Let me know if you are into GIS and in Boston by posting a comment to this post. If I get enough responce I would be happy to start organizing some local GIS groups stuff… let me know. And please pass this on to your GIS friends in Boston.

After gonig to refresh boston I think there should be group that talks about GIS and spatial data issues.

I watched a couple of sesions, but the one that really stands out for me is the one with James Fee sharing a google map hack for searching for Rest services.

ok… open google map and search for this: “boston mapserver”

It suddenly find map servers that serve out rest… it’s amazing. Now search “washington dc mapserver” and you can find tree planting. Or search “crime mapserver”.

Now, think about this for a little bit. Should we be able to find crime data? Do all these mapservers mean to be open?

This sparks a great debate in my office about how one share information and why? It’s great to have open standards for sharing geo-data, but I wonder, as many others do, does eeryone get that a mapserver by default can be set up to push out everything… and that can be a very dangerous thing.

What do you think?

Public Sub RemoveSpatialIndex()
Dim pGxApp As IGxApplication
Set pGxApp = Application
Dim pGxObject As IGxObject
Set pGxObject = pGxApp.SelectedObject
Dim pName As IName
Set pName = pGxObject.InternalObjectName

If TypeOf pName Is IDatasetName Then
Dim pDatasetName As IDatasetName
Set pDatasetName = pName

If pDatasetName.Category = “File Geodatabase Feature Class” Then
MsgBox pDatasetName.Category & vbNewLine & pGxObject.FullName
RunRemoveSIGeoProcess pGxObject.FullName
Else
MsgBox “Selected Item is not a File Geodatabase Feature Class”
End If

End If
End Sub

Public Sub RunRemoveSIGeoProcess(InputString As String)
‘//Init the groprocessor
Dim GP As IGeoProcessor
Set GP = New GeoProcessor

Dim parameters As IVariantArray
Set parameters = New VarArray
parameters.Add (InputString)

‘Execute the removespatialindex tool
GP.Execute “removespatialindex”, parameters, Nothing
End Sub

Ok… it’s really rough… but now I have something to say about this whole resource website thing…

1. Why are all the searches opening a seperate window?
2. Why isn’t their a way to re-open the TOC from the pages that search  brings up?

So the good news is that the informatino and diagrams are out there, but the bad news is that it’s a little crazy trying to find what you need. It’s like ESRI wants you to take a class on how to navigate their website.

So I want to start programming some simple buttons that will allow me to work faster by making a button without having to click into many different windows and sus around.

So my first case study is going to be…. Spatial Indexes. Why Spatial index? Because all the spatial index tools are trapped in the properties window and force me to open many windows before I can delete or recalc them. BTW if you have a spatial index and put in a feature that exceeds it, you will get an error. (reminds me of the original bounding issues with the original geo-databases).

OK… so this is what I want to do, but how do I get started. Well… I started poking around the support/resource website and found a page that had some code that allowed access to a selected layer in arcatalog and returns information about the name of the layer here.

Now that I have this code, I need to do some searching to find out how to get the full path/dataset and featureclass name to allow me to locate the file I want to work on.

I hope that I can figure this out in the next week and move onto running a geo-proccessing function to remove the spatial Index.

OK, this time I mean it. This weekend I will start to podcast about GIS. It’s something I have been wanting to do for almost two years and it’s about time i got started.

I can’t tell you what the format or subject will be exactly. i hope to make it about the GIS community, but to start with it will be about my tinkering with some of the new GIS web tools and trying to build useful applications. Ha… like I have ever done that before.

So here we go again, I am throwing the gauntlet down…

Let’s hope it doesn’t bounce back in my face again.

An open letter to ESRI:

Dear ESRI,

My name is Guido. I am a GIS analyst and a consumer of your web content. I was pleased to see that you have embraced the ideas of both rss feeds and podcasts. I like to use these for keeping up with the wide array of stuff that happens with your company and GIS at large.

But I am having some serious problems with the way you chose to implement these technologies. These feeds can prove to be a good way to build a conversation and to inform your clients what you are up to. But you really aren’t providing either of these things based on what I am seeing.

First, the podcasts. While it’s nice to have a place where you can tell your listeners what you are up to, would it be too much trouble to have a place where your listeners can add there own comments? Even if you don’t have comments, how about some show notes where I can find links to things you guys were talking about in the podcats or even a transcript (you guys are big enough to afford that right?) Both show notes and transcripts also make it possible to Google these podcasts making them more assessable to all of the audience who would be interested in the topics you talk about. Finally, just because you put out a podcast doesn’t mean you should only link to your mp3, try creating a show notes page which has  the mp3 enclosed and then my feed reader, itunes, and web browsers can get there.

Secondly, your news feed. Today I read this from your feed

The March regional issues of the Wealth Management Business Magazines from France Publications reveal the 25 Wealthiest ZIP Codes in the state of California, New Jersey, and Virginia in an easy-to-read graphic format. ZIP Codes ranked by ESRI’s wealth…

The March regional issues of the Wealth Management Business Magazines from France Publications reveal the 25 Wealthiest ZIP Codes in the state of California, New Jersey, and Virginia in an easy-to-read graphic format. ZIP Codes ranked by ESRI’s wealth indicators such as income, home value, net worth, and Community Tapestry prove there is more to wealth than just your paycheck.

And I though to myself, cool I would like to know more, so I tried to click on the link to the original page. This brought me back to a page about feeds fro your site and had no more contextual information or links to the article you describe. And that is what set me off into writing this letter.

Is it too much to ask for a link to the original story or a link to the original feed? arghh…

These issue worry me. I hear that you guys are going to be working on resource centers and are really trying to get WEB 2.0 stuff down. But these simple feeds show a real lack of understanding on how and why feeds work in a WEB 2.0 world.

I hope that you are trying to fix these issues. I have met many web 2.0 and podcast consultants with which whom i can connect you with if you would like.

Please let me know if I can be of any help,

Guido

p.s. if you happen to come across this site and this letter I know it’s low on content at the moment, I really am trying to get back to that, but content is not something I am getting paid for at the moment so this pet project needs to wait until I have a little more time to blossom.

So what have I learned recently.

ESRI ModelBuilder models and Python Geoprocessing scripts don’t work for me. Somehow, in the process of creating a model I ran into a bug at every turn.

While building a model I learned that Field Mapping does not work well when you batch Append and many of the temporary variables I used needed real file locations and were not completely based on input values. This makes it difficult to use the model on multiple computers with input variables. Ugh…

So then I learn to write a Python script. This handles the field mapping and the variable issues. Great!! I am back on board with how this is an awesome tool. But, for what ever reason the topology tools are not working properly from python. So I need to make a python call to a modelmaker model to complete the topology issue.

OK, this is where I get off. I had issues getting the toolbox-model and the script to find each other.

It makes me sad that I ran into so many walls. I was really excited about using the tools to automate some of my work.

Oh well… you win some you lose some and sometimes you just have to keep hacking until you find a workaround.

Someone in my office sent me a link to this movie and I have not stopped laughing, an hour later. This is the funniest GIS movie I have seen yet !

As I prepare for the upcoming conference I can’t help but wonder if there is any chance that there will be a generalized GIS unconference on theEast coast. It sees to me most conferences are either too topic or vendor specific and there should be a baskin robbins 42 flavors conference that touches on all of it. Perhaps I am not looking hard enough for it. Seeing as there are now so many player/vendors it would be neat to see how people played there different architextures and cost models against each other. Perhaps that is something I will get into with the podcast.

ohh… GIS death match… only one technology can survive… In my first episode KML vs. GML. ( I think we all know who is going to win that one)