Re: They Told Us It Would Be Like This

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I'm not help at all, but this really makes me feel better that I did nothing when, about a decade ago, somebody told me I should learn GIS stuff.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:08 AM
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A decade ago GIS stuff really was Model T level. I'd like to think it's a little better nowadays; Google maps is a thing, for example. That said, I can picture exactly what interfacing data organised for a 10 year old system to it would involve.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:22 AM
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Just be sure the punch cards don't have any hanging chads.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:24 AM
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You'd be in demand, but holy hell, what a mess.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:24 AM
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I'm in demand now. I think Obama has got the economy turned around. He's really been a great president.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:26 AM
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I ended up having to port a thing from Google Maps to Bing Maps due to the API not doing what I needed it to do. I was happier with the Bing Maps.

I've also been doing a bunch of GIS stuff in my spare time but, yeah: holly hell, what a mess.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:27 AM
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Have you considered learning SAS?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:28 AM
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I'd be thrilled just to know the projection settings to convert a shapefile to a google maps readable geoJSON file.

I don't know about projection settings (you mean like WGS84?), but I've used these instructions to go from shapefile to geoJSON in the past.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:36 AM
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you mean like WGS84?

Yeah, exactly. And I think I need to use the census files, because I'm going to make census API calls to populate the map.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:48 AM
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Hasn't Google organized the world's information yet?


Posted by: fake accent | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:56 AM
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I'm going to make census API calls to populate the map.

In real time? Conversion between shapefiles and geoJSON could take some horsepower. You might find it easier to do all your conversions in advance and cache it somewhere.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 8:57 AM
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You have to hang your cache from a tree at least ten food away from the trunk or a bear will eat it.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 9:11 AM
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Well, obviously if your cache is vulnerable to being attacked by bears, you need to put more thought into your cybersecurity arrangements.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 9:21 AM
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I did, in fact, learn GIS 10 years ago, or I guess 14 now. Incredibly clunky. I'm not sure the blame really lies with the gov't here: they're using GIS (and associated technologies) for very sound reasons, and ESRI and whoever else is responsible for GIS has resolutely failed to remotely keep up. I can imagine a world where government advances better technologies instead of prolonging the use of antiquated ones, but the first step would involve killing every Republican.

For a non-banned analogy, AutoCAD was, for a very long time, incredibly primitive relative to almost literally every other CAD program available, on any platform, but they had an Office-like deathgrip on the industry, so they just didn't give a shit*. I can't vouch for it firsthand, but my understanding is that things finally changed starting about 10 years ago, to the point where it's now a completely legit alternative, not just what you pick when you care more about compatibility than usefulness.

*a big part of it was engineers, who legitimately didn't really need any sort of sophisticated drawing tools, but also are constitutionally prone to preferring shitty** but straightforward tools that are standard.

**To this day, a typical AutoCAD drawing will represent a square with four unrelated lines instead of a rectangular object. Aside from the stupidity embodied in that outcome--need to change the size? It'll take a lot of clicks!--just getting there is stupid, as it involves 4X the number of clicks


Posted by: JRoth | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 9:22 AM
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For someone whose professional work heavily involves maps I know precious little GIS. I definitely need to up my game.

When I do use it I've been using QGIS.

Have you considered using OpenStreetMap instead of Google?


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 9:27 AM
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and ESRI and whoever else is responsible for GIS has resolutely failed to remotely keep up.

The open source alternatives are also rubbish. I don't want to shell out for ArcGIS so I use qGIS, and the thing is a huge turd. Somehow its a thing with open source projects that they have terrible user interfaces. Its because everyone submits their own modules and re-invents the wheel, with minimal oversight on the broader user experience.

Also, I have a graphics card out of the Batmobile, and it doesn't seem to make a difference for rendering times. Parallel processing could go a hell of a long way here, but its barely used.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 9:34 AM
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16.2, yes, learning GIS on QGIS is a bear. Are there any resources you'd recommend?


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 10:08 AM
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I haven't seen any of the Batman movies since Val Kilmer. Is that a good graphics card?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 10:10 AM
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In real time? Conversion between shapefiles and geoJSON could take some horsepower.

The shapefile conversion happens once at the start, then you make calls to populate the map. Hypothetically. Here are two working examples.

From Google.

From something very close to what I'm trying to do. (I contacted her. No response.)


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 10:54 AM
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Are there any resources you'd recommend?

Not for QGIS. I've basically spent a lot of time trying to figure it out myself, based around some previous knowledge I had of the GDAL command line stuff. I can't say I've been terribly successful.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 11:17 AM
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you mean like WGS84?
Yeah, exactly.

Have you tried NAD83?

Otherwise, you might be able to figure out what you need to know using ogrinfo.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 11:45 AM
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Thanks for the update, ogged. I've been wondering how you were doing at coding camp since I finally broke and decided to learn JavaScript. It's not as awful as I thought it would be, but I still prefer Python.


Posted by: Trivers | Link to this comment | 03- 9-16 2:06 PM
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CartoDB is really surprisingly easy, and guess what? It can convert .shp to geoJSON! and backwards as well!

https://cartodb.com/pricing-features


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 3:02 AM
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can you find in the google library the appropriate unit of analysis polygons (counties or states or whatever) w census Fips code identifiers and then just use the census api for data tables instead?


Posted by: JD Marron | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 4:34 AM
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can you find in the google library the appropriate unit of analysis polygons (counties or states or whatever) w census Fips code identifiers and then just use the census api for data tables instead?


Posted by: JD Marron | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 4:34 AM
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I'll look into that. I'm working through some google maps tutorials now.

CartoDB

Hey, that looks slick.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 6:14 AM
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It surely is. You can do transforms within SQL queries!

https://aharrowell.cartodb.com/viz/dffea282-f971-11e4-a39e-0e9d821ea90d/map


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 6:45 AM
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So, CartoDB comes with 250 MB of storage for Basic edition, 1.5 GB for Enterprise.... That's fine for shape files, but any application with satellite imagery would fill that up in a heartbeat. Am I missing something here?


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 6:53 AM
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They sell, and presumably host, a lot of satellite stuff themselves:

https://cartodb.com/cartodb-for/satellite-aerial-image/


Posted by: Alex | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 7:41 AM
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Am I missing something here?

No, I'm playing with it right now, and it is very easy to use, but I think I'm already running into their data limits. I might contact them and say I just want to try it out for a student project.

There's also this awesomeness, but when they don't even put their pricing online, you know it's for big business.

But the 60-day trial of this would be plenty. Choices! I like it!


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 7:45 AM
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r. Hey ladies !; also, as seen(*) at Trump University: courses.arilamstein.com/courses/mapmaking-r-choroplethr.

(*) Seen during delusion.


Posted by: Econolicious | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 9:48 AM
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If I knew I could meet ladies, I'd have learned R.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 9:50 AM
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I don't know R but I was trying to run some R code against some geodata the other day. I was working on using MODIS satellite data to build a temporal visualization of the drought in Guatemala, as one does. I was following detailed instructions, but somehow the stupid thing crapped out in the middle of a library call. No way I'm even trying to debug that. The Guatemalan drought will have to wait.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 4:23 PM
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So, R can make it rain.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-10-16 4:31 PM
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If none of the above helps, ogged can always try running this.


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 03-11-16 4:10 AM
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the URL is to a github repo with a bunch of tools for dealing with these issues, as well as for a bunch of uploads of converted data. i wrote this stuff while consulting at mapzen a little over a year ago; it uses some standard GIS command line tools and a bunch of python scripts for conversion of census bureau TIGER shapefiles into GeoJSON.
it's way bigger/more complex than what you need, but you should be able to glean some info from it. feel free to email me with questions.
Oh, and the Census data is in the NAD83 projection, which for all practical purposes is the same as WGS84.


Posted by: Richard | Link to this comment | 03-18-16 11:52 AM
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WOW very impressive posts. You can check Geocoding international addresses through this website.


Posted by: yasminragu | Link to this comment | 11-30-16 4:05 AM
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