Surveying, Mapping and GIS

I had a most enjoyable evening last night - several of us met up at TGI Fridays last night, Walter Robillard, Chuck Ghilani and his wife, several folks from PSLS Pocono Chapter - Harry and Bill Schoenagel and Steve Lesher.

After some great conversation over dinner, we went down to Penn State Wilkes-Barre and Mr. Robillard gave a spirited presentation covering quite a few interesting cases, involving evidence, case law, PLSS versus metes-and-bounds, and touched on many issues that drive the need for surveyors, attorneys and other professionals dealing with boundaries need to be aware of and deal with. It really drove home the message of doing due dilligence and for forging partnerships with our fellow professionals in the legal profession. With a good 30 to 40 people in attendance, including the Penn State student surveying constituent, it was a great turnout.

I am looking forward to attending the EPA GIS Workgroup meeting coming up in Boston. This time around, the spring meeting will be in Boston, at the Omni Parker House Hotel, May 15th to 18th.

It will be good to refresh some contacts and make some new ones. We are hoping to make some further inroads in the EPA GIS community, combining our present USEPA geospatial expertise and SDVOSB status to reach out and support USEPA regions and other USEPA program offices. For me, it's also another opportunity to go and visit with my relatives in Massachusetts.

Over the last few days I have been working with a great newly released metadata editor tool developed by our good friends over at Innovate!

It's based on the Coeur d'Alene Tribe "3-Tab" editor, and provides a customized environment which is database-driven and customizable for an Agency's needs, as well as highlighting some elements which are not mandatory for FGDC CSDGM compliance, but which are mandatory for Agency profile compliance above and beyond FGDC requirements.

The tool integrates seamlessly with ArcCatalog and also provides a validation tool, to ensure compliance with the Agency profile.

Tab 1: Basic Dataset Information

Tab 2: Quality, Coordinate System and Attribute Information

Tab 3: Distribution & Metadata Information

In just a matter of minutes, it's fairly easy to generate a complete, compliant metadata record, which passes validation in metaparser (mp).

• Clark on Surveying and Boundaries
• Evidence and Procedures for Boundary Location
• Brown's Boundary Control and Legal Principles

To follow up, the full details of the Google Earth Darfur layers are available at the Holocaust Museum: http://www.ushmm.org/googleearth/

• Download and install Google Earth
• Download the Crisis in Darfur layers for Google Earth
• Learn More about the Crisis in Darfur layers and the Museum’s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative
• Find out What You Can Do to confront genocide in Darfur

It warms my heart to see that a headline story today is in how Google Earth has been working to expose the violence and bloodshed in Darfur.

This part of Sudan has been suffering horrendously in the midst of conflict, with denial from the Sudanese government - and thanks to the efforts of the folks at Google, the violence has been put front and center, with imagery depicting destroyed villages and lives, people displaced, and worse.

From one of the news articles,

Using high-resolution imagery, users can zoom into Darfur to view more than 1,600 damaged or destroyed villages, providing what the Holocaust Museum says is evidence of the genocide. Sudan's government denies that genocide is taking place.

In addition, the remnants of more than 100,000 homes, schools, mosques and other structures destroyed by janjaweed militia in Darfur, Sudanese forces and others are visible.

"When it comes to responding to genocide, the world's record is terrible. We hope this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most," said Holocaust Museum director Sara Bloomfield in a statement.

Ogle Earth carries some of the details: http://www.ogleearth.com/2007/04/darfur_webcast.html

As I mentioned a few days ago, I was just finishing reading one of the books in the "Head First" series that Kathy Sierra developed, namely Head Rush Ajax by Brett McLaughlin.

This is a fun read. It really makes Ajax very easy and accessible, with a fun dialogue, irreverent and entertaining style, and plenty of practical examples and online code to work with. I have been playing with Ajax code since around November of 2005, but largely just hacked my way through most of it, brute-force-style, without any coherent source of information, other than the school of hard knocks.

As such, I figured there might be a few areas where I might grumble through the but given there were a lot of things that I already knew, but on the other hand I still learned quite a few nuances and new things while reading this book.

The book presents Ajax in a good, progressive way, with bite-sized yet savory nuggets, which all contribute to a soundly filled tummy full of Ajax. Unlike many of the technical tomes I digest routinely, this one didn't put me to sleep. It was deceptively simple in how the book followed a linear progression, with each piece building upon the one before it - it's not at all written "reference-style" with disconnected globs of information as so many other technical tomes tend to be.

True, some parts of the book were still perhaps overly "nØØb"-oriented (for me at least) and overly rich with "greasy kid stuff" but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The way that the book tackled otherwise sticky topics, such as navigating and managing the DOM was nice, as were the ways in which a request is sent, processed and received. All in all, the presentation was quite robust, with no meaningful detail omitted.

The only downsides: 1. The emphasis on JSON toward the end. I have expressed my bias and concern regarding JSON before, mainly as I still cling to the paradigm of not only server-to-client communication via XML, but also server-to-server communication. 2. It had a PHP focus - I don't deal much with PHP, mainly .NET and Java.

As an aside, two things I'd like to see some objective study someday on:

• How truly bloated is XML, compared to JSON? Seems JSON can suffer from its share of bloat as well.
• How much is JSON supported on the server side. Not just libraries for generating JSON, but also libraries for parsing and processing JSON? What languages? Seems to me that generating JSON might be the easy part, even doable through XSLT transforms - but parsing?

No matter your faith, it is a universal and ancient truth that, with the Vernal Equinox comes a celebration of rebirth, renewal and new growth.

With my son, I recently planted seeds for tomatoes, peppers, and a variety of herbs and vegetables which are beginning to sprout. So too are the seeds of many new ideas and business relationships beginning to sprout. I am looking forward to the coming summer, for growth and a bountiful harvest.

I wish a very happy Easter to all.

1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.

However, the deeper thought not expressed in O'Reilly's call is that this whole controversy unfolded in the technology blogosphere... Presumably populated by developers, enterprise architects, analysts, IT pros and other technology professionals. Perhaps I presume too much.

Professionals.

Even beyond behaving as humans, which means treating each other with basic dignity and respect - treating others the same as we ourselves would expect to be treated by others, the community also should behave like adults and professionals, as this type of vicious, misogynistic behavior gives the entire technology sector a black eye.

While I too may occasionally not agree with everything Kathy Sierra, Scoble, O'Reilly or others have to say, I for one nonetheless value them deeply as professionals, for their input and contribution to the professional community, for their experience and insight, and so on, and as such, would treat them with the respect they deserve. I am finishing reading one of the Head Rush books even as we speak. I am one who will defend freedom of speech to the last, even for those with whom I would disagree, and as such have little tolerance for anyone who would use threats of violence toward silencing others.

In our work, in our capabilities, in our words, we are to be humans, adults, and professionals first and foremost. In any professional environment, gender is irrelevant, and violence and cyberbullying is completely unacceptable. It is a sad commentary that the community even needs Codes of Conduct.

The Map Room blog has an interesting article discussing a reinterpretation of an old portolan chart found in a Los Angeles library vault, by author Peter Trickett. In his book Beyond Capricorn, Trickett argues the case for Portuguese discovery of Australia, long prior to the British or Dutch. According to Trickett, Portuguese explorer Christopher de Mendonca led a small fleet into Botany Bay in 1522, more than 200 years ahead of Captain Cook, and ahead of Dutch explorers as well.

Is it another Gavin Menzies adventure? The argument is rather compelling in some ways - obviously the chart describes a massive landmass, which does align well with parts of the Australian coast.

According to this MSNBC article, the map describes features one might expect in that region of Australia, however the coastline had some inconsistencies. It's argued that these inconsistencies may be either intentional and/or miscopied, including a 90° rotation along the coastline.

The Google Earth Hacks blog has a download, which overlays the map graphic (respliced with the 90° fix) atop the Australian landmass, so you can see this for yourself: