1034. Representing rough locations in KML (3) (2010-06-17T14:24:09Z) in architecture, web, data, geography, pleiades, standards
In the example below, I show collections of relations that form a 3-piece concentric partition of space.
1033. Shape of things to come? (2010-06-17T10:13:23Z) in recreation, geography
Can you identify the spatial object having this footprint?
1030. Fuzzy and relative places in KML 2 (2010-05-28T12:50:27Z) in web, data, geography
I'm going to continue to think aloud about this for a while. Good ideas and good-natured heckling are welcome.
1029. Python and GeoJSON (2010-05-27T09:22:16Z) in python, web, data, geography
Is GeoJSON (as a ``dict``) a new lingua franca for Python GIS?
1028. Shapely 1.2 (2010-05-27T07:49:12Z) in the lab, python
Share and enjoy.
1026. Spring snow (2010-05-18T10:19:27Z) in nature, recreation
That's more than one thousand meters from the starting zone to the base of the cirque. Kaboom!
1023. Descartes 1.0 (2010-04-27T09:05:40Z) in python
I heart JTS too.
1021. No end-points (2010-04-22T07:46:16Z) in web, rest
NoEndpoints, anyone?
1020. Geo-annotating tweets (2010-04-18T07:34:30Z) in web
Agree on a key, use a URI that resolves to a map or KML, and you're on the map.
1018. Geographic OData (2010-04-15T08:31:31Z) in atom, web
It seems clear to me that data, especially standard stuff like geographic location, is more visible outside the payload.
1017. Rtree 0.6 (2010-04-13T20:16:17Z) in the lab, python
Version 0.6 of Rtree, the N-dimensional R-tree package for Python, is ready.
1016. Spatialindex 1.5.0 (2010-04-13T08:01:04Z) in the lab
New C API and 64-bit support for the N-dimensional R/MVR/TPR-tree library.
1015. Shapely 1.2b5 (2010-04-09T09:47:54Z) in the lab, python, digital humanities
Shapely 1.2b5 is uploaded to http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Shapely and http://gispython.org/dist/.
1014. Descartes (2010-04-07T10:06:11Z) in python, the lab
See http://bitbucket.org/sgillies/descartes/ for code and more examples.
1012. Bootstrapping a Python project (2010-04-01T09:54:44Z) in python, programming
Here are my notes on starting a brand new, versioned, readily distributed Python project.
1011. de9im: DE-9IM utilities (2010-03-31T08:30:57Z) in python, programming, standards
The de9im package is 100% tested, which gives me a good starting point for experimenting with more optimal implementations.
1008. Sensors, things, and the Web (2010-03-15T09:41:14Z) in web, rest, architecture
A "Web of Things" presentation (via "This week in REST")
1007. ISAW Visit (2010-03-09T12:21:32Z) in isaw
The workshop went well, too. More about that later after I push new code up to our site.
1006. Prunus dulcis (2010-02-28T14:46:40Z) in nature
Normally, turkey vultures inform me of Spring's arrival.
1005. PyCon interview with Sanjiv Singh (2010-02-28T12:27:36Z) in python, open source
Here's an interview with Sanjiv Singh (TurboGears, GeoAlchemy) in The Bitsource.
1004. Saving bandwidth takes two (2010-02-18T22:19:19Z) in web, standards
The organization running the server has to want to help you save bandwidth.
1002. Bags of bits (2010-02-18T11:41:43Z) in web, data, standards
How does Google Earth deal with ordering of resources? Is it as serious an issue there as Notingham suggests it is in the browser?
1001. Shapely 1.2b1 (2010-02-18T11:17:43Z) in the lab, python
This is the first 1.2 release uploaded to PyPI.
1000. Geospatial Jython (2010-02-16T20:40:24Z) in python
A little bit of its Java-ness leaks through, but at least one is spared the getters and setters.
999. Future of Flash in GIS (2010-02-15T10:32:31Z) in web, standards
I'm almost certain that Apple will eventually win this game of chicken and relent.
996. Below the buzz (2010-02-12T10:58:17Z) in web, standards
I just stumbled onto this post at ReadWriteWeb.
995. Plotting GIS shapes (2010-02-11T10:20:27Z) in python, the lab, programming
With Shapely, I've deliberately made it *hard* to do it in more than two lines.
991. GeoWeb blues (2010-02-03T11:20:37Z) in web
Apparently, a lot of the "GeoWeb" is made of blue legos.
990. More web linking (2010-02-01T14:26:18Z) in web
They are written for different audiences, but ones that overlap a bit, and go pretty well together.
989. In which we go into the weeds for some REST (2010-01-29T11:39:43Z) in rest, web, standards
On the descending portion of the hype cycle now it seems that, like the guy in the "Rock Star" t-shirt, a "REST API" most likely isn't.
987. Linking UK data (2010-01-28T09:49:57Z) in web, data, rest, standards, architecture, government
Read it and check out the links to tutorials about creating linked data.
984. Shapely 1.2a1 (2010-01-20T11:31:18Z) in the lab, python
Credit 1.2 to Aron Bierbaum.
983. GIS on Python Package Index (2010-01-19T12:51:35Z) in python
Python does a lot more for GIS programmers and analysts than just replace Avenue.
982. Dotted JSON namespaces (2010-01-18T09:28:34Z) in standards, web, data
JSON is less abstracted than XML, closer to code, and dotted namespaces seem like a win to me.
981. Magnificent seven plus two (2010-01-14T11:10:18Z) in web
For the sake of carrying geographic information on the web, we'll need two additional primitives.
980. WS-REST 2010 (2010-01-05T09:24:18Z) in rest, web, standards, architecture
To be held at WWW 2010 in Raleigh, North Carolina next 26 April 2010.
978. Adieu, 2009 (2009-12-31T16:36:25Z) in life
I've never had a year like 2009.
977. WMS and URI addressability (2009-12-30T10:05:39Z) in web, standards
More precisely, the saving grace of WMS is that its protocol parameterization doesn't obstruct URI addressability.
976. La volaille (2009-12-29T16:28:38Z) in food and drink
Even supermarket chicken seems years fresher than its American counterpart.
975. Least power (2009-12-21T14:00:16Z) in architecture, web
To me, this design acknowledges something like a Rule of Least Power for GIS interfaces.
974. Sweeping your front door (2009-12-19T15:56:50Z) in architecture
Before you agonize about how RESTful your back-end management protocol is, how about you make sure that your management application (the user front-end) is a decent Web application?
973. Last market before Christmas (2009-12-19T15:38:10Z) in food and drink
It was frosty this morning at the market, but just as busy as ever.
972. Simple and reusable spatial queries (2009-12-18T10:46:18Z) in software engineering, web, architecture
Simple indexed search is the initial boost to more interesting queries.
970. DDOS on climate science? (2009-12-16T11:01:57Z) in science, data, politics
A potential problem for science, and scientific consensus, in a brave new world where we are all now climate scientists, is the ramping up of the social denial of service attacks.
969. Montpellier street art (2009-12-12T15:59:04Z) in recreation
There is some inspired street art in Montpellier, the likes of which I've never seen in the uptight places I've previously called home.
968. Judgement matters (2009-12-11T09:52:48Z) in web, politics, government
How do we keep the tyranny implied in that statement out of the "GeoWeb"?
967. GeoWeb: utopia or dystopia? (2009-12-07T10:54:37Z) in life, community, industry, politics, government
I suspect it's going to be constant struggle to keep the "Wisdom of the Earth" from being rigged against civil liberties.
966. Punk (2009-12-06T14:23:22Z) in life, media
This piece by David Rees is the best piece of rock and roll fan writing of all time.
965. Idiomatic programming (2009-12-01T10:07:58Z) in programming, python
I'd prefer to have been taught, and to have taught others, idiomatic Python.
963. Ima let you finish (2009-11-11T13:04:39Z) in media
Back channel #geocom chatter inspired me to make this cartoon dedicated to "GeoWeb evangelists everywhere.
962. Design gap (2009-11-10T12:29:12Z) in architecture
Buttons vs. gestures. A multitude of complex, specialized, rigid protocols vs. one dumb protocol that can channel different, complex, emergent interactions.
960. Itertools to the rescue (2009-11-10T09:40:15Z) in python, programming
Without having to think hard at all, I can get a list of locally unique pairs of numbers.
959. Can't happen here (2009-11-05T12:48:12Z) in digital humanities, ironic
Thank the gods that Digital Classicism isn't GIS. It can't happen here.
958. GeoJSON Data URIs (2009-11-05T10:20:28Z) in web, standards
One can encode location directly in a URI using escaped GeoJSON.
957. Atom threading (2009-10-30T17:21:16Z) in atom, web
I'd suggested that you might arrange for an app to walk your posts and leave geographic annotation in comments using the same Atom extension.
956. Lessons of standardization (2009-10-30T10:10:41Z) in standards, industry
Bosworth goes into each of these in detail, I've only reproduced the first sentence.
955. Python GIS features (2009-10-28T11:02:05Z) in python, programming
How do you access the attributes and geometry of features in your favorite Python and GIS environment?
954. Why learn to program? (2009-10-26T09:28:14Z) in programming, geography
Why would a geographer need to learn to program?
953. Iterators, again (2009-10-25T10:22:45Z) in python, programming
If your favorite Python GIS environment doesn't provide iterators, you can easily implement wrappers like these.
952. Iterators (2009-10-23T20:37:29Z) in python, programming
How do you get a GIS feature from a Python collection/layer/provider/thingy?
951. Python idioms for GIS Education (2009-10-20T22:12:08Z) in python, programming
Utah State's GIS Programming with Python can be easily tuned up to teach even better Python GIS programming skills.
950. Unwords (2009-10-20T09:00:59Z) in media
The level of negative meaning in "REST API" is almost as high.
948. Working and playing at CBGP (2009-10-16T09:45:38Z) in geography, recreation
I've alluded to how pleasant it is out here and recently took a camera on my run to try to capture the feeling.
947. Shapely, map, and reduce (2009-10-15T13:03:34Z) in the lab, python, programming
Waiting on something else this afternoon and just want to write this modestly neat code down for myself.
946. Python and GIS 101 (2009-10-14T12:42:03Z) in python, programming
All those nested loops one uses to loop over the elements of rasters? There's a Python function for that.
945. Shapely 1.0.14 released (2009-10-06T09:59:43Z) in the lab, python
This release fixes a bug in writing out WKB on 64-bit systems.
942. Unofficial Python GIS SIG (2009-09-30T09:35:06Z) in python, community, programming, software engineering, architecture
There ought to be a discussion group that helps developers communicate across projects.
941. Neo-paleo-geo (2009-09-30T07:52:19Z) in community
Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting Geography. Please.
939. Geography of dégustation: Saint-Christol (2009-09-28T09:01:41Z) in food and drink, geography
From the top of Luc and Elisabeth Moynier's Villafranchian limestone hill one has great views in all directions.
938. For spork's sake no (2009-09-22T13:43:15Z) in rest
REST and RPC are different styles of solutions for different types of problems. Wanting them to be exactly the same misses the point entirely.
937. NASA SPG REST and SOAP (2009-09-21T12:29:35Z) in architecture, web, rest, standards
I don't interpret the blue border between "SOAP" and "REST" literally as my firewall, but as a horizon of trade-offs involving scalability.
936. Another Shapely sighting (2009-09-21T09:09:02Z) in the lab, python
Via Volker Mische, I'm pleased to see that GeoCouch is using Shapely.
934. Updates to the Shapely roadmap (2009-09-16T09:43:27Z) in the lab, python
Speaking of great Python packages for geoprocessing: the Shapely roadmap has updates.
933. Redefining open source? (2009-09-11T08:29:35Z) in open source, community
Is there more to open source than an OSI license?
932. Where's the book? (2009-09-09T08:46:07Z) in python
Seriously, it's a more formidable task than it appears.
931. On web sanity (2009-09-07T08:26:45Z) in web, software engineering, architecture
I think this goes for the "GeoWeb" too. We're delivering too much desktop GIS over the web. It's a point made also by Brian Noyle, though I see Flex, Silverlight, .NET, and MVC as parts of the problem, not the solution.
928. GeoAlchemy (2009-08-16T14:09:24Z) in python
Looks like something that could become very useful for Python and GIS programmers who work with a spatial RDBMS.
927. Evolvability (2009-08-12T15:45:58Z) in architecture, web, standards
Andrew Turner quoted me yesterday. The missing context of the quote, which I've linked to several times, is Clay Shirky's essay in praise of evolvable systems.
926. Data blogging (2009-08-10T14:51:20Z) in architecture, web, data, standards, atom, science
A sensor is just a little robo-blogger, right? Let's connect them to the web with blog technology.
925. Saint-Guillaume-le-Désert (2009-08-10T12:07:33Z) in geography
Sunday, we spent the entire day out and about in the neighborhood of Saint Guillaume-le-Désert.
924. Rtree 0.5.0 (2009-08-06T15:24:09Z) in the lab, python
See Howard Butler's release note for details.
923. It's the imagery, stupid (2009-08-05T18:51:07Z) in standards
It's all about the free-ish imagery on the KML platform.
922. 5 years (2009-08-04T21:25:37Z) in web, rest, standards, architecture
Finally done?
921. Place de la Canourgue (2009-07-31T21:34:14Z) in geography
This little place is a gem, and its immediate environs the most pleasant spot we've found in Montpellier.
920. KML and links (2009-07-31T09:07:08Z) in web, data, architecture
What do the people pushing "GeoWeb" at Google, a company founded on links, think about geographic data and web architecture?
917. Geo-grandiosity (2009-07-27T09:38:19Z) in geography, science
Do GIS paradigms and processes scale infinitely inward and outward?
916. Collections, queries, and REST (2009-07-24T08:34:45Z) in web, rest, architecture
Create a new resource for each user collection that exposes a list of the most recent editions of each book, along with links to the new and currently held editions, formatted using Atom so that you can track updates in a feed reader, and you're all set.
915. Ambrussum (2009-07-20T12:23:59Z) in recreation, geography
I took our highly energetic older daughter on an expedition to find the Gallo-Roman site of Ambrussum yesterday.
914. JTS on App Engine (2009-07-10T12:24:01Z) in web
That didn't take long: http://giscloud.appspot.com/.
913. Nous sommes arrivés ŕ Montpellier (2009-07-06T23:27:11Z) in geography, life
We're in the quartier Les Cévennes which rather reminds me of some Albuquerque neighborhoods.
912. We're hosting the Tour (2009-07-06T21:39:36Z) in recreation
We'll try to reproduce these shots during the race tomorrow afternoon.
911. Geo interface and Python 2.6 (2009-06-25T15:49:07Z) in the lab, python
The geojson module does this for you, and more, but clearly needs to work with json from 2.6 as well as simplejson.
910. Showing support for GIS-Python software (2009-06-22T19:01:41Z) in the lab, community, open source, pleiades
Are these packages important to you and your company or organization? Do you appreciate them?
909. Rtree 0.4.3 (2009-06-05T23:17:45Z) in the lab, python
No need to upgrade the spatialindex lib.
908. Dissecting recovery.gov (2009-06-05T15:14:37Z) in architecture, web, data, standards, government
Erik Wilde has been digging into recovery.gov from the start and has some excellent recommendations for open, transparent architecture.
907. OpenLayers Atom (2009-06-03T22:51:02Z) in web, data, rest, atom
I've overhauled some older code so that it conforms almost completely to RFC 4287 and submitted a patch for OpenLayers: #1366.
905. Buildout, Django, Solr (2009-06-01T12:38:48Z) in web, python
More interesting to my readers, I suspect, is Bertrand Mathieu's configuration for building out Django, Solr, and supervisord.
904. Rtree 0.4.2 (2009-05-28T22:37:33Z) in the lab, python
http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Rtree/0.4.2.
903. Jack Camel (2009-05-21T18:40:22Z) in industry, python, media, community, programming
Owning the GIS curriculum in US colleges isn't locking in future revenue streams enough already?
902. Reactions (2009-05-20T19:46:05Z) in web, data, rest, standards, atom
Some reactions on the web to the Google Maps Data API announcement.
901. Geo + AtomPub (2009-05-20T17:43:41Z) in atom
Google Maps Data API. We have been telling you AtomPub would be a big deal.
900. Diving into Shapely 1.1 (2009-05-18T21:53:10Z) in the lab, python, programming
It's not been tested on Windows at all, but might work with some coaxing.
898. Look what I found in KML (2009-05-12T17:03:59Z) in rest, web, standards, architecture
A neat find because we need more working examples of service descriptions.
896. Philosopher's Stone (2009-04-23T18:07:32Z) in web, industry, rest, standards, atom
Jeff Harrison tries to flip the alchemist label back onto the web wonks.
895. Generic geometry library (2009-04-13T14:34:37Z) in open source, the lab
The Generic Geometry Library (via Mateusz Loskot) looks interesting.
894. Shapely 1.0.12 (2009-04-09T22:14:38Z) in the lab
This release fixes a reference counting bug.
893. GeoRSS media type? (2009-04-08T17:11:45Z) in web, data, atom
Is there anything to be gained by having a special GeoRSS media type that overrode the Atom or RSS media types?
892. REST vs SOAP at ESRI DevSummit (2009-04-08T16:44:28Z) in rest, web, media, industry
Before his presentation becomes canon in the ESRI user community, I'd like folks to consider:
891. Keytree 0.2.1 (2009-04-05T04:51:12Z) in python, data, pleiades
Now, I'm trying to decide if something similar would be useful for Atom with GeoRSS.
890. Sensible observation services, part 2 (2009-04-03T16:31:58Z) in rest, web, data, atom
SOA didn't say how to spatially or temporally slice data. SOA said "have services". Services with well-defined interfaces. It's up to communities to define those interfaces. It's the same for RESTful architectures.
889. REST in reality (2009-04-02T22:20:23Z) in rest, industry, data
This isn't finance. Sometimes non-transactional is more honest.
888. OpenLayers constrained by hypertext (2009-03-31T22:50:45Z) in web, programming, rest
All data the OpenLayers code needs to render a map of the place is now discoverable through HTML links without having to go out of band.
887. Spring is officially here (2009-03-25T15:50:57Z) in nature
You know Spring has really returned to Fort Collins when the turkey vultures show up.
886. Good because it's good (2009-03-21T04:03:29Z) in rest, web, standards
REST isn't good because it's trendy, it's good because it's good. Loose coupling. Scalability. Evolvability. Serendipitous reuse. A real alternative to RPC.
885. Implications of WMTS for S3 tiles (2009-03-19T18:27:41Z) in web, rest, standards, architecture
Check out this interesting post by Randy George concerning S3 map tiles for DeepEarth: Theproject also includes an example showing how to set up a local tile set. The example uses256×256 tiles but not in the OSGeo TMS directory structure. Here is a...
884. Commenting on OGC WMTS (2009-03-19T15:54:52Z) in rest, web, standards
Meanwhile, I've started a discussion on geo-web-rest by posting my comment verbatim, and will write a bit more about the candidate standard here.
883. Sensible observation services (2009-03-16T23:32:22Z) in web, data, atom
What is an ASOS station or a data buoy if not a very dedicated non-human blogger?
882. Behind the curtain (2009-03-08T23:21:56Z) in web, rest
Does it matter to a RESTful zealot that ESRI?s REST API is a cover for SOAP?
881. Unbearable liteness (2009-03-06T17:25:19Z) in architecture, web, rest
Lets you achieve simple goals simply, but not itself a simple thing -- is this too wonky a notion to get across?
880. Transliterating from Greek and Latin (2009-03-04T21:02:27Z) in pleiades, python
The code we use to transliterate names from Greek and Latin writing systems in the style of the Barrington Atlas is now available from our package index.
878. Give it a REST (2009-02-23T17:25:51Z) in rest, web
I'd like to see more GIS developers follow the lead of CloudMade and tout HTTP APIs.
877. Plugins for Shapely (2009-02-19T16:26:03Z) in the lab, python, software engineering
In theory, this makes it possible to a write an application using Shapely that can run on either C Python, Jython, or IronPython. In practice, the plugin framework is helping to improve the testability and quality of Shapely's code.
876. Critique of WxS, en Français (2009-02-14T21:31:19Z) in web, standards, architecture
I think this is the first time I've been translated.
875. Making data more citable (2009-02-13T15:33:02Z) in web, data, science
Shorter Kurt Schwehr: your data needs a cool URI.
873. What's the beef? (2009-02-04T17:45:38Z) in web, community, industry, open source, rest, standards
The answer requires a few more than 140 characters.
872. Busting RESTful GIS myths (2009-02-02T19:44:36Z) in web, rest, standards, architecture
I'm going to use the announcement of Nanaimo's "authentic Web" GIS as an occasion to debunk some myths about REST and the Web, and their fitness for designing alternatives to the OGC's service architecture, that surfaced on Twitter last week.
871. Nanaimo's RESTful GIS (2009-02-01T19:27:18Z) in web, rest, government
Webarch, REST, and GIS for "the town that Google Earth ate", Nanaimo, BC. Very nice.
870. A more perfect union, continued (2009-01-27T21:38:36Z) in the lab, python
Shapely never had the power to dissolve adjacent polygons in a collection before, or at least not over large collections of real-world data. GEOS 3.1's cascaded unions are a big help.
867. Services and web resources (2009-01-21T21:12:07Z) in web
Are these OGC web services not web resources at all, or just broken ones that might be patched up with appropriate representations and HTTP status codes?
866. KML and atom:link (2009-01-21T13:41:29Z) in standards, web, atom
Jason Birch is right in wanting to use rel="alternate" in his KML atom:link, and the OGC KML spec is wrong in limiting us to "rel=related".
865. Mocking GEOS (2009-01-20T18:21:03Z) in programming, python, the lab, software engineering
My use of mocks isn't as sophisticated as Dave's, perhaps, but I stumbled onto a simple testing pattern that might be useful to other Python geospatial/GIS developers who are wrapping C libs using ctypes.
864. Toward Shapely 1.1 (2009-01-20T16:10:52Z) in the lab, python
Feel free to grab the new code from its Subversion repository.
863. Open access to National GIS data (2009-01-16T16:20:04Z) in data, government
I believe I will write my new Senator, Mark Udall (do I ever love typing that phrase!), and see if he's interested in doing something about it.
862. Links in content (2009-01-15T20:13:48Z) in web, rest
If your services aspire to the level of infrastructure, links in content is a better architectural style than one where all clients break when the API changes, or that demand a client upgrade to get access to any new capabilities.
860. OpenLayers and Djatoka imagery (2009-01-04T17:51:10Z) in imagery, open source, library
Hugh Cayless has written an OpenURL image layer for OpenLayers that pulls imagery from Djakota.
859. More decoration (2009-01-02T18:03:01Z) in python
Are decorators merely cosmetic? I'm of the opinion that some syntaxes are better than others.
858. How to decorate Python GIS code (2008-12-30T19:42:20Z) in python
Last month I blogged about Python logging and how to avoid using print statements in geoprocessing code. But your crufty old code isn't going to rewrite itself, and you're overworked already.
856. I can has Python and GIS environments? (2008-12-23T23:45:39Z) in the lab, python, software engineering
I've spent this short week tuning up my new laptop's development environment, and a side effect of this work is a new build system for replicable, isolated Python, GIS, and image/raster processing environments.
854. Geojson 1.0.1 (2008-12-21T04:10:05Z) in the lab, python
Geojson 1.0.1 fixes a bug in serialization of features with no geometry.
852. My new project (2008-12-17T21:03:31Z) in life
Born Saturday, a few days early.
851. Semantic web at CAA 2009 (2008-12-12T15:56:06Z) in digital humanities, web
There will be a semantic web session at CAA 2009.
849. Why not CIDOC CRM at this time (2008-12-10T18:03:38Z) in web, pleiades, standards
Our decision to defer use of properties of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) is explained in this memo.
848. Surging! (2008-12-09T15:21:33Z) in industry, standards
Some say the "Geo-Gopher" is surging, and it may well be. Any numbers?
847. Get your Python 3000 geometries on (2008-12-04T22:11:06Z) in the lab, python
Python 3.0 is final and I've pushed my port of Shapely to GitHub: http://github.com/sgillies/shapely-3k/tree/master.
844. The beds we make (2008-12-01T15:50:03Z) in standards
To the extent that INSPIRE is guided by the OGC, how could it have chosen anything but SOAP?
843. REST solutions (2008-11-26T16:54:15Z) in rest, web
"Resources derive from the solution domain, not part of the problem domain.".
840. Why not Atom-powered repositories? (2008-11-21T23:14:24Z) in atom, web
Less like EPrints, DSpace, or Fedora; more like Google's data APIs, more like what Peter Keane is doing with DASe.
839. Shapely 1.0.11 and onward (2008-11-20T16:47:20Z) in the lab, python
If I were superstitious, I wouldn't post a link to http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Shapely/1.0.11. Tests pass, the release candidate checked out, it's good to go.
838. HTTP caching explained (2008-11-19T17:43:40Z) in web
Even if you already know, you'll likely appreciate Ryan Tomayko's explanation of the things caches do.
837. Maps, France 1944 (2008-11-18T17:34:31Z) in cartography, life
Yesterday, I received in the mail my grandfather's cloth escape maps of France, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany.
836. Shapely 1.0.10 (2008-11-18T04:07:47Z) in the lab
Somewhere along the way I became too lax about testing compatibility with GEOS 2.2.3, and it was broken in the 1.0.8 release.
835. Shapely 1.0.9 (2008-11-17T03:43:10Z) in the lab
Shapely 1.0.9 works with a MacPorts libgeos. No need to upgrade otherwise.
834. GeoJSON is not hypermedia (2008-11-13T23:36:17Z) in web, data, rest
In conclusion, GeoJSON 1.0 is not a hypermedia format. Without links there are no levers of application state to be seized, no hypertext constraint, and therefore no REST.
833. Nearest book (2008-11-13T22:56:24Z) in recreation
A book excerpt meme is propagating through Python blogs. Why not?
832. Python logging (2008-11-11T19:00:42Z) in python, programming
Today's tip: excellent application logging and how to avoid using print statements in your production code.
830. Change (2008-11-03T04:43:33Z) in politics, life
After 7 disastrous years of mal-intent and incompetence, let's give the hopeful and serious a chance. It's time for a change.
829. Shapely 1.0.8 (2008-11-01T18:22:30Z) in the lab, zope
An upgrade is recommended if you're using Zope or a similar framework.
828. Multiprocessing with Rtree (2008-10-30T19:49:11Z) in python, the lab
I came up with an example of how Python's multiprocessing package could be used to set up a simple R-Tree index server:
827. Geo-enabling CouchDB (2008-10-29T15:55:01Z) in programming, python, the lab, data
I suggested in comments that GeoCouch might want to take advantage of the GeoJSON group's work, on geometry formatting at least.
826. Zotero Update (2008-10-29T14:47:05Z) in open source, community, industry, digital humanities
"CHNM announces that it has re-released the full functionality of Zotero 1.5 Sync Review to its users and the open source community.".
824. New blogs around OpenLayers and Python (2008-10-22T15:43:36Z) in media, open source
My Zope guru, Whit Morris, is writing on a new OpenGeo, and there are two new blogs related to MapFish by Cédric Moullet and Eric Lemoine.
822. ORE 1.0 (2008-10-21T15:13:52Z) in web, data, standards
The discussion around ORE opened minds all around: I was clued in to Linked Data and had my interest in RDF rekindled; the ORE authors came around to embracing the practices of the Atom community.
821. Long, lonely tail (2008-10-20T22:03:34Z) in web, media
This reminds of the geospatial/geoweb community's fascination with "top 25" lists and preference for popular blogs over idiosyncratic blogs.
818. Beers and Python GIS in Praha (2008-10-03T07:49:41Z) in community, python
One of the highlights of this trip was the chance to meet fellow Python and GIS programmer, and blogger, Jáchym ?epický.
816. OpenLayers and 900913 (2008-09-19T17:21:11Z) in pleiades
Thanks to some hand holding from Chris and Josh, Pleiades now has Spherical Mercator maps using the Google physical geography layer as a stand-in for our ideal ancient world base map.
815. Geojson and pyproj interop (2008-09-18T21:20:13Z) in the lab, python
I've just finished writing a module that supports projection of objects that provide the geometry part of the Lab's geo interface: proj.py.
814. Adding pyproj to a buildout (2008-09-18T16:11:54Z) in zope, python
Pyproj is Jeffrey Whitaker's Python interface to PROJ.4. It depends on Cython, which makes it a bit tricky to include in a buildout: you must install Cython into your buildout's python, not as an egg, and make the pyproj egg only after this step is finished.
813. kml:description considered harmful (2008-09-17T15:39:58Z) in data, standards, atom
Limitations of KML's description element and its ties to the original implementation hold us back. We need something better.
812. G(eo)nomes of Atlanta (2008-09-16T18:41:52Z) in industry, standards
Inside the "Open" Geospatial Consortium there are yet more inner circles?
811. Python packaging and builds (2008-09-15T18:15:05Z) in python, software engineering
Do read Teague's post to the django-developers list if you're new to the Python software ecosystem.
810. C-List and proud of it (2008-09-09T16:33:54Z) in media
Technorati is totally busted for doing this kind of analysis.
809. POST(a) and POST(p) (2008-09-08T16:52:15Z) in rest
It's great to see others like Vish continuing to write about REST in geospatial (I continue to stalk the term).
808. The other GeoWeb (2008-09-05T18:02:17Z) in data, web
I forgot to mention that there's a third "GeoWeb": the web of data that links to GeoNames, U.S. Census, etc.
807. Will the real "GeoWeb" please stand up? (2008-08-29T18:28:16Z) in industry, web
Is one of these the real "GeoWeb", or are they just two parts of the same elephant? Can anyone describe how such a beast works?
806. On the road (2008-08-29T16:05:53Z) in geography
I'd enjoy meeting up with open source GIS or classics programmers along my route.
805. Lex parsimoniae (2008-08-27T16:46:56Z) in media
See also Occam's Razor.
804. GIS-Python Lab website update (2008-08-27T16:16:25Z) in the lab, community
I've tuned up the http://gispython.org page; adding links to similar enterprises, highlighting the email list, and exposing project news items.
803. Friends don't let friends use Endnote (2008-08-26T04:05:17Z) in data, digital humanities
Kurt, I have in fact seen mapping integrated with Zotero. Shekhar Krishnan used the GeoNames database to locate items by their place of publication in a demo at THATCamp.
802. Shapely 1.0.7 (2008-08-23T03:41:47Z) in the lab, python
Version 1.0.7 fixes problems with polygon ring dimensions and reference cycles.
801. Mapping McCain's homes (2008-08-21T20:09:36Z) in politics, media, vulgar geography, cartography
Speaking of maps in the media, I like this one of John McCain's homes.
800. Easier (2008-08-21T16:53:24Z) in python, programming
Mateusz's post about marshaling geometries from hex-encoded WKB strings in C++ reminded me how easy this is in Python using built-in string methods and Shapely.
799. Better (2008-08-21T16:01:50Z) in python
This is better, as I was saying. It's nice to see Python catching on in my home state's GIS department.
798. REST and JSON (2008-08-19T21:16:53Z) in data, rest
The GeoJSON working group didn't target specification of an API, but I always imagined we'd be using something like this.
797. tg.ext.geo (2008-08-18T21:14:21Z) in python, the lab, community
TurboGears will join the ranks of geospatially-enabled Python frameworks with the addition of tg.ext.geo to tgtools.
796. The distinction between disciplined and simple (2008-08-16T20:55:36Z) in rest, web
If there's anything the GIS mainstream knows about REST, it's that REST is simpler and more lightweight than SOAP, "Web Services", or the OGC's service architecture. This notion is erroneous, and it's irresponsible to propagate it.
795. Down to earth (2008-08-15T18:05:43Z) in software engineering
if anybody can rescue the concept of geospatial cloud computing from the pundits, Kirk Kuykendall can.
794. Who is playing whom? (2008-08-14T20:12:13Z) in open source, community, industry
Sounds like FOSS4G 2008 is going to have an even stronger proprietary flavor than the 2007 edition.
793. Django on Jython (2008-08-14T16:14:19Z) in python
I could see Shapely or GeoDjango adapted to Jython to bring some geoprocessing power to the framework.
792. Rocky Mountain Rail Authority Study (2008-08-13T04:16:29Z) in geography
It's about damn time. I don't care if the study has to use the most paleo-proprietary software one can find, let's get this on.
791. "Web GIS" versus "GeoWeb" (2008-08-08T16:19:56Z) in web
The "GeoWeb" proposition repels me. Maybe it's a matter of taste, but I'd find discussion of MusicWebs, VideoWebs, and BookWebs equally unproductive.
790. Clouds and hypertext (2008-08-02T17:51:03Z) in web, rest, atom
There are some actual architectural constraints that make these "Cloud" applications feasible. One of them, and the one that has been almost entirely missing in so-called "GeoWeb" applications to date, is hypertext.
789. Geojson 1.0 (2008-08-02T04:09:38Z) in the lab, python, data
Share and enjoy.
788. High Country News and Plone (2008-07-24T17:39:10Z) in plone, media
I've read the print manifestation of High Country News for years and am delighted to find out today that the new http://hcn.org site is based on Plone. Congratulations Jon and ONE/Northwest.
787. Coda (2008-07-23T17:38:58Z) in web
See update to http://sgillies.net/blog/690/no-wms-in-google-static-maps-api.
786. Weak references (2008-07-23T17:23:44Z) in python, the lab, programming
I've been living off of them for years, but have finally found a use for Python's weak references in my own code.
785. Linking open geographic data (2008-07-21T18:27:31Z) in data, web
This graph of data has grown by leaps and bounds since we pitched Concordia. We didn't initially propose to join the Linked Data project, but I'd really like to see Ancient World datasets link themselves together in this way.
784. Blog hauling (2008-07-16T17:19:40Z) in media
I'm moving my blog to http://sgillies.net/blog/.
781. Shapely 1.0.6 (2008-07-10T05:03:01Z) in the lab, python
Shapely 1.0.6 is uploaded.
780. Get your Grand Tour on (2008-07-09T16:09:09Z) in recreation
My interest in pro cycling bottomed out last summer, but Get Your Grand Tour On has completely revived it. Inspired by David Rees's brilliant Get Your War On, brace yourself for sarcasm and obscenity.
779. Explain? (2008-07-07T23:17:52Z) in rest, standards
Except for very large values of "inconsistent" -- like "one or the other doesn't use HTTP" -- I think a little more explanation is needed to support this: "REST-based architectures are not inconsistent with the WFS specification.".
777. REST anti-patterns (2008-07-07T14:47:09Z) in rest, web
I've recommended a couple of Stefan Tilkov's articles before; his new one on REST anti-patterns is equally good. See if you can recognize the anti-patterns most commonly used in geospatial services.
776. Geojson 1.0 beta 1 (2008-07-02T17:14:07Z) in the lab, python
We've renamed our "GeoJSON" package to "geojson", uploaded the first beta release, and plan to finalize it within a couple weeks.
775. Fava time (2008-06-21T05:02:23Z) in food and drink, recreation
We had our first favas this evening, sautéed with garlic in olive oil. Pink Côtes de Provence, not Chianti, and ravioli, not liver.
774. Parallels (2008-06-17T17:46:44Z) in data, web, standards
Andy Powell's presentation on Web 2.0 and repositories is just as relevant a read for GIS designers as it is for archivists.
773. GeoJSON ships (2008-06-16T18:24:04Z) in standards, community, data
Congratulations, everyone.
772. Guerrilla SOA (2008-06-16T13:50:03Z) in web, rest
Those of you interested in applying Agile software development methodology to geographic or GIS Web services may be interested in this talk by a couple of ThoughtWorks gurus: Does my bus look big in this?. In the second half, Martin Fowler and Jim Webber make analogies from Agile development practices and benefits to using the Web/REST for agile deployment and integration.
771. Feature query languages (2008-06-13T19:35:09Z) in programming, data
What concerns me right now as I face this WorldMill patch is that SQL may not be the right model at all for this sort of domain specific language.
770. Penstemonium (2008-06-12T23:51:05Z) in nature, life
This is P. Strictus, perhaps the most beautiful perennial wildflower of the Mountain West, just beginning to bloom today.
769. XML mapfile (2008-06-11T19:38:49Z) in mapserver
Heh. I think "XML mapfile" is a stage that many people (myself included) just have to go through on their way to enlightenment. See also bargaining.
766. THATCamp (2008-06-02T23:33:18Z) in digital humanities
Dear Jeremy, Dave, Tom, Dan, and the CHNM crew, thank you for having me out for the inaugural THATCamp!
765. Everyone's a historian now (2008-05-30T04:47:56Z) in digital humanities, web
Stephen Mihm's article in the Boston Globe highlights several different projects using the Internet and its communities to examine American History in new ways.
763. xISBN and REST (2008-05-28T06:39:29Z) in web, data
Looking at the xISBN service docs tonight while running Pleiades data import tests, I see that there is support for "REST-ful" short URLs in version 1 and cool URIs in version 2.
762. Planet Geospatial (2008-05-27T18:47:16Z) in media, community
It's weird what an influence his site has on the informal discourse of the GIS business.
761. Public Service, Public Data, and the Web (2008-05-27T17:35:26Z) in web, industry, data, standards
Next time I speak to a non-technical audience about the "GeoWeb", I'm going to lean heavily on Paul Ramsey's clever and informative talk (click through for the PDF).
760. Tilt! (2008-05-21T18:09:54Z) in data
Placebase's Pushpin API provides a format they call "GeoJSON", which should be good except that it has the wrong coordinate order.
759. GeoHash and BigTable (2008-05-21T17:58:01Z) in python
A while ago I wrote about cool stuff that could start to happen when Google's AppEngine supported bounding box searches for geo data.
758. Barrington Atlas Feature IDs and Unicode Normalization (2008-05-21T17:22:06Z) in python, web, pleiades, digital humanities
pleiades.normalizer reduces Barrington Atlas labels which may contain annotation and non-ASCII characters to ASCII strings suitable for use in URI templates.
757. Shapely 1.0.5 (2008-05-20T14:40:54Z) in the lab, python
Shapely 1.0.5 now includes a flexible polygonizer, documented in section 2.5.1 of the updated manual, and makes it harder to create a particular class of broken geometries.
756. Dark Matter of the "GeoWeb" (2008-05-14T13:12:53Z) in web
Hanke wasn't referring just to ESRI silos, but also to the data stuck behind WMS and GetFeatureInfo(), WFS and GetFeature().
755. OWSLib 0.3 (2008-05-08T19:34:20Z) in the lab, python, data, standards
OWSLib 0.3 adds preliminary support for coverage services, contributed by Dominic Lowe.
754. Shapely Debs (2008-05-08T19:00:24Z) in the lab
I'm a big fan of the Debian GIS project and pleased to see that Shapely is getting some of its attention.
753. Line Simplification (2008-05-06T19:31:41Z) in python, the lab
I just want to point out how well Schuyler Erle's implementation of Douglas-Peucker line simplification works with Shapely.
752. The Programming Historian (2008-05-05T15:08:16Z) in digital humanities, python, programming
The Programming Historian looks great to me. It covers HTML parsing (with Beautiful Soup), regular expressions, Unicode, and link traversing, with more to come.
751. Shapely 1.0.4 (2008-05-02T03:48:34Z) in the lab, python
One bug fix and a simple GEOS geometry cache to improve performance when wrapping coordinate data stored outside of Shapely.
750. Keytree (2008-05-01T21:30:26Z) in python, pleiades
Keytree (also known as pleiades.keytree in our repository) is a simple package of ElementTree helpers for parsing KML.
749. QGIS Python Plugins (2008-05-01T06:12:57Z) in python
I think it would be neat to see QGIS community plugins done Trac-style, as eggs.
748. Don't Save the Whales (2008-04-30T17:20:44Z) in politics
Wouldn't you know: Dick Cheney and his shadow scientific community have other plans for those Right Whales.
747. SpatialIndex 1.3.1 (2008-04-30T16:42:59Z) in the lab
Howard and Marios have released SpatialIndex 1.3.1.
745. Python Geo Frameworks 2 (2008-04-29T17:19:32Z) in open source, community, python
Here, continuing on from my previous post, are some of the forces arrayed against an all-encompassing OSGeo Python framework.
744. GeoJSON 1.0a4 (2008-04-28T17:06:43Z) in the lab, python
Matthew Russell and I have brought it up to date with the current draft version of the spec and uploaded 1.0a4 to PyPI.
743. WordPress Commenting Trouble (2008-04-24T15:42:54Z) in web
My comments on WordPress blogs this week are vanishing without any confirmation or trace. I'll bundle them together here as a last resort.
742. Python Geo Frameworks (2008-04-23T22:48:56Z) in python, the lab
Those who do not learn from the history of PCL_ are doomed to repeat it.
741. Logo Fiasco (2008-04-22T16:49:00Z) in media
Fort Collins, my hometown, "where renewal is a way of life" (ugh), is going through a branding and logo fiasco. But maybe we should be grateful: it could have been much much worse.
740. Vulture Roost (2008-04-22T02:33:56Z) in nature
Here's the neighborhood vulture roost at sunset, with half of the birds still incoming.
738. KML Standardization (2008-04-16T17:23:50Z) in industry, standards
One thing that nobody has mentioned is how much the OGC needed KML standardization.
737. Python re.cipe (2008-04-14T19:05:44Z) in python, programming
Python's regular expressions aren't as expressive or as built in as Perl's, but there's nothing you can't do by using a callable object as the second argument to re.sub.
736. More Gardening (2008-04-14T14:37:41Z) in recreation
Are people from a farming or gardening tradition more likely to cultivate open source software?
735. Fava (2008-04-13T20:46:07Z) in recreation
The fava beans we planted 16 days ago finally came up yesterday.
734. Pop! (2008-04-10T18:37:31Z) in media
Heads explode as Adena Schutzberg links to the Great Orange Satan.
733. Attribution (2008-04-10T17:11:17Z) in media
You are free to share and remix the content of my blog, including code and data examples. In return, please attribute my work.
732. Shell History (2008-04-10T16:03:06Z) in media, programming
Why not?
731. Shapely 1.0.3 (2008-04-09T21:22:43Z) in the lab, python
This release fixes another operator chaining bug and makes multi-threaded use more safe.
730. Shorter Paul Smith (2008-04-09T14:58:09Z) in media, web
Christopher Schmidt rocks your world.
729. Google App Engine (2008-04-08T14:35:42Z) in python, web
Python, WSGI, and Bigtable (well, non-relational datastores generally) are 3 things I've been telling geospatial folks to keep an eye on.
727. Useful GMaps GeoRSS Quirk (2008-04-05T04:53:06Z) in atom, vulgar geography
I'm thinking this quirk just might be a good practice.
726. Vulgar Geography (2008-04-04T23:11:21Z) in geography
I like Tom's new name for "neogeography" so much that I'm adopting it for my blog tagline.
725. Poudre River Osprey (2008-04-04T16:09:03Z) in nature, recreation
My reward for braving the blustery weather to run yesterday was seeing 3 Osprey, just arrived from their winter range, fishing at the "ponds" (flooded gravel pits) along the Cache la Poudre River.
724. Emerging Geo Technology (2008-04-02T17:11:31Z) in industry, web, media, rest, atom, standards
Looks like Andrew Turner's presentation provided the fresh air that Ed Parsons was enjoying.
723. Vimperator (2008-03-31T23:25:36Z) in web
I'm loving Vimperator.
722. Mush and Paste (2008-03-31T23:08:14Z) in atom, web, python, data, pleiades
I've added a service to Mush that demonstrates the concept of dereferencing linked locations.
721. They Tell Stories (2008-03-28T21:44:50Z) in data, web
Charles Cummings's The 21 Steps supports my thesis that not only is one location not enough to tell a story, one narrative or analytical chunk is not enough to tell a story.
720. GeoRSS 2.0? (2008-03-27T22:01:07Z) in web, data, standards
I saw several references to "GeoRSS 2.0" recently by people who are attending the OGC TC meeting in St. Louis. Here's my 2 cents on 2.0.
719. THATCamp (2008-03-27T16:09:12Z) in digital humanities
Maybe I'll see you at THATCamp, 5/31-6/1? I'm particularly eager to find out how folks are using syndication, AtomPub, and GeoRSS.
718. Grant Award (2008-03-26T21:24:45Z) in pleiades, digital humanities
Tom and I get to continue the kind of academic research that James Fee so loves.
717. The GeoWeb That Might Have Been (2008-03-26T16:41:37Z) in web, industry, data
Searching for "geoweb architecture" turns up some interesting stuff, like this "GeoWeb" "based on a hierarchy of servers whose domain names represent geographic areas".
716. Alamosa's Dirty Water (2008-03-25T21:07:10Z) in life
Look on the bright side, Alamosans: you may be puking your guts out, perhaps hospitalized, and can't drink your municipal water for a couple weeks yet, but at least it wasn't bio-terruh!
715. The Wings of Spring (2008-03-25T04:55:35Z) in life
Nevermind the Swallows of Capistrano: the surest sign of spring is when the Turkey Vultures return to 920 West Mountain Avenue in Fort Collins.
714. Rtree 0.4.1 (2008-03-24T20:00:44Z) in the lab, python
It is important to upgrade from Rtree 0.4 to 0.4.1 if you're using it within long-running Python processes. No upgrade from spatiaindex 1.3.0 is necessary.
713. ESRI, Developers, REST (2008-03-19T14:17:30Z) in rest, web, industry
Resource oriented architecture, state transfer, entity tags ... ESRI is putting the Web back in "GeoWeb".
712. OGC URN Internet-Draft (2008-03-18T16:51:25Z) in standards, web
I'm enthusiastic about draft-creed-ogc-urn-03.txt.
711. Multiple Locations in GeoRSS (2008-03-18T16:31:35Z) in vulgar geography, web, media, atom
Feed entries are cheap: if you need more locations, add more entries.
710. AtomPub for zgeo.atom (2008-03-14T05:11:17Z) in zope, the lab, rest, atom
Now, zgeo.atom has an incomplete, but functional Atom publishing protocol.
709. Fire Eagle and Shapely (2008-03-14T04:05:47Z) in web, the lab, python, data, vulgar geography
Fire Eagle GeoJSON is fixed. Shapely is great for doing things with your data.
707. Sunset on Nebuka (2008-03-11T15:16:29Z) in recreation
Being buried in snow all winter didn't bother them at all.
706. ArcDeveloper REST (2008-03-10T18:18:06Z) in rest, web, industry, standards
ArcGIS developers are embracing Web architecture as enthusiastically as we on the open source side. Maybe even a bit more.
704. Frugosapalooza Wrap Up (2008-03-06T17:13:23Z) in community
Helping Brian realize his idea was fun. Here's his summary. What's next?
703. Representing OGC Services in Atom Feeds (2008-03-05T20:28:48Z) in atom, web, data, standards
I think that a custom link relation could be the hint Jeroen is looking for. The OGC's content type problem still needs to be fixed.
702. The Fear and Insecurity Industry (2008-03-05T17:15:38Z) in life, industry
According to the map, I live in a medium risk zone ... should I be moving to Montana soon?
701. OAI-ORE, Aggregate Resources, and Atom (2008-03-04T18:16:36Z) in data, web, pleiades, standards, atom
We have some graph-y plans for the resources of Pleiades and related projects that fit perfectly with ORE.
700. Fun With Shapely (2008-03-03T18:15:22Z) in the lab, python
Very cool. Is this neogeogenomics? I hope the JTS/GEOS architects are equally pleased.
699. Rethinking GSDI Architecture (2008-03-03T17:21:19Z) in web, community, industry, rest, standards
Ed Parsons and Chris Holmes were at the GSDI-10 conference and have each written posts about "GeoWebs" and "Global Spatial Data Infrastructures" that touch one of my favorite topics: architecture.
698. G(eo)nomes of Vancouver (2008-02-29T17:15:06Z) in industry
Anybody else ever play Steve Jackson's Illuminati card game?
696. Not-Quite-Web Processing Service (2008-02-27T06:25:00Z) in standards, web
I had a longer post about the new WPS specification that I scrapped after I realized that it reduces to this: the OGC WPS working group gets the formats and parameters more or less right as usual (good), but still can't find any respect for HTTP as a...
694. InscriptOL Source (2008-02-26T20:39:48Z) in pleiades, digital humanities
By popular demand (okay, 2 people asked), you can now browse or clone the inscriptOL repo.
692. Python, MapServer, and WSGI (2008-02-23T20:44:46Z) in mapserver, python
To enable this is why I added an OWSRequest class and image byte access to mapscript.
689. Shapely Mention (2008-02-20T22:31:36Z) in the lab, pleiades
It feels good to read about Shapely being put to use in EveryBlock alongside OpenLayers, Mapnik, PostGIS, OGR, and TileCache.
688. Pleistocene World WMS? (2008-02-20T18:15:43Z) in data
Yo, Lazyweb: is there a publicly available WMS providing maps of the Pleistocene world, or some layers thereof?
687. Nit of the Day (2008-02-18T19:37:09Z) in data
GeoRSS is not a format.
686. Atom and GML Simple for OpenLayers (2008-02-17T21:46:12Z) in rest, web, atom
I submitted the new Atom and GMLSF formats to OpenLayers (#1366) and look forward to working with the developers to get them into an upcoming release.
685. Still Not Getting it (2008-02-16T20:53:58Z) in open source, media
Open source is about freedom, not about cost-free operation. How many times does this have to be said?
684. Growth of the "GeoWeb" (2008-02-15T19:37:30Z) in industry
My own take is that the WxS-based "GeoWeb" is more like Gopher circa 1993.
682. Geo Web Frameworks (2008-02-13T19:51:46Z) in web
The biggest reason to go with Django is, of course, PostGIS.
681. FDO and OSGeo Incubation (2008-02-13T17:22:09Z) in open source
OSGeo's "A for effort" incubation policy needs to be reconsidered.
680. Entity Tag (2008-02-13T03:39:55Z) in web
OGC update sequence? Why bother when HTTP/1.1 already specifies ETag?
679. Watching the Telethon (2008-02-11T18:39:44Z) in industry
If your tech company doesn't have, or can't learn, the Javascript, SQL, and Java skills needed to deploy and run OpenLayers, PostGIS, and GeoServer, you'll be passed sooner or later by the companies that do.
677. Shapely 1.0.1 (2008-02-08T20:15:55Z) in the lab, python
A bug fix release.
675. ESRI's RESTful API (2008-02-06T21:58:00Z) in web, industry
There is resource-oriented thinking going on at ESRI.
674. Feeding Birds Again (2008-02-06T20:51:29Z) in life
I can't decide which feels more liberating: posting amateur bird photos, or writing about electoral politics.
673. Getting Political (2008-02-05T20:58:23Z) in politics
Democrats caucus in Colorado. It looks like it's going to be an interesting process.
672. Taking my own Advice (2008-02-05T19:36:48Z) in web
I had broken links on a previous blog post, but 2 mod_rewrite rules have moved resources and put all the services in working order for HTTP-savvy clients.
671. Long Live Chicago Crime (2008-02-05T18:08:49Z) in web, media
The transition of chicagocrime.org has been noted by geo-bloggers, but they are missing a key part of the story: the resources that had been hosted on chicagocrime.org are not dead at all.
670. The Planet of Digital Antiquities (2008-02-02T00:04:36Z) in media, community, pleiades, digital humanities
Have a peek into the world of ancient texts, historical sims, and virtual archaeology.
668. Buzzwords (2008-01-31T20:12:43Z) in media, web, industry, data
"GeoWeb" (or "Geospatial Web", or "Geospatial Semantic Web") is the one that really gets to me.
667. Beyond the RDBMS (2008-01-31T15:31:22Z) in industry, data
Martin Davis's post reminds me that the GIS industry, or at least the open source corner of it, still trails the Web community in thinking about data.
666. Frugosapalooza (2008-01-30T15:35:56Z) in community
Watch the wiki page for details.
664. Rtree, Shapely, and WorldMill: Jamming Econo (2008-01-24T23:25:46Z) in the lab, python, data
I just added Shapely 1.0 and Rtree 0.4 to the Gdawg buildout, where they join WorldMill 0.1. Together they create a friendly environment on the C Python platform where you can read GIS feature data, spatially index it, and manipulate its geometries.
663. Rtree 0.4 and Spatialindex 1.3 (2008-01-24T17:43:02Z) in the lab, python
I'm pleased to announce the releases of Rtree 0.4 and spatialindex 1.3.0.
662. EveryBlock (2008-01-24T03:37:16Z) in geography
Speaking of Django: EveryBlock, a new startup.
661. Django People Map (2008-01-23T18:57:37Z) in python, community
By Simon Willison: Django People. Using GeoDjango, maybe?
660. This Blog is for the Birds (2008-01-22T18:33:07Z) in recreation
He's giving me that annoyed look because I'm sticking the camera right in his face.
659. Feeding Birds and Feeding Birds (2008-01-21T22:30:31Z) in life, geography
Sadly, I'd removed my camera from our backpack just this morning or I would have been able to get a awesome wildlife action photo on my doorstep.
658. OSM Outshining GDAL and MapServer? (2008-01-19T20:00:17Z) in community
It's interesting that a technically savvy person starting from scratch today might find the OSM community first and completely overlook the old timers.
656. Data vs API (2008-01-18T19:36:50Z) in media
Brady Forrest nearly equates Zillow's free (as in speech) neighborhood boundary data with Urban Mapping's free (as in beer, while supplies last, domestic only - hey, no sharing) neighborhood ID API.
654. .aspx Considered Harmful (2008-01-18T15:54:16Z) in web
Says John Udell. I've been saying this about .php extensions for a while. One of my favorite URLs from last year: http://www.foss4g2007.org/presentations/html.php. html.php cracks me up.
652. Open Source CS-Map? (2008-01-17T19:34:19Z) in industry, media
Any news? Is it waiting on a MapGuide release or what?
648. Shapely Windows Installer (2008-01-14T21:59:50Z) in the lab, python
Thanks to distutils, even a know-nothing Linux zealot like myself can make Python distributions for Windows.
649. Count the Pikas (2008-01-14T18:31:00Z) in geography, media
Migrating poleward is not an option for every critter that lives on the alpine islands of North America.
647. On Config File Design (2008-01-11T17:19:11Z) in programming
Adding support for an interpreted language like Python or Javascript seems like a neat way to add more power while keeping simple things simple.
646. Parts is Parts (2008-01-09T22:05:32Z) in industry
Well, maybe, if you overlook a score of architectural and implementation details like protocols, wire formats, governance, terms of use, data quality, etc.
645. Atompubbase (2008-01-09T17:03:47Z) in rest, web, python
Joe Gregorio's atompubbase looks promising. To try it out, I ran the apexer program against my Hammock site.
644. Plone Geo Interoperability (2008-01-09T05:10:53Z) in plone, the lab
Zope's component architecture was designed in part to make it easier to bridge such gaps. Since I'm the one arguing that there is a real benefit to a less naive GIS approach, the obligation to build the bridge is on me. Geographer is my solution.
643. Count the Bears (2008-01-08T16:55:18Z) in media, geography
And just the other day Joe Francica was telling us that polar bear numbers are actually increasing. I think that was the moment that All Points Blog jumped the shark.
642. Geography on Plone (2008-01-07T17:11:32Z) in plone
By request, here's a repost of the summary of geographic software for Plone that I sent to the PrimaGIS and PCL community email list.
641. Shapely Manual (2008-01-02T23:08:14Z) in the lab
If you're using Shapely, I'd appreciate your feedback on the manual. It's the last ticket on the Shapely 1.0 milestone.
640. Open as Possible Standards (2008-01-02T16:37:19Z) in community, industry
Tantek Çelik's call for standards that are as open as possible appeals to me.
639. GDAL and GEOS Releases (2008-01-01T21:43:21Z) in python
GDAL 1.5.0 and GEOS 3.0.0 were released during the holiday and are now used in the Knowhere and Gdawg buildouts.
637. Britannia Superior Preview (2007-12-28T20:03:25Z) in pleiades
Also known as Barrington Atlas Map 8. Just got this data back the other day. Roads, settlements, mines, you can just pick out a few copper mines in what we now call Wales. We'll be rolling it out into the Pleiades site in the new year.
636. MSWKT (2007-12-27T19:55:43Z) in industry
I don't understand how you'd expect a different approach from Microsoft. Being a late entry, the company could benefit from shaking things up a bit.
635. Back (2007-12-27T14:59:48Z) in geography
I miss Seattle already. Normal posting from good old Fort Cowpie will resume shortly.
634. Last REST Post of 2007 (2007-12-18T18:56:14Z) in rest, web
Here's the take-away from the past year's discussion about REST and geospatial:
633. Knowhere Project Wiki (2007-12-17T20:27:38Z) in the lab, zope
It's my Christmas present to everyone. What, you were expecting something other than open source software?
630. Grok, the Paleolithic Geographer (2007-12-15T08:21:15Z) in zope, the lab, pleiades
The paleolithic geographer isn't concerned about geographic information systems. He wants a know-where-things-are system; hence the name of my demo app: Knowhere.
629. The Pleiades Fitness Program (2007-12-11T16:04:05Z) in recreation
You must pounce on the snow here in town because it doesn't last long.
627. OpenAerialMap Fort Collins (2007-12-07T15:40:07Z) in data
I just finished filling out the "paperwork" and voila. Christopher Schmidt did everything else.
625. Uranium Mining in our Backyard (2007-12-05T16:28:35Z) in community, industry, geography
I've been following the story but missed this Times piece. Fortunately, the world's best mother-in-law clipped and mailed it to us.
623. Peutinger's Map (2007-12-04T19:42:55Z) in pleiades
"Peutinger's" map, about which geo blogs are buzzing today, happens to be the subject of work at the Ancient World Mapping Center. Pleiades and the Barrington Atlas cite Miller's 1916 study, the Itineraria Romana.
622. My Fantasy Movie (2007-12-04T18:51:06Z) in recreation, media
Today I discover that I'm not alone in this fantasy land. Wacky.
620. Geo Microformat (2007-12-03T19:11:57Z) in data, web
I'm interested in applying hAtom to the Pleiades XHTML docs. Add location and I'd have something like an "hGeoRSS", but the geo microformat isn't going to be adequate for expressing the locations of Pleiades roads or regions.
619. New Geospatial Packages for Zope (2007-12-02T15:36:59Z) in the lab, python, pleiades, zope
As part of my work on migrating Pleiades to Plone 3, I'm distilling Zope packages from the original old-style Plone products.
618. Fake Ed Parsons (2007-11-30T15:25:46Z) in recreation
Funny. Yesterday I would have bet that a Fake Jack Dangermond would have been the first to appear.
617. Agile Schmagile (2007-11-28T21:57:49Z) in industry, programming
Just kidding, Dave. I know people feel the same about REST.
616. Watching the Watchers (2007-11-28T20:25:24Z) in industry, media
"Domestic Spying, Inc." via an All Points Blog post is a interesting look at GEOINT and the corporations who profit from expanding the War on Terror's home front.
615. Geo Products Example Buildout (2007-11-27T21:24:07Z) in the lab, pleiades, plone
I've made a Plone 3 buildout to get people up and running with reliable versions of PleiadesGeocoder, SpatialIndex, and all their dependencies.
614. Rtree 0.3.0 (2007-11-26T23:55:03Z) in the lab
This version allows you to delete objects from indexes and perform nearest neighbor queries.
613. Map of the Napa-Bordeaux Greenline (2007-11-23T16:51:24Z) in food and drink, geography
East of the of the line the greater efficiency of shipping by boat offsets the distance between Bordeaux and Napa.
612. Geocoding, GeoRSS, and KML for Plone 3 (2007-11-21T17:07:35Z) in plone, pleiades
I've made the necessary configuration changes so that PleiadesGeocoder 1.0b2 works with Plone 2.5 or Plone 3.0.
611. Kindle: meh (2007-11-20T15:46:31Z) in media
I like paper books. I like the user interface and I like the freedom.
610. That's About Right (2007-11-17T20:28:02Z) in python, community
Howard Butler sums up my motivations pretty well. The one factor he doesn't mention: community.
609. WorldMill (2007-11-16T23:19:59Z) in the lab, python
Enough blogging, here it is: WorldMill 0.1.
608. OGR, Ctypes, and Cython, Again (2007-11-15T03:24:30Z) in python
My previous benchmarks were made using the original recipe ogr.py module from GDAL 1.3.2. I saw some numbers that compelled me to try to new Python bindings from GDAL 1.4.3. Here are the new results (same benchmark code) on that same machine:
607. OGR, Ctypes, Cython (2007-11-13T20:19:50Z) in python, software engineering
Leave now if you're not into Python extension programming and performance benchmarking: we're headed deep into the weeds.
606. Grok Does AtomPub (2007-11-09T05:04:52Z) in zope
Nice. I'd like to bend Grok's REST components to fit Pleiades after our move to Plone 3.
605. Transactional Refinery (2007-11-08T19:50:46Z) in python, zope, software engineering
Talk about serendipity: repoze.tm.
604. OGR GeoJSON driver (2007-11-06T15:13:57Z) in data
Mateusz Loskot just completed the inverse of my last project: pulling GeoJSON data through the OGR abstract model.
602. Taming the OGR (2007-11-06T07:26:53Z) in python
This evening I made a protoype of a smoother, simpler interface to the industrial-strength vector data functions in libgdal.
601. PleiadesGeocoder 1.0b1 (2007-11-06T00:22:08Z) in pleiades, plone
Here it is, the first 1.0 beta release of the ultimate content geo-annotation plugin for Plone 2.5: PleiadesGeocoder-1.0b1.
600. Spook Country (2007-11-05T18:18:04Z) in life
We're there. Otherwise, I'm enjoying William Gibson's "Spook Country". Plenty of geowanking.
599. OpenSocial, AtomPub, and GeoRSS (2007-11-02T21:33:00Z) in web, rest
AtomPub again. Jason points out that OpenSocial is also using {http://www.georss.org/georss}where.
598. Geospatial Media and the Environment (2007-11-02T16:55:45Z) in media
Has All Points Blog always been so overtly skeptical about climate change, or is it a response to the recent launch of the enthusiastically green and sustainable V1?
596. Rtree for the N800 (2007-10-24T18:38:57Z) in the lab
Rtree user Kenneth Christiansen has made Maemo Bora (N800 internet tablet SDK) debian packages for Rtree 0.1 and its dependencies.
595. Plone R-Tree Spatial Index (2007-10-23T04:58:37Z) in the lab, plone, zope
At the 2006 Plone Conference sprint, Shaun Walbridge and I wrote a Quadtree-based spatial index for Plone. Last week I finally made the time to rewrite the original Plone product into a persistent R-tree index.
594. PrimaGIS Sprint Summary (2007-10-22T15:49:42Z) in the lab, community, plone
The switch to OpenLayers is complete. Kai's original map interface was fine, but there are far more resources going into OpenLayers development.
593. Rocket City Baloney (2007-10-17T21:29:56Z) in industry, media
Am I ever glad I took a pass (sorry, Tom) on coming down to Huntsville for this.
592. Lines and Polygons in Plone (2007-10-17T04:35:05Z) in pleiades, plone
Also new is a form for setting the location of any Plone content. Location is still stored in GeoRSS (Simple) form in PleiadesGeocoder (mostly to delay content migration), but the form takes GeoJSON.
590. PrimaGIS Sprint (2007-10-13T14:46:28Z) in the lab, plone
Goodbye old map interface, hello OpenLayers.
589. AtomPubbing Librarians (2007-10-12T22:07:38Z) in web, data
The 1.0 version of the SWORD AtomPub profile was released today.
588. Nobel Peace Prize (2007-10-12T14:41:58Z) in life
Congratulations to Al Gore and the UN IPCC.
587. Clearly it's a Good Idea (2007-10-11T15:24:26Z) in media
When people start coming out of the woodwork to take credit.
586. Open Source Web Processing Versus ArcGIS Server (2007-10-10T18:35:52Z) in industry, open source
A RESTful web geo-processor that provides a DSL for describing complex processes and analyses (my preference would be for Javascript ala CouchDB) and lets users create new processing resources from these scripts could certainly begin to replace ArcGIS Server.
585. Open Source and Sustainability (2007-10-10T17:38:18Z) in open source, community, media
Getting locked into buying proprietary seed is not the way to sustainable agriculture, and getting locked into buying boxed proprietary software is not the way to sustainable digital enterprises. Where is the sustainability media on the subject of open source?
584. Better Python Practices for the GeoWeb (2007-10-10T15:59:23Z) in python, programming
It pains me to see novices taught poor Python programming practices, and so I can't resist making a few corrections to this post. Processing and marking up data into KML is a simple task that can be used to teach better practices. Here are 3 easy ones.
582. RFC 5023 (2007-10-08T23:37:26Z) in web
It's "AtomPub", not "Atompub" as I've been writing.
581. NEH/CNR Slides (2007-10-03T17:29:49Z) in digital humanities, pleiades
The slides that I will be using at the National Endowment for the Humanities/Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche "Using New Technologies to Explore Cultural Heritage" conference are online.
580. Horothesia Blog (2007-10-01T17:22:53Z) in digital humanities, media
My boss, Tom Elliot, is an expert epigrapher as well as a fine programmer and geo hacker, and has a new blog on these subjects: Horothesia.
579. REST at FOSS4G (2007-09-29T21:31:25Z) in community, web
Charlie, Chris, and I got to speak in succession and tag team on REST. I don't know if anybody sat through all three of these talks (and kept their sanity), but we did get some good momentum going.
578. GeoJSON 1.0a1 (2007-09-29T18:09:56Z) in the lab, python
I have updated GeoJSON, tagged it as 1.0a1, and uploaded it to the Python Package Index.
577. Wednesday FOSS4G Update (2007-09-26T23:36:16Z) in community
The conference wifi melted down this morning, but the event is otherwise running well.
576. Libya and Western Civilization (2007-09-23T21:50:31Z) in geography
Speaking of Cyrene, on page 3 of the Times International section is an article about Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a Ph.D. student at the London School of Economics, and the son of Libya's president.
575. Finding me at FOSS4G (2007-09-23T17:51:50Z) in community
It's the biggest open source GIS conference ever. I have no booth and my physical appearance is modal. How then are you going to find me?
574. Toddler Travel Tip (2007-09-23T17:24:26Z) in life
The flight went really well, and I'd be remiss if I didn't share the secret to traveling happily with a toddler.
573. Rethinking JSON for Geospatial (2007-09-20T16:25:53Z) in data
Limitations or quirks of our implementations shouldn't be engraved into our standards.
572. Ahoy! PP to Starboard (2007-09-19T14:44:07Z) in python
Now, thar be first-class privateerin'. Cap'n Perry dug up the secret of doublin' yer firepower.
570. Shapely Manual (2007-09-12T16:08:41Z) in the lab
It will refer to and quote from the Java Topology Suite (of which GEOS is a port) Technical Specs and the OGC Simple Features Specification for SQL, and explain specifics such as the difference between GEOS's topological operations and the set operations that are standard in Python.
569. OGC and Atompub (2007-09-10T20:57:15Z) in industry, web
Rebranding Atompub as "Federated Geo-synchronization Services" does nothing for me, but at least it is now on the map, so to speak.
568. Feed Paging and Archiving (2007-09-10T19:05:20Z) in web
Many of the initial misgivings about applying Atompub to geospatial problems had to do with uncertainty about totality and partiality of feeds. RFC 5005 is attempting to bring more feed standardization to the internet community.
567. Mush Update (2007-09-10T18:47:24Z) in web
I've updated Mush to use my feedparser.py enhancements and Shapely 1.0a3. Now it will parse GeoRSS GML, Simple, and W3C geometries of all types (points, lines, polygons) from source feeds.
566. GeoRSS Patch for Universal Feedparser (2007-09-08T19:54:27Z) in python
Recognize that? It's GeoJSON. Simple points, lines, polygons, boxes, and GML points, linestrings, and polygons can be parsed. Since entry["where"] also provides the Python Geo Protocol, you can use it immediately with Shapely.
565. Open Source GIS in Montpellier? (2007-09-07T15:51:45Z) in community, geography
Y a-t-il des utilisateurs? I'm moving to Montpellier next year and would like to make some contacts in the region.
564. Shapely for Python 3.0 (2007-09-06T18:28:57Z) in the lab, python
Shapely is a thin wrapper for libgeos_c. How thin? With help from the 2to3 tool, I ported Shapely to Python 3.0 in less than an hour, that's how thin.
563. Pleiades Data Update: Cyrene (2007-09-05T14:57:05Z) in pleiades
Yesterday we uploaded Barrington Atlas places from Cyrene (map 38, the region now known as Libya) to Pleiades.
562. Shapely 1.0a1 (2007-09-04T18:27:06Z) in the lab, python
I have just uploaded Shapely to the Python Package Index. For more info see http://pypi.python.org/pypi/Shapely/1.0a1.
561. Python 3.0a1 (2007-09-01T19:28:43Z) in python
Like others, the first thing I checked was the unicode default:
560. "Welcome to my World" (2007-08-30T17:12:59Z) in community, industry, food and drink
Despite the lip service paid to entrepreneurship in this country, our American society is in fact hostile toward small, innovative agricultural producers.
559. More Harvest (2007-08-29T15:18:24Z) in food and drink, recreation
The more gardening posts in GIS blogs, the better, I say. Too bad we're so distant: I'd happily trade some of my scruffy (the soil here in the northwest corner of the Fort is not ideal) red potatoes for some of Kurt's deformed carrots.
558. Brew Credit Due (2007-08-29T04:00:06Z) in food and drink
There's a lot of good people working hard at New Belgium, and the company itself is a good citizen, so it's great to be able to rave about one of their beer again.
557. Geo-Atompub Interop Day 5 September (2007-08-28T17:01:00Z) in web, vulgar geography, software engineering, rest
A bunch of us are going to try to meet up on 9/5 to test the interoperability of our Geo-Atompub implementations and hash out the problems that crop up.
556. Lukewarm Fusion (2007-08-28T16:26:46Z) in industry
Here's one for the FortiusOne folks: what's the spatial distribution of Fusion Center funding? What's the pork factor?
555. Harvest Time (2007-08-26T21:33:12Z) in food and drink, recreation
As it turns out, there is such a thing as too many beans after all.
554. We are Made of Star Stuff (2007-08-24T17:51:37Z) in recreation
All the buzz about Google Sky has prompted me to re-up some image companions to my 18th blog post from April 2005.
552. The Petty Bureaucrats of Wikipedia (2007-08-23T15:22:47Z) in community, media
Apparently, once the crowd to which you are outsourcing grows large enough, it may spawn a class of self-appointed bureaucrats who are more concerned about the process than the results.
550. Map Servers (2007-08-21T16:28:59Z) in mapserver, data
Map servers -- the CGI programs and servlets that render infinitely customizable map images of any scale, size, and format -- remain useful in this tiled world.
549. Plone 3.0 (2007-08-21T15:03:30Z) in plone
Plone 3.0 is released today. Built-in versioning, slick ajax interface, and more.
548. GIS Certification (2007-08-17T17:33:37Z) in industry
I'm skeptical about gatekeepers and skeptical about the value of GIS certification.
547. Tufte and Cartography (2007-08-16T17:55:03Z) in cartography
stuff. My favorite Tufte tip is outlining regions with a slightly darker hue of the fill color. Because our visual system is non-linear, a difference as small as 5-6% can sharpen up your map dramatically.
546. Why WPS? (2007-08-16T14:41:49Z) in web, industry
What exactly does one gain here by abstracting away the Web?
545. Tiles (2007-08-15T18:01:37Z) in rest, data
If you want to cache effectively, you must switch your design over to a finite number of view resources. Tiles, in another word.
544. Explaining REST (2007-08-14T22:57:18Z) in rest, web
Charlie's latest are good posts that don't require continual referral to the HTTP/1.1 or OWS specs.
543. That's not Agile Geography (2007-08-14T15:19:08Z) in industry
Looks like the standards architects are not going for the KML + Atompub idea after all.
542. Camping With Google Earth (2007-08-13T22:55:49Z) in recreation
Last week I used Google Earth to scout sites for my 21 month-old daughter's first ever camping trip.
541. REST Can't Handle Rasters and Coverages? (2007-08-10T18:07:47Z) in rest, web
There may be geospatial problems that REST can't tackle, but access to arbitrary regions of a coverage is not one of them.
540. Buildouts for the Lab (2007-08-10T16:19:16Z) in software engineering, the lab, zope
Ah, the benefits of collaborating with a real software engineer in an open source project.
539. Stop Using Mapscript: Finally (2007-08-09T23:06:29Z) in mapserver, python
I've explained the motivation previously. You can now transform the problem of writing intricate, error-prone mapscript code into a more tractable template interpolation problem.
538. OGC, GeoDRM, and Me (2007-08-09T16:33:32Z) in industry, python
My hackles rise every time I read that GeoDRM is one of the OGC's advanced technologies. I simply do not find it easy to look past it to the other more sensible working groups and standards.
537. Shorter Sebastian Good (2007-08-09T15:18:11Z) in media
Let's you and him fight. Nevertheless, I always enjoy Sebastian's writing.
536. KML Module: Atom (2007-08-08T22:58:53Z) in web
An Atom module would help developers implement Atompub clients and services by delineating a clear boundary between media and metadata elements.
534. OWSLib 0.2.1 (2007-08-06T16:50:06Z) in the lab, python
It now works with no external dependencies on Python 2.5.
532. Atompub and KML Demo (2007-08-04T08:13:46Z) in web, the lab, vulgar geography
I have repurposed my Hammock application into a demonstration of the Atompub, KML, and Google Earth integration.
531. The Shapely Alchemist (2007-08-03T17:04:15Z) in python, the lab, data
Following the example at byCycle.org I've figured out how to use Shapely geometries with SQLAlchemy and PostGIS.
530. Welcome Spatialindex (2007-08-02T16:25:36Z) in the lab, python, open source
We offered Marios Hadjieleftheriou a home at the GIS Python Labs for his spatialindex library, and I'm pleased to say he has accepted.
529. Uninformed (2007-08-02T15:02:44Z) in rest, web, media, industry
The industry mainstream has now heard of REST, but not everyone gets it yet.
483. Amateurs: STFU (2007-07-31T16:44:14Z) in media
I'd love to see Jeff Thurston debate Larry Lessig on the merits of "The Cult of the Amateur".
527. Selectively Running Python Tests (2007-07-31T06:33:55Z) in python
With unittest your best bets are to name tests so they cmp() predictably, or subclass TestLoader and implement your own testing ordering (sorting) algorithm.
526. OGC WTF of the Day (2007-07-30T13:19:02Z) in industry, web
I'm reading over the WFS 1.1.0 spec (0GC 04-094) and see in section 6.3.1.
525. KML Output for Mush (2007-07-28T21:28:25Z) in vulgar geography, the lab
Add format=kml to a Mush request to get a KML document instead of the Atom feed default.
524. Planning Alerts and Findspots (2007-07-27T15:45:58Z) in vulgar geography
Here's an application of Mush that might even be useful to an antiquist: UK planning alerts within 1 kilometer of Celtic coin finds in Cambridgeshire [feed] [map].
523. Mush, 2 Feeds (2007-07-27T06:47:34Z) in web, the lab, python, vulgar geography
Mush, my prototype feed geo-processing service based on Shapely and the Universal Feed Parser can now find the sphere of influence intersections of 2 different feeds.
522. Holy Memory Holes, Batman! (2007-07-26T20:47:42Z) in community
Just one year? Isn't it more like 2? As I recall, some MapServer developers were already under an NDA with Autodesk in June 2005, 2 months before I was invited to join.
521. Web Home for Spatial Reference Systems (2007-07-26T16:13:30Z) in web
Christopher Schmidt and Howard Butler have teamed up to create http://spatialreference.org/, a home on the Web for user-generated spatial and coordinate reference systems.
520. La Mort du Tour (2007-07-26T14:38:18Z) in recreation
Yes, I got suckered back into watching the TdF this year, even though I figured it was pretty likely to have another meltdown.
519. Geo at Plone4Artists Sprint (2007-07-25T20:02:58Z) in plone, media
David Siedband and Sally Kleinfeldt are working on implementing the interfaces of Plone Maps and zgeo.geographer for GPS-tagged digital photos uploaded to Plone, making it easy to make a Google Map or provide GeoRSS feeds of photo locations.
518. Atompub! (2007-07-25T18:23:41Z) in web
One of those areas where the Atom Publishing Protocol takes off just might be geospatial.
517. mod_wsgi (2007-07-24T16:11:06Z) in python, web
Easy. According to the author, mod_wsgi is feature complete and a 1.0 release candidate is coming soon.
516. Games (2007-07-23T17:36:22Z) in community
I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that, soon, any enterprise that is not also a rewarding, multi-dimensional game will struggle.
515. Web Geo-Processing, Pull Style (2007-07-20T23:10:17Z) in web
The growing consensus is that map image and feature services can be (and should be) done RESTfully. Is there any aspect of web GIS that cannot? Geo-processing, perhaps?
514. Going Big (2007-07-20T17:59:28Z) in food and drink
I'm throwing a party this weekend featuring my most ambitious ever grill-roasting enterprise: whole leg of pig with citrus marinade and sauce.
512. Sound Advice for INSPIRE (2007-07-18T16:06:44Z) in web, industry, data
Should INSPIRE's enterprise be a distributed object system, upgrading to new versions across the board simultaneously (and this certainly means rarely)? Or should it be more like The Web, allowing clients, servers, and data to be upgraded independently and as needed?
511. Mars Lander Blogging (2007-07-18T14:36:24Z) in community, the lab, python
Kurt Schwehr, who's making fink packages of OWSLib, Quadtree, and PCL-Core, is blogging about working on the Phoenix Mars Lander. Are these packages going to Mars, or helping from Earth? Let us know if the Lab can be of any assistance.
510. Why There is no REST in WxS (2007-07-18T13:02:26Z) in web, industry
OGC web services have no uniform interface, and therefore are not well suited for RESTful architectures. That's the why not.
509. Geo Blogs and Media (2007-07-17T18:01:36Z) in media
Do GIS/geo blogs have any such impact on the media?
508. Software and Camping Gear (2007-07-16T15:58:27Z) in software engineering
Why write new web GIS software? Why not add to MapServer? I'm going to explain by analogy: it's like picking camping gear.
507. The "GeoWeb Ecosystem"? (2007-07-13T16:41:34Z) in media
If Google is the primary source of the "GeoWeb Ecosystem", then it's a pretty limited and fragile ecosystem. Like the organisms living off hydrogen sulfide leaking from a deep-sea vent, we must huddle closely around an API, pray to Neptune that it doesn't shut off, and dream of brighter, richer realms.
506. North and South (2007-07-11T21:11:14Z) in web, rest
Steve C.-P. pointed me to this bad analogy by David Chappell that Elliotte Rusty Harold picks off and runs the other way for a touchdown.
505. Chocolate and Peanut Butter (2007-07-11T18:10:05Z) in media
The combination of chocolate and peanut butter is in no way better than pure chocolate. Hanke is either a barbarian, or is cynically perpetuating the fraudulent premise of Reese's Peanut-Butter Cups.
504. Real Life Object Databases (2007-07-11T15:05:58Z) in data, python, zope
I enjoyed Martin Davis's love letter to the relational model, but would like to remind readers that object databases aren't entirely academic.
503. Resource-Oriented WFS: Filters (2007-07-10T04:55:05Z) in web
Posting a query destroys the uniform interface, and should only be done if there is no other option. In this case, there is another option, and a fine one: implement filter resources subordinate to feature type resources.
502. INSPIRE Tech Choice is Discouraging (2007-07-06T20:14:39Z) in industry, web
HTTP REST is not about light weight (RFC 2616 is just as heavy as a WxS spec), it's about working with the grain of the Web.
501. Are GML Documents Hypermedia? (2007-07-06T15:38:47Z) in web, industry
XLink is part of GML, but I've never seen a WFS return GML that links to other resources. Does anybody use GML like this, and what client would they use?
500. Rendering Shapely Geometries in Matplotlib (2007-07-05T21:26:42Z) in the lab, python
I hope you'll agree that this is considerably simpler than the code I used at the 2005 Open Source Geospatial workshop. An even more direct solution for ogr.py fans would be to provide the Numpy array interface directly from OGR geometries.
499. Buh-bye Blogroll (2007-07-01T17:56:23Z) in media
I dropped the blogroll from my blog's home page since it wasn't accurately reflecting what I read. Go ahead and unlink me if you're keeping score.
498. Good Things (2007-06-30T04:56:59Z) in community, web, the lab, python, industry, plone
2 more REST-related presentation abstracts submitted to the FOSS4G conference: