thoughts on spatial tools and practices
Or Skype, or Google Meet, or GoToMeeting, or whatever.
As I bounce around social media, I keep running across a lot of spurious advice on how to project a “professional” impression as you, like everyone else, participates in video calls from home. This seems to be particularly true on LinkedIn.
Most of that advice is hogwash.
The cursor flashes, waiting for a command.Any command.An editor window is open,Empty.The fan does not hum, with nothing to cool.The keyboard simply restsAs dust,Illuminated by the stripes of sunlightmoving across the desk,Settles between its idle keys. It all taunts meWith the truth: There is no map I can make,No chart,No graph,No query,No post nor comment; … Read more Nonessential
If you’re seeing this page, chances are you have followed a link to http://geobabble.wordpress.com. If so, you should update your bookmarks to http://blog.geomusings.com. I have recently moved my blog over to Octopress and no longer be actively maintaining this blog at wordpress.com.
This site will remain online as there are many older links that point back to this URL, but no new content will be posted here. All of the existing content on this site has been migrated to the new location so I strongly encourage you to update any links that may still be pointing to “geobabble.wordpress.com”. If you experience any problems with linking to the new site, please contact me using the information on my “About” page and I’ll try to help resolve the issue.
I was mowing the lawn today and trimming with the push mower pictured below. If it looks old, that’s because it is. I first acquired it in 1978 when it was given to me by neighbors that were moving to an apartment near the city, meaning they no longer needed it. It still starts on … Read more Mowers and Maps
Things have been a bit hectic the last few weeks and that’s left little time for blogging. Quite a bit has happened so I thought I’d do a little round-up (if for no other reason than to clear my own head).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJa7P6dfmco]
In no particular order:
Steve Coast to Microsoft (I told you it had been a while) – Firstly, congratulations to Steve (#sincerity). Secondly, this clearly is the final proof that crowd-sourced data in general, and OpenStreetMaps (sic) in particular, has no real value when compared to “authoritative” data sources (#sarcasm).
Google Fusion Tables – The only real problem at this point is the size limitation but, otherwise, this will be a game-changer for storing and sharing data. In its current form, it’s already fairly easy to push your data up and expose it through Google’s APIs. It’ll be interesting to see if it gets easier. Support for spatial queries hints at some analytical capability, too. Speaking of which…
Analytics in GeoCommons – This is one to watch. They are debuting a new function each day on their blog. FortiusOne builds their platform API-first, UI-second so everything they are showing should be exposed through their APIs. This will be a huge step in moving cloud-based geospatial technology from the “bit-bucket” stage to having a more complete workflow on the cloud infrastructure.
I found this map on display at the Cranberry Glades visitor center in West Virginia (click any of the pictures to enlarge them): One of the rangers working there told me it is to scale (although the quilt itself lacks any indication of scale). The next two pictures are close-ups showing the north arrow and … Read more Quilted Map of Monongahela National Forest
GIS Day is when the Great Map renders from its cache and slips around the world giving GPS units to all the good geographers.
Today is World Diabetes Day. I am a parent of a child with Type 1 diabetes (also known as juvenile diabetes). As such, my child is dependent upon insulin and will be until a cure is found. I am using my blog today to discuss the issue of interoperability (or lack thereof) of medical devices.
This past weekend, NFL Sunday to be specific, I was the victim of a TV/internet outage due to a mistake made by a technician while they did some work at the junction box shared by my next-door neighbor and I. As a result, I was unable to watch my beloved Washington NFL franchise hobble to another almost-loss so I had to find another way to keep tabs on the game. Since my internet service was also down, that left me with my BlackBerry Tour as my sole means of connectivity.
I initially started off on the ESPN site, trying to keep track of the action. Finding this unsatisfactory, I switched to MSNBC with the auto-refresh set to 30 seconds. I quickly realized that the information I was getting was woefully behind and quite inadequate. Then I had a different idea.
Yesterday, I enjoyed Seth Godin’s post titled “The End of Dumb Software.” This morning, I got an e-mail started off like this:
Dear Amazon.com Customer,
As someone who has purchased or rated books by Norman Bridwell, you might like to know that Clifford The Champion will be released on October 1, 2009. You can pre-order yours at a savings of $5.20 by following the link below.