Ï€: quiet musing

As conversations on recent events indicate, the religious fundamentalists have found servile bed-fellows among many pseudo-intellectuals of the extreme Left who often lack sufficient moral clarity within to accurately parse acts of violence. Their hearty embrace of the bogus “root cause” excuse with regards to violence reveals a clouded moral view, a sympathetic bias to drawing the line “somewhere convenient”, and a sickening weakling of a fortitude.

Related:
* Failure of Ideas

Inspite of every generation’s tendency to glorify its own challenges as bigger turning points (the past looks smaller from a distance), the result was fairly momentous by comparison and it can gain more perspective via The Principle of Shuffling the Apple Cart: This was an opportunity to shuffle the cart in some ways, and that principle and the benefits therefrom gain precedence over most policy differences and their risks, whether actual or perceived.

As this long season draws a yawn today, here is a thought: Despite differences, it was great that the season lasted for as long as it did because that caused a necessary catharsis- a wrenching expunging of social toxins where hushed backroom conversations were extricated to the surface and thrashed about in public until dry; offering sounder role models on the inside amidst a lack, while challenging yesterday’s straitjackets on the outside amidst an abundance.

Related:
* Understanding 2008 American Political Campaigns - The Demographic End-Blocks Challenge: A Nutshell
* Technology Leaders and Political Bent, 2007

* Subprime Mortgage Crisis
* Subprime Crisis: Impact Timeline

Related:
* C4
* Bremner, Bird and Fortune
* John Bird
* John Fortune

Given the niche, I am helping spread the word. Pass it along to qualified parties:
“The project objectives are to develop Virtual World applications to study how people acquire, organize and apply information. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in Virtual World development, and a demonstrable interest in Social/Bio Sciences and/or Communication/Media.”

In an apparent indirect retort, Fareed Zakaria responds:
“If this pattern of misunderstanding, disunity and stalemate continues, there will be little progress on all kinds of urgent global issues.”

So his answer:
“…to create new and enduring relations with them, integrate them into existing structures of power and lay out new rules of the road.”

More “one-world” accommodative, less “I-got-here-first” parochial.

Related:
* Bend It Like Brooks

Here’s my thumb-rule: A life capable of relatively mature emotional (human) relationships must be valued more when other survival diets are available.

* Sentience

* PETA

If you just make a slight substitution, David Brooks, who is sometimes on the mark, comes across as one opposing democratic principles:
“This dispersion should, in theory, be a good thing, but in practice, multipolarity means that more groups have effective choice [veto] power over collective action. In practice, this new pluralistic world has given rise to negotiations [globosclerosis], an inability to solve problem after problem without consensus.”

So his answer is to concentrate power:
“The answer is that, in the late 1940s, global power was concentrated.”

And then he wants to use that power to punish others:
“There is no mechanism to wield authority.”

Parochial? Et tu, Brooks?

Well, I have switched from b2evolution to Wordpress CMS. And thanks to Apache’s mod_rewrite, I was able to keep all my old links intact. Here’s how:

### wordpress:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
# basic:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/
# file:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
# dir:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/index.php [L]
# [R] Redirect [L] Last rule
# post:
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} title=([^&]+)
RewriteRule ^index\.php /gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/%1\.html? [r=301,nc]
# archive - monthly:
http://www.spatiallink.org/gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/pi.php?m=200807
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} m=([0-9]{4})([0-9]{2})
RewriteRule ^index\.php /gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/%1/%2? [r=301,nc]
# archive - category:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} cat=15
RewriteRule ^index\.php /blog/category/aspatial [r=301,nc]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} cat=14
RewriteRule ^index\.php /blog/category/spatial [r=301,nc]
</IfModule>
### end wordpress

This was how the old URL looked like, http://www.spatiallink.org/gistools/discuss/weblogs/blogs/?title=gisp_and_aicp. Note that there were limitations to permalink, since %year%, %day% or %category% were unknown from the old URL. Fortunately, I had only 2 categories, so this was a cinch.

Although I am still on the fence on GISP given the relative lackluster, what APA has done with AICP’s CM could give it some shine when it comes to creating a provider ecosystem.

To quickly fill you in: Last year at its Leadership Meetings, APA launched the CM program for AICP. In short, it required professional planners to continuously seek training in order to maintain their certifications, and allowed 3rd-party providers to offer that training.

For SIS, adopting a similar approach would require forsaking a fee-centric approach, letting someone like OGC bite a bigger share and sinking deeper into some sort of GIS accreditation, far beyond ESRI Authorized Training Program, before the “Surveyor Usurp” (see below).

–Ï€

Related:
� The Status of Professional Certification in GIS - Conclusion:
“GIS application areas range from engineering to computer and information sciences, geography, business, logistics, forestry, and many other academic and professional preparation fields. Because GIS professionals come from a wide variety of backgrounds and academic preparation, no one group can claim to represent all approaches and applications within the GIS community. Also, given the volatile nature of the field, and the rapid change currently underway in software development and application deployment, adequate preparation today does not guarantee competency in the future. For these reasons, an overarching program to ensure appropriate professional preparation and competency must be developed by those parties interested in safeguarding the viability of the field and the competency of those claiming professional status.

It is unlikely that voluntary certification can assure competency across the profession if most practitioners choose not to be certified or if employers don’t insist that their employees be certified. Therefore, it is essential that benefits of certification be clearly articulated. By including a wide range of professional organizations within the certification development process, and working to include the interests of all GIS professionals by developing both a reasonable core set of competencies and appropriate specialized evaluations within the certification process, all groups will benefit from certification.”

� Groups - “The Usurp“: Spatial Sciences Institute (SSI), Australia and Board of Surveying and Spatial Information, New South Wales, Australia

� Degrees: University of Southern Queensland, Australia - Bachelor of Spatial Science (BSPS) and Bachelor of Spatial Science Technology (BSST)

� Ideas: For ideas on what required trainings could entail, here’re some courses (article) and my suggestions for AICP’s CM that I feel comfortable teaching (GIS != ESRI):

— PLAN TECH 101 - Desktop GIS (vendor-neutral) —
Featuring:
- QGIS (opensource)
- ArcGIS (proprietary, $)
- MapInfo (proprietary, $)
Outline:
* Intro to GIS data
- Vector
- Raster
- KML, GML, WMS etc
* How to acquire GIS data - Resources
* How to work with maps - Common tasks
- Geocoding/Geoprocessing
- Spatial analyses
- Editing
- Printing, publishing
* Intro to spatial databases
* Best practices
* What lies ahead - Industry trends
* Other notable resources - handy tools and hacks

— PLAN TECH 102 - webGIS (vendor-neutral) —
Featuring:
- Mash-Up APIs
- Google Maps (proprietary, free)
- ArcWebServices (proprietary, $)
- Virtual Globes
- NASA World Wind (opensource)
- Google Earth and SketchUp (proprietary, free versions)
- IMS
- MapServer (opensource)
Outline:
* Intro to webGIS
* How to mash-up
- Text to maps etc
- How to use MapMaker, MyMaps and Charts
- License considerations
* How to use Virtual Globes
- How to add placemarks, polygons, photographs etc
- How to georeference photographs
- How to create network links
- How to create tours
- License considerations
- Other presentation considerations
- 3D models
* Intro to in-house interactive mapping
- How to set-up and serve
* Best practices
* What lies ahead - Industry trends
* Other notable resources - handy tools and hacks

— PLAN TECH 103 - Web 2.0 (vendor-neutral) —
Outline:
* Intro to Web 2.0
* How to set-up
- CMSs
- Blogs and forums
- Mailing lists
- webGIS
- Mash-Ups
* How to use Social Networking
- YouTube
- MySpace
- Facebook
* License considerations
* Intro to Section 508
- Guidelines
- Resources
- Tips
* Best practices
* What lies ahead - Industry trends
* Other notable resources - handy tools and hacks

In reference to PerryGeo’s generosity comments, I have benefited from similar help. And the more I talk about it with other outdoor enthusiasts, the more I feel that that may just be a common trait of those professionals who get to work outdoors, especially the always helpful park service staff. The pace is relaxed, the rhythm natural and the approach commonsensical; and they are frequently encountering a blessed scene with few abstractions to “simply doing” or even “simply living”. And that does something to you, slowly, over a period of years, day by day. Add to that the particular raw blend of professionals which gets attracted to such work in the first place.

individual
| +
+ |
ENVIRONMENT

So when we are choosing what profession to undertake or where to work or even which lifestyle to adopt, we ought to consider the powerful effects of our environment.

–π

Demographic End-Blocks:
* Bleeding Heart Uppities [soc/log]
* Blue Collar Union Bees [mar/emo]
* Wall Street Investor Types [mar/log]
* Church Going Folksies [soc/emo]

WHERE **
[soc] = Largely Social Concerns
[mar] = Largely Market Concerns
[log] = Predominantly Logic-driven Political Responses
[emo] = Predominantly Emotion-driven Political Responses
** All caveats that go with such nutshells are applicable

The challenge here is to court at least two of these distinct end-blocks, preferably on the same side of the progressive-conservative divide. Why? To establish sufficient political relevance at a national scale. How? By effectively framing a coherent message with as little “compromise”- appeasement, condescension or pandering, as possible.

– Ï€

Related:
* Technology Leaders and Political Bent, 2007
* Rural Clusters and Relative Rurality
* Making Public Policy: A Nutshell
* Political Equilibrium
* Clinging to the data [Paul Krugman]

• 3.14 and the Rest
• Joy of π
• A History of Pi
• The Number Pi Challenge

GEMMO is a massively multiplayer online game [MMOG or MMO] for Google Earth that allows you to “explore the world as you collect gold, fight evil monsters and try to collect the crystals that are guarded in major cities [19 so far] across the planet” without any additional software to download.

Given the gathering whispers of our rumor-mill, some morph of this could make it big- a la Scrabulous. Good job Mickey of MickMel Inc!

– π

Related:
• Google Earth [GE] @ Work
• Google Earth in Second Life!
• Metaverse

Quotes from the recent Net Neutrality Hearings:

David L. Cohen, Vice-President, Comcast- ‘…on a “very limited basis” Comcast was delaying traffic in limited areas when there is heavy traffic.’”Don’t let the rhetoric of some of the critics scare you- there is nothing wrong with network management. Every network is managed.”

Tim Wu, Professor, Columbia Law School- “I have this terrible fear we are going to have an exam after this on what is reasonable network management. And we are all going to fail.”

Related:
• FCC to Act on Delaying of Broadband Traffic [NYT]
• FCC
• Network Management

I started the year with this ‘Time Management‘ video by Randy Pausch. You may know him from ‘The Last Lecture‘. His introduction is by Gabe- my website mentor at UVA Computer Science Web Team. A must-watch if you haven’t already.

– π

Related:
• 2007
• The Legacy of Randy Pausch

• Medium Maximization: “A medium, for example, points or money, is a token people receive as the immediate reward of their effort. It has no value in and of itself, but it can be traded for a desired outcome. Experiments demonstrate that, when people are faced with options entailing different outcomes, the presence of a medium can alter what option they choose. This effect occurs because the medium presents an illusion of advantage to an otherwise not so advantageous option, an illusion of certainty to an otherwise uncertain option, or an illusion of linearity to an otherwise concave effort-outcome return relationship. This work has implications for how points influence consumer choice and how money influences human behavior.”

• “With the lure of points added to the mix, more than half of students chose the longer task and the less desirable pistachio prize that went with it. Independent of their actual value, ‘points’ apparently give people some satisfaction. That’s just one reason that frequent-flier programs have been so successful for so long.” [NYT]

Related:
• The Power of Ten

1,000 CONTACTS > 100 VISITORS > 10 SIGN-UPS > 1 ACTIVE USER

– π

Related:
• “It is claimed that a satisfied customer tells an average of three people about a product or service he/she likes, and eleven people about a product or service which he/she did not like [Silverman, George. Secrets of Word Of Mouth Marketing. 2001]. Viral marketing is based on this natural human behavior.”
• Bizsum Book Summary [Amazon]

Having just returned from a ‘passing away’, I am tempted to share this pick:

[18] A Parable

A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.

Two mice, one white and one black, little by little, started to gnaw away [at] the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

Related:
• Risk Management
• Impermanence
• Tath Tvam Asi
• Question
• 101 Zen Stories [Amazon]

Planning departments, especially those of smaller cities, have long hesitated because of technology, budgetary and other constraints to engage their constituents through web-based mapping tools. Part of the reason is simply an uneasiness with Web 2.0-esque mapping technologies.

Well, these days they have less to worry about. That is, if they don’t mind piggy-backing on corporate giants.

Recently, the BurbankLeader reported on how the City of Burbank, Los Angeles County, California, the not-so-undisputed “Media Capital of the World” with a comfortable population of 104,317 (2006), has trusted some online service providers and their armies of 24/7 network-support staff to host part of its mapping data. Not a mash-up feat by today’s standards, but the City has invited public input by publishing its planning project status using Google Maps’s free Application Programming Interface (API).

According to the City’s Principal Planner Michael Forbes, AICP, “the planning projects map, run by Google, is an interactive list of all residential, commercial and industrial projects throughout Burbank that are being processed or have been recently approved or denied. Each project icon on the map includes information about the project and a link to its current status.”

A note of caution for the impatient GIS Planner: While nowadays, a mash-up is more than a hack, most public map APIs are still constrained by their ask-coordinates-get-flat-tile design, albeit smart, when it comes to geometry-aware mapping that requires ‘queriable geometry’.

Consequently, despite the established familiarity of mash-ups, the appropriateness of such mash-ups to enterprise GIS for large-scale custom mapping is still debated.

Then there is that question of commercial advertisements on publicly-funded maps. Note that there are ways around it: Google Maps for Enterprise, for one, allows the option to disable location-based advertising for an annual fee. The free Google Maps also requires map and custom data to be publicly-accessible. But as far as the cause of community’s access to information is concerned, it is well-served by such mash-ups.

So nearly two years after chicagocrime.org- the seminal Google mash-up that won the 2005 Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism and was named by the New York Times as one of 2005’s best ideas (”It turns out that the best way to organize much of the information online is geographically.” - Do-It-Yourself Cartography, NYT), arrived at the mapping scene followed by hordes of Google Earth KMLs; At a time when some Elite Systems Research Institutes have already tried similar approaches and not quite succeeded; At a time when companies have been successfully built from mash-ups; At a time when real-estate mash-ups have become stale and foreclosure mash-ups have become hot; ’smallish’ planning departments are warming up to the idea of neogeographic mash-ups as planning tools. Finally.

– π

Related:
� Online Tool Spotlight: Mash-Ups as Planning Tools (Summary)
� Planning and Technology Today: Technology in Public Participation (Issue 90, Fall 2007) - A Publication of the Technology Division of the American Planning Association
� Neogeography 101: Word Association
� Google Earth [GE] @ Work
� Follow Up [1]: ESRI Ketchup!
� Follow Up [4]: Graphic Software
� Follow Up [2]: Map Viewer and Google
� Virtual Earth For Government
� ESRI ArcWeb Services: Pricing Guide
* Find sample region by geometry - $0.02
* Get map of region - $0.02
* Zoom in/out of above map - $0.02
* Find places - $0.02
* Measure distance on map - $0.00
� Other Examples: OpenLayers - Web Processing and Routing

BBC News | Special Reports: “Weather disasters ‘getting worse’”

Related:
• Unshared Sacrifice
• Oxfam

Paul Ramsey points to Danny de Vries’s take on Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial [FOSS4G] 2007:

“What we saw was a young and passionate movement not-so-subtly showcasing their dedication for open-source as a tool by which to challenge corporate, or closed-source, IT monopolies in the geospatial domain.”

I want to underline the ’showcasing’ part. It is important to not ignore why that is significant for contribution to opensource, which as some would like you to believe is often lacking direction and profit and not the best use of your time. And it can be summarized like so:

                        +—[IN]—> LEARN
CONTRIBUTE —|
                        +—[OUT]—> SHOWCASE —> GET WORK

–π

Related:
• My Pick of FOSS4G 2007 Presentation Submissions
• Contribute

• What if Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?
• If Microsoft packaged the iPod…

Related:
• Never the Twain Shall Meet

As the Google-backed Open Handset Alliance takes shape, I have been testing dominant WAP browsers on my 2-year old touchscreen PocketPC. This resulting post should narrow down the choices for those who follow:

• Deep Fish by Microsoft appears to be the most promising of the lot. Unfortunately, it is in a strict testing phase and no longer accepting registrations. Until then, you can always make do with Internet Explorer for Mobile.
• Opera, arguably the slimmest desktop browser out there, has a paid version- Opera Mobile for $24. But if you do not have a smartphone and/or do not wish to spend any money, try Opera Mini.
• The Mozilla Foundation has the amusingly named Minimo.

Opera Mobile offers tab-browsing like Minimo, and does a better job at handling pop-ups and javascripts than Internet Explorer. And like Minimo, it offers ‘grab and drag’ navigation thus eliminating scrollbars. Opera Mobile also offers subtle other improvements, like allowing you to change your User Agent- a must-have for those websites that recognize mobile browsers, but remain inexplicably unprepared for them. On the other hand, Minimo features XUL [try this in Firefox - chrome://browser/content/browser.xul] that has impressively found its way into Mozilla Amazon Browser etc, and is the most customizable.

Absent from all these is the Nokia Web Browser- the sometime favorite of opensource mobile development. After all, its early emulators are what helped a lot of programmers/developers gain a handle on mobile development long before Google.

–π

Related:
• Follow Up [1]: Wireless Application Protocol
• Wanted: Proactive Policies
• >> WAP
• News:: Spatial
• News:: Science & Technology
• Sample *.xul
• xda-developers Forum
• Picsel Browser
• Zumobi
• Proxy Server
• Mini-Me

Try this page to compare Ruby’s and Python’s language elegance side-by-side. Spoiler Warning: There is a winner!

To get you started:
Ruby - string.method ["String".reverse or "String".length]
Python - string[slice] or function(string) ["String"[::-1] or len(”String”)]

–π

Related:
• Python Interpreter
• ASP
• Cold Fusion
• JSP
• Perl [ActivePerl]
• [ActivePython]
• PHP
• Tcl [ActiveTcl]
• A Tale of Two Cities