.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:48 PM on August 2, 2004

Don't cheer yet, dg. My code's f*cking up.

Apparently someone switched your "u" and "*" keys.
posted by Ufez Jones at 5:19 PM on August 2, 2004

Hey, hey, creamed fish!
posted by orange swan at 6:33 PM on August 2, 2004

I hope this isn't an obvious question, but how would one figure out one's latitude and longitude? I've been looking for a conversion site without any success.
posted by orange swan at 7:19 PM on August 2, 2004

Apparently someone switched your "u" and "*" keys.

Yo*'re right, *fez.

F*ck, it's spreading!
posted by jonmc at 7:20 PM on August 2, 2004

u sprays beer on monitor u
posted by yhbc at 7:26 PM on August 2, 2004

here, orange swan : >
posted by amberglow at 7:53 PM on August 2, 2004

F*ck, it's spreading!

Oh no! My priceless rendering of a p*ckered an*s!!! It's ruined: u
posted by jonson at 7:57 PM on August 2, 2004

If its of any use to the powers that be at this point, I had to do something similar for my job, and asked Metafilter for help, yielding this, which wound up working nicely. Uses SQL; Input is your zip code and a radius in the query; Output is a list of zip codes within the given radius of the given zip code and their associated distances. (Otherwise I'll return to trying to keep my MeTa comment count down.)
posted by alphanerd at 11:02 PM on August 2, 2004

I look forward to tearing apart and finding all the bugs celebrating this latest code from timeistight ;)

KIDDING!
posted by filmgoerjuan at 12:18 AM on August 3, 2004

alphanerd, it would be for international mefites, not american.
posted by ashbury at 7:14 AM on August 3, 2004

alphanerd, it would be for international mefites, not american.

Wouldn't it be to convert the american postal codes to lat & lon so that everyone would be using the same metric to judge closeness? (Since the rest of us don't have zip codes)
posted by srboisvert at 5:47 AM on August 4, 2004

That's correct, srboisvert, except that we've gotten stalled somewhere between my SQL inexperience and mathowie's lack of time.
posted by timeistight at 9:14 AM on August 4, 2004

Thanks for working on this, TIT (acronym should be lower case, properly speaking, but somehow that doesn't look right). When Matt gets around to currying it, that's going to be one fine pony.
posted by orange swan at 12:26 PM on August 4, 2004

cool link, amberglow.

>Ottawa, Ont., Can. 45 24 75 43 12:00 noon
An hour (or twenty-four minutes) outside of Ottawa is a little town with a white-on-green road sign, "You are now half way to the North Pole" as if it were a legitimate driving destination.
posted by philfromhavelock at 9:44 PM on August 4, 2004