How to Get Lat/Long Coordinates from iOS/Android

Recently I needed to obtain the specific coordinates of a point on the earth’s surface, and didn’t have my hiking GPS handy. Turns out you can do this pretty easily from iOS using either Apple or Google Maps, neither of which reveal coordinates directly. This technique assumes you can get to a desktop computer later, and should work just as well with Google Maps from an Android device.

1) Using Apple or Google Maps, press and hold on the location until a pin is dropped. Tap on the pin’s details to find its “Share” feature, and send the new location to your own email address.

share

2) From your desktop computer, click the link in the email you receive to open it in Google Maps.

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3) In the browser, right-click on the pin and select “What’s Here?” from the menu.

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4) The Location field in Google Maps changes from a human-friendly rendering to lat/long.

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Presto!

Of course, there are any number of 3rd-party apps you could use to get coordinates directly from the phone – this is assuming you don’t have one of those and just need a quick solution.

Miles Takes a Wrong Turn at Kirkwood

After a couple rides on the bunny hill, Miles and I ventured up a longer lift, where M promptly took a wrong turn and headed down a hill he wasn’t ready for and took off like a bat out of hell. Doing his full pizza, but running on the edge of control. I was scared as hell, but he held it together!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Ts65ZnLA8&feature=youtu.be

Compassion in Social Media: Facebook and Emotion

Had the opportunity tonight to hear an excellent local talk by:

  • Dacher Keitner: Professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and director of the Greater Good Science Center
  • Aturo Bejar:  Engineering Director at Facebook

dacher

Keitner and Bejar are working together to make Facebook tools such as removal of unwanted photo tags, bullying indicators, and crisis support more effective by using emotional language in prompts and dialog boxes, fine-tuned by age ranges, gender and other indicators. By using human-ese rather than engineer-ese, their experiments are making various Facebook tools more effective at resolving intended and unintended human conflicts.  Here are a few scattered notes from tonight’s talk. Many of the points below were supported by charts and graphs not shown here.
Continue reading “Compassion in Social Media: Facebook and Emotion”

Notes on Jury Duty

Just finished taking part in a jury selection process which lasted four days: 95 potential jurors for a 4-6 week criminal murder trial. The process was amazingly, painfully inefficient in so many ways, but only because it’s FAIR in the extreme. Which is great. For example, at one point, we had to sit in the hallway (most of us on the floor) for 2.5 hours because one person couldn’t hear well and they had to track down assistive listening devices to make sure that *everyone* could hear, no exceptions.

Almost every single potential juror was interviewed about whether they knew anyone in law enforcement, whether they had ever experienced violence, whether they had biases on account of the suspect already being in custody, how they felt about the concept of aiding and abetting, about the paradox of innocent until proven guilty, etc. (each question with an eye toward any bias it might impart in the juror).

It was *amazing* to hear everyones’ stories and opinions. Our country is so diverse, so strange, so wonderful. One person was a politics and law professor. The next has spent his life in the projects, and his own son was murdered (“execution style”) outside his house. One person works at a big box store, the next claimed to have beaten up by cops . The next was a toxicological soil inspector. The next  a lifetime NRA member. The next  a social worker who doesn’t trust the judicial system based on what she’s seen. The next is from a large law enforcement family. The next refuses to look at photos that involve blood, the next had a job incinerating amputated limbs and things at a hospital (so gore means nothing to them). It just went on and on.

And there was so much personal philosophy – some of it clear, some of it muddy. I was fascinated by how skillfully the judge and the attorneys got people to drill in on their fuzzy ideas with laser focus – so many people changed their original opinions after a few minutes of dialog, and came around to admitting that perhaps they weren’t quite as biased as they thought they were after all.

For the first couple of days, I was frustrated, trying to figure out a workable escape plan. By the end of the process, I was all-in, and ready to give up work for a month just for the privilege of participating. I really wanted to jump out of my day job and into this strange world, to have this totally new experience. But, unfortunately, I was one of only eight people who never got questioned (the order is randomly determined, and they had finally chosen the jury just before they got to me). Still, I feel like I learned more about our country in just a few days of listening to real people talk than in a lifetime of watching the news.

I’m a bit bummed not to have been selected, truth be told.

Havey Canyon Trail

We call the Havey Canyon Trail (hills above Berkeley, CA) hike our “reverse” hike because it starts at the top of a valley, descends quickly and steeply into Wildcat Canyon, then slowly up the other side of the canyon. Coming back, you end your hike with a major steep climb (most hikes start at the base of a hill, and you end by coming down).

havey

 

The elevation map ends up looking kind of crazy.

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Wonderful evening out with Amy, Miles and a friend doing this regular favorite of ours. Just four miles round-trip, but pretty strenuous on account of all the up/down.

The kids had a great time talking their way through an imaginary “Hunger Games” type world/scenario (they were from the “poison” district).

miles-josiah

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