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.

Here’s an excerpt from the GeoJSON web service:

{
 "srid": 900913,
 "crs": {
  "type": "link",
  "properties": {
   "href": "http://spatialreference.org/ref/epsg/900913/",
   "type": "proj4"
  }
 },
 "type": "FeatureCollection",
 "features": [
  {
   "geometry": {
    "type": "MultiPolygon",
    "coordinates": [
     [
      [
       [
        -9774223.6553460006,
        1955094.8610100001

Here's the web service view:

def borders(request):

    borders_qs = WorldBorders.objects.filter(subregion=request.GET.get('subregion'))

    return render_to_geojson(

        borders_qs,

        geom_attribute='geom',

        mimetype = 'text/plain',

        proj_transform=900913,

        pretty_print=True

    )

and here's the client feature store that I hooked to it:

// create feature store, binding it to the vector layer
store = new GeoExt.data.FeatureStore({
    layer: vecLayer,
    fields: [
        {name: 'name', type: 'string'},
        {name: 'area', type: 'float'},
        {name: 'pop2005', type: 'float'}
    ],
    proxy: new GeoExt.data.ProtocolProxy({
        protocol: new OpenLayers.Protocol.HTTP({
            url: "/world/borders/json?subregion=13",
            format: new OpenLayers.Format.GeoJSON()
        })
    }),
    autoLoad: true
});

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

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.

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

What a blast.  We all met on the steps of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.  By 1pm there was probably a couple hundred of us and judging by peoples reaction we were nothing short of a spectacle.  Traffic was jamming up with gawkers and families getting photos with the crazy santas.

Hippy santa spreading the love

Did I mention it was cold that day? Jesus didn't seem to mind

DC couchsurfing contingent at Santarchy

Santas on the carousel. The operators about shit when they saw all of us approaching.

There's nothing quite like visiting monuments with two to three hundred other santas

Trekking to the washington monument

Everyone needs christmas candy, even passing cars.

Official looking folks didn't seem to mind us. This guy wanted a Lamborghini for Christmas. All he got was Ferrari santa.

Bad santa talking smack in front of the white house

Barrack was nice enough to pay us a visit.

There were bleachers over by the white house christmas area, perfect for santarchy carols.

The elves did exhibit some lewd behavior

The santarchy march ended without arrests or children crying at the sight of hundreds of santas.  Parents were quick to comfort their children explaining that we were assistants to the big man himself.

Jaco, an aspiring teacher from Germany was also couchsurfing at Ningxi’s pad.  He was traveling down the east coast.  We wandered various Smithsonian museums together and had a great time talking about our homes and cultural differences.  We both agreed your more likely to do interesting, fun, crazy stuff by couchsurfing than if you were to stay in a hotel.  Couchsurfing unites people that love to travel and as a host I feel you can’t help but want to share the best a place has to offer including your friends.

Jaco as a lesser known hybrid santa reindeer.

Jaco and I at the air and space museum

Capitol hill was smaller than I imagined

Walking back to the metro after a long day hitting museums.

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.

I think the Chronicle article was the best although they all have their errors and overgeneralizations.  I’m not sure the media ever gets it quite right.  Love the quote from Astrid, my VP.  “Just the name Ecotrust gives some fishermen heartburns,” she said. “They think we’re enviros - it’s a conversation starter.”   So true.  Telling people back in my hometown, Warrenton, the name of our organization and that we do fisheries and forestry work tends to ruffle their feathers a bit until I explain what we’re actually doing.

I bought my first suit jacket for the trip to DC.  Dalina was kind enough to spend 2 hours with me picking it all out.  I think I looked pretty sharp.  Tied my tie all by myself with the help of the internets.  Think I’ll start wearing a suit on a regular basis, hah.

Ecotrust Mellon Award Photo with Vinton Cerf

My friend Careen is going to Japan soon and told me she was looking to find some folks to stay with (couchsurf) while she’s there.  I’ll be taking a trip to DC in December for work and I really want to spend a couple extra days wandering around and do it on the cheap.

So, I put in my first surf request!  Very cool.  Sleeping on a couch sure puts the hurt on me, but most people seem to have a futon or air mattress.  Heck I’m easy, I’d settle for some floor space.  I joined the Portland discussion group as well and found an interesting community of people.  I hope to come across some local events to meet some folks in person.

Met with a lot of fisheries folks there in Nanaimo, Alaska fish and game, Canada dept. of fisheries and oceans, Oregon dept. of fish and wildlife, state of the salmon, ecotrust, lots of smart people.  Was I intimidated?  Yeah a little, but I spoke my mind and learned a lot.  We’re all collaborating as part of the Agency Partnership Initiative, funded by the Moore foundation.

Good beer was hard to come by up there.  The longwood brewpub had a couple good selections.  Their dunkelwiezenbrau, a dark wheat beer was pretty tasty.  Their stout lacked a nice foamy head when poured and was pretty warm for my taste but was pretty good.  Everything else I found was just so different from the same style beers in the Northwest.  The ESB’s and IPA’s where lacking severly in hoppiness.  Maybe the bitter part of my tongue is overloaded from all the fresh hop brews belmont station has been serving up.

The ride back was great, took my first seaplane trip across the channel back to Vancouver.  Little bumpy but too much fun and the landing is so smooth.  I think I felt safer in a little plan than a big jetliner.  Lower height and less moving parts maybe.

Saw Obama clinch the presidency just before boarding the plane back to the states.  I’m not sure I would have got on if McCain won…

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.

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.