Toilet Map

When out the other day checking locations of toilets I came across one rather municipal facility in an otherwise quite ornate building.

Toilet block in Camberwell New‎ Cemetery

However, in the cubicle, I noticed someone had gone to a little bit extra effort and put some flowers on the windowsill, and there were two books for users to peruse.

At least, I presume they were for reading, as the lack of toilet paper may have resulted in the books being put to an altogether different use.

Cubicle with books and flowers - but no toilet rolls

I have been very busy with projects and the Toilet Map was slightly neglected – but I have still been working on it when I can, and today I made a fairly sizeable upgrade live on the website version of the map.

Technically – the old map would load absolutely everything into your web browser in one big lump – all 947 of the toilets in one go. This meant the map could be quite slow to respond on older computers, and especially Microsoft browsers.

The new version only loads the toilets that are visible on the map that can be seen on the screen, and also I have done away with the classic Google pop-up layers for a (hopefully) better version, which also helps cut down on the map scrolling to load the Google layers.

The other advantage is that the underlying core code I have written is also designed to – eventually – work on the smartphones as well, where you should see considerable performance improvements once I have migrated the improvements to the iPhone and Android apps.

With all the talk of council funded toilets being closed because they are too expensive to maintain, one former Victorian toilet block has been turned into a temporary art gallery.

Image courtesy BBC News

On the first day of opening the organisers said about 80 people visited, with 40 coming the following day.

A nice idea, but I also can’t help but wonder how many people would have visited the venue were it were still performing the function for which it was originally designed.

Actually, I wonder how many turned up expecting it to be performing its original function!

More at the BBC News website.

A small upgrade to the facility on the website to submit changes to the toilets on the main map.

You can now change the position of the toilet on the editing page by dragging the marker to the “corrected” location.

An update of the permissions message on the iPhone.

When you install the app for the first time, the Apple platform asks for permission, then the app itself displays the longer message.

It turns out this is a way the iPhone handles location permissions in “webapps” developed by the platform I used – so each time you open the app again, the second longer message will be displayed. It doesn’t affect the performance of the app – but is frankly it’s a bit of a nuisance.

Sorry – it never happened on any of the production tests, so I am irked about this appearing once the app hit the app store.

The team expects to have a fix to remove that – and I will send out the free upgrade as soon as it is ready.

In the meantime a database update will be going out in the next few days, so look out for that.

I am getting a few reports of an error message of sorts on the iPhone app where it asks for the location information twice, once with a quite ugly message.

This (obviously) never happened in the development or testing versions – so I am investigating to find a fix for it.

As reported, it doesn’t affect the functionality of the app, but is quite obviously annoying.

As soon as I have a fix, it will be added to the next database upgrade, which I itching to send out as quickly as possible – although there is a delay of up to a week at Apple as they check everything again before it can be downloaded.

Everything is now live on the website – the main map, the mobile map and most importantly, the smartphone apps.

If you find any bugs, either put the details below or email me and I’ll start looking into them.

Thanks!

Ian

An occasional series about some of the conveniences listed in the Toilet Map.

Probably the main set of public toilets used in Greenwich town centre, these subterranean Victorian style toilets are looking a little sorry for themselves today.

Functional, although on the day I visited it was raining, and I hope the water on the floor was rainwater, and not the results of neglected plumbing!

In need of sympathetic repairs to the men’s urinal where the protective layers are wearing away, the four dark wood cubicles seems to date from the time when cubicles might be charged for – especially as one still has the word “Free” in faded lettering on the top.

I haven’t been able to easily find out when they were built, although I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that they are built at the same time as the railway that runs underground right next to them, but that is just speculation.

A nice touch is that the wash basins are still in a separate room from the main urinals, as would have been fairly commonplace at the time they were built. The toilets themselves extend under the pavement, where glass bricks let plenty of light in below and prevent it having the air of a dank dark hole.

Obviously, as a bloke, I am not going to be peering into the ladies toilets, and handing my camera over to a passer-by to take a photo for me would probably get me arrested. Likewise, one of the reasons why the main Toilet Map lacks photos of the exteriors is the difficulty of getting a photo without someone in the way – although I could adopt the Google method of burring out faces if people really want photos in the future.

I had some good news yesterday – the smartphone app for use on Apple iPhones has been approved by Apple, and will go live on the iTunes server next Wednesday (2nd March).

The next few days will be spent on the last few remaining bugs on the website and continuing to get more opening hours for those toilets were I currently don’t know what they are.

Then next week, the smartphone apps for both Android and iPhone will go on sale, and I can start SHOUTING LOUDLY about this website.

If you’ve come across this website and wondered why it might be looking a little unfinished, that is because it is indeed still unfinished.

It’s open to the world though so that good old Google (etc) can discover the pages and start priming their search results as I get close to the formal launch the website.

What’s left – the Android and iPhone apps are nearly finished and waiting to be submitted to the apps stores. A bit more polish for the website, and then I can pop the champagne and launch the website to the cross legged public.