QGIS Compositing, more gushing yet…

Ever had a workflow on the web that resulted in stuff so nice, you wanted to replicate on the desktop?  Ya, me neither until recently.  I love the cartography a particular website, know all the bits and pieces of color and effects that go into, but had no desktop application that could do the same.   Until now.  On the left, QGIS, on the right, TileStache … Continue reading QGIS Compositing, more gushing yet…

Quantum GIS Compositing Continued

QGIS compositing is not limited just to between layers, but also for elements in the Print Composer. How is this useful? Every want a non-rectangular map? With 1.9 alpha, you can use an SVG to affect the elements under it.  On the right, the svg.  On the left, the map element inside the Print Composer. Overlay the two with “Blending Mode” set to “Normal” and … Continue reading Quantum GIS Compositing Continued

Way beyond red-dot fever– bees hives and overlapping home ranges

Last week, post Boston Code Sprint, I spent a couple of hours playing with bee data, specifically bee keeper data for Norfolk County Massachusetts. My friend Eric (a bee keeper of 4 hives in said county) says that worker bees can fly as far as 3 miles for nectar, but after that approximate limit, they hit diminishing returns relative to the calories they burn. Proximity … Continue reading Way beyond red-dot fever– bees hives and overlapping home ranges

Solarized

I have been intending to use Ethan Schoonover’s Solarized (http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized) colors for vim for development work for a while now, and finally got around to adding it to my profile on my laptop.  What is nice about the colors is they are meant to be distinguishable in the terminal without using excessive contrast– color is the primary distinguishing element.  It makes writing or reading on … Continue reading Solarized

Boston Code Sprint

I hung out this week at the Boston Code Sprint http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Boston_Code_Sprint_2013, which is a “C-Tribe” code sprint for improving things like PostGIS, MapServer, and other GeoFOSS projects written in C. See Paul Ramsey’s posts on PostGIS and MapServer for more on what everyone was working on. Being my first time at a code sprint, it’s been very interesting, and it’s a very warm and inviting … Continue reading Boston Code Sprint

3D Renderers– a woefully incomplete survey

Recent exploration into PostGIS 3D tools has reminded me of my love of renderers.  First, there’s PovRay.  PovRay is and always will be my first love.  I’ve done so many fun things with it. In short, PovRay is a mathematicians renderer– mathematical primitives, advanced ray tracing tools, and a C-like control language make for an abstract but powerful environment.  I like to use it with … Continue reading 3D Renderers– a woefully incomplete survey

Photogrammetry using Bundler, PMVS, GDAL, and PostGIS.

Photogrammetric like ortho-photos rendered with GDAL/PostGIS from 3D point clouds created in Bundler and PMVS?  Yes indeedeedoo: Point cloud in meshlab:   And “orthophoto” derived from voronoi polygons in PostGIS, rendered to tif with gdal:     Hat tip to my3dscanner for making it so easy to generate the point cloud.  More on this later. Continue reading Photogrammetry using Bundler, PMVS, GDAL, and PostGIS.