T.Dubya.

I gave a talk last night to the Portland Python User Group at Webtrends on the geospatial capabilities of the Django web application framework.  In addition to showing off GeoDjango, I took their basic WorldBorders sample and extended it to provide a GeoJSON web service that OpenLayers could consume.

Presentation Slides

World_Borders Tutorial_Plus (Source Code)

I essentially took a render_to_geojson utility developed by my friend Dane Springmeyer and put together a quick and dirty GeoJSON web service.  The output from this service is ready to be consumed by an OpenLayers GeoJSON protocol.  I then combined that with the GeoExt ‘Feature Store In An Ext Grid’ example and gave it a nice OpenStreetMap base layer.

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In mid-July we fired the Tin Man for the third time over at Careen’s place near Johnson Creek.  We unloaded last week and we’ve improved by leaps and bounds.  The kiln fired much more evenly and we added soda (baking and ash) for the first time giving the pots a nice sheen and some much more vivid colors on the clay.  I didn’t use a single glaze this time on my work, a first.

Firing details and additional photos can be found on Careen’s blog

Thought I would point out another article about Ecotrust’s involvement in the Calfornia marine life protection act initative (MLPAI).  Specifically our work interviewing fisherman in the south coast region.  The goal was to capture which areas are most important to these fisherman, by species and by port, so that people lobbying for the fisherman have the best information available and the impact of marine reserves on their bottom line can be reduced in an analytical way.

I wish I was able to show you the maps we’ve produced, they’re really something, and I really think they’re going to help the decision making process.  I should create some sample maps to display.

It’s important to remember that all of interviews are done under a very strict privacy agreement and only the summarized maps are made available so that individual fishing spots are not identifiable as much as possible.  The maps are also made available to a very small number of people for decision making.  The article doesn’t seem to make this key point very well as you’ll notice from peoples comments.

I couchsurfed my first place last weekend.  I was traveling to DC for the first time for the awards ceremony I mentioned in my last post and I wanted to come a few days early to see some sites and meet some folks.  What better way than by staying with complete strangers (with good references)!

Ningxi Liu and her fellow dorm-mates at George Washington University were kind enough to host me.  I showed up on their doorstep on Saturday right off a red-eye from Portland.  An hour later we were emerging out of the subway in santa suits for Santarchy DC ‘08.  I actually bought a suit in Portland and brought it with me…

Me and Ningxi on the DC Metro rail

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Open OceanMap Screenshot

It’s nice to see some news sources running stories on our software development at Ecotrust.  We received a Mellon Award last week in DC for our work on Open OceanMap.  OPB and and San Francisco Chronicle were kind enough to interview and run stories presenting the case for our software and its use to capture fishermen’s knowledge to try and minimize the impact of implementing marine reserves on fishing communities.

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I signed up at couchsurfing.com the other day.  Really a great resource they’ve put together.  It’s so much more than hooking up free places to stay.  People coming to stay with you and sharing their culture, insights and knowledge with you.  Traveling to a distant place and truly immersing oneself in the culture.

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Wandered up to Nanaimo, BC this week.  They don’t make it to easy to get there sometimes.  Stephen and I ended up hopping the max train to the airport, plane to vancouver, cab to the ferry, ferry to south nanaimo, cab to dowtown Nanaimo.  Geez.  Both cabs were little Prius’, nice.

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I picked up a couple of those digital signal converters for our ‘ancient’ TV today. Before I did I questioned whether or not to just get rid of the damn TV altogether. We don’t watch it much. But then Dalina remembered we’ll be getting two OPB channels now with the digital signal, not just one. I’m a sucker for Law and Order too… Now the question is how long until I get around to hooking them up…

I picked up the converters with those government-issue coupon cards. But why two if I only have one TV plugged in? Well, current technology is designed to break in 1-5 years and I don’t have any plans to get a hi-def TV. I’m holding out for when old TV’s will be retro cool. Same with my cell phone. You’ll see.

Wow, what a roller coaster start to the spring here at the North end of the valley.  No shortage of rain, sleet, snow and sporadic frosts.  Today I did get in some snap peas, chard and other leafy greens.  Plopping and sprinkling seeds always gives me warm fuzzies.

I cruised down to Eugene on Friday for the Hot Apps conference sponsored by Oregon URISA. Anselm Hook was along for the ride. The theme this year was open source GIS and was focused particularly on the web. Paul Ramsay was invited down to do the morning workshop which was essentially a crash course in web GIS. It included the use of free software and free API’s like Google maps.

There was excitement on the faces of some workshop attendees when we showed up at the end of the morning session.  Most of them work for local and state government agencies and had never had the opportunity to get their hands on this stuff.

I demoed the Inforain watershed locator and Forestland carbon calculator web tools along with the OpenOceanMap desktop tool based on QGIS.  They really liked seeing a web-based GIS being used to do more than just visualization and attribute display.  The carbon calculator is destined for greater things.  Most were also happy to know that OpenOceanMap has been field tested, being used for interviewing fisherman down in California as part of the process of defining marine protected areas.