I spent about 8 hours digging and planting this past weekend. More time in the gym this spring has paid off, and I'm much less sore this morning than the morning after last year. The garden plan is much the same, but with fewer eggplant, English and Armenian salad cucumbers instead of the bitter pickling variety, more green beans (you can never have too many beans), and potatoes. The spuds are an experiment. Our soil isn't ideal, but I think we can amend it sufficiently, and we've been told that our daughter will be greatly entertained by the treasure hunt for new potatoes.

Spring has been mild, and our plum's blossoms escaped the last hard frost for the first time since 2003. The NOAA CPC 3-month outlook for May-June-July has Fort Collins outside the high temperature anomaly, but we expect to have a drier than normal season. Looks like James Fee will be running his air conditioner overtime this summer.

Looks like I'm in. I'm pleased and, honestly, a bit surprised. WxS owns the open source GIS community, and I worried that a presentation on an alternative might be a bit too niche.

Update: Jason Birch and Paul Ramsey have more and more.

Just change the name and turn the table on the critics. Brilliant! Maybe ... no, nevermind.

Via Slashdot.

"Real-time Geography" is a better, more accurate catch phrase than "Geo-Web". The latter has been trading on universal, yet shallow recognition of the significance of the (HTTP REST) World Wide Web despite being composed of services that are not of a web.

I accept GML, more or less. I still don't see how W*S is better for real-time geography or environmental monitoring than good old HTTP.

Update: Google is determined to keep the Geo-Web banner flying. Via All Points Blog.

If you're into technical blogs, add Bill Thorp's MapWrecker. .NET is his working environment, but he's writing about issues of browsers, standards, and protocols that cross platform boundaries.

Sorry, I couldn't find a good image macro to go with the title.

Help! I'm turning into a librarian.

Not that anyone gives a damn about my approval, but I must give credit where it is due: this looks promising. Software quality and usability remain a bigger problem for open source GIS software adoption than lack of commercial support, but an index of providers won't hurt at all.

Mitt Romney and I have many things in common. We were both schooled in Utah (no, I went to the "U"), together we saved the Salt Lake Winter Games, and we love science fiction. The difference is that Mitt loves crappy sci-fi.

Does taste in SF make or break a candidacy? I think it's a more valid factor than a candidate's haircut, waistline, or iPod playlist (current media staples, joined just now by desert island necessities. What's next? Which "Lost" character do you most identify with?). Charles Stross's "Glasshouse" and Jo Walton's "Farthing" would be my litmus test. Did you read them? Did you like them?