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29 June 2023
11:54
Marco Bernasocchi: QField background tracking
sur Planet OSGeo

Years ago, the QField community and its users showed their love for their favourite field app by supporting a successful crowdfunding to improve camera handling.

Since then, OPENGIS.ch has continued to lead the development of QField with the regular support of sponsors. We couldn’t be prouder of the progress we have made, with plenty of new features added in every major release. This includes major improvements to positioning including location tracking, integration of external GNSS receivers through not only Bluetooth but TCP/UDP and serial port connections, accuracy indicator and constraints, and most recently sensors reading to list a few.

We are now calling for the community to help further better QField and unlock an important milestone: background location tracking service.
Pledge now
Main goal: background location tracking on Android – 25’000€
Currently, QField requires users to keep their devices’ screen on and have the app in the foreground to keep track of the device’s positioning location. On mobile devices, this can drain batteries faster than many would want to, in environments where charging options are limited.

This crowdfunding aims at removing this constraint and allow QField – via a background service – to constantly keep tracking location even while the device is suspended (i.e., when the screen is turned off / locked).

To achieve this, a significant amount of work is required as the positioning framework on Android will need to be relocated to a dedicated background service. Recent work we’ve done adding a background service to synchronize captured image attachments in QFieldCloud projects armed us with the assurances that we can achieve our goal while giving us an appreciation of the large amount of work needed.
Some of the benefits
Running out of battery is the nightmare of most field surveyors. By moving location tracking to a background service, users will be able to improve their battery life considerably and keep focusing on their tasks even if it involves switching to a different app.

Furthermore, while OPENGIS.ch ninjas remain busy squashing reported QField crashes all year long, there will always be unexpected scenarios leading to abrupt app shutdowns, such as third-party apps, systems running out of battery, etc. To address this, the background service framework will also act as a safeguard to avoid location data loss when QField unexpectedly shuts down and offer users means to recover that data upon re-opening QField.
Stretch goal 1: background navigation audio feedback 5’000€
The second stretch goal builds onto QField’s nice fly-to-point navigation system. If the QField community meets this threshold, a new background navigation audio feedback informing users in the field of their proximity to their target will be implemented.

The audio feedback will use text-to-speech technology to state the distance to target in meters for a given time or distance interval.
Stretch goal 2: iOS 15’000€
The main goal will cover the Android implementation only. Due to being a very low level work we will have to replicate the work for each platform we support. If we reach stretch goal 2 we will also implement this for iOS.
Pledge now:
In case you do not see the embedded form you can open it directly here.

Thanks for supporting our crowdfunding and keep an eye on our blog for updates on the status.

9:47
The True Cost of Climate Change
sur Google Maps Mania

This week the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland announced that 4.1m hectares of primary rainforest was destroyed around the world in 2022. In reporting this news many media outlets compared the amount of rainforest lost last year as being equivalent to the size of Switzerland. This got me thinking about how often the scale of natural disasters (such as hurricanes

7:50
gvSIG Team: Geoportal y APP para gestión y consulta del Plan de Infraestructuras Turísticas de Canarias con la Suite gvSIG
sur Planet OSGeo

El Gobierno de Canarias tenía la necesidad de poder gestionar a nivel interno el Plan de Infraestructuras Turísticas de Canarias (PITCAN) y, de cara a los ciudadanos, dotarles de una app para consulta.

El PITCAN es un plan impulsado por la Dirección General de Infraestructuras Turísticas del Gobierno de Canarias. Se trata de una base de datos abierta, dinámica y flexible de infraestructuras turísticas, a modo de relación de actuaciones priorizadas.

Para dar solución a estas necesidades se ha implementado gvSIG Online, como plataforma para gestionar todas la información georreferenciada relativa al PITCAN y que, por ejemplo, incluye funcionalidades para generar informes automáticos en distintos formatos. Por otro lado, se ha desarrollado una app integrada con gvSIG Online y basada en gvSIG Mapps con herramientas orientadas a facilitar las consultas a los ciudadanos y visitantes interesados en el Plan de Infraestructuras Turísticas de Canarias.

Por si queréis echarle un vistazo, la app la tenéis disponible tanto para iOS como para Android.

Google Play: [https:]]

App Store: [https:]]

28 June 2023
10:13
The 2023 Best Cities for Cycling
sur Google Maps Mania

According to PeopleForBikes Minneapolis is the best large U.S. for cycling. Every year PeopleForBikes ranks the best places to cycle in the United States. This year, using its own 'Bicycle Network Analysis' (BNA) PeopleForBikes rated the quality of the cycling networks in 1,484 U.S. cities. This year Minneapolis made significant improvements to its cycling infrastructure becoming the best large

8:00
gvSIG Team: Planes locales de quemas (PLQ) con gvSIG Online
sur Planet OSGeo
El Plan Local de Quemas (PLQ) es una normativa reguladora fundamental en la gestión del uso cultural del fuego que se aplica en la Comunidad Valenciana, existiendo normativas similares en otras comunidades autónomas.

Los PLQ están orientados, principalmente, a minimizar los riesgos de incendios forestales. Regulan actividades tradicionales que requieren el uso del fuego como la quema de restos de poda, quema de matorrales, quema de márgenes de cultivo, uso del ahumador en actividades apícolas, etc.

Estos Planes Locales de Quemas tienen una clara componente territorial, estableciendo zonas de riesgos que establecen las limitaciones para realizar quemas en las distintas parcelas de un municipio.

Cada vez son más los municipios que implantan gvSIG Online como su solución para gestionar toda la información territorial. Con gvSIG Online es extremadamente sencillo generar un geoportal con el Plan Local de Quemas.

Os traemos 3 ejemplos de 3 municipios que tienen un geoportal público con el PLQ:
- Alzira: [https:]]
- Onda: [https:]]
- Benicarló: [https:]]

27 June 2023
15:32
The End of the Rainforest
sur Google Maps Mania

Last year we destroyed an area of rainforest equivalent to the size of Switzerland. According to a new report by the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the University of Maryland 4.1m hectares of primary rainforest was chopped down in 2022. This was a 10% increase on the previous year. According to the report the two countries with the most tropical forest, Brazil and the Democratic Republic
9:35
Geoengineering Planet Earth
sur Google Maps Mania

The Geoengineering Map shows the locations of over 1,700 geoengineering experiments taking place around the world. The mapped projects include experiments involving weather modification, carbon capture, and solar radiation management.In response to global heating some governments and companies have proposed tackling climate change through large-scale manipulations of Earth's ecology. The

8:21
gvSIG Team: Curso-taller: Preparación de modelos de datos y fichas de búsqueda en gvSIG
sur Planet OSGeo

Hoy traemos la grabación de un curso-taller al que todos los que trabajáis con datos con dimensión geográfica deberíais echarle un vistazo (y dos, y tres… ). gvSIG Desktop dispone en sus últimas versiones de un conjunto de herramientas muy potentes para trabajar con modelos de datos. Lo dicho, no os lo perdáis…
26 June 2023
20:32
QGIS Blog: QGIS Grant Programme 2023 Results
sur Planet OSGeo
We are extremely pleased to announce the 4 winning proposals for our 2023 QGIS.ORG grant programme:
Funding for the programme was sourced by you, our project donors and sponsors! Note: For more context surrounding our grant programme, please see: QGIS Grants #8: Call for Grant Proposals 2023.

The QGIS.ORG Grant Programme aims to support work from our community that would typically not be funded by client/contractor agreements. This means that we did not accept proposals for the development of new features. Instead proposals focus on infrastructure improvements and polishing of existing features.

Voting to select the successful projects was carried out by our QGIS Voting Members. Each voting member was allowed to select up to 6 proposals. The full list of votes are available here (on the first sheet). The following sheets contain the calculations used to determine the winner (for full transparency). The table below summarizes the voting tallies for the proposals:

A couple of extra notes about the voting process:
- Voting was carried out based on the technical merits of the proposals and the competency of the applicants to execute on these proposals.
- No restrictions were in place in terms of how many proposals could be submitted per person / organization, or how many proposals could be awarded to each proposing person / organization.
- Voting was ‘blind’ (voters could not see the existing votes that had been placed).
We received 35 votes from 20 community representatives and 15 user group representatives.

On behalf of the QGIS.ORG project, I would like to thank everyone who submitted proposals for this call!
8:20
gvSIG Team: Geocoder of gvSIG Online. Versatility and power in address searches.
sur Planet OSGeo

The geocoding plugin of gvSIG Online is a powerful and versatile tool that allows us to search for places and locate them on the map. At the user level, its operation is extremely simple. Once the search string is entered, a list of possible candidates is displayed. At the administration level, the most interesting feature is that we can configure and add as many providers/geocoders as we need.

Of course, the plugin offers functionality for both forward geocoding (locating a place based on a search string) and reverse geocoding (finding the address by marking a position on the map).

From the administration panel, in the list of search providers, you can assign a category (to group the results of that provider under a separator) and assign an icon that will mark each of the suggested locations. Then, depending on the characteristics of each provider, different parameters may be required for them to function. Examples of providers include Nominatim from OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, custom layers such as points of interest or street data, etc.

The plugin has very interesting options, such as configuring and establishing the priority order in which the results obtained from each of the providers used in the searches will be displayed.

And, of course, it is possible to configure custom providers for each territory, as we have done in various projects. Examples include Cartociudad in Spain or the Geocoder of the IDE in Uruguay.
8:14
gvSIG Team: Geocoder de gvSIG Online. Versatilidad y potencia en las búsquedas de direcciones.
sur Planet OSGeo

El plugin de geocodificación (geocoder) de gvSIG Online es una herramienta potente y versátil que nos permite buscar lugares y ubicarlos en el mapa. A nivel de usuario su funcionamiento es extremadamente simple, una vez introducida la cadena de búsqueda nos aparece un listado con los posibles candidatos. A nivel de administración, lo más interesante, es que podemos configurarlo y agregar tantos proveedores/geocodificadores como necesitemos.

Por supuesto el plugin dispone de funcionalidad tanto de geocodificación directa (la localización de una ubicación mediante una cadena de búsqueda) como geocodificación inversa (averiguar la dirección marcando una posición en el mapa).

Desde la parte de administración, en la lista de proveedores de búsqueda se les puede indicar una categoría (para englobar los resultados de ese proveedor bajo un separador) y se les puede asignar un icono que marcará cada una de las sugerencias propuestas . Luego, según las características de cada uno, se requerirán unos parámetros u otros para que puedan funcionar. Ejemplos de proveedores: Nominatim de OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, capas propias de – por ejemplo – puntos de interés o callejero, etc.

El plugin tiene opciones muy interesantes, como configurar y establecer el orden de prioridad en el que se mostrarán los resultados obtenidos de cada uno de los proveedores utilizados en las búsquedas.

Y, por supuesto, se pueden configurar proveedores propios de cada territorio, como así hemos realizado en diversos proyectos. Ejemplos: Cartociudad en España o el Geocoder de la IDE de Uruguay.

8:13
Where Do Refugees Go?
sur Google Maps Mania

Last year 35.5 million people (equivalent to over half the population of the UK) were forced to flee their homes and find refuge elsewhere. For World Refugee Day Al Jazeera took a closer look at where refugees come from and where they go. Visualizing the Global Flow of 35 Million Refugees is illustrated with two interactive maps: one showing the countries where refugees originated from last year,

24 June 2023
17:42
GRASS GIS: GRASS GIS 8.3.0 released
sur Planet OSGeo

What’s new in a nutshell The GRASS GIS 8.3.0 release provides more than 360 changes compared to the 8.2 branch. This new minor release brings in many fixes and improvements in GRASS GIS modules and the graphical user interface (GUI) which now has the single window layout by default. Some of the most relevant changes include: support for parallelization in three raster modules, new options added to several temporal modules, and substantial clean-up of g.

10:51
Discovering the Dissolution
sur Google Maps Mania

I live near Abbey Road in East London. The road is named for Langthorne Abbey, which used to be one of the largest Cistercian abbeys in England. At the beginning of the 16th Century the abbey owned most of the land in East London. It also owned a number of local mills and controlled a number of local industries including brewing, shearing, weaving, tannery and farming. Then came the Dissolution

23 June 2023
15:08
The 2023 OGC Tiling Interfaces Code Sprint – How it went!
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)
On June 12-14, 2023, OGC held its 2023 Tiling Interfaces Code Sprint at OGC Strategic Member NGA’s Moonshot Labs in St. Louis, Missouri. The code sprint focused on a select set of Application Programming Interface (API), database, and encoding standards related to map tiles. An API is a standard set of documented functions that expose the capabilities supported or data offered by an application, or service to other applications.

OGC code sprints are collaborative and inclusive events that support the development and refinement of open standards by providing software developers the time and space to focus on projects that implement the standards.

By experimenting with emerging ideas in the context of geospatial standards, OGC code sprints help improve interoperability of existing standards by experimenting with new extensions or profiles, and building or enhancing software products to implement the standards.

In addition, the sprints’ mentor streams provide developers with a helping hand when learning how to use the standards and projects so that they can build a working understanding of them that will last beyond the duration of the sprint.

The mentor stream at the Tiling Interfaces Code Sprint included three entry-level tutorials that used practical use-cases to introduce participants to the standards. One tutorial focused on how to serve vector tiles using the OGC API – Tiles standard, while another focused on compliance testing, and the third provided an overview of a web-based product that implements several OGC standards.

The 2023 OGC Tiling Interfaces Code Sprint focused on the following Standards and specifications:
- OGC API – Tiles: An approved Standard that specifies building blocks for creating Web APIs that support the retrieval of geospatial information as tiles.
- OGC API – Maps: A candidate Standard that specifies building blocks for serving spatially referenced and dynamically rendered electronic maps and charts.
- Changesets API: A prototype specification based on outcomes from OGC Testbed-15 that provides the foundation for a ‘Transactional Tiles API Extension’ for OGC API – Tiles.
- Vector Tiles Extension to GeoPackage: A prototype extension of the OGC GeoPackage Standard to support the use of vector tiles.
- Variable Width Tile Matrix: A grid suited for the whole globe that keeps the data in a geographic Coordinate Reference System.
- Web Map Tile Service (WMTS): The popular OGC Standard that specifies a web service that can serve map tiles of spatially referenced data using tiled images with predefined content, extent, and resolution. The OGC WMTS Standard is the base standard for the WMTS profiles of the US National System for GEOINT (NSG) and the Defense Geospatial Information Working Group (DGIWG).
Results
At its peak, the code sprint had 50 concurrent active users participating remotely across multiple channels on the code sprint’s online platform. In-person participation saw a dozen participants from NGA, OGC, US Army Geospatial Center, UK Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (Dstl), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (CREAF), Pixalytics Ltd., Compass, FlightSafety International, and University of Maryland.

Screenshots of a selection of applications deployed for the code sprint are shown below.
Figure 1 (click to enlarge)
Figure 1 is a screenshot of the MiraMon browser accessing multiple OGC-compliant services and APIs deployed by CREAF and other participants.
Figure 2 (click to enlarge)
Figure 2 is a screenshot of TEAM Engine, the open source software used by the OGC Validator, presenting test results for a specific implementation of OGC API – Tiles.
Figure 3 (click to enlarge)
Figure 3 is a screenshot of the open source QGIS Desktop GIS with GDAL embedded to enable import and display of map tiles and vector tiles.
Figure 4 (click to enlarge)
Figure 4 is a Map Tiles viewer by Tech Maven Geospatial.
Figure 5 (click to enlarge)
Figure 5 is a screenshot of the pygeoapi application enabled to support OGC API – Tiles.
Figure 6 (click to enlarge)
During the code sprint, personnel from the US Army Geospatial Center (AGC) presented the Releasable Basemap Tiles (RBT) product which has been in development at AGC (Figure 6). The presentation enabled participants to identify an approach for how QGIS and GDAL could support workflows that involve the downloading of vector tiles and map tiles from an OGC API and the storage of the tiles in a GeoPackage.
Figure 7 (click to enlarge)
Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2023.
Figure 7 shows a map created by KORTxyz from the vector tiles distribution of the Ordnance Survey Zoomstack product and accessed through an OGC API – Tiles interface.
What did we learn?
The following are some of the lessons learned during the code sprint, and recorded by participants on the final day of the code sprint.

There is a need for further developer guidance documents for implementing OGC API – Tiles, particularly with regard to the placement on tileset resources. Such guidance should include clarification on the handling of relation types such as ‘conformance’ that can be represented as simple string literals and also as URLs.

There is a need to make sure there exists a well-documented user journey for people that want to use OGC API – Tiles through QGIS. For example, documentation to take a beginner from their first line of code to a more advanced stage.

Although some work has been done on vector tiles within OGC, more work is needed to advance the specification towards becoming an OGC Standard. Some of the work that could be carried out includes, for example, development of a Best Practice document. RBT could provide a foundation for such a Best Practice.

For future code sprints, it may be necessary to introduce participants to the basics of the specifications that are in focus for the code sprint ahead of the event. Further, it would be helpful to participants such as students to have specific instructions to help participants prepare for the code sprint.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The code sprint met all of its objectives and achieved its goal of supporting the implementation of open geospatial standards within the developer community. Furthermore, the code sprint provided an environment for development and testing of prototype implementations of open standards and a starting point for developers to learn about the draft and approved standards, as well as their implementations.

The participants identified the following recommendations at the conclusion of the code sprint:
- A future code sprint that includes the OGC CDB Standard should examine how vector tiles could be embedded in such a data store.
- AGC is interested in how the World Mercator coordinate reference system (reference EPSG:3395) could support vector tiles in a GeoPackage. The question for future experimentation is whether this could be specified so that it can be implemented by any developer.
- The application of OGC API – Tiles in partitioning and indexing content from an implementation of the OGC SensorThings API standard and the OGC API – Connected Systems candidate standard could be explored in a future code sprint.
- An initiative to develop content for the OGC e-learning resource and the OGC Compliance Program could help improve interoperability between implementations of OGC Standards.
- Although OGC API – Tiles is an approved standard, there is some work to do around addressing interoperability issues in the different implementations (see for instance this Issue on the OSGeo gdal GitHub.
To learn more about – and participate in – future OGC Code Sprints, visit the OGC Code Sprints webpage or sign up to the OGC Events Newsletter.

The post The 2023 OGC Tiling Interfaces Code Sprint – How it went! appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

14:55
OTB Team: OTB release 8.1.2
sur Planet OSGeo

Dear OTB community, We are happy to announce that OTB version 8.1.2 has been released! Ready to use binary packages are available on the package page of the website: You can also use the official docker image It is also possible to checkout the branch with git: git clone [https:] OTB -b release-8.1 The documentation […]

10:18
The Solar Eclipse Simulator
sur Google Maps Mania

Next year on April 8 2024 there will be total solar eclipse in the United States. The path of totality will cross Mexico, the United States, and Canada, and will be about 115 miles wide. If you are within the path of totality, you will see the Sun completely blocked out by the Moon for about two minutes. If you want to preview what the solar eclipse might look like for different locations then

7:57
gvSIG Team: Inventario de empresas y vertidos en áreas industriales con gvSIG Online
sur Planet OSGeo

Para el Ayuntamiento de Náquera se ha desarrollado un conjunto de herramientas, integradas con gvSIG Online con el objetivo de llevar a cabo la creación y gestión del inventario georreferenciado de las empresas ubicadas en las áreas industriales del municipio.

La herramienta web sirve para la captación de información de empresas (sector de actividad, volumen de negocio, número de empleados, características de los residuos, tomas de agua, salidas de emergencias…) situadas en los polígonos industriales y para su integración en un visor de mapas de gvSIG Online con la geolocalización de dichas empresas.

Parte de la información es introducida por las propias empresas mediante diversas herramientas desarrolladas con este objetivo. Por otro lado, el sistema dispone de opciones de validación de la información para los técnicos municipales. Además, la solución desarrollada también posee funcionalidad para gestionar el registro de empresas, de forma que puedan acceder al sistema y modificar sus datos.

Después de la introducción de los datos y validación por parte del Ayuntamiento la herramienta genera una capa que permite consultar las fichas de empresas registradas en la herramienta web desde el geoportal de áreas industriales de Nàquera. Al pulsar en el mapa, se muestra la información básica de la empresa, teniendo la opción de consultar la ficha completa de cada una de las empresas.

Por otro lado, la herramienta permite consultar los diferentes sectores de empresas por actividad, activando o no la visibilidad de cada sector, de todos los sectores o de aquellos que se seleccionen.

Del mismo modo que se rellenan los datos de la ficha de empresa, existe la opción de rellenar la información correspondiente a una ficha de control de vertidos. Estas fichas de control de vertidos pueden ser consultadas desde el geoportal de áreas industriales, siempre con acceso restringido. Cada empresa está asignada a Estaciones de Muestreo, de forma que cuando se detecta una incidencia en una estación de muestreo se pueden listar todas las empresas vinculadas a dicha estación de muestreo.

Un ejemplo más de como gvSIG Online se ha convertido en una solución idónea para gestionar la información de un municipio, en este caso de sus áreas industriales.

22 June 2023
15:00
OGC proud to create European Innovation Events and Open Knowledge
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is proud to co-organize and sponsor upcoming European Innovation Events such as Data Week Leipzig 2023. The Location Innovation Academy continues to grow and support Open Knowledge.

Data Week Leipzig 2023 will run next week, June 26-30, 2023, in Leipzig, Germany, and online. OGC will present its new OGC European Innovation Days event and more at the event. Data Week Leipzig is an innovative networking and exchange event that highlights scientific, economic, and social perspectives of data and its use, and where industry, citizens, science, and public authorities can enter into dialogue. Special topics of Data Week Leipzig 2023 are Semantic Interoperability, the European Green Deal, NetZero Cities, sustainable, resilient development, and the Location Innovation Academy (see below). Digital strategies will be presented and discussed from the European to the local Leipzig City level. The event will be streamed to viewers worldwide.

Findings of the AD4GD (All Data for Green Deal) and GeoE3 Projects will be included in the topics of Monday’s European Innovation Day at Data Week. Several sessions on Data Spaces, Digital Twins, and Urban Planning will be held across Monday and Tuesday, while Wednesday will offer several workshops on Semantic Interoperability and the new “OGC Rainbow” environment – which represents the state-of-the-art in enabling semantic interoperability.

The Growing Location Innovation Academy

Starting as a hub for the distribution of knowledge and skills related to the publication and use of location-based information, the Location Innovation Academy is expanding its horizons and finding a larger audience, with a view to provide the foundation for the future OGC Academy. The Academy was presented during last week’s Open Data & Open Knowledge Workshop, hosted by GEO. The workshop emphasized the importance of open knowledge and open academies that provide not just information but also grow students’ ability to correctly interpret the available information to support better and more informed decision-making.

Don’t miss the hybrid hands-on session providing detailed insights about the Location Innovation Academy during the European Innovation Days at Data Week Leipzig 23 on Tuesday June 27 @ 17:00 CEST.
Learn more at academy.ogc.org
GeoE3 recently published a blog post entitled “Interested in new technologies of data services?” that outlines the free Data Service Management course offered by the Location Innovation Academy. The course teaches students everything they need to know about OGC API standards and how they can be implemented to manage geospatial data services more efficiently. This course and others offered by the Academy address the need, identified during GeoE3, to lower the barrier of entry for new users of APIs.

More information on the academy and the courses offered is available on GeoE3’s Location Innovation Academy information page. The Location Innovation Academy is hosted by OGC at academy.ogc.org.

For information and registration for the European Innovation Days, including the Semantic Interoperability and Location Innovation Academy sessions, see the Data Week Leipzig 23 website. For other events see the GeoE3 events and OGC events webpages.

The post OGC proud to create European Innovation Events and Open Knowledge appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

11:54
GeoSolutions: Information about latest alleged GeoServer security vulnerabilities
sur Planet OSGeo

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10:20
A Year of Wildfires
sur Google Maps Mania

NASA has released an animated map which shows the locations of active fires around the world over the last one and half years. The map Active Fires As Observed by VIIRS, 2022-Present uses observations from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) to show the locations of active fires on Earth for every day from Jan 5th 2022 to 21st June 2023. VIIRS uses instruments on

8:08
gvSIG Team: Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales de Albacete. La Suite gvSIG como solución a la gestión integral de la información geográfica municipal
sur Planet OSGeo

El proyecto de implantación de la IDE de Albacete merece más de un post, por su ambición y resultados. De momento comenzamos compartiendo una presentación del alcance y trabajo desarrollado para convertir la Suite gvSIG en la solución a la gestión integral de la información geográfica municipal.

Algunos apuntes antes de dejaros con la presentación… se ha utilizado el control de versiones de gvSIG Desktop para las actividades de edición multiusuario de la información cartográfica, se ha incorporado gvSIG Mapps como herramienta de toma de datos en campo integrada con gvSIG Online, se ha realizado la integración con el gestor de expedientes SEGEX de SEDIPUALBA, se ha desarrollado una herramienta de localización y ruteo para el cementerio municipal, plantillas varias para impresión, integración con el padrón – ahora georreferenciado -, adaptación a RT de Inspire, un completo y versátil geocoder, acceso a Catastro con datos protegidos a nivel interno,…

El proyecto de implantación de la IDE de Albacete es un ejemplo para cualquier administración local que quiera poner en marcha una solución similar. Un ejemplo, también, de por qué la tecnología gvSIG se ha convertido en un referente en el sector de la geomática.

Podéis acceder al portal de la IDE de Albacete aquí: [https:]]

Presentación del proyecto:
21 June 2023
8:01
gvSIG Team: Implantación de la Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales de Alzira. Proyectos en gvSIG Online
sur Planet OSGeo

El Ayuntamiento de Alzira es otra más de la administraciones locales que ha apostado por la Suite gvSIG como la tecnología base para poner en marcha su Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales. Un proyecto que, más allá de todos los visores de mapas internos, en poco tiempo ha permitido publicar diversos geoportales como los de planeamiento, infraestructuras, plan local de quemas, etc.

Es interesante reseñar que además de la propia IDE montada con gvSIG Online, se ha integrado gvSIG Mapps para la toma de datos en campo y el gestor de expedientes de Indenova. Entre los desarrollos a medida, destaca el proceso que permite generar de forma automática la cédula urbanística.

Podéis acceder a los distintos visores públicos aquí: [https:]]

Presentación del proyectos:
20 June 2023
13:04
GeoSolutions: GeoNode 4.1.0 is out!
sur Planet OSGeo

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10:07
The Kessler Syndrome
sur Google Maps Mania

Steve Wozniak and a host of other Silicon Valley luminaries have launched a new company called Privateer, whose mission is to track and map space debris in Earth's orbit. In 1978 NASA scientist Donald J. Kessler published a paper which argued that if the number of satellites in Low Earth Orbit reached a certain critical level, then even a small collision could create enough debris to cause a

7:50
gvSIG Team: Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales de Náquera con gvSIG Online
sur Planet OSGeo

Compartimos la presentación de la IDE del Ayuntamiento de Náquera, administración local de una población de 7.500 habitantes ubicada en el Parque Natural de la Sierra de Calderona y que multiplica su población en temporada estival. Pese a ser una administración local pequeña dispone de una gran cantidad y variedad de información geográfica que necesita gestionar.

La implementación de una IDE con gvSIG Online les ha permitido cambiar una situación de partida con información no catalogada, no compartida, duplicada, con dificultad para actualizar… por un sistema interoperable, organizado, estandarizado que facilita tanto la gestión interno como aporta un nuevo mecanismo para transmitir la información a los ciudadanos y visitantes del municipio.
19 June 2023
17:41
iCarto Blog: Creating a Shareable QGIS Project with PostgreSQL/PostGIS Connections
sur Planet OSGeo
One of the numerous features offered by QGIS is the ability to save our projects. We can store all the specific configurations, layers, styles, analyses, and other aspects in a file, allowing us to return to that point at any time. This is particularly useful when dealing with complex project organization. This functionality is also very helpful for collaborative work, as we can exchange projects with other team members.

However, when creating a project for sharing, certain aspects need to be taken into account, such as including connections to a database. In this article, we will discuss some interesting key points for accomplishing this.
Database Connections in QGIS Projects: The Recommended Approach
Most of the time, when creating a QGIS project with PostgreSQL/PostGIS layers, the data connection details are directly written, including storing the password in plain text within the project.

When done this way, within the project file created by QGIS with .qgz/.qgs extension, there will be a line like this:
```
<datasource>dbname='test' host=localhost port=5439 user='test_user' password='test_user' sslmode=disable key='id' srid=4326 type=Point checkPrimaryKeyUnicity='0' table="public"."cities" (geom)</datasource>
```
This approach creates several problems when it comes to deploying the project or sharing it with others:
- Usernames and passwords need to be shared among several people, making it impossible to establish logical individual or group permissions.
- If we don’t hardcode the username and password, every person using the project will have to enter the data each time.
- Passwords are stored in plain text.
- If the server needs to be changed, for example, from a testing environment to a production one, the project needs to be modified.
- …
Although there are some ways to improve this situation, such as using .pgpass, using the Authentication Manager, or using custom embedded scripts within the project, they are not the best options and have issues.

The best approach, or at least the one we can recommend based on our experience, is to associate the connection details with an identifier (a pre-agreed name) and establish the connection in QGIS using the same identifier.

PostgreSQL allows achieving this through the Connection Service File. It is a text file located in Linux at ~/.pg_service.conf and in Windows at %APPDATA%\postgresql\.pg_service.conf, and it would look like this:
```
[test]
host=localhost
port=5439
dbname=test
user=test_user
password=test_user
sslmode=disable

# Avoid hardcode the password in prod
[production]
host=my.production.server
port=5432
dbname=my_project
user=my_user
```
In QGIS, the connection would be established like this:

Here, you only need to fill in the connection name and the service name, which will be our identifier (the text within the brackets) in the .pg_service.conf file. This is explained in more detail in the QGIS documentation.

The advantages of using connections with an identifier are clear and solve the aforementioned problems. One person can prepare the project locally, and then, when moving to production, they only need to send the project and indicate the connection name and parameters that the rest of the team should fill in the .pg_service.conf file.

Furthermore, since this file is directly managed by libpq, the standard PostgreSQL client library used by 99% of applications, this strategy will work with any other client that needs to use that database connection, not just QGIS.

For example, in console commands:
```
ogrinfo PG:"service=test" cities
psql service=test
```
or in QGIS scripts:
```
layer = QgsVectorLayer("service=test table=cities (geom)", "Cities", "postgres")
QgsProject.instance().addMapLayer(layer)
```
The Service File allows defining numerous parameters, and few of them are mandatory. For instance, if we don’t define the password, any application using libpq will execute a normal workflow to try to discover it: searching in the PGPASSWORD variable, checking the existence of the .pgpass file, or directly prompting us to provide it.

La entrada Creating a Shareable QGIS Project with PostgreSQL/PostGIS Connections se publicó primero en iCarto.
10:42
GeoTools Team: GeoTools 28.4 Released
sur Planet OSGeo

The GeoTools team is pleased to share the availability GeoTools 28.4: geotools-28.4-bin.zip geotools-28.4-doc.zip geotools-28.4-userguide.zip geotools-28.4-project.zip This release is also available from the OSGeo Maven Repository and is made in conjunction with GeoServer 2.22.4. Release notes - GeoTools - 28.4 Bug GEOT-7266 WMTSCapabilities throws NPE for missing title GEOT-7345 WFS
8:47
gvSIG Team: La Unión Europea avanza en la regulación de la Inteligencia Artificial
sur Planet OSGeo

La Inteligencia Artificial (IA) es una tecnología innovadora con el potencial de transformar diversas industrias y mejorar la vida de las personas. En su búsqueda por regular esta tecnología y garantizar su uso responsable, la Unión Europea ha propuesto el primer marco normativo de la UE para la IA, como parte de su estrategia digital.

Esta regulación no solo tiene implicaciones generales, sino que también afecta a campos específicos, como la geomática. En este contexto, en gvSIG estamos analizando distintas posibilidades para integrar tecnologías de IA en la Suite gvSIG.

La combinación de la geomática y la IA promete avances notables en la toma de decisiones basada en datos, la gestión del territorio y el análisis espacial.

La regulación de la IA en la UE sienta un precedente a nivel mundial y muestra el compromiso de la Unión Europea de liderar en el desarrollo y uso responsable de esta tecnología. Esta regulación también se aplica a proyectos como gvSIG. El futuro ya está aquí.

Más información: [https:]]
8:33
gvSIG Team: The European Union advances in the regulation of Artificial Intelligence
sur Planet OSGeo

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an innovative technology with the potential to transform various industries and improve people’s lives. In its quest to regulate this technology and ensure its responsible use, the European Union has proposed the first regulatory framework for AI in the EU as part of its digital strategy.

This regulation not only has general implications but also affects specific fields such as geomatics. In this context, at gvSIG, we are exploring different possibilities to integrate AI technologies into the gvSIG Suite. The combination of geomatics and AI promises remarkable advancements in data-driven decision-making, land management, and spatial analysis.

The regulation of AI in the EU sets a global precedent and demonstrates the European Union’s commitment to lead in the development and responsible use of this technology. This regulation also applies to projects like gvSIG. The future is already here.

More information: [https:]]

7:59
Staring at the Moon
sur Google Maps Mania

NASA's Daily Moon Guide is a new interactive map to help you observe the moon on any day of the year. The map shows you what you can see on the moon today with the unaided eye, with binoculars or with a telescope, taking into account the current phase of the moon.The Daily Moon Guide automatically shows you the current phase of the moon. So, for example, tonight you won't see much of the moon

2:00
GeoServer Team: GeoServer 2.22.4 Release
sur Planet OSGeo
GeoServer 2.22.4 release is now available with downloads ( bin, war, windows) , along with docs and extensions.

This is a maintenance release of GeoServer providing existing installations with minor updates and bug fixes.

GeoServer 2.22.4 is made in conjunction with GeoTools 28.4.

Thanks to Peter Smythe (AfriGIS) and Jody Garnett (GeoCat) for making this release. This is Peter’s first time making a GeoServer release and we would like to thank him for volunteering.
Release notes
New Feature:
- GEOS-10949 Control remote resources accessed by GeoServer
Improvement:
- GEOS-10973 DWITHIN delegation to mongoDB
Bug:
- GEOS-8162 CSV Data store does not support relative store paths
- GEOS-10906 Authentication not sent if connection pooling activated
- GEOS-10936 YSLD and OGC API modules are incompatible
- GEOS-10969 Empty CQL_FILTER-parameter should be ignored
- GEOS-10975 JMS clustering reports error about ReferencedEnvelope type not being whitelisted in XStream
- GEOS-10980 CSS extension lacks ASM JARs as of 2.23.0, stops rendering layer when style references a file
- GEOS-10981 Slow CSW GetRecords requests with JDBC Configuration
- GEOS-10993 Disabled resources can cause incorrect CSW GetRecords response
- GEOS-10994 OOM due to too many dimensions when range requested
- GEOS-10998 LayerGroupContainmentCache is being rebuilt on each ApplicationEvent
- GEOS-11015 geopackage wfs output builds up tmp files over time
- GEOS-11024 metadata: add datetime field type to feature catalog
Task:
- GEOS-10987 Bump xalan:xalan and xalan:serializer from 2.7.2 to 2.7.3
- GEOS-11008) Update sqlite-jdbc from 3.34.0 to 3.41.2.2
- GEOS-11010 Upgrade guava from 30.1 to 32.0.0
- GEOS-11011 Upgrade postgresql from 42.4.3 to 42.6.0
- GEOS-11012 Upgrade commons-collections4 from 4.2 to 4.4
- GEOS-11018 Upgrade commons-lang3 from 3.8.1 to 3.12.0
- GEOS-11020 Add test scope to mockito-core dependency
Sub-task:
- GEOS-10989 Update spring.version from 5.2.23.RELEASE to 5.2.24.RELEASE
For the complete list see 2.22.4 release notes.
About GeoServer 2.22 Series
Additional information on GeoServer 2.22 series:
- GeoServer 2.22 User Manual
- Update Instructions
- Metadata extension
- CSW ISO Metadata extension
- State of GeoServer (FOSS4G Presentation)
- GeoServer Beginner Workshop (FOSS4G Workshop)
- Welcome page (User Guide)
Release notes: ( 2.22.4 | 2.22.3 | 2.22.2 | 2.22.1 | 2.22.0 | 2.22-RC | 2.22-M0 )
18 June 2023
23:12
GRASS GIS: Developing and updating GRASS GIS addons
sur Planet OSGeo

The r.mblend experience In 2017, I had the opportunity to implement a DEM blending algorithm that had been theorised earlier by my colleague João Leitão. It was somewhat natural to develop it as a GRASS add-on, since I have long relied on it for map algebra and other geo-spatial computations. That is how the r.mblend add-on was born. Five years passed without me committing again to r.mblend. In the meantime many important things changed, GRASS version 8 was released and code management moved from SVN to git/GitHub.
14:25
Tom Kralidis: new pygeoapi podcast with MapScaping
sur Planet OSGeo

For those interested in pygeoapi, the project was recently featured on MapScaping (available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and Spotify). The MapScaping folks were great to work with and I’d like to thank them for making this happen and asking all the right questions. Enjoy! pygeoapi – A Python Geospatial Server
10:00
gvSIG Team: El Mapa Sanitario, una herramienta para la planificación y ordenación en salud: El caso de Mauritania
sur Planet OSGeo

Los llamados mapas de salud son un instrumento para la promoción, democratización y derecho a la información pública sobre salud. También han sido utilizados para contextualizar y focalizar las desigualdades en el sector de la salud pública y otros sectores relacionados. Os traemos un artículo que tiene como objetivo explicar la elaboración del mapa sanitario de Mauritania y su valor en la planificación y reorganización de la oferta de servicios de salud en todos los niveles de la pirámide sanitaria del país, con el fin de responder a las crecientes demandas de información generadas por diversas organizaciones, pero principalmente por el sector sanitario mauritano.

Los sistemas de información geográfica fueron un apoyo importante para este trabajo… y el software seleccionado para elaborarlo fue gvSIG Desktop.

El artículo, disponible en castellano, lo podéis encontrar aquí: [https:]]

17 June 2023
11:42
AI Street View Hallucinations
sur Google Maps Mania

I have been a huge admirer of OpenStreetMap Haiku for a number of years. OpenStreetMap Haiku is a clever map that can write a short poem about any location in the world based on the OpenStreetMap data for that location. Share your location with OpenStreetMap Haiku and it will generate a unique haiku using data gleaned from OpenStreetMap using Overpass Turbo. I thought that it might be interesting

9:03
gvSIG Team: Comparación de información catastral antigua y actual con gvSIG Desktop
sur Planet OSGeo

En un artículo recientemente publicado en el Boletín de la Asociación Española de Geografía se muestra el uso de gvSIG para detectar los cambios en los usos del suelo-tipos de cultivo desde 1930 a la actualidad.
Título: Cartografía antigua catastral para la detección de cambios de cultivo: los mapas topográficos parcelarios de Alboraya (1930–2013)
Artículo disponible en abierto: [https:]]

16 June 2023
9:39
The History of Latin America
sur Google Maps Mania

The Latin American Political History Map is an animated map which attempts to visualize the ever changing history of Latin American politics, by revealing the political leanings of Latin American countries (and the USA) over the course of over 200 years. I've been following the heated debate on Twitter around this map with some interest this morning. Many of the perceived problems with the map

8:49
gvSIG Team: Curso-Taller de trabajo con modelos de datos de gvSIG Desktop
sur Planet OSGeo

Las pasadas Jornadas Internacionales de gvSIG contaban en su programa con un taller de trabajo con modelos de datos de gvSIG Desktop.

La grabación del taller no está disponible, pero sí un vídeo previo que grabamos de preparación del taller y que hemos decidido compartir por si es de utilidad.

Es un mini-curso de 1 hora de duración que os puede servir para ir más allá de lo habitual en el manejo de datos en un SIG. Muy recomendable a poco que manejéis modelos de datos algo complejos.

Talleres con formación tan avanzada no son tan habituales ni fáciles de acceder… así que mi recomendación es que no os lo perdáis:

15 June 2023
10:18
AI Map Search
sur Google Maps Mania

I am trying to keep track of developments in the use of artificial intelligence in mapping. At the moment the most interesting experiments seem to involve using AI to help answer geospatial queries. This is leading to some interesting maps which use AI to map answers to users' queries. Over the last few months I've been reading with interest on Twitter how developers have been using AI models (

8:40
gvSIG Team: Geoportales públicos de L’Eliana
sur Planet OSGeo
Uno de los ayuntamientos que acaba de sumarse al cada vez más numeroso conjunto de administraciones locales que tienen su IDE con gvSIG Online es el de L’Eliana. Otro ejemplo más de cómo no solo las grandes ciudades pueden disponer de soluciones y tecnologías avanzadas para gestionar su información con dimensión geográfica.

De partida, más allá del número creciente de geoportales privados y orientados a la gestión interna, hay ya cuatro visores de mapas públicos disponibles, cada uno impulsado desde su departamento correspondiente:
- Medio Ambiente. Permite la consulta del “Plan de ordenación de los recursos naturales (PORN)” del Parque Natural del Túria y de la cartografía de riesgos, tanto de inundaciones como forestal.
- Urbanismo. Podemos acceder, entre otras capas, a información como la clasificación y calificación urbanística o al catálogo de bienes y espacios protegidos del municipio.
- Servicios Municipales. Disponible para consulta información tan relevante como los servicios de saneamiento, distribución de agua y luminarias.
- Deportes. Cartografía de rutas saludables.
La página web principal es:

[https:]]

Y podéis acceder a los primeros geoportales públicos publicados en:

[https:]]
2:00
Camptocamp: SwitzerlandMobility - a new website with a unique map and content features
sur Planet OSGeo

Pièce jointe: [télécharger]

For the new version of their website, SwitzerlandMobility wanted to create a unique concept of classical information mashed up with geographic information on maps.

14 June 2023
15:00
OGC CEO Dr. Nadine Alameh receives 24th Annual Women in Technology Leadership Award
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is pleased to announce that OGC CEO, Dr. Nadine Alameh, has received the 24th Annual Women in Technology Leadership Award in the Non-Profit and Academia category, which honors women who demonstrate exemplary leadership traits and have achieved success in a non-profit organization or educational institution.

The Women in Technology’s Annual Leadership Awards seek to “recognize and honor female leaders whose achievements, mentorship and contributions to the community align with the WIT mission of advancing women in technology from the classroom to the boardroom” by honoring and celebrating female professionals who have found success in entrepreneurial, STEM, government, and corporate industries while inspiring colleagues, partners, and their community.

“These awards are a cornerstone of the WIT mission to advance women in technology from the classroom to the boardroom,” said Amber Hart, President of WIT and the Co-Owner/Founder, The Pulse of GovCon, in a press release for the awards. “Recognizing the success of these women provides a vision for current and future leaders of what is possible with determination and focus and highlights the role of mentorship and sponsorship in building a successful and meaningful career.”

In the nomination letter for the award, Chair of the OGC Board, Jeff Harris, Vice Chair, Prashant Shukle, and Board member, Zaffar Sadiq Mohamed-Ghouse, said that the OGC board nominated Nadine for her “outstanding global leadership of the Open Geospatial Consortium and its 500 members through a period of profound change.

“When Nadine assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer, she articulated a new vision and role for the OGC – one where it had to be relevant at the speed of change. To that end, she has worked tirelessly in pursuit of this vision as she mobilized some of the world’s largest technology companies, developed and developing national governments, and small- and medium-sized businesses and startups. That she delivered in a not-for-profit entity and with a steely resolve to ensure the global public interest – not only speaks of the scale of her achievements but also its impact on the global public good.”

The 24th Annual Leadership Awards were presented at a Gala on Thursday, May 18, 2023, at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, VA, USA.

The post OGC CEO Dr. Nadine Alameh receives 24th Annual Women in Technology Leadership Award appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

8:21
gvSIG Team: Un vistazo a la Infraestructura de Datos Espaciales de Cullera (IDE)
sur Planet OSGeo
La IDE de Cullera se inició en el área de urbanismo, pero rápidamente se ha extendido a todas las áreas y departamentos municipales. En la actualidad cuenta con decenas de geoportales internos y una serie de visores de mapas públicos, donde consultar información relevante para los ciudadanos y visitantes del municipio.

Con este post vamos a iniciar una serie de artículos en los que os iremos presentando distintas Infraestructuras de Datos Espaciales implantadas con gvSIG Online, que se está convirtiendo en la solución de referencia para IDEs con software libre.

Vamos a repasar solo algunos de los geoportales públicos:
- Turismo: Es el geoportal principal que recopila información relativa al turismo. Agrupa un extenso conjunto de información como oferta hotelera, puntos y zona de Wi-Fi, gastronomía, museos, rutas y sendas turísticas, playas,…
- Movilidad y transporte: Permite consultar información relativa a movilidad como estacionamientos, carriles bici, líneas de autobús, puntos de carga eléctrica,…
- Deportes: Este geoportal está orientado a mostrar los recorridos de diferentes eventos deportivos como la Volta a peu a Cullera, el triatlón, la San Silvestre,…
- Agricultura y actividades cinegéticas: Contiene información de usos del suelo, bancos de tierras,…
- Servicios municipales: Visor de mapas con información de dotaciones municipales como centros sanitarios, bibliotecas, instalaciones deportivas, centros de enseñanza,…
- Playas: ahora que se acerca la temporada estival aquí se puede encontrar información tan interesante como playas accesibles, infraestructuras, banderas azules…
- Urbanismo: el inicio de la IDE, con toda la información típica de este tipo de geoportales relativa al urbanismo (calificación y clasificación) y catastro. Es interesante destacar que tiene normativa urbanística asociada a los elementos geográficos.
- Y más geoportales públicos: infraestructuras, medio ambiente y cambio climático, gestión de residuos, ciudadanía, arqueología, sanidad, fiestas y comercio. Y siguen creciendo…
La dirección de la página principal de la IDE de Cullera es:

[https:]]

El principal contenido de la IDE, además de los servicios de mapas, son sus geoportales. En el siguiente enlace se pueden visualizar todos los visores de mapas actualmente disponibles:

[https:]]

También es interesante hacer referencia a que gvSIG Online permite generar “Vistas compartidas” que no son más que URLs que permiten compartir una configuración concreta de un geoportal, en la que hay una serie de capas visibles o invisibles por defecto e, incluso, un determinado encuadre (zona o territorio del municipio visible al entrar).

Desde la web de turismo del Ayuntamiento de Cullera, accesible en el enlace [https:]] hay vistas compartidas en distintas secciones de esta web: playas, rutas naturales, monumentos… todas estas vistas compartidas enlazan con distintas configuraciones del geoportal de Turismo que forma parte de la IDE.

Por último, para acabar, indicar que entre las mejoras previstas para los próximos meses está la integración con el gestor de expedientes (SEGEX de Sedipualba) y la incorporación de gvSIG Mapps como app para toma de datos en campo.

7:49
The June Deportations
sur Google Maps Mania

In 1939 the Soviet Union entered into a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany. In addition to the agreement to not attack each over the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact included the Secret Protocol. In this protocol Germany and the Soviet Union effectively divided up Europe among themselves, deciding which countries they would allow the other to invade.Soon after the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop

13 June 2023
17:48
GeoSolutions: GeoSolutions presence at FOSS4G 2023 in Prizren (Kosovo)
sur Planet OSGeo

You must be logged into the site to view this content.

15:00
Chronotube
sur Google Maps Mania

NYC Subwaysheds visualizes how far you can get in "40 minutes from each subway station in New York City". Hover over a subway station on this map and an isochrone layer shows the accessible areas around that station in ten minute intervals (traveling by subway and by foot).Mapbox's Chris Whong was inspired to make the map by the ever popular Chronotrains map. Chronotrains visualizes the travel
9:38
Where You Can't Afford to Live
sur Google Maps Mania

The Guardian has published an interactive map which visualizes where you can't afford to live or rent in the UK. Unfortunately the newspaper has mistakenly mistitled the map Find out where you can afford to buy or rent in Great Britain rather than the presumably intended 'Find out where you can't afford to buy or rent in Great Britain'.The Guardian map allows you to enter your annual salary to

8:11
gvSIG Team: gvSIG Desktop aplicado al riesgo de impacto paisajístico
sur Planet OSGeo

Hoy os traemos una presentación de la empresa Geoscan, una consultora con muchos años de experiencia en áreas como la de la ingeniería geológica y el medio ambiente. En este caso nos muestran el uso de gvSIG Desktop para analizar el impacto paisajístico de las instalaciones de una empresa de producción y comercialización de semillas.
7:42
OPENGIS.ch: Unterstützung für WMTS im QGIS Swiss Locator
sur Planet OSGeo

Das QGIS swiss locator Plugin erleichtert in der Schweiz vielen Anwendern das Leben dadurch, dass es die umfangreichen Geodaten von swisstopo und opendata.swiss zugänglich macht. Darunter ein breites Angebot an GIS Layern, aber auch Objektinformationen und eine Ortsnamensuche.

Dank eines Förderprojektes der Anwendergruppe Schweiz durfte OPENGIS.ch ihr Plugin um eine zusätzliche Funktionalität erweitern. Dieses Mal mit der Integration von WMTS als Datenquelle, eine ziemlich coole Sache. Doch was ist eigentlich der Unterschied zwischen WMS und WMTS?
WMS vs. WMTS
Zuerst zu den Gemeinsamkeiten: Beide Protokolle – WMS und WMTS – sind dazu geeignet, Kartenbilder von einem Server zu einem Client zu übertragen. Dabei werden Rasterdaten, also Pixel, übertragen. Ausserdem werden dabei gerenderte Bilder übertragen, also keine Rohdaten. Diese sind dadurch für die Präsentation geeignet, im Browser, im Desktop GIS oder für einen PDF Export.

Der Unterschied liegt im T. Das T steht für “Tiled”, oder auf Deutsch “gekachelt”. Bei einem WMS (ohne Kachelung) können beliebige Bildausschnitte angefragt werden. Bei einem WMTS werden die Daten in einem genau vordefinierten Gitternetz — als Kacheln — ausgeliefert.

Der Hauptvorteil von WMTS liegt in dieser Standardisierung auf einem Gitternetz. Dadurch können diese Kacheln zwischengespeichert (also gecached) werden. Dies kann auf dem Server geschehen, der bereits alle Kacheln vorberechnen kann und bei einer Anfrage direkt eine Datei zurückschicken kann, ohne ein Bild neu berechnen zu müssen. Es erlaubt aber auch ein clientseitiges Caching, das heisst der Browser – oder im Fall von Swiss Locator QGIS – kann jede Kachel einfach wiederverwenden, ganz ohne den Server nochmals zu kontaktieren. Dadurch kann die Reaktionszeit enorm gesteigert werden und flott mit Applikationen gearbeitet werden.

Warum also noch WMS verwenden?

Auch das hat natürlich seine Vorteile. Der WMS kann optimierte Bilder ausliefern für genau eine Abfrage. Er kann Beispielsweise alle Beschriftungen optimal platzieren, so dass diese nicht am Kartenrand abgeschnitten sind, bei Kacheln mit den vielen Rändern ist das schwieriger. Ein WMS kann auch verschiedene abgefragte Layer mit Effekten kombinieren, Blending-Modi sind eine mächtige Möglichkeit, um visuell ansprechende Karten zu erzeugen. Weiter kann ein WMS auch in beliebigen Auflösungen arbeiten (DPI), was dazu führt, dass Schriften und Symbole auf jedem Display in einer angenehmen Grösse angezeigt werden, währenddem das Kartenbild selber scharf bleibt. Dasselbe gilt natürlich auch für einen PDF Export.

Ein WMS hat zudem auch die Eigenschaft, dass im Normalfall kein Caching geschieht. Bei einer dahinterliegenden Datenbank wird immer der aktuelle Datenstand ausgeliefert. Das kann auch gewünscht sein, zum Beispiel soll nicht zufälligerweise noch der AV-Datensatz von gestern ausgeliefert werden.

Dies bedingt jedoch immer, dass der Server das auch entsprechend umsetzt. Bei den von swisstopo via map.geo.admin.ch publizierten Karten ist die Schriftgrösse auch bei WMS fix ins Kartenbild integriert und kann nicht vom Server noch angepasst werden.

Im Falle von QGIS Swiss Locator geht es oft darum, Hintergrundkarten zu laden, z.B. Orthofotos oder Landeskarten zur Orientierung. Daneben natürlich oft auch auch weitere Daten, von eher statischer Natur. In diesem Szenario kommen die Vorteile von WMTS bestmöglich zum tragen. Und deshalb möchten wir der QGIS Anwendergruppe Schweiz im Namen von allen Schweizer QGIS Anwender dafür danken, diese Umsetzung ermöglicht zu haben!

Der QGIS Swiss Locator ist das schweizer Taschenmesser von QGIS. Fehlt dir ein Werkzeug, das du gerne integrieren würdest? Schreib uns einen Kommentar!

12 June 2023
11:17
The Map of Roman Amphitheaters
sur Google Maps Mania

Roman Amphitheaters is an interactive map of Roman amphitheaters built in Europe and northern Africa during the long reign of the Roman Empire. The map has been created using Sebastian Heath's Roman amphitheaters data.The amphitheater markers on the map are sized by capacity. Select an amphitheater on the map and an information window opens providing details on the amphitheaters's capacity,

11:00
Lutra consulting: Webinar: Processing LiDAR data in QGIS 3.32
sur Planet OSGeo

Join this webinar to learn more about the new features in QGIS to process LiDAR data:

Date: Monday, June 26, 2023 at 14:00 GMT

Duration: 30 minutes + 15 minutes Q&A session

Speaker: Martin Dobias, CTO at Lutra Consulting with more than 15 years of QGIS development experience

Description
Point clouds are an increasingly popular data type thanks to the decreasing cost of their acquisition through lidar surveys and photogrammetry. On top of that, more and more national mapping agencies release high resolution point cloud data (spanning large areas and consisting of billions of points), unlocking many new use cases.

This webinar will summarize the latest QGIS release 3.32 and the addition of tools for point cloud analysis right from QGIS Processing toolbox: clip, filter, merge, export to raster, extract boundaries and more - all backed by PDAL library that already ships with QGIS, without having to rely on third party proprietary software.

This work was made possible by the generous donations to our crowdfunding.

Live on Monday, June 26, 2023 at 14:00 GMT

Add it to your calendar!
8:01
gvSIG Team: Control de versiones y edición de cartografía multiusuario con software libre
sur Planet OSGeo

Uno de los desarrollos más avanzados que han llegado a gvSIG Desktop es su control de versiones, VCSGIS, y que lo ha convertido en una herramienta fundamental para resolver las problemáticas de edición avanzada a las que el software libre no tenía respuesta.

En esta presentación podréis conocer qué es VCSGIS y todo lo que permite hacer

10 June 2023
10:32
Global Sunlight Chart
sur Google Maps Mania

The ShadeMap: Direct Sunlight Chart is an interactive map which can calculate the number of hours of direct sunlight for any location on Earth. Unlike traditional sun charts, this map actually accounts for shadows cast by buildings and terrain. If a tall building or mountain blocks out the sun for part of the day this is taken into account in the sunlight chart for that location. The

09 June 2023
17:48
GeoSolutions: GeoSolutions at WAGIS 2023 in Tacoma, WA 14-15 June
sur Planet OSGeo

You must be logged into the site to view this content.

10:41
America's Pink Migration Banana
sur Google Maps Mania

The San Francisco Chronicle has published a fascinating map which visualizes net migration in US counties. On this map counties which have seen a net loss in migration are shown in pink and those that have seen a net gain are shown in blue. The map therefore provides a great overview of where Americans are moving to and from.The Where People are Moving map reveals a pink banana running down the

7:56
gvSIG Team: Plataforma de información geográfica del Estado de Tocantins, Brasil
sur Planet OSGeo

Os traemos la presentación de otro interesante proyecto de implantación de gvSIG Online, en este caso en el Estado de Tocantins (Brasil) y que ha permitido publicar numerosas capas de información geográfica, estructurada en diversos geoportales.

De este proyecto, además, destacamos el desarrollo de herramientas en gvSIG Online para la generación de dashboards o cuadros de mandos.
08 June 2023
16:00
Lutra consulting: Virtual Point Clouds (VPC)
sur Planet OSGeo
As a part of our crowdfunding campaign we have introduced a new method to handle a large number of point cloud files. In this article, we delve into the technical details of the new format, rationale behind our choice and how you can create, view and process virtual point cloud files.
Rationale
Lidar surveys of larger areas are often multi-terabyte datasets with many billions of points. Having such large datasets represented as a single point cloud file is not practical due to the difficulties of storage, transfer, display and analysis. Point cloud data are therefore typically stored and distributed split into square tiles (e.g. 1km x 1km), each tile having a more manageable file size (e.g. ~200 MB when compressed).

Tiling of data solves the problems with size of data, but it introduces issues when processing or viewing an area of interest that does not fit entirely into a single tile. Users need to develop workflows that take into account multiple tiles and special care needs to be taken to deal with data near edges of tiles to avoid unwanted artefacts in outputs. Similarly, when viewing point cloud data, it becomes cumbersome to load many individual files and apply the same symbology.

Here is an example of several point cloud tiles loaded in QGIS. Each tile is styled based on min/max Z values of the tile, creating visible artefacts on tile edges. The styling has to be adjusted for each layer separately:

Virtual Point Clouds
In the GIS world, many users are familiar with the concept of virtual rasters. A virtual raster is a file that simply references other raster files with actual data. In this way, GIS software then treats the whole dataset comprising many files as a single raster layer, making the display and analysis of all the rasters listed in the virtual file much easier.

Borrowing the concept of virtual rasters from GDAL, we have introduced a new file format that references other point cloud files - and we started to call it virtual point cloud (VPC). Software supporting virtual point clouds handles the whole tiled dataset as a single data source.

At the core, a virtual point cloud file is a simple JSON file with .vpc extension, containing references to actual data files (e.g. LAS/LAZ or COPC files) and additional metadata extracted from the files. Even though it is possible to write VPC files by hand, it is strongly recommended to create them using an automated tool as described later in this post.

On a more technical level, a virtual point cloud file is based on the increasingly popular STAC specification (the whole file is a STAC API ItemCollection). For more details, please refer to the VPC specification that also contains best practices and optional extensions (such as overviews).
Virtual Point Clouds in QGIS
We have added support for virtual point clouds in QGIS 3.32 (released in June 2023) thanks to the many organisations and individuals who contributed to our last year’s joint crowdfunding with North Road and Hobu. The support in QGIS consists of three parts:
1. Create virtual point clouds from a list of individual files
2. Load virtual point clouds as a single map layer
3. Run processing algorithms using virtual point clouds
Those who prefer using command line tools, PDAL wrench includes a build_vpc command to create virtual point clouds, and all the other PDAL wrench commands support virtual point clouds as the input.
Using Virtual Point Clouds
In this tutorial, we are going to generate a VPC using the new Processing algorithm, load it in QGIS and then generate a DTM from terrain class. You will need QGIS 3.32 or later for this. For the purpose of this example, we are using the LiDAR data provided by the IGN France data hub.

In QGIS, open the Processing toolbox panel, search for the Build virtual point cloud (VPC) algorithm ((located in the Point cloud data management group):

VPC algorithm in the Processing toolbox
In the algorithm’s window, you can add point cloud layers already loaded in QGIS or alternatively point it to a folder containing your LAZ/LAS files. It is recommended to also check the optional parameters:
- Calculate boundary polygons - QGIS will be able to show the exact boundaries of data (rather than just rectangular extent)
- Calculate statistics - will help QGIS to understand ranges of values of various attributes
- Build overview point cloud - will also generate a single “thinned” point cloud of all your input data (using only every 1000th point from original data). The overview point cloud will be created next to the VPC file - for example, for mydata.vpc, the overview point cloud would be named mydata-overview.copc.laz
VPC algorithm inputs, outputs and options
After you set the output file and start the process, you should end up with a single VPC file referencing all your data. If you leave the optional parameters unchecked, the VPC file will be built very quickly as the algorithm will only read metadata of input files. With any of the optional parameters set, the algorithm will read all points which can take some time.

Now you can load the VPC file in QGIS as any other layer - using QGIS browser, Data sources dialog in QGIS or by doing drag&drop from a file browser. After loading a VPC in QGIS, the 2D canvas will show boundaries of individual files - and as you zoom in, the actual point cloud data will be shown. Here, a VPC loaded together with the overview point cloud:

Virtual point cloud (thinned version) generated by the VPC algorithm
Zooming in QGIS in 2D map with elevation shading - initially showing just the overview point, later replaced by the actual dense point cloud:

VPC output on 2D: displaying details when zooming in
In addition to 2D maps, you can view the VPC in a 3D map windows too:

If the input files for VPCs are not COPC files, QGIS will currently only show their boundaries in 2D and 3D views, but processing algorithms will work fine. It is however possible to use the Create COPC algorithm to batch convert LAS/LAZ files to COPC files, and then load VPC with COPC files.

It is also worth noting that VPCs also work with input data that is not tiled - for example, in some cases the data are distributed as flightlines (with lots of overlaps between files). While this is handled fine by QGIS, for the best performance it is generally recommended to first tile such datasets (using the Tile algorithm) before doing further display and analysis.
Processing Data with Virtual Point Clouds
Now that we have the VPC generated, we can run other processing algorithms. For this example, we are going to convert the ground class of the point cloud to a digital terrain model (DTM) raster. In the QGIS Processing toolbox, search for Export to raster algorithm (in the Point cloud conversion group):

VPC layer can be used as an input to the point cloud processing algorithm
This will use the Z values from the VPC layer and generate a terrain raster based on a user defined resolution. The algorithm will process the tiles in parallel, taking care of edge artefacts (at the edges, it will read data also from the neighbouring tiles). The output of this algorithm will look like this:

Converting a VPC layer to a DTM
The output raster contains holes where there were no points classified as ground. If needed for your use case, you can fill the holes using Fill nodata algorithm from GDAL in the Processing toolbox and create a smooth terrain model for your input Virtual Point Cloud layer:

Filling the holes in the DTM
Virtual point clouds can be used also for any other algorithms in the point cloud processing toolbox. For more information about the newly introduced algorithms, please see our previous blog post.

All of the point cloud algorithms also allow setting filtering extent, so even with a very large VPC, it is possible to run algorithms directly on a small region of interest without having to create temporary point cloud files. Our recommendation is to have input data ready in COPC format, as this format provides more efficient access to data when spatial filtering is used.
Streaming Data from Remote Sources with VPCs
One of the very useful features of VPCs is that they work not only with local files, but they can also reference data hosted on remote HTTP servers. Paired with COPCs, point cloud data can be streamed to QGIS for viewing and/or processing - that means QGIS will only download small portions of data of a virtual point cloud, rather than having to download all data before they could be viewed or analysed.

Using IGN’s lidar data provided as COPC files, we have built a small virtual point cloud ign-chambery.vpc referencing 16 km2 of data (nearly 700 million points). This VPC file can be loaded in QGIS and used for 2D/3D visualisation, elevation profiles and processing, with QGIS handling data requests to the server as necessary. Processing algorithms only take a couple of seconds if the selected area of interest is small (make sure to set the “Cropping extent” parameter of algorithms).

All this greatly simplifies data access to point clouds:
- Data producers can use very simple infrastructure - a server hosting static COPC files together with a single VPC file referencing those COPC files.
- Users can use QGIS to view and process point cloud data as a single map layer, with no need to download large amounts of data, QGIS (and PDAL) taking care of streaming data as needed.
We are very excited about the opportunities that virtual point clouds are bringing to users, especially when combined with COPC format and access from remote servers!

Thanks again to all contributors to our crowdfunding campaign - without their generous support, this work would not have been possible.

Contact us if you would like to add more features in QGIS to handle, analyse or visualise lidar data.

15:00
Dr. Jeff de La Beaujardiere receives OGC Lifetime Achievement Award
sur Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC)

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is excited to announce that Dr. Jeff de La Beaujardiere has been selected as the latest recipient of the OGC Lifetime Achievement Award. The announcement was made last night during the Executive Dinner in the U.S. Space & Rocket Center at the 126th OGC Member Meeting in GeoHuntsville, AL.

Jeff has been selected for the award due to his long standing leadership, commitment, and support for the advancement and uptake of standards used for the dissemination of Earth Science information.

“I’m so happy that Jeff has been selected to receive the OGC Lifetime Achievement Award,” said OGC CEO, Dr. Nadine Alameh. “Jeff is more than a champion for standards, more than an OGC Gardels award winner, and more than the WMS editor and promoter: Jeff is a role model for many of us in geospatial circles, and has directly and indirectly influenced generations of interoperability enthusiasts to collaborate, to innovate, and to solve critical problems related to our Earth. From OGC and myself, I offer our congratulations and thank Jeff for his technical work – and for being such an inspiration to so many!”

For more than 25 years, Jeff’s support of open standards and OGC’s FAIR mission has improved access to Earth science information for countless users and decision-makers around the globe. Since 1995, Jeff has focused on improving public access to scientific data by pushing for it to be discoverable, accessible, documented, interoperable, citable, curated for long-term preservation, and reusable by the broader scientific community, external users, and decision-makers.

In the OGC community, Jeff is best known as the Editor of the OGC Web Map Service (WMS) Specification: a joint OGC/ISO Standard that now supports access to millions of datasets worldwide. OGC WMS was the first in the OGC Web Services suite of Standards and is the most downloaded Standard from OGC. But most importantly, the OGC WMS Standard truly revolutionized how geospatial data is shared and accessed over the web.

Jeff was also a major contributor to other OGC Standards, including the OGC Web Services Architecture, the OGC Web Map Context, OGC Web Terrain Service, and OGC Web Services Common.

Jeff’s journey with Standards – and his engagement with OGC – started back in 1998 when NASA was leading the effort to implement the Digital Earth program. At that time, Jeff championed interoperability standards as fundamental to realizing the Digital Earth vision. As part of his journey, he has provided leadership to the Geospatial Applications and Interoperability (GAI) Working Group of the U.S. Federal Geographic Data Committee and to the OGC Technical Committee.

In 2002 and 2003, Jeff served as Portal Manager for Geospatial One-Stop, a federal electronic government initiative. He led a team of experts in defining the requirements, architecture, and competitive solicitation for a Portal based on open standards and led an OGC interoperability initiative in developing and demonstrating a working implementation. This was a fast-paced, high-stakes effort involving many companies and agencies building on what today is the OGC Collaborative Solution & Innovation Program.

Jeff has received several awards for his leadership and impact in the many communities that he has participated in throughout his career, including the 2013 OGC Kenneth D. Gardels Award, the 2023 ESIP President’s Award, and the 2003 Falkenberg Award at AGU which honors “a scientist under 45 years of age who has contributed to the quality of life, economic opportunities, and stewardship of the planet through the use of Earth science information and to the public awareness of the importance of understanding our planet.”

With this lifetime achievement award, OGC recognizes and celebrates Jeff’s lifetime of service, and his steadfast support of FAIR geospatial information for the benefit of open science, and society.

The post Dr. Jeff de La Beaujardiere receives OGC Lifetime Achievement Award appeared first on Open Geospatial Consortium.

9:35

QGIS Blog: Plugin Update May 2023

sur Planet OSGeo

In May 22 new plugins that have been published in the QGIS plugin repository.

Here’s the quick overview in reverse chronological order. If any of the names or short descriptions piques your interest, you can find the direct link to the plugin page in the table below the screenshot.

Station Offset

This plugin computes the station and offset of points along polylines and exports those values to csv for other applications

MGP Connect

Enable Maxar SecureWatch customers to stream imagery more effectively in QGIS.

Triple2Layer

this plugin imports data

DiscordRPC Plugin for QGIS

QGIS plugin that enables displaying a Rich Presence in Discord

ERS

This plugin determines calculated polluant concentrations around sensible sites’s perimeters

IPP

This plugin calculates IPP

Road Vectorisation

This plugin is designed to vectorize roads on satellite images

Image vectorisator

Plugin for image vectorisation

H-RISK with noisemodelling

Sound levels and Health risks of environmental noise

Non_electrical_vehicle

This plugins calculates number of non electrical vehicles

HOT Templates and Symbology Manager

QGIS plugin for managing HOT map templates and symbology

Transparency Setter

Apply the specified transparency value to both vector and raster layers, as well as layers within the selected groups in the Layer Panel

DBGI

Creates geopackages that match the requirements for the DBGI project

StyleLoadSave

Load or Save active vector layer style

PixelCalculator

Interactively calculate the mean value of selected pixels of a raster layer.

GISTDA sphere basemap

A plugin for adding base map layers from GISTDA sphere platform ( [https:]] ).

Adjust Style

Adjust the style of a map with a few clicks instead of altering every single symbol (and symbol layer) for many layers, categories or a number of label rules. A quick way to adjust the symbology of all layers (or selected layers) consistantly, to check out how different colors / stroke widths / fonts work for a project, and to save and load styles of all layers – or even to apply styles to another project. With one click, it allows to: adjust color of all symbols (including color ramps and any number of symbol layers) and labels using the HSV color model (rotate hue, change saturation and value); change line thickness (i.e. stroke width of all symbols / symbol borders); change font size of all labels; replace a font family used in labels with another font family; save / load the styles of all layers at once into/from a given folder.

APLS

This plugin performs Average Path Length Similarity

qaequilibrae

Transportation modeling toolbox for QGIS

QGPT Agent

QGPT Agent is LLM Assistant that uses openai GPT model to automate QGIS processes

FuzzyJoinTables

Join tables using min Damerau-Levenshtein distance

Chandrayaan-2 IIRS

Generates reflectance from Radiance data of Imaging Infrared Spectrometer sensor of Chandrayaan 2

9:16
The Privatisation of East Germany
sur Google Maps Mania

After the reunification of Germany in 1990 the German Democratic Republic established an agency in order to privatise East German enterprises. The Treuhandanstalt (Trust Institution) was tasked with overseeing the sale of over 8,500 state-owned companies. Under communism nearly half of all East Germans worked for the state or for state-run companies. Privatising all East German enterprises

7:59
gvSIG Team: GeoETL de la plataforma gvSIG Online: Automatizar transformaciones de datos
sur Planet OSGeo

Una mejora considerable de gvSIG Online respecto a otros productos del mercado es su ETL. Gracias a su ETL, gvSIG Online podrá realizar integraciones con otras fuentes de datos de forma ágil y sin necesidad de desarrollo.

ETL es un plugin que se utiliza para automatizar tareas de transformaciones de datos, ya sean repetitivas o no, de manera que no sea necesario la manipulación de los datos a través de código. De esta manera, cualquier usuario es capaz de hacer una manipulación de los datos (geométricamente o no) o una homogeneización de datos que provengan de diferentes orígenes y formatos.

Esto es posible gracias a un canvas que representará gráficamente el proceso de transformación de los datos de una manera fácil e intuitiva.

Si queréis conocer todo el potencia de GeoETL, no os perdáis el vídeo:

07 June 2023
8:42
Wildfires & Smoke Pollution
sur Google Maps Mania

Wildfires in Quebec and Nova Scotia are causing high levels of unhealthy air conditions across much of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. Over 400 fires were reported to be burning in Canada on Tuesday evening resulting in smoke pollution and dangerous levels of particulate matter 2.5 over large areas.FireSmoke Canada has an interactive smoke forecast map which provides

8:02
gvSIG Team: Conociendo gvSIG Mapps
sur Planet OSGeo

Todo el mundo conoce gvSIG Desktop, el origen de el catálogo de soluciones que denominamos Suite gvSIG. Cada vez más organizaciones de todo el mundo están implantando gvSIG Online como su plataforma de gestión de datos espaciales y geoportales. Y, aunque menos conocido, crece el número de entidades que usan gvSIG Mapps… bien como app para toma de datos en campo, bien como apps desarrolladas con su framework.

¿Queréis saber más? Os contamos qué es realmente gvSIG Mapps:

30 April 2022
22:59
A GIS Degree
sur James Fee GIS Blog

My son decided to change majors from biodesign to GIS. I had a short moment when I almost told him not to bring all this on himself but then thought differently. I could use my years of experience to help him get the perfect degree in GIS and get a great job and still do what he wants.

He’s one semester into the program so he really hasn’t taken too many classes. There has been the typical Esri, SPSS and Google Maps discussion, but nothing getting into the weeds. Plus he’s taking Geography courses as well so he’s got that going for him. Since he’s at Arizona State University, he’s going through the same program as I did, but it’s a bit different. When I was at ASU, Planning was in the Architectural College. Now it’s tied with Geography in a new School of Geographical Sciences & Urban Planning.

I have to be honest, this is smart, I started my GIS career working for a planning department at a large city. The other thing I noticed is a ton of my professors are still teaching. I mean how awesome is that? I suddenly don’t feel so old anymore.

I’ve stayed out of his classes for the past semester in hopes that he can form his own thoughts on GIS and its applicability. I probably will continue to help him focus on where to spend his electives (more Computer Science and less History of the German Empire 1894-1910). He’s such a smart kid, I know he’s going to do a great job and he was one who spent time in that Esri UC Kids Fair back when I used to go to the User Conference. Now he could be getting paid to use Esri software or whatever tool best accomplishes his goals.

I plan to show him the Safe FME Minecraft Reader/Writer.
25 October 2021
19:15
GIS and Monitors
sur James Fee GIS Blog

If there is one constant in my GIS career, it is my interest in the monitor I’m using. Since the days of being happy for a “flat screen” Trinitron monitor to now with curved flat screens, so much has changed. My first GIS Analyst position probably had the worst monitor in the history of monitors. I can’t recall the name but it had a refresh rate that was probably comparable what was seen in the 1960s. It didn’t have great color balance either, so I ended up printing out a color swatch pattern from ArcInfo and taped it on my wall so I could know what color was what.
I stared for years at this monitor. No wonder I need reading glasses now!
Eventually I moved up in the world where I no longer got hand-me-down hardware and I started to get my first new equipment. The company I worked for at the time shifted between Dell and HP for hardware, but generally it was dual 21″ Trinitron CRTs. For those who are too young to remember, they were the size of a small car and put off enough heat and radiation to probably shorten my life by 10 year. Yet, I could finally count on them being color corrected by hardware/software and not feel like I was color blind.
It wasn’t sexy but it had a cool look to it. You could drop it flat to write on it like a table.
Over 11 years ago, I was given a Wacom DTU-2231 to test. You can read more about it on that link but it was quite the monitor. I guess the biggest change between now and then is how little that technology took off. I guess if you asked me right after you read that post in 2010 what we’d be using in 2020, I would have said such technology would be everywhere. Yet we don’t see stylus based monitor much at all.

These days my primary monitor is a LG UltraFine 24″ 4k. I pair it with another 24″ 4K monitor that I’ve had for years. Off to the other side is a generic Dell 24″ monitor my company provided. I find this setup works well for me, gone are the days where I had ArcCatalog and ArcMap open in two different monitors. Alas two of the monitors are devoted to Outlook and WebEx Teams, just a sign of my current work load.

I’ve always felt that GIS people care more about monitors than most. A developer might be more interested in a Spotify plugin for their IDE, but a GIS Analyst care most about the biggest, brightest and crispest monitor they can get their hands on. I don’t always use FME Workbench these days, but when I do, it is full screen on the most beautiful monitor I can have. Seems perfect to me.
13 July 2021
17:00
Are Conferences Important Anymore?
sur James Fee GIS Blog

Hey SOTM is going on, didn’t even know. The last SOTM I went to was in 2013 which was a blast. But I have to be honest, not only did this slip my mind, none of my feeds highlighted it to me. Not only that, apparently Esri is having a conference soon. (wait for me to go ask Google when it is) OK, they are having it next week. I used to be the person who went to as much as I could, either through attending or invited to keynote. The last Esri UC I went to was in 2015, 6 years ago. As I said SOTM was in 2013. FOSS4G, 2011. I had to look up, the last conference that had any GIS in it was the 2018 Barcelona Smart City Expo.

So with the world opening back up, or maybe not given whatever greek letter variant we are dealing with right now, I’ve started to think about what I might want to attend and the subject matter. At the end of the day, I feel like I got more value out of the conversations outside the convention center than inside. So probably where I see a good subset of smart people hanging out. That’s why those old GeoWeb conferences that Ron Lake put on were so amazing. Meeting a ton of smart people and enjoying the conversations, rather than reading Powerpoint slides in a darkly lit room.

Hopefully we can get back to that, just need to keep my eye out.
12 April 2021
17:57
Unreal and Unity are the new Browsers
sur James Fee GIS Blog

Someone asked me why I hadn’t commented on Cesium and Unreal getting together. Honestly , no reason. This is big news honestly. HERE, where I work, is teaming up with Unity to bring the Unity SDK and the HERE SDK to automotive applications. I talk about how we used Mapbox Unity SDK at Cityzenith (though I have no clue if they still are). Google and Esri have them too. In fact both Unreal and Unity marketplaces are littered with data sources you can plug in.
HERE Maps with Unity
This is getting at the core of what these two platforms could be. Back in the day we had two browsers, Firefox and Internet Explorer 6. Inside each we had many choices of mapping platforms to use. From Google and Bing to Mapquest and Esri. In the end that competition to make the best API/SDK for a mapping environment drove a ton of innovation. What Google Maps looks like and does in 2021 vs 2005 is amazing.

This brings up the key as to what I see happening here. We’ll see the mapping companies (or companies that have mapping APIs) deliver key updates to these SDK (which today are pretty limited in scope) because they have to stay relevant. Not that web mapping is going away at any point, but true 3D world and true Digital Twins require power that browsers cannot provide even in 2021. So this rush to become the Google Maps of 3D engines is real and will be fun to watch.

Interesting in that Google is an also-ran in the 3D engine space, so there is so much opportunity for the players who have invested and continue to invest in these markets without Google throwing unlimited R&D dollars against it. Of course it only takes on press release to change all that so don’t bet against Google.
06 April 2021
13:00
Arrays in GeoJSON
sur James Fee GIS Blog

So my last post was very positive. I figured out how to relate the teams that share a stadium with the stadium itself. This was important because I wanted to eliminate the redundant points that were on top of each other. For those who don’t recall, I have an example in this gist:

Now I mentioned that there were issues displaying this in GIS applications and was promptly told I was doing this incorrectly:

An array of <any data type> is not the same as a JSON object consisting of an array of JSON objects. If it would have been the first, I'd have pointed you (again) to QGIS and this widget trick [https:]] .
— Stefan Keller (@sfkeller) April 4, 2021

If you click on that tweet you’ll see basically that you can’t do it the way I want and I have to go back to the way I was doing it before:

Unfortunately, the beat way is to denormalise. Redundant location in many team points.
— Alex Leith (@alexgleith) April 4, 2021

I had a conversation with Bill Dollins about it and he sums it up susinctly:

I get it, but “Do it this way because that’s what the software can handle” is an unsatisfying answer.

So I’m stuck, I honestly don’t care if QGIS can read the data, because it can. It just isn’t optimal. What I do care about is an organized dataset in GeoJSON. So my question that I can’t get a definitive answer, “is the array I have above valid GeoJSON code?”. From what I’ve seen, yes. But nobody wants to go on record as saying absolutely. I could say, hell with it I’m moving forward but I don’t want to go down a dead end road.
02 April 2021
21:42
GeoJSON Ballparks as JSON
sur James Fee GIS Blog
In a way it is good that Sean Gillies doesn’t follow me anymore. Because I can hear his voice in my head as I was trying to do something really stupid with the project. But Sheldon helps frame what I should be doing with what I was doing:

tables? what the? add , teams:[{name:"the name", otherprop: …}, {name:…}] to each item in the ballparks array and get that relational db BS out of your brain
— Sheldon (@tooshel) April 2, 2021

Exactly! What the hell? Why was I trying to do something so stupid when the while point of this project is baseball ballparks in GeoJSON. Here is the problem in a nutshell and how I solved it. First off, let us simply the problem down to just one ballpark. Salt River Fields at Talking Stick is the Spring Training facility for both the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies. Not only that, but there are Fall League and Rookie League teams playing there. Probably even more that I still haven’t researched. Anyway, GeoJSON Ballparks looks like this today when you just want to see that one stadium.
Let’s just say I backed myself in this corner by starting by only having MLB ballparks, none of which at the time of the project were shared between teams.
It’s a mess right? Overlapping points, so many opportunities to screw up names. So my old school thought was just create a one-to-many relationship between the GeoJSON points and some external table. Madness! Seriously, what was I thinking? Sheldon is right, I should be doing a JSON array for the teams. Look how much nicer it all looks when I do this!
Look how nice that all is? So easy to read and it keeps the focus on the ballparks.
As I said in the earlier blog post.

The problem now is so many teams, especially in spring training, minor leagues and fall ball, share stadiums, that in GeoJSON-Ballparks, you end up with multiple dots on top of each other. No one-to-many relationship that should happen.”

The project had pivoted in a way I hadn’t anticipated back in 2014 and it was a sure a mess to maintain. So now I can focus on fixing the project with the Minor League Baseball realignment that went on this year and get an updated dataset in Github very soon.

One outcome of doing this nested array is that many GIS tools don’t understand how to display the data. Take a look at geojson.io:

geojson.io compresses the array into one big JSON-formatted string. QGIS and Github do this also. It’s an issue that I’m willing to live with. Bill Dollins shared the GeoJSON spec with me to prove the way I’m doing is correct:
```
3.2.  Feature Object
   A Feature object represents a spatially bounded thing.  Every Feature
   object is a GeoJSON object no matter where it occurs in a GeoJSON
   text.
   o  A Feature object has a "type" member with the value
      "Feature".
   o  A Feature object has a member with the name 
      "geometry".  The value of the geometry member SHALL
      be either a Geometry object as defined above or, in 
      the case that the Feature is unlocated, a JSON 
      null value.
   o  A Feature object has a member with the name 
      "properties".  The value of the properties member is
      an object (any JSON object or a JSON null value).
```
ANY JSON OBJECT! So formatting the files this way is correct and the way it should be done. I’m going to push forward on cleaning up GeoJSON Ballparks and let the GIS tools try and catch up.
07 March 2021
22:15
GeoJSON Ballparks and MLB Minor League Realignment
sur James Fee GIS Blog

**UPDATE** – See the plan.

Boy, where to start? First, for those who haven’t been following, this happened over the winter.

Major League Baseball announced on Friday (February 12, 2021) a new plan for affiliated baseball, with 120 Minor League clubs officially agreeing to join the new Professional Development League (PDL). A full list of Major League teams and their new affiliates, one for each level of full-season ball, along with a complex league (Gulf Coast and Arizona) team, can be found below.
Minor League Baseball
What does that mean? Well for GeoJSON Ballparks basically every minor league team is having a modification to it. At a minimum, the old minor league names have changed. Take the Pacific Coast League that existed for over 118 years is now part of Triple-A West which couldn’t be a more boring name. All up and down the minor leagues, the names now just reflect the level of minor league the teams are. And some teams have moved from AAA to Single A and all around.

I usually wait until Spring Training is just about over to update the minor league teams but this year it almost makes zero sense. I’ve sort of backed myself into a spatial problem, unintended when I started. Basically, the project initially was just MLB teams and their ballparks. The key to that is that the teams drove the dataset, not the ballparks even though the title of the project clearly said it was. As long as nobody shared a ballpark, this worked out great. The problem now is so many teams, especially in spring training, minor leagues and fall ball, share stadiums, that in GeoJSON-Ballparks, you end up with multiple dots on top of each other. No one-to-many relationship that should happen.

So, I’m going to use this minor league realignment to fix what I should have fixed years ago. There will be two files in this dataset moving forward. One GeoJSON file of the locations of a ballpark and then a CSV (or other format) file containing the teams. Then we’ll just do the old fashioned relate between the two and the world is better again.

I’m going to fork GeoJSON-Ballparks into a new project and right the wrongs I have done against good spatial data management. I’m finally ready to play centerfield!
22 February 2021
17:46
I’m Here at HERE
sur James Fee GIS Blog

Pièce jointe: [télécharger]

Last Tuesday I started at HERE Technologies with the Professional Services group in the Americas. I’ve probably used HERE and their legacy companies data and services for most of my career so this is a really cool opportunity to work with a mobile data company.

I’m really excited about working with some of their latest data products including Premier 3D Cities (I can’t escape Digital Twins).
Digital Twins at HERE
17 November 2020
18:36
Digital Twins and Unreal Engine
sur James Fee GIS Blog

I’ve had a ton of experience with Unity and Digital Twins but I have been paying attention to Unreal Engine. I think the open nature of Unity is probably more suited for the current Digital Twin market, but competition is so important for innovation. This project where Unreal Engine was used to create a digital clone of Adelaide is striking but the article just leaves me wanting for so much more.

A huge city environment results in a hefty 3D model. Having strategies in place to ease the load on your workstation is essential. “Twinmotion does not currently support dynamic loading of the level of detail, so in the case of Adelaide, we used high-resolution 3D model tiles over the CBD and merged them together,” says Marre. “We then merged a ring of low-resolution tiles around the CBD and used the lower level of detail tiles the further away we are from the CBD.”

Well, that’s how we did it at Cityzenith. Tiles are the only way to have the detail one needs in these 3D worlds and one that geospatial practitioners are very used to dealing with their slippy maps. The eye-candy that one sees in that Adelaide project is amazing. Of course, scaling one city out is hard enough but doing so across a country or the globe is another. Still, this is an amazing start.

Seeing Epic take Twinmotion and scale it out this way is very exciting because as you can see from that video above, it really does look photorealistic.

But this gets at the core of where Digital Twins have failed. It is so very easy to do the above, crate an amazing looking model of a city, and drape imagery across it. It is a very different beast to actually create a Digital Twin where these buildings are not only linked up to external IoT devices and services but they should import BIM models and generalize as needed. They do so some rudimentary analysis of shadows which is somewhat interesting, but this kind of stuff is so easy to do and there are so many tools to do it that all this effort to create a photorealistic city seems wasted.

I think users would trade photorealistic cities for detailed IoT services integration but I will watch Aerometrex continue to develop this out. Digital Twins are still stuck in sharing videos on Vimeo and YouTube, trying to create some amazing realistic city when all people want is visualization and analysis of IoT data. That said, Aerometrex has done an amazing job building this view.
10 November 2020
21:01
Moving Towards a Digital Twin Ecosystem
sur James Fee GIS Blog

Smart Cities really start to become valuable when they integrate with Digital Twins. Smart Cities do really well with transportation networks and adjusting when things happen. Take, for example, construction on an important Interstate highway that connects the city core with the suburbs causes backups and a smart city can adjust traffic lights, rail, and other modes of transportation to help adjudicate the problems. This works really well because the transportation system talk to each other and decisions can be made to refocus commutes toward other modes of transportation or other routes. But unfortunately, Digital Twins don’t do a great job talking to Smart Cities.
Photo by Victor Garcia on Unsplash
A few months ago I talked about Digital Twins and messaging. The idea that:

Digital twins require connectivity to work. A digital twin without messaging is just a hollow shell, it might as well be a PDF or a JPG. But connecting all the infrastructure of the real world up to a digital twin replicates the real world in a virtual environment. Networks collect data and store it in databases all over the place, sometimes these are SQL-based such as Postgres or Oracle, and other times they are simple as SQLite or flat-file text files. But data should be treated as messages back and forth between clients.

This was in the context of a Digital Twin talking to services that might not be hardware-based, but the idea stands up for how and why a Digital Twin should be messaging the Smart City at large. Whatever benefits a Digital Twin gains from an ecosystem that collects and analyzes data for decision-making those benefits become multiplied when those systems connect to other Digital Twins. But think outside a group of Digital Twins and the benefit of the Smart City when all these buildings are talking to each other and the city to make better decisions about energy use, transportation, and other shared infrastructure across the city or even the region (where multiple Smart Cities talk to each other).
When all these buildings talk to each other, they can help a city plan, grow and evolve into a clean city.
What we don’t have is a common data environment (CDE) that cities can use. We have seen data sharing on a small scale in developments but not on a city-wide or regional scale. To do this we need to agree on model standards that allow not only Digital Twins to talk to each other (Something open like Bentley’s iTwin.js) and share ontologies. Then we need that Smart City CDE where data is shared, stored, and analyzed at a large scale.

One great outcome of this CDE is all this data can be combined with City ordinances to give tools like Delve from Sidewalk Labs even more data to create their generative design options. Buildings are not a bubble in a city and their impacts on the city extend out beyond the boundaries of the parcel they are built on. That’s what so exciting about this opportunity, manage assets in a Digital Twin on a micro-scale, but share generalized data about those decisions to the city at large which then can share them with other Digital Twins.

And lastly, individual Smart Cities aren’t bubbles either. They have huge impacts on the region or even the country that they are in. If we can figure out how to create a national CDE, one that covers a country as diverse as the United States, we can have something that can even benefit the world at large. Clean cities are the future and thinking about them on a small scale will only result in the gentrification of affluent areas and leave less well areas behind. I don’t want my children to grow up in a world like that and we have the processes in place to ensure that they have a better place than use to grow up in.

14 December 2014
2:45
Quilting "Golden Light"
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

After the success of the first experiment with printing one of my mom's photographs on fabric and quilting it last July (see Quilting Fuchsia), we selected seven more images and had those printed at Spoonflower's largest possible size (about 27 x 40 inches without distorting the image). I've since shipped and carried those pieces of fabric all around the United States and even into Canada, twice. Two weeks ago, I finally managed to find the time to sit down and start to quilt again—truly one of my very favourite/favorite activities.

This is the resulting quilt that I created from the photograph "Golden Light" by Elizabeth Root Blackmer (you can see the original image in the middle of her Frozen gallery at BrootPhoto.com). The image is bubbles of air trapped in the ice of a frozen pond.

First of all, I had to find a fabric store. I was staying at my house in Nova Scotia when I finally found the time to quilt, and although I have spent extended periods of time here at the house over the past seven years (I took over the family home), I had never tried to find a place to source fabric here. I mentioned to my farming neighbour/neighbor that I need to ask his wife about a place to get fabric, and he looked at me like I was utterly obtuse. He said something along the lines of: "Everyone goes to Avonport Discount Fabric Centre over in Avonport, up behind the school—how do you not know that?" LOL.
So I asked a few more people over the next few days as I finished up my stack of work-work, and every single person (male and female) said the same thing: go there! So I did. Well, it doesn't look like much from the outside, and it shares a big dirt parking lot with the used auto parts store next door, so I was reasonably skeptical, but oh, what an epic pleasure this place is. Fantastic materials, ample supplies, helpful staff, great prices, and generally, like so many places here in Nova Scotia, a meeting place for friends and family. I've been back quite a number of times since; it's just down the road from my house—not ten minutes away!

Anyway, I found the most perfect backing fabric and thread for my project at this lovely store, and had a few wonderful quilting-related conversations with the ladies there while I wandered around looking at everything.

For some odd reason, I decided to use the dining table as my quilting space (but it's just me here this time, so I'm not in anyone's way). It might seem odd, given that I made myself a quilting area in another room, but this space is always warm, and that space doesn't need to be heated, so I ended up out here. By the time this quilt was done, five of the six chairs had been moved away from the table to give me access to all sides of the quilt.

And here is the original printed image.

I started by quilting the ice bubbles with gold thread and used a twisty stitch-line within each circle to make them stand out as separate elements. You can see the backing fabric here as well, a delicious mottled teal.

Then I quilted the darker section in the upper-right quadrant with a brown top thread. I used the diagonal line that runs through the image as the dividing line between the two sections of parallel stitching, and eyeballed the entire quilt from that one line. Teal thread was used for every stitch on the back of the quilt.

I used a variegated thread for the rest of the straight lines. Again, with teal thread on the back.

Quilting so many straight lines was exhausting, but I found my rhythm after a while.

You can really see how the variegated thread looks on the binding. I used three lines of it on the binding to make this element really stand out.

I had to go back to the fabric store to find a suitable edge fabric to use for the binding, but then I found a bias tape that was the perfect colour/color, so I used that.

And here's what the back looks like.

And here it is on the bed in one of the guest rooms ... I go in and visit it often, as I take stretch breaks from work-work and think about which image I'll quilt next ...

I only had one major blooper that I had to reëngineer with this quilt. Oh, and what a drag it was! My camera apparently couldn't register so much teal, so it displayed it as greyish/grayish, but even so, there's the epic snaggle of thread. Ugh.

And here are the test scraps that I used during this project. I can't imagine throwing them out unless I have a record of what they look like. It's that, or staple them into my diary, and that gets cumbersome.
12 July 2014
13:12
Quilting My Mom's Fuchsia Photograph
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

My mom is an amazing photographer. She captured this image called Fuchsia:

And this is what I recently turned it into: a quilt!

That's my mom there, Elizabeth Root Blackmer, holding the finished product.

She's printed on paper, glass, silk, and aluminum over the years, each with amazing results. The aluminum prints immediately below are absolutely stunning in person, and the silks below that were beyond ethereal.

She recently had a show at a photography gallery that included seventy of her various prints. You can view more of her work on her website: BrootPhoto.com.

It seemed time to combine our interests and print one of her images on quilting fabric. Neither of us was completely satisfied with the saturation of the print on the fabric, but for a prototype, it provided us with what we needed to know for the next time.

Here's what I started with: the image printed on a yard of fabric, a yard of solid fuchsia for the backing, and seven colors of thread.

For those who might wonder, the fabric was printed by Spoonflower. We've since put in another order and are hoping for more accurate saturation of the colors.

Here's what the original printed fabric looked like just after it had been washed and ironed. The printed image measured 25 by 40 inches, and by extension, the quilt came out measuring just shy of that.

It was difficult to know where to start quilting as I didn't have a plan and was just winging it. I figured that I'd begin with the small white bits and sewed them directly onto scraps of batting so that they were tamped down to something (if not, washing the quilt in the future could make a huge mess of things when the batting wads up).

Also, I wanted the white bits—which were mostly droplets—to have a slightly 3D feel to them. Here's what the back looked like with the bits of quilted batting; I then cut carefully around the shapes.

As an example of how the white islands look on the final product, here's a preview:

Then I placed a whole piece of batting on the back and started quilting the darkest color on the fabric with my darkest purple thread. This time it was the printed fabric and the batting, but still without the final fabric backing (you'll understand why when you read about my topo lines below).

Some of the light and bright green also needed this pre-backing treatment as there were islands of those colors within the fabric that needed to be captured before the more prolific colors got quilted. In the following image, the purples had also been quilted, but you can see where the greens existed as islands—unreachable from any edge.

Once the colors that existed as islands were quilted to the batting, I layered the fuchsia backing fabric to the sandwich of printed fabric and batting, and started quilting the larger swaths of color that ran from the edges all the way in and then back out again.

I'm not sure how many of you know this, but in my real life, I'm a cartographer. I love me some topo lines, so I quilted this such that the back looks like a topo map. Plus, I freaking loathe tying the hundreds of knots in the back of a quilt (I always think they look messy and I know that they will eventually come loose and unravel). As such, I quilted from one edge into the image and back out again, avoiding the need to tie knots—instead, I backstitched the heck out of each thread's beginning and ending. This is what the back of the completed quilt looks like because of this method. Dude: topo map!

So, that's why I quilted this quilt the way I did, first to bits of batting, then to a whole piece of batting, and then with the fabric backing. Also, I quilted around the bubbles as best as I could while going in and out, and used the various thread colors to create the visual texture of the piece.

Maybe you can imagine the maddening forethought it took to freehand each of these lines so that they didn't overlap at any point but so that enough of the complete layers of the quilt were actually stitched together.

Once all the quilting was done, to ensure that none of my backstitched threads were ever going to release, I double stitched around the whole edge of the image and then I cut everything away except for about a quarter-inch of white around the remaining image.

I had originally planned to add a traditional border to the quilt, but decided against it. Instead, I sacrificed a small percentage of the image all the way around to create a border by carefully double-folding the edges of the quilt all around and stitching them into place.

And once again, I'll mention how annoying I find it to tie knots, so I very carefully stitched all the way around and created all the quadruple (at least) stitching on all the corners using one freaking thread. Epic win!

So really, except for the one blasted thread that broke during quilting and that I had to repair with a knot, there is only one other visible knot in this entire quilt!

Oh, and this is where this quilt was made—in Tenants Harbor, Maine:

I've been visiting my parents for a few months and as a Mother's Day gift I painted out this room for my mom—it went from yellow and white to a light grey on all walls and ceiling, and with fresh bright white trim throughout. Before I moved her back into the room, I took it over as an office and quilting space. The light in here is awesome and her photography will look amazing in here. Or maybe some quilts ...
17 May 2014
21:56
Badger Afloat Again (2014 Edition)
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Hard to believe, but it's already been two weeks since I dropped my husband off at his ship and said farewell to him for the summer and beyond. He's off again aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter HEALY—north into the seas and oceans around Alaska. This is the last picture I took of the cutter, as I stood on a beach in Washington in the pouring rain. She was sailing north and out of Puget Sound ...

I've been tracking the ship since, which is one of the very cool things you can do with this particular Coast Guard cutter (a truly appreciated rarity). She left Dutch Harbor, Alaska just a few days ago on her first mission, and it looks like she is now entering the Chukchi Sea. You can track their progress from this link:

[icefloe.net]

This first research mission—which runs through late June—is to study the under-ice bloom. It's fascinating stuff if you're interested in plants or ice or biology:

[www.nasa.gov]

The two other missions this year will study "Moorings" and "Oil Spill Technologies." Those are the main topics, but many other scientists are aboard as well, doing other very interesting research.

They are already in the ice as one of the recent images from the hourly camera feed from the top of the HEALY shows us. You can track the photos here:

http://icefloe.net/Aloftcon_Photos/index.php?album=2014

This blog post is really just an update for those of you who want to track the HEALY and her progress in 2014. We have a whole list of other posts we are supposed to have done already (some of which we will yet do, we promise), but the past few months have been especially busy with work and also filled with trying to pack in as many adventures as we could together before he sailed away again ...

As a teaser, here's one of the images that Badger took of himself with the HEALY last year during Ice Liberty somewhere in the Arctic Ocean:

___

Here's the post on (roughly) the same topic that I wrote about a year ago when they deployed. It includes some additional details about the ship and about my sweet husband:

http://aluminumloaf.com/2013/08/badgerafloat.html
27 February 2014
18:12
Alice's beads, repurposed … again!
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

A few years ago, my Beloved Aunt Alice (my father's older sister) parted ways with the living. She was an amazing woman on so many different levels, and she touched each of us in special and unique ways; leaving every one of us believing that we had her absolute attention (and maybe rightfully so, as she had a huge heart and so much to give). We miss you Alice.

A few months after her passing, a number of us received packages in the mail that included an item of jewelry from her collection. The piece I received was a necklace that I wouldn't myself wear—I don't really wear gold-colored stuff—but after just a few minutes of looking at it, I knew what to do, and I sent an email with a photo of it to my very favorite jeweler: Jen Burrall in Portland, Maine. She replied that the red beads did look like carnelian and agreed to do a closer inspection of the piece to see what she could do with it for me. I figured that if I could wear the beads in some way, that I would be honoring Alice, but if the necklace sat in the back of a drawer for the rest of my life, that it would be sad and pointless.

Jen's jewelry has an extra-special place in my heart as my husband has been giving me pieces of hers since long before we were married. Also, she made my engagement ring, our wedding rings, and the special pins that we gave out to the twenty or so guests who attended our wedding. And each year, my collection grows ... and grows ... and grows ... (but that's another post).
So, I sent the necklace off to Maine (we were living in Seattle at the time), and Jen harvested the carnelian and disposed of the garish gold balls. All that remained of the original necklace were the smaller round beads, but that was enough for her to work with. She sent me a few ideas via email and I chose one. Here's her sketch:

Not long after that, the most amazing necklace arrived in the mail. Here's the picture that I immediately took and posted to my various social media worlds:

She did it! Jen turned something basically unusable into something absolutely spectacular. And honestly, I wear this necklace quite a lot, and just about every time I do, someone asks me about it or mentions how gorgeous it is. Alice continues to be honored on a regular basis. Thank you Jen!

So ... the point of this blog post is actually not about that necklace from years ago, nor about Sweet Alice. It's about the fact that my Dear Cousin Lex turned fifty this past year. Happy Birthday Sweetie! Lex was another one of us who had that extra-special bond with Alice—a bond that is just about impossible to break. It will always be there. Forever! And when we get together, we always talk about Alice and our memories of her.

When Jen sent me her completed masterpiece all those years ago, she also returned the remaining beads from the original necklace, and I've been saving them since. Waiting for a reason to somehow use them.

Lex has seen my necklace and stated her love for it. And we each sniffed a tear or two when I told her where the beads had come from and how Jen had brilliantly repurposed them for me. (From what I remember, I think she received a set of odd earrings from the estate?). So it seemed only natural that I would have Jen make a set of three necklaces with the remaining beads: one for Lex's fiftieth, one for her sister (also known as my Awesome Cousin Clare, who will also eventually turn fifty), and one for my mom, who was an integral part of Alice's life, especially in the years since moving to Maine.

So, off I sent the beads to Jen. And oh look what came back! A set of three astonishing necklaces that are clearly part of a set, but that each stand on their own.

Lex's is the one in the middle, Clare's is the rectangular one in the front, and the faceted one in the back is for my mom.

Again, it's only the round carnelian beads that are from the original necklace, but look how perfectly Jen matched them with a few other faceted carnelian beads ...

I adore Jen's twirly bits ...

And just look at those gorgeous pendants. Here they are up close:

Each of the necklaces uses a different mix of chain and hammered circles ... and yet they all so clearly belong together as a set, too.

I love Jen's hammered circles!

And those hooks!

They are stunning, Jen! Thank you so much for making yet more memories for me and my family.

Happy Birthday Lex! Cheers!
25 January 2014
2:13
Catching Up ...
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Oof ... I cannot believe how quickly the past few months have flown by—2013 is long since gone now, and 2014 is already in full swing. And although we have done an enormous amount in that time on both personal and professional levels, as usual, I am running behind on getting out our annual New Year's Notes. For the record, it usually takes me at least the first third of each year to write all the personal bits in them and decorate the 225+ envelopes, but I really had thought that this year would be different (as I do every year; so who am I kidding?). Anyway, I am working on them today. No, really I am. I think I have finally even frozen the design (yeah, right!).

I had three different clients slip scheduled project deliveries to me today, which means that I'll be working all day and night on Sunday, but it also means that because I had blocked most of the day today to work on those particular jobs, I instead found myself with a few precious hours of unassigned time. WHA? I could have picked up one of the [literally 20] other, more-flexible-deadline projects, but I just couldn't face yet another client file when my personal piles of stuff are literally falling over with their own weight. Plus, husband is away this week/weekend so I have all those other hours to myself as well. Some would nap or take a bath or read a book ... but me? Nah. I decided to spend the time doing the most important thing to ME on my extensive lists of shit-to-do. For me, that's working on my correspondence—something that has so sadly fallen to the wayside during these insane few months. What I really should be doing is working on writing that masters thesis, but that will have to just hold its horses for one more day. I need a break!

I am sorry, peeps, for not yet responding to your lovely letters. I have a few here from early-2013 that I've been transporting around in my bag for almost a year now—very well-traveled epistles. I'll try to do better in 2014, but the fact is, I already know this will be my most stupid-busy year ever. Sigh.

So, I'm working on them ... and that's what I hope to spend my entire night on—decorating envelopes and thinking about all these beautiful letters sitting here before me from all you beautiful people.

And as I just posted to Instagram: You know it's been way too busy when you have to measure your personal as-of-yet-not-replied-to mail by the inch (this is more than two inches when squashed as tight as possible). I live for the mail but I was a terrible correspondent in those last months of 2013. Sorry guys; I'm on it!
02 November 2013
6:01
The Other Airstream Bench Seat Gets New Fabric (Finally!)
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

I've had one last Airstream fabric project hanging over my head for quite some time: covering the bench seat that Badger sits on. I've had the fabric for months and months, but was squeamish about sewing around all those curves and corners. Today, in a period of just over an hour, I did the entire project from start to finish. Months and months of avoidance and it only took me an hour and twelve minutes! That'll teach me to procrastinate (*grumble*).

So ... here's what it looks like now: Awesome!

I had already covered or removed all of the other unfortunate blue-and-white-striped fabric in the Airstream, and replaced the (dare I say awful?) palm-tree curtains with new white ones, but this project eluded me. I dislike that stripey fabric so much that I had even kept a piece of black fabric draped over the seat in question for the past few months just so I didn't need to look at it. But then, because husband is away for many months, somehow various projects got assigned to The Bench where they languished ... but in a fit of cleaning and reörganizing over the past few days, I cleaned them all off and away. Then I could see those blasted stripes again, and the ridiculous blue bolsters. Arrrrgh! So today was the day.

Here's what I started with:

Just pulling the cushion off made me happy. I had previously removed the television that used to be on that wall but didn't want to cut any of the cables, so that's the steampunkish cable hanging down there (it just tucks in behind the cushion).

Managing this huge piece of fabric in limited space was difficult, but I was determined to get this DONE!

And wrapping the cushion was unruly to say the least. Yes, it's all one big thing all stitched together which makes for easier management while snapped into the seat (it isn't always sliding all over the place), but it made a more difficult sewing project for me.

I made it up as I went along, and with each seam I sewed, I refitted the whole thing back over the cushion and replaced it in the space so I didn't make too many mistakes in a row. Corners had to be tucked in and sewn ...

I even cut all five slits for the snaps right the very first time (three above and two anchored below). Yay me! (Very lucky me!)

I couldn't be happier with the result. It will make me smile multiple times every day for probably a month or more.

I hope you enjoy your new seat Badger. I'll show it to Makeshift if he ever gets out of bed, LOL!
20 October 2013
1:47
Quilted Octopus & Matching Blanket
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

When Makeshift and I went to Alaska last month, we met an awesome octopus in Seward at the Alaska SeaLife Center, and we've been octopus-obsessed since. We'd been tentacle-crazy for years, but they were usually Cthulhu-related experiments, not necessarily octopus-centric. However, once we were home again, the infatuation didn't wear off, and one morning last week we got it in our heads to make a quilted octopus, and a bunch of hours later, Makeshift had one of his very own! Granted, it is a temporary ownership in that the octopus is actually a baby gift. But for the nonce—and until I managed to make the matching quilt—Makeshift had a new tentacly companion.

I'd never even considered the idea of how to make a quilted animal before, but it seemed reasonably straightforward. The biggest problem I had was that I only had a single fat quarter of the olive fabric (I later secured more of this fabric) which I wanted to use for the underside of the tentacles, and I had a very limited amount of the onion fabric (and that was the very end of it after I reserved the piece I needed for the matching baby quilt that I planned on making), so I needed to use every possible inch and not mess up. I was only going to get one shot at this.

I extended the fat quarter by a few inches on both ends of the olive fabric to match the size of the onion fabric I had, which was easy because I knew that the selvage would be hidden inside of the head. I sketched out a head shape and reproduced it on a piece of printer paper.

Then I copied the reverse of that onto the other end of the fat quarter and drew in four tentacles coming out of either head—they all twisted in and around one another to use up as much of the fabric as possible.

Then I made a sandwich of batting and the two fabrics (good sides facing).

And I cut them out.

I then took each half-topus and pinned it up so it wouldn't move around as I carefully sewed the three layers together.

And sewed them up. Here's what the other side looked like.

I had of course left an un-sewn opening so that I could reverse the half-topuses. And I worked on that for a long time ...

Once reversed it looked like this.

I sewed a stitch into all the edges to give the tentacles some additional strength and to flatten them out.

And then I quilted each of the two halves including the heads.

I laid the heads back-to-back and cut off the edges so that they were mirror images.

I had originally planned to use binding to connect the two head pieces which is why I did things the way I did, but in the end I ended up sewing the heads together from the inside, and then reversing them, which made for a much cleaner and easier-to-make product. I could have saved myself a ton of time by sewing the heads differently, and if I ever make another quiltopus, I will know how to save some time; basically though, leave the opening for reversing the tentacles at the top of the head, not within the tentacles, and then don't bother sewing the head up until you are doing it from the inside.

I used some clamp guys to mark where I wanted to stop, and sewed four lines of stitches into the head to make it wicked strong.

Then I reversed the head.

To finish him up, I decided to make a pillow to slide inside the head to give him some extra volume, and to make it removable so that the quiltopus could be easily washed/dried. I'm told that kids barf on stuff, so things should be washable, right?

So I grabbed another piece of the olive fabric—of which I had since secured another 3.5 yards during the week, and washed and dried—and traced out the head shape.

Sewed that up and left a slit for stuffing. In retrospect, I would have left the slit at the top so that the final seam wouldn't be visible when inspecting the underside of the octopus.

Hello extra pillow. Goodbye pillow. Hello awesome stuffing.

And voilà: Octopus brain!

Easy to slip in, and thus presumably easy to slip out for washing needs as well.

And here he is, sitting up, so you can really see how little fabric this project actually took (because the tentacles all sort of fit into one another when not hanging about).

So, I still had that one remaining piece of onion fabric, and now lots of olive fabric (I bought the last of what one local shop had, and found two more yards at another shop), so it was time to make the matching baby quilt.

I laid out my onions atop the olives and I had my front and back.

I'm still working on that enormous piece of batting that I bought a few months ago. A king-size, all-natural, no glues or resins monster that I picked up for a quarter of what it was worth (sale on top of sale and a coupon equals a happy mushroom!). So, here's the sandwich.

I sketched out some baby tentacles for the edges on the back-side of the onion fabric.

And then cut them out (that's three layers there: batting, olives, and onions).

I sewed all around the edges and left a few tentacles un-sewn so that I could reverse the whole thing. Which once again took forever.

But finally I had it fully reversed and all the tentacles sitting pretty.

Then, exhausted, I went to bed. The next pictures include natural light and coffee!

I sewed up the few tentacles that I had left open for the reversing process.

Then I put a stitch all around the edge to strengthen and flatten—so many twists and turns!

And then tens of thousands of stitches got placed as I quilted from the outside edge all the way to the inside.

And eventually, however many hundreds of turns later, it was done! Here's the oniony front side.

And here's the other—sucker/olive—side.

Here's Quiltopus atop his blanket, blending in just as octopuses are prone to do.

And again ...

May my new small friend enjoy these tentacly, octopus-inspired gifts as much as we enjoyed getting to know our Alaskan octopus buddy, the predominant influence behind them.

And here are three pictures of our enormous Alaskan friend and his super-cute little horns:

Thanks for the show, Thumb! You're awesome!
19 October 2013
5:18
Friday's Fantastic Fabric Fandango
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

You know how when someone you know says something like "Hey, you should check out my vintage fabric collection—I've got kind of a lot of it," you smile and think, Hey, yeah, that's cool, I have a few boxes too. But politely and excitedly say, "Yes, sure, I'd love to check it out. And yes, sure, we can barter the thing you want of mine for a few vintage scraps."

Well, Stacy weren't kidding. I was literally speechless when I walked into her vintage fabric room. Truly awesome!!!

The sheer volume of awesomeness was overwhelming at first, but then I enthusiastically dove in ... only to find that there was even more fabric than I first believed; layer upon layer of incredibleness. I had just been reading about inspiring workspaces in my new issue of Uppercase magazine, and wow, did this space inspire me! I wanted to go get my sewing machine, bookshelves, comfy chair, and quilting/crafting supplies, and move right into the middle of it all!

So, thank you Stacy for the incredible Friday afternoon adventure. And thank you for the inspiration and the awesome barter.

Here are the amazing fabrics that I got out of it:

And here's why I chose each of these delicious prints ...

1. Three vintage Alaska tablecloths. Each full of errors/typos, cultural insensitivities (by today's standards), and stereotypes, but each a representative example of its time. Given that my husband has been in Alaska since July (mostly floating around in the Arctic Ocean), and given that I recently took my first trip to Alaska, my infatuation with the state is deep. These three gems themselves were worth the price of admission—oh wait, that was free. I am a lucky girl! I have no idea what I might do with these, but I can't wait to find out ...

This one is 34 inches by 37 inches:

This one is 31 inches by 33 inches:

This big boy is 50 inches by 47 inches:

2. I love anything with a vegetable on it, and this is the oddest vegetable-related fabric I've ever seen (it's another tablecloth measuring 52 inches square). The Dutch (?) rabbit with the apron is downright sinister, and the truly bizarre collection of quotations is insane—a sampling:

"Cares melt when you kneel in the garden"

"Don't get carrot away"

"24 carrot gold"

"Do you carrot all?"

and, um:

"From caring comes courage —Lao Tzu"

Wait, what? Clearly this must become a quilt, but for whom?

3. How could I pass up the kind-of-creepy fish?

4. I've been octopus-obsessed since my trip to Alaska (and my run-in with the awesome octopus in Seward), and I've been drawing out octopus-inspired quilting designs in my journals since my return. This fabric make me think of the suckers on an octopus' arms, and I already know just what I'm going to do with this black and white scrap of masterpiece!

5. Well, these are mushrooms. How could I pass up a mushroom fabric? Not possible.

6. Given that my husband is in the Coast Guard, and given that because of that we will probably always live very close to the water, we are surrounded by nautical hints at every turn. This fabric will make an excellent quilt or pillows or even curtains at some point ...

7. And this bizarre pattern and color combination will make an amazing accent to a more sedate quilt or scarf.

So, that's my haul ... I can't wait to do the laundry again and get all of this washed up and dried.

Thank you dear Stacy for the fantastic glimpse into your vintage fabric world—it left me inspired and excited to see what comes out of my sewing machine next ...
10 October 2013
0:59
Scale Model Airstream Quilt for Badger's Birthday
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

So, Badger's birthday came around last month while he was still off sailing the Arctic Ocean and stomping around on ice sheets to his heart's content as part of the crew of the US Coast Guard Cutter HEALY. I knew that I would be taking a trip to Alaska to join him for a week soon after his birthday, and I wanted to make him a special quilt. I'd started quilting in June, shortly before he left, and he's missed a few of them since he got underway, so this one had to be extra-special. It took me a few days to figure out what he most loves/misses about being out to sea, but it soon came to me: HE MISSES HIS AIRSTREAM! (Duh.) So I spend a number of weeks in September working on this two-sided, openable, scale model quilt of our Airstream. I gave it to him while we were together in Seward, Alaska a few weeks ago, and he and Makeshift felt right at home beneath it. It has since been installed on the ship where it is having the trip of a lifetime (or rather, the first of what will be many to come).

Here are a few more pictures of what the final reproduction looks like. Our Airstream is 25-feet long and this quilt reaches five feet from tip to tail—a one-fifth scale model. It has flair that is specific to port and starboard sides; logos, lights, awnings, windows, water, refrigeration, furnace, outside shower, electricity hook-ups, outdoor outlets, hot water heater, et cetera ... (even the blue pull-tabs for our gorgeous blue-striped awnings are there if you know where to look). I apologize for the somewhat rumpled look, when we took these pictures the quilt had been in a very tightly-packed travel bag for a number of days.

Badger's rack (bed) on the ship is essentially a twin-size bunk, so I wanted this quilt to be able to both lay there reasonably—decorating his living space—but also have him be able to use it as a blanket to curl up with. He tested out that idea with Makeshift and it seemed to work just fine (I don't think a man has ever been happier to have unfettered access to broadband Internet before; that's his freshly loaded-up iPad mini in the townhouse I rented for us during our week together in Seward).

So, it all began as many projects do with me: a journal entry (or ten) outlining the pros and cons, problems, concerns, issues, and any other sort of drivel that comes into my mind. Hey, it gets me where I need to be—we each have our own process. And I should mention, I actually completed this quilt long before I had even had the notion for the Cthulhu quilt that came after it, and for once I managed to keep a secret from my husband (something I am notoriously terrible at!) and didn't tell him about it. [It didn't hurt that we had very limited communication pathways during the weeks that I worked on it—I surely would have blown it otherwise.]

Choosing the fabrics was easy, the swirly silver waves on the simple gray cotton was the obvious starting point for the quilt, and many of the smaller bits I even had on hand from earlier quilting projects: the blue was from Mom's Scrabble quilt, the red was from Tania's elephant quilt, the black flower fabric was used in Kasia's pink-hair quilt, and the orange was purchased for my brother's quilt (which continues to languish at the moment, unstarted) but was also used to make the eyes on Dad's Cthulhu quilt. So really, of the six quilts I've now made, only the Ripley quilt isn't represented here in one way or another.

Then, I spent a few hours outside one evening with a ruler and tape measure, carefully collecting all the dimensions and doing calculations. Exhausting work for my brain, but I rewarded myself with a glass of wine, so all was well. And only one neighbor actually stopped square in their tracks and asked what the heck I was doing this time! LOL. I love that Martha! She's a crack-up.

I input the calculations into Adobe Illustrator (my map workhorse and very close companion of mine for more than a decade) and created all the attachable pieces. I cut them out one by one by one by one by one by one ... it went on forever! But in the end I had all the bits cut out, fused, re-cut, and bonded—and all onto the correct bits of ironed fabric.

Windows in the making for the curb side.

And all the darker gray bits for the curb side ... (see my note in the Intermission below and you'll understand why all these pieces are together: re-do!).

Lights! Orange lights in the making for the front of the Airstream! And then the red ones were created for the back. And then all over again for the other side.

Here are some of the bits for the street side of the quilt.

Here's one especially awesome thing about this quilt and our couch (gaucho): The quilt fit perfectly on the only surface (besides the floor I suppose) that would hold it. Here's what it looked like when I had all the pieces placed atop, before anything was actually sewn on.

I'm jumping ahead, but again, check out how once things were actually attached to the two sides, they fit perfectly—two-pieces-across—on the privacy curtain bar between the living space and the bedroom. This quilt was made to be made in this Airstream!

So, returning to our regularly scheduled program ...

Then I had to figure out how to best attach all those bits. I decided on an awesome stitch that looked like it would cover up the edges completely so they wouldn't fray in the wash, as well as hold strong for many years to come. And so began the sewing-on of bits ...

It took SO LONG to sew on all those windows using that thick, complicated stitch, but I love how they came out.

There was so much more measuring and math ...

I added a darker grey stripe along the bottom of the trailer just like it really has, and added the wheel wells, too.

And then the "chrome" strip that runs between the aluminum above and the grey below needed to be created and attached. I even sewed it to match the horizontal grooves in the real-world strip.

Then I decided to make the riveted door frame out of a piece of binding. I thought I could use what I call the Asterix stitch—cuz he put up with Obelix—to adorn it. Natch!

I needed a bit more bite so I added a long scrap of paper to the mix. All the better for the feed dogs to grab.

My theory worked and the paper tore away easily enough, leaving me with a long piece of "riveted" binding.

Getting the curve just right and sewing it on took a miracle, but it worked! Here's what came out of the experiment that night: Success!

I also used that same Asterix stitch to create the (curved) lines of rivets that run top-to-bottom and end-to-end along the Airstream.

Then, I took a break from the main parts of the quilt and figured out how to make the awnings! Always with using up every scrap! This batting remnant from the eggplant quilt got cut down to be used inside the awnings.

The smaller awning arms for the two sides (different lengths for each of course) were easy enough, but the awnings that run the whole span of the Airstream were almost five feet long on this quilt; that took some careful maneuvering.

But I got it. And look at the cunning little blue pull-tab. :)

So, much later (after the quilting was completed) I attached the awnings, but since I'm discussing them here, I'll add the relevant pictures to this section.

So, as an aside—or maybe by means of an Intermission if you are actually reading this—someone I know said that I should add more "screw-ups" to my quilting blog posts. Well, here's one: I thought I was going to be able to use the reverse side of the grey fabric (which was a nice solid grey, not some faded number), and had made all the original grey pieces in that fabric, but check out how it just disappeared into the sparkly fabric, not effectively showing off the particular component. I tore them out and went on the hunt for a darker grey. Believe it or not, grey is not a particularly popular color and it is actually incredibly difficult to match.

I worked and worked on the first side until all of the little bits were added and then I cut the shape out. Then, I had to start all over again with the other side (which is arranged in a completely different way, but thankfully, is lacking a [very difficult to sew] door).

After both sides were fully decorated with their accoutrements, I had to quilt them. Another set of almost-disasters occurred during this phase, but all the major ones were somehow averted.

The first sandwich began.

With something this big I knew I had to quilt top-to-bottom (a million times) and start from the middle. It was a major concern that the layers of the quilt sandwich didn't shift because I was working with less than a half-inch of wiggle room. Wiggle wiggle woo!

Even so, it barely fit rolled up in the crook of my machine. And I was very careful to quilt around every one of the elements, which meant I had to go back with different thread colors and quilt into those separately; all the black and dark grey bits got their own attention ... it felt downright Sisyphean.

I wanted to include all of the pieces that attach to the outside of the Airstream, so I had to create the logos. The tiny little logos. Crazy-town! Ours is an Ocean Breeze model, so it has an extra palm tree logo in blue and silver by the door (under the traditional International logo): Nailed it!

And the International logo sits by itself on the street side.

Two quick things I should mention that I realized about our aluminum home simply by making this quilt that I hadn't known before: (1) there's an International logo on the street side (cool), and (2) there's a grounded power outlet right next to my chair outside, where I have literally been sitting and said to myself (or maybe written in my journal), I wish there was an outlet out here! Well, there is! (Badger will have know this all along [duh!] and will laugh at me when he reads this clear lapse in aging brain power; he'll make an excuse for me though, and say that it must have looked like Cracker Barrel sign, lol.)

So, the binding. SO MUCH BINDING! I needed more than 30 feet of it! And in two colors: silvery-grey for the body and the darker grey for the base. I was so glad that I had invested in a new iron before taking on this quilt.

Ooops, not quite enough clips for the first side ... maybe I'll make another small investment in these useful grabby guys.

The "sunglasses" which wrap around the front of the Airstream were easy enough to add, but I had to put them on after the binding was secured so that they would show the illusion of "wrapping" around the silver shell, also, I gave them depth by adding some padding, just like they have in real life.

And then I had to devise a final solution: a fabric hinge to attach the two pieces of the quilt. I came very close to messing this up about a hundred times, and almost quilted the whole thing together in reverse—that's one of the main problems with too many exceptionally late nights in a row while on deadline: brain-rot.

But in the end, it all came out just fine. I decided not to attach the wheels as they seemed somehow dwarfed by the rest of the structure, even though I remeasured a number of times. I thought about making larger ones but they wouldn't sit right, so I just left them off—and now that just looks normal to me.

And so you have managed to make it to the end of this blog post (wow—thanks for reading/scrolling!). Here are two more views of the finished quilt: curb side and street side. These images may make the quilt look small, but really, for a badger, he has a significant wing-span.

Also, if you've seen the Cthulhu quilt post and the picture of my Dad peeking out from on top of it, this isn't a meme; Badger did the same peeking thing with this quilt before Dad even received Cthulhu (he was in the mail, winging it from Alaska to Maine at the time), and the two haven't seen one another's pictures (Dad will when this gets posted of course, and Badger will when he gets some good Internet again).

Happy Birthday my love ... I hope your makeshift Aluminum Loaf is keeping you comfy.

Can't wait to see you again.

Hugs, Mushroom
05 October 2013
7:10
Cthulhu Quilt [Hat/Helmet] for Dad's 70th Birthday
sur Planet Geospatial - http://planetgs.com

Happy Birthday Dad!

My Dad is a very difficult man to buy presents for. He'd say he isn't because he has an Amazon Wish List, but he's going to buy that stuff for himself in the end anyway (if he still wants it). I did very well last year with the Mystic Order of the Elder Gods fez; it's a thing of beauty and a tribute to American craftsmanship, and he wears it very well!

But this year is his 70th birthday ... so something significant needed to be designed/developed/created. My Dad isn't really a quilt person—it takes an act of magic to keep a darn napkin on the man's lap (if we do end up giving him one, he inevitably stands up and dumps it on the floor anyway, so we mostly don't bother unless fancy company is around who might notice that a setting is lacking a face wipe). But he does love to watch his obscure episodes and movies, and often I think he might want company or might possibly be chilly in the 50-degree room where his monitor is (we don't have a TV, we have a "monitor" that plays DVDs and streams video). So, for a month I was trying to imagine a quilt-like thing that I could make him; something fun and yet maybe useful.

Finally, on the first page of a new journal, on the day before his actual birthday, it came to me and I drew it out: a Cthulhu Quilt! A lap blanket (a cotton codpiece if you will) that might keep him warm (or at least the popcorn bowl better balanced), and provide a smattering of company.

Within the hour I had the fabric ironed and was cutting out tentacles! Luckily, I already had all the fabric I needed in my fabric box and it had previously been washed and dried. I had purchased all of the remaining three-plus yards of this incredible onion print fabric from a nice lady at a tiny quilt shop in Port Townsend, Washington a few months ago with a quilt for my brother's new baby in mind, but I hadn't gotten around to making it yet. And I had two types of orange fabric that were also originally destined for two other quilt ideas, but that also hadn't yet been used, and I even had the green and orange thread that I'd need, and the batting. This quilt was magical from the start!

This is only the sixth quilt I've ever made, and I've never done one that was more fabric-art than blanket-type-thing. So I was totally winging it.

I started out by making a sandwich of fabric and batting for the tentacles.

Then I cut out curvy strips that I imagined would make good tentacles.

One of the two green spools of thread I had on hand was from my first quilt—the RIPLEY quilt—which used a bizarre gradated green thread. I still had quite a lot left so I used it to sew the thousands of inside tentacle stitches.

To make the tentacles, I took the fabric that was on the bottom of the sandwich and put it on the top, front-to-front, with the batting beneath.

The I sewed the three layers together.

Reversing the tentacles was much more time-consuming than you ever might have imagined. If the tentacles were wide, it wasn't so bad, but if narrow, they took forever and a certain amount of swearing was expressed. (Makeshift, cover your ears!)

The two most useful tools I had during this phase were a bone burnisher and the pen for my drawing tablet. With the burnisher on the inside and the pen helping to guide the sleeve from the outside, I managed to get the tentacles reversed one after the other.

It did rather feel like I spent my entire afternoon skinning hagfish (aka slime eels), but it was worth it as the door to the Airstream became progressively covered in tentacles ...

Then I switched to a darker green thread and added a stitch all the along the outside of each of the tentacles, helping to give them some additional strength and uniformity as well as a bit less floppiness.

And then, by the end of a the first very long day, I had completed the tentacles. They took at least twice as long as I ever might have imagined, but they looked awesome!

Oh wait, then I couldn't sleep, so I started playing with ideas for the eyes. A while later I had constructed these lovelies. Completely winging it once again ...

Makeshift was especially pleased.

I should also mention that I broke my first needle! Crunch and Snap! Quite the surprise when it happened. And a rite of passage I suppose. Lesson learned: No matter how awesome those metal clips are, you must remember that one end is longer than the other, and the longer end should be on the TOP of whatever you are sewing. Otherwise, your sewing machine needle will hit one and snap apart in a blaze of terrifying glory. Thankfully, I had 100 spare needles waiting. Turns out, sewing machine needles are incredibly cheap when purchased in bulk (I paid $16 for 100 on Amazon—those are cunning little pouches of 10 each).

The next day I started working on the two sides of the head. Somehow, overnight, I had gotten in my head that this quilt should be able to be worn as a HAT. Don't ask my why, it was just very clear to me that this needed to happen ... (Bad Makeshift!!!)

A sandwich of fabrics and batting began the back side. I chose an orange fabric to line the inside of the head.

Smaller tentacles were cut out of the sandwich.

The fabrics were re-sandwiched and prepared for sewing.

Note how all of the clasping-pins are long side ON TOP this time.

Tentacles sewed.

Ends snipped away and edges also cut down a bit to make for easier reversing.

And then, much later, the tentacles had been reversed. Note to self: Long thin tentacles are almost impossible to reverse successfully. And one of them got completely buggered up. But in fact, the anemic little deformed tentacle might even be my favorite. So Cthulhu!

I was much smarter about the front of the head—the tentacles are much wider.

So I sewed the head tentacles, reversed them, added a stitch all around the outside and then started attaching the long tentacles. Again, long sides UP with the metal monsters.

Also, I attached on the eyes ...

More tentacles added ... seventeen in all ...

Makeshift was totally enthralled with Cthulhu ... it was a bit of a love affair for a few days.

The back and front of the head were quilted ...

Then, Makeshift demanded that Cthulhu have wings. So I made some ...

Makeshift spent quite a lot of time that day trying to fly ...

Wings were attached.

The two sides of Cthulhu's head were shaped and cut, and then sewn together with some binding.

Makeshift pleaded to keep Cthulhu ... but alas, their friendship will have to exist via the Interwebs.

At that point, I was rushing to get out the door to start my trip to Alaska—planning to meet up with our large-sized Badger in Seward when his ship pulled into port—so Makeshift and I ended up in a hotel room in Seattle for the night. The room had two large beds, so they took over one of them while I attended to some well-deserved beers at the bar.

And then we were in Alaska with our beloved Badger!

We made him wear Cthulhu as a hat in a sweet church-cum-cafe in Seward that we frequented quite a lot during our week together. As usual, he was a very good sport about it.

And we made him model it, too (I laughed for WAY too long):

Cthulhu Video

Then Cthulhu got mailed from Seward, Alaska to rural Midcoast Maine. I knew he'd probably fuck up the works, but I had no idea he'd shut down the government nor that he would take two extra days to arrive (the Express Mail money-back guarantee meant I collected my refund with no trouble, so although the government is still askew, I have my $40 back in my pocket = essentially free shipping and money for another QUILT!).

But then he did finally arrive in Maine!!!

(The following pictures—as well as the two at the very top of this post—were taken by my mom of my dad with Cthulhu; delayed but unharmed.)

Happy Birthday Dad! May Cthulhu keep you warm and amused for decades to come.

Love,

Kate

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