If you have no idea what Public Laboratory and Balloon Mapping are, I suggest you take a look at this video from FOSS4G 2011.

Currently, I don’t think there is anywhere for me to purchase Helium in Ilmenau, so I am going to have to head to Erfurt  before I am going to be able to put a balloon in the air. This is actually too bad, as the trees don’t have leaves yet here and it would allow for better mapping. I am mostly looking to improve the area around Ilmenau with this, but I am not completely certain where I am going to be able to do this. There is a hill near Ilmenau that is without trees, so I figure that is a good spot to start.

My biggest concern is the 1000m rope for the balloon. I don’t know what the German air regulations are, or if I should even worry. I know that Public Laboratory is doing a lot of work in the United States, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico after the oil spill. So if I bring my balloon on my trip to California in a few weeks, I should likely be fine to do some aerial imagery. But in Germany? I guess while I am waiting for the chance to get to Erfurt for Helium, I can research that.

Stay tuned for upcoming aerial mapping!

Many of the videos and presentations are already up here and here, although all content is in German. I ended up going to many of the OpenStreetMap talks, such as Jochen Topf’s ‘OpenStreetMap in Zahlen und Karten‘ (auf Englisch: ‘OpenStreetMap in Numbers and Maps’. He pointed out a few things of interest, particularly to those who want to work with OpenStreetMap’s planet data. A few things from it: OSM will soon not work with 32 bit integers as there is getting to be too many nodes. There are 28 million nodes for the coasts, the largest alone being 4 million nodes (Europe/Asia) and approximately 10% of the coastlines comes from GeoBase or NRCan’s CanVec data. I think Canada has a fair amount of coastline, so this does rather make sense.

Overpass API is likely something that would interest many of you. It is a routing engine, specifically for emergency vehicles. The idea being that people want their emergency vehicles to be able to reach them in 4 minutes, where should an additional station be placed? This is a fairly common question, but now very answerable with OpenStreetMap. More information, in English, can be found here.

I also learned about Imposm, which is a data importer for OpenStreetMap that is optimized for quicker rendering. Mapnik can also be used for rendering. MapProxy is a caching solution for OpenStreetMap, and there were many other sessions that I didn’t get to.

Overall, a lovely conference in Dessau, with tons of information, but not an overload. Between the videos, the pdfs of the presentations and the 180 page book that came with registration, even missing talks means that I didn’t necessarily miss the information. I am going to try and attend FOSS4G CEE in May in Prague as there looks to be even more good talks there.

Shall I see you there?

Why not, you may ask?

Whenever I sit down with the intent to make a map, I realize that I never have the base data that I need. There is a variety of base data that I could need with Statistics Canada data. I could simply need Canada and her provinces, or the entire country broken down by postal code, or the entire world, as we trade with different countries.

Where can I look for this?

I’d like to be able to find this data somewhere, with a license that will allow me to display it easily online or otherwise with no issues. What are my options?

But when I crashed five music players, three photo editors, two browsers, iTunes, Windows, Ubuntu, my Kobo Touch, as well as the Kobo Desktop and it’s installer, I knew it was time to do something.

Oh yes, faithful reader. I do mean blog. I am not a programmer. I don’t know where to direct a bug report for most of this software, otherwise I would easily do so. I’m good at writing bug reports, which makes sense given how much I break things. This category of my blog isn’t going to become a bug report, more of “wow, I broke this much software today”. Because it’s getting ridiculous. That list of what I broke? I did that in the past 30 hours, and I slept for 12 of those hours. I won’t tell you about my job, as I’m not sure I can share it and well, I’m getting to paid to break it. That’s different. This is the software that I’m not getting paid to break, it just breaks anyway.

Apparently I’m a power user.

I think I just have higher expectations than the developers.

That, really, is sad.

Music Player Open Source developers, do you honestly think that someone wants to load their music library every time they start up your software? Do you think that they don’t want to see who the artist is? Do you understand that some people, like me, have 65 gigs of music scattered on my computer and external harddrive?? It’s a mess! That’s why I want your software, dear developers, to organize it and curate it and make it useable.

Speaking of curating, my photos definitely need that. They are also scattered on my external harddrive, my three partitions of my internal harddrive. I need organization! And yet, when I go to bring them in, you insist on importing them to my tiny Ubuntu partition! I have no room there, that’s why I have the external harddrive and the internal harddrive’s partition marked “DATA”.

Is my setup overly complicated? Absolutely. Is that rare among Ubuntu users? Not as rare as among Windows users.

Am I grumpy? Oh heck yes. I just bricked my own eReader until Kobo tells me what I can do to replace it. My iPhone sporadically decides it doesn’t want to connect to Virgin Mobile, and my Ubuntu install shuts down by itself, usually when I’m not doing anything particularly labor intensive. It just does.

The developer I work with, that I mentioned earlier? He was awesome enough to give me a new title, I think it fits.

Software Detonator.

1. I knew nothing about conferences before I started this.

Like a wedding, there are all of these little things that no one but the wedding party has to think about. Centerpieces, linen, water jugs, food allergies, access to rooms ahead of time. The attendees, even the speakers, don’t always think of these things. I’m still working out swag, prizes, the volunteer coordination and everything else. I have been to some conferences before, but not many. I’ve volunteered with FOSSLC for a few conferences, but have never been in charge of figuring out even how many tables we’d need. It’s been great practice for my upcoming wedding though!

2. Decision Fatigue exists and I may have it.

Between spending two hours at 8 different stores trying to find linen at a decent price (and 8 of the identical ones) and trying to decide on venues, food and who to contact first, decision fatigue has set in. I didn’t even know this was a thing until Jason pointed it out here. I’m on page two and finding myself nodding along. For the tech savvy of my readers, it is similar to looking at laptops. There are tons of options and you know that as soon as you make a decision, a better one is going to go on sale or a newer one is going to come out.

It’s interesting though, because my job is to make decisions. Every day, I’m making decisions about our conference or how we are going to record State of the Map and FOSS4G down in Denver. I had to make decisions about the flights to Denver, hotels, transit and volunteers. It’s as exhausting as the article makes it out to be.

3. Drupal is different from WordPress.

So I’m currently using WordPress. FOSSLC is definitely using Drupal. The longer I work writing both blogs, the more I realize that they have both fairly decent interfaces and that I have no idea what’s going on underneath. I didn’t set up this blog and I won’t touch the underlying … anything of FOSSLC. Not only because I’m a gremlin, but because there’s no reason for me to know how the underlying code and what not works. I can do what I need to in either page and things just work. I understand why people use either WordPress or Drupal, from a user’s point of view.

4. Most of a conference can be organized via email.

Don’t believe me? The snacks are from Auntie Loo’s, the lunch is from Dantessa, the evening event is at the NAC, the conference is at OttawaU and the mapping party is at The Code Factory. All of these were done via email. I’ve met with Auntie Loo for a taste test (yum!) and with the NAC for signing and a deposit. That’s it. I’m a nerd, I tend to work strange hours and honestly, the world is working to accomidate me and my strangeness. I don’t like the phone, and never really have. The nice thing was that people are willing to phone me. I emailed the NAC and Dalia called me back the next day asking about details. It was when she was free that she contacted me and she already knew what I wanted. I didn’t have to wince afterwards and think “drat, I meant to ask about that” because I had had enough time to think about that in my email. It worked really well.

5. I have no idea who is on the who’s who list of Open Source.

I don’t and I still don’t. I know enough to know that bringing in the creator of OGG/Vorbis is a pretty awesome thing, as is bringing in one of the guys who founded Mozilla. It does make it very hard though when people are asking me about the conference and I honestly can’t tell you much about it. Why? Because it’s beyond me. I’m not a technical enough person to quickly explain what the guys from TikiWiki are going to be talking about. Actually I say technical but I mean mostly that I’m not a developer/programmer. I can easily tell you that one of the rooms is going to be full of open data talk and I love it. I’m making it my aim to get myself in that room for the 90 minutes. It’s Open Data, Open Data Ottawa and Open Street Map. You can check out the full schedule in printable form and on the conference main page.

6. Volunteers appear out of the woodwork about two weeks before the event.

I’m not complaining! I think it’s fantastic that I asked our IEEE Ottawa U Student Branch exec to find me some volunteers and I got six, four within a few days. I hope they’re reading this, as the more volunteers they bring me, the more they get to watch the conference! Incentive is the best way to get volunteers, really.

And we did, without a hitch. The time off work was spent finding a new apartment, visiting my family (a previously planned trip made longer by my dad getting an emergency hip operation – from which he has recovered very well).

So I remained unemployed long enough to pick up one EI check before Andrew Ross contacted me and said that he had work for me again. Andrew was one of my three bosses for a time last Christmas and I’ve known him for a few years now. I jumped at the chance. Not only is Andrew one of the more relaxed, down to earth people that I have ever had the pleasure of meeting, but he’s involved in a ton of interesting things – things that he was more than willing to tell me about and involve me in.

I am his assistant, essentially. I write emails, I contact people, make meetings happen. Sporadically I even tell him that he’s taking on too much work, or to remind him that he may be. I organize. I organize a lot.

And by organize, I mean that I have helped to create this. It hasn’t even happened yet and I’m rather proud of it. We’ve got some huge names in open source from so many different communities, it’s going to be a fabulous event. If you’re reading this, you’re likely going to be interested in some part of it. We have open data talks, database talks, video talks and more. PostgreSQL and OpenStreetMap talks will be in one room for the OSGeo people.

What will also be of interest to mapping people is our mapping party that is going to be happening, with the support of The Code Factory, on Sunday, August 28th. We’ll be meeting at The Code Factory for a few talks, then head out for a lunch of mapping, then back to the Code Factory for entering in the data.

I think it all should be a grand time and I’m really hoping that we get a lot of great attendees out to match our great speakers.

I believe that governments and agencies paid for by government money should release data that can help people. We paid for the data, and if the data can help us make smarter, better informed decisions, then we should be able to see it. We should be able to access it, freely and easily.

I should be able to go to the Saskatchewan Water Authority’s website and find out what data they are using when they are making their predictions about water levels. I should be able to look at the exact same data they did, that we pay them to look at, and make my own, amateur observations.

I should have been able to trust that they would change their estimates on how much water Moose Jaw was going to receive as well. Farmers and city residents should have been able to trust them when they said they would be below the record 1974 levels.

I am not a trained hydrologist, I am a GIS technician that knows how to collect and show data in such a way that it makes data useful to people. Given the knowledge of where the Authority gets their data, I would have been able to do a specialized model for my parents’ farm, potentially helping them plan their evacuation strategy of their farm better. I could have helped them relax, regardless of the two foot increase that the Authority called for and then reversed within 24 hours.

I am writing this passionately, which is never rarely a good thing when wanting to convince people the logic of your thoughts. I am writing this out of sheer frustration, as my parents and I were led to believe that the farm house would be ruined – including all of our belongings on the first floor. As the estimate was never altered by the Authority, we never suspected the water levels would get near the 1974 levels. Had we known, had we suspected that they would, the house would have been emptied. All precautions would have been tempted.

I know groups, individuals, corporations, and governments make mistakes. These things happen. But to not release your data or your data sources in a clear way that a concerned individual can check your work? Shame on you, Sask Watershed Authority. In the age of crowdsourcing, you did not take advantage of many eyes checking your work. You did not ask people for measurements, you did not teach them how to make accurate measurements, you did nothing. You went along as if all you had to do was report to the people, give the minimal necessary to assist them. The amount of times that you let down people made them question you. You let them done and you need to make amends.

Inspired by Gretchen Peterson’s Valentine’s Day stickers, I started on an adventure to create pink heat-shaped maps using FOSS programs.  Using Quantum GIS and Inkskape, I created SVG images that are easy to manipulate and export to raster  images.

1. Need some data

Natural Earth has small scale data available for free.  Since all that’s needed is oceans and land masses, their 1:110M data are a perfect option: http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/110m-physical-vectors/

2. Add the data to QGIS and reproject

• Open the “Custom Coordinate Reference System Definition” dialog box (Edit | Custom CRS…).
• Give the projection a name (e.g. Werner), enter +proj=bonne +lat_1=90 in the Parameters text box, and hit the save icon.  Now the projection can be selected in the project properties and any data added to the project will be reprojected.
  
• Open the Project Properties (File | Project Properties…), scroll down to the User Defined Coordinate Systems section, select the Werner projection that was just added, check the “Enable ‘on the fly’ CRS transformation” check box, and click OK.
  
• Add the data to the project.  There will probably be a line from the top-centre of the heart going off to the left, but that can be removed once the map has been imported into Inkscape.
• Open the Properties for each layer (Layer | Properties…) and remove the outlines in the Symbology section.  If outlines are desired, they can be added in Inkscape.
  

3. Export the map as a PostScript file

• Open a new Print Composer (File | New Print Composer).  Click the “Add Map” button and click and drag a rectangle in the map area.
  
• Open the Print dialog (File | Print) and select “Print to File (Postscript)” in the Name field.  Click “Properties” and change the orientation to landscape.  Enter an output file name and click “Print”.

4. Open and edit the PostScript file in Inkscape

• In Inkscape, select open the PostScript file (File | Open, and select the file).  In the PDF Import Settings dialog, no changes are necessary, just click OK.
• Right-click on the map and select “Ungroup” three times to separate the heart from the rest of the page components.  The extra page components can be deleted (there will probably be 4 – an outline, 2 white rectangles and a grey rectangle).
• There will be a few vertices in the top left corner.  Select them with the “Edit Paths by Nodes” tool and delete them.
  
• Change the colours of the outlines and fills and add other features as desired.

5. Export as a bitmap

• With the components of your artwork selected, open the Export Bitmap dialog (File | Export Bitmap).  Click the “Selection” button in the Export Area section, and either select a width and height of the output image, or change the dpi.  Input a file name for the bitmap and click Export.
  

On a quick side note, I am currently doing some research into education for a client and discovered some data that is easily mapped (thank you Statistics Canada). So maps shall be hopefully forthcoming, but I will leave you with this tidbit of information. Revenues from surveying and mapping in Alberta were four times that of Ontario in 2008. I am looking forward to getting more recent data, to see if Alberta has declined in the past two years. Maps with this data, and more detail, should be coming in the next week or so.

I’m not going to be able to write here particularly often, but I am going to try for about once a week. Hopefully I should be able to create a map and find some time to write each week, but no promises.

It got me thinking about Open Data, particularly with Open Data Ottawa becoming a bigger deal with the city of Ottawa releasing more data and now World Bank releasing their data. Edmonton, Vancouver and Toronto have all joined the rally cry. Who else?

I love Open Data, I love analyzing it and love looking at the applications that people use it in. But how do you find it? As far as I know, no one has come up with a decent list. This of course is made worse by new places releasing their data on what seems like a daily basis.

Let me know what open data sources you know of and I’ll update here accordingly. I don’t expect that I’ll be the only person doing so, but I’d like to have a better idea of where I can get data. Future blog posts will also have maps of what work that I have done with some of this open data.

Who else:

The City of Surrey (thanks @MapsRus)