04 Sep 2015
On The Heels of The Pioneer Corps
Mapping the footprints of the men who faced the thicket, built drifts
across rivers, played the debut soccer and rugby matches in a country.
Background
So, as I was working on some project and the corresponding write-up for
a blog post, I got a ‘technology’ interruption. The key data for the
project was ready now and the other processing was still ongoing
TileMill, GDAL, ASTER.. what not.
CartoDB was the interruption and particularly
Odyssey.js. My (initial)
intention was to make a pannable map with an ‘old’ theme. Since this was
going to be a spatio-temporal kind of a map I decided to give Odyssey.js
a go.
Tire-kicking
So in one afternoon I had a reasonable visualisation going! Having a
CartoDB account was one of the requirements for this exercise and I had
long back signed up for a free account when CartoDB came on to the
scene. I went with the Torque Template on
Odyssey.js. The point data I
uploaded to my CartoDB account, simply added a ‘integer’ field to
represent time. It wasn’t difficult to figure out how the story could be
put together using Markdown. And after two hours or so….voila!
The Map Story
#postscript
- The experience I had with Markdown helped me to quickly compile my
story.
- I used a great tool
by Ben Balter to upload a document of the narrative I used to plot
the points in the visualisation to my GitHub account via the
browser!
- Apart from the expediency with which one can make a animated
visualisation of one ’s data, there’s somewhat a restriction on the
cartography front. Thus I will still continue with my initial
intention on creating an old map.
- Take away from all this is that there are great tools out there to
help one do great things with minimal effort.
08 Jul 2015
Map-Teleportation
In a matter of minutes I was
‘cartoported’ from 2015
to circa 1980. It all started when I turned the Google Maps
Navigator on. In a matter of 10 minutes I was totally disoriented as
to where I was going. This was exacerbated by the season of the year.
Sunset quickly turned to night. I only wished it was summer time where
sunset can be experienced at 20:15 and not 17:58. The sacrifice I had
made for some costly mobile data was about
to count for nothing.
The first mistake
was over-reliance on the battery life of a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini. At
35% you’d think you still have some hours of ‘play-time’ with the
gadget. Two hours maybe, but that’s before you turn on GPS with
‘Locating method’ set to highest. Add to the mix a bumper-to-bumper
traffic jam, and the ETA starts to increase, the distance falling at a
snail’s pace.
I am one for no fiddling with a gadget while driving (#itcanwait), so I
ignored the thing and enjoyed the diversity of cars passing left and
right. The battery low warming was drowned by the engine sounds all
around. Even if I had heard it, it didn’t matter because I had no in-car
charger.
Stop and Look
5km or less after off-ramping from the busy national road into an
arterial road, the phone went dead. Disorientation quickly set in. The
comfort of just listening to “in 500 m take the left exit” was gone. I
tried to remember; What was that road again that I was supposed to
branch to? Was I to turn right or left after the third street? I
quickly realised I didn’t remember and the information boards were only
confirming what I already knew and not the finer detail I sought - when
am I supposed to make that left?
As it turned dark, I stopped at a Caltex fuel/ service station. After
strolling the place a bit, I found the favour of a petrol attendant whom
a later entrusted with my trusty Galaxy. Ten minutes was the most I was
gonna allow myself to remain ‘deaf’. I had already accumulated
considerable time since my battery had died.
Cartography By Hand 101
The 10 minutes recharge (with the wrong charger) got me 15% of charge. I
had pen and paper ready as I switched the phone on. I wrote down key
contacts, turned on Location, ran the Maps app, searched my address and
did my sketching. I think I did well. You be the judge… 
I got my confidence back. Drove slower to as to glance at the sketch now
and then.
In all this I learnt that one with a variety of tools in their toolbox
is at an advantage.
#postscript
- You probably have looked at the ‘survival’, must-haves for your car
but the pen and paper do come in handy. So does some Cartography
skills.
08 May 2015
I recollect a time, seven or
so years back, I was at a place where I celebrated the successful
download of a 10MB installation file. I would compress it
(WinRar), chop it up and then save it to several
1.44MB diskettes!
We have progressed well since that time but I still find myself using a
thin pipe to tape to the internet!
A Tinkeror’s Necessity
For any ‘Tinkeror’ internet access is an indespensable assay but, the
average Joe has to tinker more to get ahead. With the boom and
proliferation of FOSS tools, ability to download at will is largely a
given, the means, quite the contrary - for my part of the world. The
connections to the interweb are there and the speeds are reasonable. The
challenge is what you trade for to get your data chunk. Some great
geo-toys even assume you’re always connected to the internet. Well,
thanks to initiatives like the Smart
Cape,
I can budget the 500MB data allocation per month to download only
critical programs to my ‘workbench’ or trusty S4 Mini mobile phone. But
wait, I need to
to have my latest blog post published, and that requires some data
currency. Thanks to git, I don’t need to push a file horde, just a
simple markdown text file and a few pics. The 150MB/ month I get from my
Service Provider atomises within four days of
receiving it - provided I decide to be conservative about visiting
Facebook. Trouble starts when I need that 729MB Landsat 8
file to check out what is happening this
rainy season with the once disastarous Tokwe-Mukorsi
Dam.
I could download just the bands I need but, even that would deplete my
monthly quota by (~59MB x 3) 35% for a true colour band combination.
This is too much to sacrifice just for one project. Work arounds have to
be fathomed, working with a D-Link 3G 21Mbps, USB Modem and Mobile phone
(Mobile hotspot functionality).
# Wait For Night
I’m sure am not the only tinkeror who sacrifices sleep now and then.
Work all night, Sleep all day, Wake up at 8pm really confused
–
@lyzidiamond
At night, one can get a
bit of reasonably prized data. I ran a USSD request on my service
provider (07 May 2015) and got ‘Night Express’, 1GB for R10. Remember
this will be chowed by a single landsat scene multiband image and would
cost me a few hours of snooze.
An alternative service provider has a similar data deal:
But there is a catch, I get to sleep a bit later. Yay! 
# Sip or Chow & Work
There are 101 restaurants and Cafes with ‘Free-Wifi’ access. But having
to trade 50MB/ day for your phone number and email address is a bit too
much. Don’t even start on the idea of moving from Cafe to Cafe until a
project is done. Sipping on a cup of coffe for two hours! Really?
Google Search is like a pencil and scrap pad. I transfer mental notes to
there. More often than not I have typed Define:{Mind drift idea here}
in that nifty search box. The thought that my browser is connected to
the interweb never occurs in all of this.
# A Mesh Of All
Well, a 40Mbit/s ADSL line in the house, enabling one to read ‘Done!’
after a repository clone command simultaneously with the lifting of the
finger off the ‘Enter’ key would be ideal. Until then, patience and data
budgets remain the order of the day for the average Joe.
17 Mar 2015
Having a working Octopress install on Windows 7 was not straightforward
for me. This post outlines the steps I would recommend to have a working
environment.
Important: There are upcoming changes to the whole of the Octopress
‘platform’ so please readup, but while we wait
…
Step 0: Pre-Requisite:
To have the environment going, you’ll need to have
git up and running. But to save yourself the
tears setting up SSH and permission stuff, I recommend you download and
install Github for Windows. This will
provide you with a ‘reliable’ command line interface. The correct paths
for applications readily setup for you.
Step 1: Install Ruby
My working environment used the installer, Ruby
1.9.3-p194
(This might be an outdated version but it works well). Download and
install the package, be sure to tick the check-boxes as shown in the
image below (This will save you “command not found” errors later on)
Step 2: Install The Development Kit
Download
DevKit-tdm-32-4.5.2-20111229-1559-sfx
and extract this to C:/RubyDevKit.
Step 3: Create/ Choose Your Repositories Folder.
Create a folder, something like c:/github. In here we’ll store the files
and folders which make up our blog, configuration files, posts, images,
etc.
Step 4: Setting Up The Environment At The Command Line
Now, using the Git
Shell that was co-installed when you installed GitHub for Windows, run
the following command:
$ cd c:/RubyDevKit
$ ruby dk.rb init
$ ruby dk.rb install
Thats should have the Ruby environment setup for you. Now continue with:
$ cd ..
$ cd c:/github
$ git clone git://github.com/imathis/octopress.git yourusername.github.io
This clones the octopress repository. Now open the folder you cloned
Octopress to, viz yourusername.github.io. Locate the Gemfile and
using a text editor (I use Notepad++), open the file, replacing
https with http. This is important!
Now do:
$ cd c:/github/yourusername.github.io
$ gem install bundler
$ bundle install
If, after everything is done the word error does not appear on the
command line, you’re good to go. Still on the command line, continue
with:
This installs the default Octopress theme. I wanted a different
theme,
Justin-Kelly-Theme in particular, so had to run:
$ git clone https://github.com/wallace/justin-kelly-theme.git ./themes/justin-kelly-theme
$ rake install['justin-kelly-theme']
Step 5: Setting Up A Repository on GitHub
You probably already have a GitHub account. Logon to GitHub and create a
repository yourusername.github.io. Never mind the must have README
suggestion by GitHub. Copy your SSH clone URL to a text editor or
clipboard. It is similar to
git@github.com:yourusername/youruserame.github.io.git and you can see
it when you visit your newly created repository. So you should now be
having
https://github.com/yourusername/yourusername.github.io
Go back to the command line and run:
$ rake setup_github_pages
You will be prompted for a url: type
git@github.com:yourusername/youruserame.github.io.git
You can then continue on the command line with:
$ rake generate
$ rake deploy
Opening http://youruserame.github.io in
your browser should land you at your sparkling new blog, albeit, without
content.
Now it’s time for some content creation.
The Octopress Website has excellent
documentation to get you started. So head over there and get blogging.
After several tweaks to my blogging environment, I added a sidebar
twitter widget, Comments via Disqus and Search(Currently in the
works), to have a more appealing blog. Tutorials to do this are
ubiquitous on the web and since i didn’t struggle setting them up I saw
no need to include the howto with this post. I Include references below
for quick access.
“ Parting Quote ”
@erickndava, March 2015
If the problem is IT related in whatever manner, and you can’t seem to
find the solution, it’s probably on the internet - you just have to
google harder for it.
#postscript
> Murky waters. (tl;dr)
After I had initially setup my environment according to the procedure
outlined above, at somepoint evrything just broke. (could have been
some Windows update)I lost my debut post. Tried to setup again using,
Jekyll on Windows. That too had me
in circles of troubleshoot. So I did the whole thing over, following the
procedure here and Voila! I’m back in business.
Why another guide?
I chose Octopress and blogging on GitHub over other ‘easier’ methods for
a few reasons:
- This becomes my gentle introduction to git and GitHub
- I like to be in ‘control’, viz I enjoy seeing cogs of a technology/
implementation moving.
13 Mar 2015
On Names
So, I decided to start a blog and I picked a name - neaRThings, my
succinct version of Tobler’s first law of
geography,
should reflect the domain I am passionate about - ‘geo’ and atleast,
well, be intriguing enough.
Nowadays people don’t have time for verbose articles and I’m glad
you’re on the third sentence already! My few professional years have led
me to realise that
tinkerers make
things happen. I watched the Leaflet Mapping
library grow from being just a speck on GitHub
to the time it took on the Google Maps
API. I
also witnessed MapBox hire this Leaflet
dude as I
watched them evolve since I was following them closely because of
TileMill.(Evolved to Mapbox Studio)
Tinkering gives one an edge, with contentment, without the restrain of
structured seminars, classroom lessons or guided training. As a tinkerer
I can quit when I want to (rarely) without feeling guilty about it.
Research while troubleshooting, opens up (often unwanted) divergent
paths from the task at hand and the tools, technologies and tutorials
stumbled upon end up being appended to an ever growing ~ TODO!
Hencefrom
I learned about QGIS when it was still 0.7 (It’s at
2.8 at the date of writing this article), I was just about to leave
varsity then, later ditched the prospects of becoming a Land Surveyor
post graduation after having been made to wait the whole day by the
would-be-mentor, only to be told to come back the next day. The first
GIS related job was with an institution that had spreadsheets for a Land
Information System - I was heart broken. This was nothing near what had
been said in the interview and fell far short of what I had read from
ArcUser Magazines at college. A few
years later I met a mentor like no other, Johann Groenewald of
Tracks4Africa. He led me on a
teach-yourself path and gave me room to do it. I discovered QGIS again
and PostGIS as well this time. Things have not
been the same since.
(Aside: you may want to readup of T4A products and check out their
Africa Map. Their business
model still befuddles me. )
Along the way I discovered
gis.stackexchange.com and jumped onto
twitter. I was already faithfully
following geobloggers amongst them James
Fee - for starters, then the list
grew to warrant the use of Feedly and not
unparsable bookmarks in the browser. During my regular reading I bumbed
into a statement that almost described my situation and led to serious
introspection. It was by Paul Ramsey on his
blog.
“…a career where 90% of the activity is actually in data creation
(digitization monkey!) and publication (map monkey!), not in
analysis…”
It was an eye opener regarding where I wanted to be professionally. Ever
since I have been endeavouring to conform to the
Spatial-IT padigm.I also
took to heart the advice he gives in one of his presentations:
“Learn something new or hard. Learn something uncomfortable.”
And that was not the last on the matter as I kept coming across similar
thought provoking and spurring tweets:
Well, I had left varsity thinking spatial was special!
Henceto
Direct thyself.
From the one and many blog posts I have read. I drew the conclusion -
the best way to learn a technology, programming language or tool, is to
be handson with it. Get to do some project with it. Thus the
direction I am taking is to learn as much as I can through projects that
come to my mind … light bulb moments.
Another Blog?
The day job doesn’t necessarily task me enough in the directions of the
many tools and technologies out there. Sufficient for a day’s work are
the tools in the office. For diversity I choose to waddle the “forest”.
On this blog I intend to share my thoughts and experiences. Several
posts on career development I’ve read up on recommend blogging for
various reasons. I decided the following were relevant to me:
-
Improve my writing skills. - I like poetry and ‘twisted’
english. So I will see how much of that can be used in technical
writings. Metaphors say?
-
Cement the things I learn. - By writing down procedures, that
forces one to think about it, cementing the concepts in the head and
hopefully birthing alternative approaches.
-
Re-share what I have Read-up - rewrite what I would have
learnt. Often I have used steps of ‘how-to’ from more than one blog
post to get something right! Let others rediscover it. So I see no
harm in having three pseudo-identical articles on the web.
What Tree?
Yes, I am using the Windows Operating system. I have had my stint with
Linux, did 101 data recoveries from broken
Windows. At one time I became an OS ethusiast, carrying around several
distros on 3.5 inch floppy disks. I even damned the machines I was using
daily, calling them Windoze.The revolutionalism got me nowhere! The food
on my table and the railment I gait in, have been earned from spending
atleast 8 hours a day using this operating system. Working against it
doesn’t help but rather with it. Regardless, I can presently fire-off
Ubuntu off my
VirtualBox installation. To add to my
consolation, one of the
‘geo’-bloggers I read after
makes continued use shameless.
(Aside: At one point in my career I had to unistall Ubuntu from 30 PCs
or so to install a Windows OS just because the adoption of OpenOffice
and such just couldn’t happen. It was retrogressive to try and enforce
it.)
In The Meantime
off to a project on GitHub for Geo - the thought “I need to learn
JavaScript fast”, dogging my path after 2014 end of year
geo-discussions, a turf
call!
“ Parting Quote ”
@briantimoney,
April 2012
Learning spatial SQL may not help getting a $45K job now, but is
critical to getting a $85K job three years from now.
#postscript
The cost (gain) of the first post
It has been the ascent, albeit slow, of steep and slippery learning
curves and unfamiliar terittory. There was serious tyre-kicking just
to get the framework properly set-up - git, Ruby, ruby-gems… had to
resort to using GitHub for Windows when
SSH keys and things became a tangle while setting up git (command line).
Setting up Ruby was toughest, top-hit Google Search Octopress setup
tutorials led me into infinite loops of troubleshooting. After weeks of
trying, I had to do the whole Ruby setup ‘thing’ all over after finding
this excellent and straight forward article on the
matter. In a
nutshell tools and apps that were used:
- Octopress - [Tool] Setting up,
customising for font, but then git was a pre-requisite!
- GIT - [Technology] The tears and sweat
of ensuring it installed and was working.
- Markdown - [Language]
Learning the language. Luckily Cheatsheets made it easier.
- SublimeText - [Tool] Learning the
Keyboard shortcuts. Searching for useful plugins. Must say
OmniMarkupPreviewer
did come in very handy while editing the blog post
Well, I must say the temptation to dump the Octopress path and go for
WordPress (on Openshift) was great at one time but I prevailed.
Tinkerers tinker until it works!
