Starting to think about my dissertation.

Over the last few days I've had to start putting serious thought into my summer thesis. It's crazy how its come around so soon after the start of the course. Last September it was fine, you think "Ah, months away, something will come to me soon, I'll get passionate about an area and then follow that" .... then X'mas comes... and goes.... and you're bogged down in coursework... and then BAM. Although we're constantly told it's only a short project, and not to worry about it too much, we're also told to consider what skills we want to get out of it, and make sure that they're relevant for what we want to do afterwards. So as you can see it suddenly isn't just a short project anymore, it's the rest of our lives. Ha. Tad dramatic I know.

And that is where I've got to stop writing unfortunately...! Reason being I'm fortunate enough to have been given access to some data of a confidential nature. People within the Department will no doubt know what I'm talking about, but other than that it's hush-hush. Suffice to say I'll be doing some spatio-temporal analysis, mostly on the movement of cars around a London Borough, and that the results might be quite interesting. Spatio-temporal being, as I'm sure you've guessed, analysis of a spatial nature combined with temporal (time) nature. So maybe firstly looking at the movement pattern of the cars, seeing which streets are visited more maybe, and then looking at how this varies over hours/days/months etc.

As a random aside, this is a map that I created for some coursework a month or so ago that I thought was pretty cool. It's a representation of how air pollution may increase around the town of Lydd from the expansion of nearby London Ashford Airport. I produced it to note firstly how the consultants (employed by the airport!) had done a terrible job of modelling the increases, and secondly to show what the figures might actually be if they had done it properly (Hmm.. this is probably the same thing, right?):

Map Projections

The Winkle triple world map projection, credit to ESRI

What's a map projection you ask? Well essentially it's the different ways in which we can decide to flatten the spherical earth to be a flat map, suitable for viewing on a piece of paper or on a computer screen. There are different projections available as you just can't flatten something that's spherical without 'breaking' it or warping it. Try it with an orange... carefully peel it so it stays in one segment.. now try and flatten it on the table without applying very much pressure. You can't do it. One bit of it always stick up doesn't it. Well that's essentially what map projections are about - as the way that we DO flatten the earth (or orange peel) means that we get distortion.

So anyway, here's an article about map projections from ESRI who know alot more about it than my trivial understanding! For those who don't know, ESRI are the people behind the GIS industry standard Arc software:

http://blogs.esri.com/Support/blogs/mappingcenter/archive/2011/02/17/an-alternative-to-web-mercator-winkle-triple.aspx

EDIT: Just coming back to this blog post, as the BBC have recently shown an excellent documentary about mapping which is very relevant! LINK

Some good Geo-stuff.... and some bad Geo-stuff.

As always, Twitter is a constant source of excellent GIS and general Geo 'stuff'. The community is so active it's untrue. Sometimes it's rubbish however. Maps for the sake of it that don't really 'show' anything other than a nice picture. Or worse, maps that show pointless things badly. Maps for maps sake aren't really my bag.

That said, many great ideas and invention have come out of things that weren't originally meant, for example penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming after he left a dish of bacteria uncovered for a few days and returned to find the dish covered in bacteria apart from a small area where penicillin had been...! So, on that theme, here's something I think is rubbish but what do I know! That's right. It's some sort of weird map, that someone has turned into a face. Where is it a map of? Who knows. What's the purpose? Art I guess. Hey ho. So clearly this doesn't rock my boat. Which my two arty housemates will no doubt chide me for. I'm not against art at all, I like art, but this is just silly. Anyway, onto better things, if I do say so myself! It's a little map I've just put together for my Coastal Engineering assignment at Uni. It's pretty basic, and could do with some towns and features for the user to orientate themselves, perhaps a small extent window in the bottom right to show which area of Britain it's in, but I think it does a job - it's shows where the Sites of Special Scientific Interest are on the South Coast.

Messing about with the CloudMade API....

Today we were introduced, by the lovely Dr Ellul, to the API for Open Street Map. Open Street Map for those of you who aren't in the know, is a Wiki approach to mapping. It's quite similar to Google Maps which I'm sure that you are all familiar with, but there are no commercial interests or issues of copyright. Indeed, you can download an entire detailed map of the UK to your hand-drive if you like - for free! Try doing that with Google.... you'll need a spare £20-30K I gather. The beautiful thing, is that as it's OpenSource, it's constantly updated and kept as current as the users make it. The slight drawback is that areas with non-techy people, or indeed no people at all, don't get mapped. But the percentages are growing... a recent comparison reckoned about 80% of the map was complete compared to the Ordnance Survey. Pretty good. Well anyway... to the point of this post. Google have an API. That's a Application Programming Interface. It's a way for you to use and customise their maps in your own website essentially. Infact here an example of one I made earlier this year...

http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucesjsm/

... and what we have been introduced too today is the OSM version called Cloudmade. It looks pretty simple to use... though I admit I'm at a loss as to why my map has appeared in tiles as below. I think it might be to do with trying to embed it in this blog. If/When I come around to having to use it properly I'll have to figure th at out...!

Great weekend / terrible weekend

Well that was fun..... and I got no work done. Bugger. Must crack on with Coastal stuff today, but so far I've spent 40 minutes doing it, 40 minutes messing about, and 40 minutes playing with the template for my blog. Pro.Duct.Ive.

Assignments, assignments....

Another day, another assignment. This second term is fast becoming a joke. It's also slightly concerning that I can't seem to get motivated or focused for it. Deadlines are now...

Topographic Mapping 1 - 7th February (2000 words)
Coastal Zone 1 - 21st February (2000 words)
Coastal Zone 2 - 25th February (3000 words)
Advanced GIS - 25th February (2000 words)
Topographic Mapping 2 - 25th February (2000 words)

Total = 11,000 words
Days left = 23
Words per day = 478

Sounds bad... but not THAT bad when put like that doesn't it? That's until you realise that on 13 of those 23 days I've got a full day of lectures. So taking those away, that's 1000 words per day. Oh, and I need to research what those 1000 words are actually going to be about too. :: insane rocking starts ::

Anyway, I should probably be getting on with it instead of writing this blog....!  On a last note however, I was introduced to this blog today by @oobr , and it's really rather good...

http://www.floatingsheep.org/

Starting a blog and looking for GIS jobs....

So.... as I look around the world of GIS everyone seems to have a blog talking about the GIS stuff they love and posting to maps and APIs that attract them. So I thought I'd better get one started too.