The first annual Unmanned Vehicle Systems Oman recently finished in Muscat and was by all counts a success. It was a small but potent conference (which is an important combo for ambitious firsts), the hosting was quite exemplary, the space (the campus of Sultan Qaboos University) exquisite, and the talks were a wonderful stretch for me both into areas I don’t think much about, like controller design … Continue reading The first UVS Oman
I had the privilege last summer of attending State of the Map Africa, and getting some insight into the status of OpenStreetMap on the continent. This year, almost as a followup, FOSS4G Dar es Salaam was held in conjunction with the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team’s Summit. And so it was that FOSS4G this year was one part FOSS4G, one part HOT, and one part Tanzania, all … Continue reading Women and FOSS4G / HOT Summit in Africa
Last year I really enjoyed attending and presenting at North Carolina GIS in Raleigh. As many of you know, Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial North America (FOSS4GNA, alleged by some to rhyme with “lasagna”) will be in Raleigh this year, in a short few weeks. I highly encourage you to go. First of all, it’s FOSS4GNA, so lots of free and open source geospatial … Continue reading ~~North Carolina GIS~~ rhymes with Lasagna
Korean Drumming at FOSS4G Seoul: Continue reading Korean Drumming at FOSS4G Seoul
In order to function at a most basic level in a given society (which I do not yet in the South Korean context), it is good to know the basic words of courtesy — the equivalents of “Excuse me”, “Pardon me”, “Nice to meet you”, “Hello”, “Goodbye”, etc.. Today we’ll talk about how to say “I’m sorry.” Between talking across cultural / language / expectation … Continue reading Mini-series on Korean words, part 4: Apologies
I had the good pleasure of attending FOSS4G Seoul. One of the organizers (Heegu Park) early on told me, in response to the workshop I planned, something to the effect of “Whatever you need, Steve, ask for it. Nothing is impossible.” The organizers truly were capable of fulfilling any request. More on that later. Last time I was in Seoul, I took lots of pictures. … Continue reading Uninformed botanical musings
I posted this on Twitter and Facebook, but I really like how this time lapse turned out. This is shot in a single take with a single video. Maybe wordpress won’t over-compress it like the others… . Continue reading Time lapse
Short linguistics aside For me, understanding a language, beyond a memorization of terms, is predicated on the idea that I understand something of the underlying logic to the language. So today, instead of a Korean word, we’ll talk about the term agglutinative. (bless you) In short, what it means is that a language uses a lot of prefixes, stem words, and suffixes, and that these components … Continue reading Mini-series on Korean words, part 3: Agglutinative language
A good logo is hard to come by. I love the logo of Korean National Park Service. It’s simple, beautiful, has elements of complexity to it, and makes a simple statement: land of mountains and sea. The mountains and the sea are sources of life in Korea, from the resources and farming found on the edge of the mountains, the peace found hiking and visiting … Continue reading Mini-series on Korean words, part 2: Land of Mountains and Sea
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