Tuesday 6 September 2011

RSS feed of Google Calendar Events

Use the following;

https://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/[your account]/public/basic?orderby=starttime&sortorder=ascending&max-results=5&futureevents=true

Now to put it on XBMC. The GF will be impressed.

Friday 1 July 2011

GIS Technologies - DotSpatial

I'm going to hopefully run through the majority of the technologies on show at FOSS4G this year. I probably won't be going myself but at least by September I'll have first-hand experience with the big names.

Okay, the first one I chose was DotSpatial. I think i'll bunch up the OSM stuff into one long session - that's why I've gone and skipped over it.

So DotSpatial. I've only had a half a day but there's plenty of clear tutorials over at DotSpatial Docs to work through. I tried out a few and it's normally stuff for a dot Net Spatial library - map controls and ease of loading/editing vector and raster files.

Loading WMS into a map contol - no simply single layer class yet but a workaround was posted by Ted - here

Coming from working with ArcObjects it's looks a godsend of common sense. I'm not sure if I'll yet see a job post looking for DotSpatial as a requirement but you never know.

Friday 17 June 2011

GIS Technologies this year at FOSS4G

This is a boiled down list of the technologies to be discussed at FOSS4G this year. I've been using most of the OSGeo GeoStack a fair while but I knew there was a lot out there I wasn't getting exposure to. Simmering down the tech list from the FOSS4G schedule has given me an insight into what I should be looking at. And really, I wasn't expecting it to be so darn large.

Sorry there's no links. Some entries are missing from the schedule due to their particular focus but I've tried to keep it complete as best possible from a developer's point of view.

OSM - OpenStreetMap
JOSM - an editor for OpenStreetMap in Java
OSM + PostGIS + QGIS - Data analysis
DotSpatial - Mono/.Net Framework C# GIS library
PostGIS
MapFish - web framework, companion to OpenLayers, GeoExt, GeoAlchemy, Shapely
FormAlchemy / GeoFormAlchemy
Geomajas - a client/server framework, uses GWT
Spatial Data Infrastructure/GeoNetwork/GeoCat Bridge creates metadata
GeoMoose - client framework for MapServer, good on data organisation, data maintenance
pgRouting - routing extension to PostGIS
Geoserver
OpenLayers
Common JavaScript libraries - jQuery UI, ExtJS, Sencha Touch
GeoKettle - ETL tool, GeoMonrian (Spatial OLAP server) and GeoBIExt - all @ spatialytics.org
OGC WFS-T, TinyOWS
GeoExt
MapServer
QGIS
Mapnik, Node.js
i2maps - geocomputational platform, spatial/temporal data (built around OpenLayers and GeoDjango)
GeoNode
NodeJS framework, Polymaps framework - both for back-end
Inkscape - SLD production
Zoo-Project and WPSs (Web Processing Services)
Amazon Web Services - autoscaling, load balancing cluster
Spatial Wiki - Ubuntu, MediaWiki, Apache, Geoserver, OpenLayers, PostGIS
NSDI, GIS in urban planning
Flot plotting library, spatio-temporal modelling - surfaces
HydroDesktop, free GIS for hydrological modeling
Tilecaching, secured WMS, MapProxy
Imposm - imports OSM data into PostGIS
gvSIG Mini - production of PoI data from OSM, map viewer for Android
Flex, OpenScales, NetCDF, AXIIS, Degrafa, SOS, AIS - for Oceanic applications
Mod-geocache - caching server
MapMint - SDI manager
MapQuery, gRaphael (SVG chart library)
TileMill with Mapnik and Carto (map styling language)
Glob3 - 3D framework, suitable for iOD and Android devices
Google Fusion tables > kml for google maps
GDAL
GeoTools - Java GIS library
MapWindow - MS Windows GIS with .Net API
GXP - Javascript library connects to OpenLayers, Ext JS, GeoExt using a JSON configuration.
Tinyows, GeoPrisma, Zoo WPS - part of the MapServer project stack
GeoScript - extends python, javascript, scala, groovy
CartoSet - web map framework, built upon Ruby on Rails framework ‘CartoDB’.
GeoShield - security access-control to OGC services
MapGuide OpenSource Server & Web Extensions
OGC Web Processing Service (WPS), 52 North, Geoserver
OpenAerialMap
Mobile mapping: BeeGIS (uDig ext) and Geopaparazzi
Partitioning Around Medoids clustering algorithm with Grass & R
GeoWebCache
Cartagen Knitter - rectifying aerial imagery
Opticks - open source image processing software
OpenLayers Mobile
Esri Geoportal Server
Web of Things demonstration - SenseBox
WebGL Earth
WCS 2.0
MassMov2D - landslide modelling
libPC & libLAS - point cloud processing
PyWPS
mapnik2geotools
FalconView
Cellular Automata QGIS plugin
GeoCouch, CouchDB
HydroLiDAR
jai-tools
Geomondrian
GeoServer Plugin for the NoSQL Mongo Database
PostGIS Raster support/extension
JTS Topology Suite
HTML5/WebGL
OGC SOS
GeoCommons
GeoExt vs MapQuery vs Legato
Postal Address Geo-Coder (or PAGC)
AcidMaps
JGrass/uDig
Stado
HSLayers - a Openlayers/ExtJS based mapping framework
Neo4j Spatial
MapBender 3
GeoAPI 3.0
GeoCat Bridge - publishing data from ArcGIS to GeoNetwork/Geoserver/MapServer

and Oracle, FME and ArcGIS Server!

Monday 16 May 2011

Reproject shapefile for google maps

This is always a bind in whatever GIS package I seem to use - probably because I forget to concentrate over my projection details. However the easiest way to do it is to use fwtools. Download the pack from fwtools.maptools.org and move your data (in this case a shapefile) to the fwtools directory to make it easier.

Load up the FWTools Shell and type the following to convert a shapefile from OS National Grid to Google Maps EPSG:900913

ogr2ogr –f “ESRI Shapefile” –t_srs EPSG:900913 output.shp input.shp

Load into geoserver and test in a google maps page and you're done.

Friday 4 February 2011

How to remove apps from Facebook

this might change but the current method of removing apps, as of Feb. 2011, is..

1- Account (top right hand corner)
2- Privacy Settings
3- Applications and Websites – edit your settings (bottom left corner
4- Applications you use – edit settings
5- click x to remove whatever application wanted to remove

Friday 21 January 2011

Seeing XP machine from Windows 7 machine

I renamed one of my XP machines on my home network and ever since the Windows 7 box has failed to see it.. An unidentified error occurs in windows explorer when trying to access the XP machine (as it is listed) but a different situation arises in command line;

In command line
net view
returns the XP machine along with all other machines.. good.
net view \\xpmachine
fails with system error 53 message.

I've tried checking netbios is enabled, firewalls off, ip6 turned off, and a heap load of other things that i've googled on.

Weirdly NET USE M: \\xpmachine\myfolder /user:myUserName myPassword works and I get a mapped network drive. Once done new view \\xpmachine works.

But I don't want mapped network drives. I want to access drives by \\xpmachine\myfolder. But I've found that if i enter \\xpmachine into the address bar of windows 7 explorer window it will prompt for user and password. And once done it seems to have stuck and net view \\xpmachine returns the available resources.

-----------------------------------------

Well it happened again. I can't believe that what I wrote last time actually worked. If it did then lucky me. This time it took me a while to work out that the clock on both machines must be in sync (to some degree I guess) for windows 7 to be happy. I was doing some work that required me to set the year back to 2010 (#cough) so correcting that back to normal fixed it.

Honestly, you think network diagnostics were explain that's the reason why the shared folder access fails.

Tuesday 11 January 2011

How to convert epub to mobi correctly

- Convert epub to epub in Calibre, removing the spacing and margins in the "look and feel" section
- Open the resulting file in Sigil
- edit the stylesheet in Sigil to make sure that all references to "leftmargin" are set to "0"
- save the file in Sigil then open it in Calibre again
- use Calibre to convert to mobi

Takes about 5 minutes per book. Not a major deal unless you're converting a lot of stuff

- courtesy of TeleFunken @ EG