Mars Viewing Path (North America)

Orion Telescopes and Binoculars

Tomorrow (Saturday, Oct 29) at 23:25 EDT Mars will be at it's brightest. The above link has details and shows where North American stargazers can find it in the sky.

CNN Article (detailed info)

RAID Graphical Description

raid.jpg (JPEG Image, 1092x577 pixels)

The linked site graphically explains what all of the different RAID configurations are.

This concept really is genious. There isn't a single word on the site...just simple pictures that easily depict what the specified RAID level means.

RAID (wikipedia): Redundant array of independent disks. A system of multiple hard drives for sharing or replicating data.

Puberty/Height Prediction Calculator

College of Kinesiology

The College of Kinesiology (University of Saskatchewan, Canada) has an online calculator that claims it can predict how tall a kid will be and when they will hit their growth spurt. It is based on scientific studies and has been around for quite some time - so it looks pretty real.

All you need are the birth date, standing height, sitting height and weight of the kid...and bingo you can determine adult height and when the rugrat will be growing faster than the weeds in your backyard.

Prediction of Adult Height - Calculator

Prediction of Peak Growth Spurt - Calculator

Google Earth - Version 3 Released

Google Earth - Home

A newer BETA version of Google Earth is now available as of October 20, 2005. The change log consists of mainly "many minor bug fixes."

Firefox Surpasses 100 Million Downloads

100,000,000 DOWNLOADS! | Spread Firefox

Today Firefox exceeded 100 Million downloads, and it hasn't even been a year since it was released.

- Firefox - You can download the free web browser at GetFirefox.com (free, easy and highly recommended)

- Opera - If you would like to check out another excellent browser: download Opera (also free, painless and recommended - especially for non-computer savvy users)

Just in case you are from that last corner of the Earth that hasn't heard - you should NOT be using Internet Explorer as your web browser unless you are a computer genius and know how to remain protected. If you are asking yourself what the hell any of the stuff in this article means...you should NOT be using Internet Explorer. (Unless of course you like spyware, viruses and paying $100 to have your machine cleaned up every 6-months to a year).

Firefox - Wikipedia article has a lot of information on the browser, it's history and why nerds love it.

Free eBook - Introducing VB 2005 for Developers

Visual Basic 6.0 Resource Center: Free Book - Introducing Visual Basic 2005 for Developers

Microsoft is offering a new title "Introducing Visual Basic 2005 for Developers" for download.

The book is geared toward Visual Basic 6 developers.

MO to Track Cell Phones for Traffic Conditions

AP Wire | 10/08/2005 | States seeking to track cell phones for traffic conditions:

Well, the US is starting to get into the cell phone tracking game. Missouri is apparantly going to start a state-wide cell monitoring project for traffic purposes.

In what would be the largest project of its kind, the Missouri Department of Transportation is negotiating with private contractors to monitor thousands of cell phones, using their movements to produce real-time traffic conditions on 5,500 miles of roads statewide.

Cell phone users won't even know anyone's watching them. But transportation and technology leaders assure there is no need to worry - the data will remain anonymous, leaving no possibility of tracking specific people from their driveway to their destination.

Ha - anonymous my ass. Since when is anything anonymous? Do people still buy that line?

Once the ability to track cell phones for traffic purposes has been established, passive tracking isn't far behind. If it can be done - it will be. No matter what the current crop of politicos have to say out this side of their mouths, those in office 5-years from now can give us a new line of bullcrap justifying even greater invasions of privacy.

I can hear the arguments for passive tracking now: sexual offender tracking (the save our children argument), child tracking devices (lazy parent argument), and terrorism (only those with something to hide would oppose the idea).

From a GIS/data perspective I think it is an interesting idea. From a citizen's point of view it make me nervous...as it should.

Here are some other articles and items related to this topic:
Intelligent transportation systems in the offing will ease traffic bottlenecks
Using Cell Phones as Traffic Probes (Canadian Study - PDF)
Slashdot Article

Canada Road GIS Data Now Online

Statistics Canada

Canada's national road layers and related datasets are now available for download.

2005 Road Network File - To Download Page - 242MB (shapefile & other formats available)

Road Network File Reference Guide - To Download Page - PDF, 275Kb

It's great to see Canada opening up their GIS data!

How long before we start to see more developers including both Canada & the US in their applications.

The 2005 Road Network File is a digital representation of Canada's national road network, containing information such as street names, type, direction and address ranges. It is now available free of charge.

It is the first official release from the 2006 Census Geography suite of products and services.

The unrestricted use of the file allows you to preview the national road network, which is the source for the creation of geographic units being used to conduct the 2006 Census of Population.

Other applications of this file include: mapping, geo-coding, geographic searching, area delineation, and database maintenance as a source for street names and locations.

The 2005 Road Network File is available for Canada and individual provinces and territories in three formats: ArcINFO®, MapInfo®, and, for the first time, Geography Markup Language.

2 New Imagery Satellites - 1/2 Meter Res

DigitalGlobe - Press Release

WorldView I, scheduled to launch no later than 2006, will be the most agile satellite ever flown commercially. The high-capacity, panchromatic imaging system features half-meter resolution imagery. With an average revisit time of 1.7 days.

WorldView II is planned to launch no later than 2008. Operating at an altitude of 770 kilometers, WorldView II will enable DigitalGlobe to offer half-meter panchromatic resolution and 1.8- meter multispectral resolution.

Added spectral diversity will provide the ability to perform precise change detection and mapping. WorldView II will incorporate the industry standard four multispectral bands (red, blue, green and near-infrared) and will also include four new bands (coastal, yellow, red edge, and near-infrared 2).

So I'll ask a stupid question: If a private company can launch this type of imagery satellite with 1/2 meter resolution, why the hell hasn't the US government done this yet? That resolution is better than the 1 meter aerial photography we have in Minnesota. I hear FEMA has a billion for updating it's flood maps - oh wait, that's going to be spent on beaurocratic bungling...I forget...

from SlashGISRS

MySQL Ready for Prime Time

MySQL Ready for Prime Time

An excellent article on MySQL for data managers. If you don't know what MySQL is or why it might be a good thing, I would recommend the article - you might be suprised with what you find. (MySQL is free and open source).

Personally I would like to see our local county governments take a closer look at MySQL and other open source solutions for managing their data. If they would only step away from the damn AS400 and move to ANYTHING else... That blasted platform not only costs (I do mean wastes) the county a fortune every year, but the people using it don't have a clue how to do anything with it.

Most of the small counties in my area could get by with a simple Access database. Not that I would recommend it for that purpose - but they aren't dealing with millions of transactions or complicated data models. It's quite sad to see the amount of money thrown at data management every year and there isn't anything they can do with the data once it's been entered.

I better stop this rant before it even starts...

from Slashdot

GDAL/OGR Update Released - Important Changes

GDAL: GDAL Downloads

An important update for GDAL and OGR has been released.

The 2 changes that jumped out at me were:

OGR 1.3.1

ESRI Personal Geodatabase Driver:
- New driver implemented for ESRI Personal Geodatabase (.mdb) files.
- Uses ODBC, enabled by default on win32.

GDAL 1.3.1 [pronounced "Goodle"]

MrSID Driver:
- Updated with proper JPEG2000 support as JP2MRSID driver, including
encoding with ESDK.
- Updated to support MrSID Version 5.x SDKs.

As far as I know, this is the first time Personal Geodatabases have been supported!

This effectively means that the newest version of MapServer will also support PGDBs. For most this may not seem like a big deal. However, one of the staple questions I hear from folks thinking about using MapServer is if it can use ESRI Personal GeoDatabases (Microsoft Access databases). It isn't that they want/need to use a PGDB or that they know what they are. The question is asked more as a test to find a weakness with MapServer and validation in their minds that ArcIMS is the only way to go (you've got to appreciate ESRI's marketing effort and MapServer's lack of such an effort).

With personal geodatabases now supported, a major obstacle (both real and imaginary) to MapServer has been eliminated. Now the answer to the MapServer database support question doesn't have to begin with references to newbie-frightening words "PostgreSQL" and "PostGIS".

I haven't checked around for any documentation on how to use a PGDB in MapServer (considering this was just released yesterday, I'm not expecting any quite yet). However, if you know of examples or other doc material, please post a comment with a link.

DOWNLOADS & FURTHER INFO:
- Windows users that want standalone GDAL/OGR functionality will want to download FWTools, which is a packaged, pre-compiled kit of GDAL, OGR and other utility apps.
- MapServer (Windows, OS/X, Linux) users can download the latest build (binary/pre-compiled), which should include these new libraries very shortly (if they don't already).
- GDAL
- OGR
- MapTools.org

TIP: GDAL and OGR are 2 libraries the function together. OGR is usually included in GDAL. GDAL (with OGR inside) is then included in MapServer. If you download a pre-compiled (binary) version of MapServer, it will already contain both GDAL and OGR - just check the README or other documentation to determine which version(s) it contains.

Satellite Image Captures 'Milk Sea'

Image Display

LiveScience.com has an interesting satellite image and article on a "milky sea" event. (Full article)

Mariners have long told of rare nighttime events in which the ocean glows intensely as far as the eye can see in all directions.

Fictionally, such a "milky sea" is encountered by the Nautilus in Jules Verne classic "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

Scientists don't have a good handle what's going on. But satellite sensors have now provided the first pictures of a milky sea and given new hope to learning more about the elusive events.

Outdated FEMA Flood Maps Put Millions At Risk

FEMA Information - Legislative Actions:

FEMA's flood maps are dangerously out of date and terribly unreliable.

[July 12, 2005] Experts from across the country testified before a House Subcommittee that FEMA’s billion dollar map modernization program was digitizing obsolete data. FEMA testified that in many cases maps do not necessarily change over time.

Experts unanimously agree that floodplains change over time as a result of land clearing associated with development, erosion, and other factors. FEMA’s maps have an average age over well over ten years, with some experts claiming the average age is eighteen years. One expert testified to “garbage in, garbage out” in regards to the modernization program.

To anyone working in a government GIS office (at least in the Midwest) this shouldn't be a surprise. When a county or local government digitizes a new dataset for parcels, streams or any other feature, the data is never encouraged to be distributed to any other agency let alone a central source. There is little to no communication between agencies or varying levels of government.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a REAL, LIVE repository of the most current GIS datasets (vector and raster)? Even if each state put together there own web service that enabled this it would be a significant start.

Often this type of discussion gets bogged down in details of metadata and standards compliance. My opinion - get something operational now and work out the details later. Hell, set up an FTP server at the state level that allows public AND private entities to upload/download their own and other datasets. A basic solution CAN be done on the cheap without requiring everyone to have a web guru on staff.

In August 2005, Congress moved to freeze FEMA's flood mapping efforts.

House appropriators took the action because they said they were misled by officials. The lawmaker said the program was "originally portrayed as a means to update all of the nation's flood maps."

The department last year began updating 25,000 of the 100,000 maps with geographic information systems and posting them on the Internet. Seventy percent of the maps are more than 10 years old, according to the Government Accountability Office.

A 2004 GAO report found that the maps become outdated because of property development that can cause erosion and changes in drainage patterns of rainwater.

The GIS technology would let FEMA meld different types and sources of data by linking multiple digital databases and graphically displaying layers of information on the Internet. GAO said an example includes layers of a map of all the streets in a specified area, on top of the area's topography or elevation data, and aerial photographs and streams in the same area.

"These themes are all key elements needed to create flood maps that accurately depict floodplains and can be used to identify properties in these areas," GAO said. FEMA said it also would use light detection and ranging remote-sensing technologies to collect highly detailed and digital elevation data.

ABC News did a story tonight on how these garbage maps resulted in tens of thousands of home owners in New Orleans NOT getting flood insurance (and subsequently losing everything).

Based on those maps, residents of parts of St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana were told that they did not need federal flood insurance. They lived in sections of the parish that fall outside FEMA's designated Flood Hazard Area.

FEMAinfo.us has a tremendous amount of information and detailed links on how FEMA's flood mapping operation is truly a disaster in it's own right.

The Hows and Whys of Degradable Ajax

Particletree � The Hows and Whys of Degradable Ajax

This is a very thorough and detailed article on creating degradable JavaScript (multi-browser support).

Your Momma Coding Jokes

YourMom!

This site puts a programming spin on the old Your Momma jokes.

Childish? Yes. Funny? Definately.

Detailed Linux Migration White Paper

KBSt - Federal Government Co-ordination and Advisory Agency (KBSt)

Germany's IT agency (KBst) has updated their Linux Migration Guide (white paper). It is in English and extremely detailed (500+ pages).

Direct download: Migration Guide, Second Revides Edition (PDF, 4.28MB)

The whitepaper includes a very detailed, long-term cost analysis and other sections that might be of interest to any medium to large organization considering moving from Windows to Linux.

Wireless Triangulation without GPS

Welcome to the Place Lab homepage:

Slashdot has an article on an Intel application, Place Lab, that allows triangulation of wireless device location without the use of GPS.

Intel Whitepaper

Place Lab

Place Lab is software providing low-cost, easy-to-use device positioning for location-enhanced computing applications. Place Lab tries to provide positioning which works worldwide, both indoors and out (unlike GPS which only works outside). Place Lab clients can determine their location privately without constant interaction with a central service (unlike badge tracking or mobile phone location services where the service owns your location information).

The Place Lab approach is to allow commodity hardware clients like notebooks, PDAs and cell phones to locate themselves by listening for radio beacons such as 802.11 access points, GSM cell phone towers, and fixed Bluetooth devices that already exist in large numbers around us in the environment. These beacons all have unique or semi-unique IDs, for example, a MAC address. Clients compute their own location by hearing one or more IDs, looking up the associated beacons’ positions in a locally cached map, and estimating their own position referenced to the beacons’ positions.

SQL Designer

SQL Designer

Here is an interesting web implementation of a graphical SQL database designer.

World's Brightest Flashlight - $80 (15M Candlepower)

World's Brightest Flashlight at Hammacher Schlemmer

Well, looks like I found Xmas presents for a few relatives.

15,000,000 candlepower! (only $80) 40min on battery at full power, 85 min at 1,000,000 candles. Includes charger and car adapter.

This is the brightest flashlight available, producing 15,000,000 candlepower (the equivalent of 150 60-watt bulbs), six times as bright as the lighthouse at Montauk Point, New York, and is visible more than six miles away.

Here is a 10,000,000 candlepower flashlight for only $30 at Amazon. (also includes car adapter)