Gather round Children…..lets talk about some really old stuff…..
So way back in the early 90’s (really not that long ago), Young Randy started his GIS career. When I first started out there was this company called Intergraph that pretty much ruled for mapping in the agency for which I worked. They are right down the road from Chattanooga in Huntsville Al. You had all this very boring looking software running on very complicated computers of which I had no clue. The only clue I did have is that we used Intergraph software in combination with Microstation to map stuff. We had 1 or 2 onsite techs. Arc/INFO eventually shut them out. It was a bit sad – a local company gets dumped for a non local company….but that is the way it works.
So about that same time (or a little later) I had to take a trip to Muscle Shoals and printed out my maps from Mapquest. Mapquest rocked. No more fooling with giant Atlases for me – I would print out where I needed to go when I needed to go there. If I remember correctly, and I most certainly don’t, that same trip I passed Intergraph off the side of the interstate while holding my Mapquest printouts swerving all over the road. I haven’t looked at mapquest in probably 5 or 6 years.
So twice in one week the past came rocketing back.
First off – Intergraph was bought by Hexagon. Hexagon it seems is in the business of “precision”. From their website “Hexagon is a world-leading supplier of systems for measurement of objects in one, two or three dimensions.”. What makes this Interesting for me is that Hexagon also owns ERDAS. I’ve had a long standing relationship with ERDAS. I’ve watched them jump around a bit over the last few years as they were bought by Leica Geosystems….. and then Leica Geosystems being bought by Hexagon…… to the re-emergence of ERDAS as a solutions provider for imagery and other stuff (Apollo). So ERDAS and Intergraph are pretty much in the same 6 sided church. ESRI doesn’t much care for wither one. Absolutely nothing could come of this…..or everyone is so busy building flex sites they wont’ be paying attention.
Second – Mapquest just announced a $1,000,000 dollar investment in OpenStreetMap . I can’t remember the last time I went to Mapquest to print out a map. I do remember however the last time I went to Google Maps and printed out a map…and cussed because it was wrong. So is it a bid to remain relevant? Do they really want to make a better map? I don’t know but I am interested just because of all the work I’ve put into the the Chattanooga portion of the map. Plus there is the US State of the Map conference in Atlanta….at which I will be speaking…..
Anyway – two things I had pretty much forgotten about suddenly came rocketing back out of the past this week.
Linkedin now has a Mid South ASPRS group. If you’ve been wanting to keep up with any news or information – please join. We’ll be posting information about the upcoming conference and student paper competition and any thing else that concerns the South East Chapter. I’m the maintainer of the group – if you have any problems please track me down and email me.
Through a lot of hard work on behalf of several individuals, the US Chapter of OpenStreetmap is now open:
http://www.openstreetmap.us/membership/join/
Fill out the form and join. Dues are $20 dollars per year. I just completed the form and joined.
Why is GIS fun? It’s the people. It’s also the data and the maps but mostly it the people. I had the pleasure of meeting Jo Dyson, GIS technician at the University of Worcester. We met online at The GIS Forum a while back dealing with some sort of GIS Problem. Emails shot back andforth concerning GIS, Britain, and the ability to get kicked out of every pub in Britain.
Jo – and she won’t mind me saying this – is quite an excellent chef by all accounts. No – I haven’t eaten anything she has cooked but if you can pull off a site like http://joskitchen.wordpress.com/ , you’re doing something right.
A few months back Jo had a problem and I helped her work her way through it. A few weeks after that:
I got a package in the mail. From Britain. A Cupcake. A knitted Cupcake. A small token of thanks from many many many miles away.
Cupcake with Cat
Cupcake on Me
A cupcake is exactly why I enjoy my profession. No – it’s not always lucrative….it is not always fun. But every now and then something exceptionally funny and cool happens. Please stay tuned as the cupcake will go on several adventures in and around Chattanooga.
Imagine my surprise when I picked up the latest issue of ArcNews and saw this article. Yes – an article on GISCorp and it’s beginnings and a mention of the DPRK Project. A very Interesting read – take a few minutes and check it out.
One thing I can say about owning your own business is you get tied up in a lot of different things. Some fun and some not so fun. This was something fun.
I found myself the first full week in June at a Clean Water Kids Camp. How did I get involved -I got there because of the Caribbean Sea….no it wasn’t in the Caribbean. It was at Audubon Acres. I met the director of Caribbean SEA about a year ago at another even and helped clean up a map they had of St. Lucia (in the Caribbean). So this summer they ramped up the TenneeSEA portion of the non-profit and held this camp. Kids got to spend a week outside learning the basics of clean water and watersheds. I went out for three days. The first day I scooped critters out of a creek.
My second day out I spoke about maps. As you can imagine that went over well with 21 kids who have the attention span of a gnat. So after the talk and in the middle of a thunderstorm I started the second portion of my presentation: Geo-caching. I lucked up – with the work that I’ve done on Open Street Map and thanks to the generosity of Cloudmade they shipped us some GPS’s. It’s actually quite amazing, 1o years ago I struggled a bit to explain to people in English what I did. Now – you can stand in front of 21 kids and find that 25% have GPS’s on their phones (the may not fully understand what it is) and just about all the parents have an in-car navigation device. Oh yeah – and about half the kids have used Google Earth for something. So it only took about 15 minutes to get them up to speed on what they needed to do.
Now – Audubon Acres is one of those hidden/forgotten parks around Chattanooga. They much like everyone else have been feeling the crunch. I spoke with the Caretaker and she handed me a map. A 19 year old hand drawn map of the facilities. So I decided that I’m going to help. Thanks to Hamilton County Water Quality (a sponsoring organization) I received orthoimagery and some parcel information for Audubon Acres. I used ArcGIS to lay out the caches and used that information to load the GPS units with some pre-defined points. This wasn’t geocaching as those of you who are familiar with geocaching know it. We made it a bit easier. Kids used the GPS to walk to the points. They also got a papers with coordinates and the supervising adult in most cases got a map. If you look at the map below the red dots are caches. Notice the placement.
Audubon Acres
As I said – Audobon Acres had a 19 year old map. I turned on Tracking on the GPS Units. I put the Caches on Trails. So about 5 groups and 3 hours later – I should have multiple tracks on all the usable trails (they’ve lost a lot of trails back to the forest). From this – Audubon Acres should make Open Street Map and have a really new map for visitors (I hope). So this upcoming weekend I will be mapping Audubon Acres. The kids seemed to enjoy themselves. I made sure that they had to traverse the whole of the park. They had an option to cross at a bridge or to take a short cut across the creek. Once again proving that boys operate on about half their available brain cells they took the creek and made a trail. The girls crossed the creek and found the trail.
Back to the Kids Camp – they made the local news. If you have a question about the camp or want to hold one in your county – email Mary Beth Sutton at marybeth@caribbean-sea.org.
I should be posting the new map of Audubon Acres up shortly.
Oh yeah – Finally – My last appearance at the Clean Water Kids Camp.
Canoes
We all jumped in the water and paddled like maniacs down South Chickamauga Creek. This was taken from my Canoe – or as I call it North River Geographic System’s Aquatic Unit 4.
So for those of who who don’t know – I’m the 2nd VP of Mid South ASPRS (American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing). Every year we try and hold a student paper and poster competition. This year it is at the Geospatial Conference that will be held in Athens Georgia October 19-22, 2010. Spread the word. Winners get some cash and a one year membership to ASPRS.
I wrestle with this blog (and you notice it’s been two weeks since a significant post has occurred) for subject material. At times I wish to wax poetic on the state of mapping/GIS and at others I feel the need to dive into things a bit more technical.
North Star Pattern
The same issue I have with the blog I have with work. The technical versus the mundane. What work do I do….what work do I refuse? How do I provide the best service at a reasonable price? Sometimes – you just do the work and don’t worry about the price. As I’ve stated on the business website and I think I’ve said here: “It’s not all about the money”. Sometimes it’s just nice to make a map for the sake of making a map. Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s unholy painful. Here’s the story of a map that was unholy painful to create.
As a small GIS shop I take on just about any job I can – paid or not. Whatever I do benefits me as a GIS practitioner and as a company. One of groups I’ve dealt with has been the South East Tennessee RC&D. These guys are an interesting. They are a non-profit organization (of USDA origins) committed to “accelerate the conservation, development and utilization of natural resources, improve the general level of economic activity, and to enhance the environment and standard of living in designated RC&D areas”. The South East Tennessee Resource Conservation and Development district covers the area in which I live. I’ve been helping these guys make maps. They might do about anything: Farmers Markets, Conservation, Construction, Education, Environmental issues…etc.etc
The director wanted to know if I could make a map of Athens Tennessee. “We need a simple Map”. I spent a week downloading census data…adding building footprints, correcting roads – verifying names……etc etc. To only get to the end and get “No Simpler – just a few roads and some dots where the GPS points were taken”. Another week and another “No Simpler – less roads”. Another week and “Bingo – that’s what we wanted”. Skipping to the end meant I literally should have spent an hour making a map…..instead I spent probably 40 hours over three weeks. It’s a hazard of the profession. Sometimes you can’t see the map for the layers.
So what was I mapping? Quilts.
Colonial Basket Pattern
So for those of you unfamiliar with the Underground Railroad it was an ever changing group of people and routes to get slaves out of the south in the 1800’s. The end was somewhere outside of the slave holding states – some even went as far as Canada. The interesting thing about the Underground Railroad was the lack of a map (and I’m not a historian – I could be completely wrong). No one knew the entire route in case something happened. What would happen – I’m guessing jail or worse because during that time period I’m guessing you would be accused of stealing “property”.
So how do you get from point A to Point B on a route that no one knows completely….Quilts. Abolitionists/sympathizers/slaves would hang quilts outside of their home as a message to those that were escaping. The quilts became that little bit of annotation or collar information on the underground railroad map. So in the case of the Colonial Basket Pattern – escaping slaves knew there was food/supplies nearby in a basket. The North Star Quilt pattern I’m guessing either told slaves the direction (north) or had them look for the North star. Anyway – Fascinating.
So what does all this have to do with Me? Back up to my confusing street map.
Apparently there are people stranger than GIS people. They are quilters. Did you know you can vacation and look at Quilts? If you drive around the area you will see fairly large quilts patterns hanging on the sides of a barns and businesses. It all part of the Appalachian Quilt Trail. The quilt trail is more of a (If I understand this) get-off-the-Main-Road kinda vacation. For me the quilts would be secondary.
Athens Tennessee know has a walking quilt trail which is part of the Appalachian Quilt Trail. The quilt patterns you see here are hanging up through out downtown on different historic bu;dings. The squares are about 2 feet by 2 feet – you really need to get out and walk and explore the scenery.
My Map:
Beautiful isn’t it? Ha – the simpler the better. I think it’s possibly the simplest map I have ever made. I think I really should have sketched the map by hand – It would have given it a bit more soul I think.
So if you are in the Athens Tennessee area – run downtown. Check out the walking trail.
Long time no post – been busy. It’s a good thing.
The 2010 Spring Newsletter for TNGIC is out and about. It’s a bit large – so give it some time for download.
I really shouldn’t be that underwhelmed. Maybe it’s because I’m not really paying that close of attention to the launch of ArcGIS.com. It’s nice – it looks good. There are a lot of interesting things such as the ability to use Open Street Map data as a Basemap. You can see apps – you can sign up for groups…share apps….there’s a lot of functionality. So much show I should be slightly more excited. I am….but I’m not for right now.
So I had a phone call the other day and picked up what I hope is a new client. I’ve been getting alot of random phone calls as of late for work – not that I’m complaining – keep calling. At absolute worst I get a chance to talk to some people intersted in GIS before AT&T drops my call. Again.
Anyway the interesting thing about this job is the repetitive nature of it. I had to do alot of things over and over. For those of us crusty old farts who got a chance to use workstation the monotony was a bit exciting. You could build an AML to make your life just a bit easier. When ArcGIS desktop hit the scene I became annoyed – I hated VBA. It worked but I didn’t like it.
Flash forward to me installing ArcGIS 10 (the Pre-Release). I cranked up the project in 10 and started working and doing just a bit of learning. Ladies and gentlemen I introduce you to ArcPy.
S if you look at the bottom you’re going to see where I opened the Python Command Line in ArcCatalog. You’re also going to see where I did a not so great job of trying to hide the name of the customer in case he/she doesn’t want me talking about his/her data. From the help:
**************************
import arcpy
from arcpy import env
env.workspace = “C:/data”
arcpy.CreateFeatureclass_management(“C:/output”, “habitatareas.shp” “POLYGON”, “study_quads.shp”, “DISABLED”, “DISABLED”, “C:/workspace/landuse.shp”)
**************************
Once you issue the arcpy.createfeatureclass_management commend just hit the up arrow and the line comes right back….make a change…..hit return. I haven’t felt this way in 10 years. With a little bit of improv I can loop through a list and build a feature class in every dataset (for the record I needed an empty Feature class in several datasets).
For those of us that still create data and care about data – it’s a wonderful thing. Don’t want to type it in – build a script. Once again from the help. I started changing this one and didnt’ get quite finished…..yet.
**************************
# Name: CreateFeatureclass_Example2.py
# Description: Create a feature class
# Author: ESRI & rjhale
# Import system modules
import arcpy
from arcpy import env
# Set workspace
env.workspace = “F:/projects/geodatabase/Production.gdb/”
# Set local variables
out_path = “F:/projects/geodatabase/Production.gdb/Two”
out_name = “Green2″
geometry_type = “POLYGON”
template = “F:/projects/geodatabase/Production.gdb/Eighteen/Green”
has_m = “DISABLED”
has_z = “DISABLED”
# Creating a spatial reference object
spatial_reference = arcpy.SpatialReference(“F:/projects/lyrs/SCSTP.prj”)
# Execute CreateFeatureclass
arcpy.CreateFeatureclass_management(out_path, out_name, geometry_type, template, has_m, has_z, spatial_reference)
**************************
Once again – loop through a list and create the feature in every dataset if you want…the ability is there in python.
So what does this hurried blog post mean – ignore the glitz and flash. Turn your head from the new shiny website. Take a look at the software right in front of you. If ESRI should be jumping up and down about anything – it’s this.
Shortly after becoming a GISP I joined the GISCorps. For a short explanation, the GISCorps does volunteer GIS projects all over the world. I’ve watched from the sidelines as projects have come and gone. Some I’ve put in for and some I couldn’t because I couldn’t take the time off.
Well – I made it finally. I’m working on a project with the World Food Program (WFP) and Information Management and Mining Action Program (iMMAP). I and 19 other people, 2 projects managers, and a project advisor are digitizing 400 sheets and gathering information such as roads, railroads, streams, villages, and rivers. It’s been a while since I’ve done straight out digitizing and data attribution on this scale. It’s actually kinda nice.
Do I get paid? No. But I get Karma points!
NAIP (National Agriculture Imagery Program) acquisition has begun for Tennessee for 2010.
There is also a link to a ArcGIS application showing the capture status - http://gis.apfo.usda.gov/naipstatus10/
You’ve heard me babble on about Open Street Map. Well, the first “State of the US Map” conference is coming to Atlanta August 14 and 15, 2010.
The call for papers is sponsors is open – please make plans to attend. The website is http://www.sotm.us/
The NetGIS group will be doing a free one day intro to ArcGIS server event up in Kingsport TN on June 11th 2010.
ESRI is shipping in technical people to walk you – the oh so average user with setup, support, and a rubber mallet to beat the server with. Just kidding…..you’ll need to bring your own mallet.
Email David Light, President of NetGIS, to reserve a spot.
