2012: A Spatial Odyssey

So here it is; my blog and my inaugural post in my latest sortie into the world of social media and communication.

Why am I doing this? Well to be honest I'm not really sure, other than 140 characters in Twitter is almost always too succinct for my thoughts and having a blog seems like a good way for me conjecture, capture, shape and share my thinking (not that I'm expecting many people will probably ever read this!). I'm way behind the curve on all of this social-media, but like the ethos behind the original garage-punk scene I am loving the DIY 'anyone can do this' spirit behind all of this. 

Hopefully the blog title is relatively self-explanatory and I'm fully expecting all things spatial and GIS will be the primary topic covered (apologies now to any misguided Clarke or Kubrik fans). However in the truest sense of an odyssey I would not bet against the journey getting lost, diverted and heading down many a dark-street as we go. If I can figure out what I'm doing I hope to be able to tag my entries in a meaningful way so if anyone is interested in my thought then at least they can filter through the clutter.

At this stage I have no idea how often I will post, and I can make no guarantees regarding the intellectual brilliance, thoughtfulness or insight on display. We'd also better add punctuation and grammar to that list too. 

What I can be more certain of is that I will not be setting out to use any 'shock and awe' tactics on this blog to try and elicit more readers or provoke comment, outrage and furore.  Comments and views expressed will be my own (unless otherwise stated) and will be based upon my observations, perspective, understanding and knowledge; all of these things are likely to flawed on occasion and therefore all entries will be open for comment  in order that I may be corrected on errors and omissions, or that alternative viewpoints and opinions can be expressed. 

Thanks for reading and welcome.
     
Location: Leeds, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Custom javascript in Esri Survey123 - Part 1

Image
So this week I've been playing with the latest beta release of Esri Survey123; and in particular the ability to now call custom javascript functions though the pulldata() function. This new feature allows you to extend Survey123 quite significantly, such as by using functions to calculate new values or for performing data validation. So in this post (and a second post to come shortly) I've outlined a couple of common use cases where I've extended Survey123 using javascript functions to calculate new values. Example 1: Converting Coordinates One of the frequent challenges with using the ArcGIS Online platform within the UK is that by default all location is stored in  WGS 1984 Web Mercator (auxiliary sphere) - EPSG:3857, and accessing location information  from the spatial objects  is returned either this coordinate  system or WGS84 latitude / longitude  (EPSG:4326); but a lot of organisations in the UK work to British National Grid ( EPSG:27700) .  Whilst dropping
Read more

Predicting the future

Last week the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) put out a paper titled 'Future trends in geospatial information management: the five to ten year vision' ( available here  as PDF). Now I must confess prior to reading the document and seeing tweets from people I knew who appeared to be attending a session of this group in Qatar I hadn't heard of the UN-GGIM. However it appears to be a group that's been set up in recognition that geospatial information can assist with development of nations; national and region initiatives on geospatial information need to be better coordinated and that 'developed' countries can lend a hand and resources to the benefit of less-developed countries. Some laudable aims there certainly, but anyway I digress slightly from the future-trends document itself... Overall I think the document is a well-constructed ‘snapshot’ on the current main trends in geoinformation. Whilst those pe
Read more

Oracle Spatial 12c - new features for spatial (maybe, possibly, subject to all Oracle caveats)

Today I had the pleasure of chairing the UKOUG Oracle Spatial SIG at Oracle's London City Office. I'm on the Committee for the SIG and use the technology a lot in my day to day work, so my view is biased, but I do like the SIG as I always leave it with a better idea of the Oracle Spatial technology roadmap and invariably have at least one 'take-home' idea or tit-bit which I have gleamed from one of the other presenters, sharing their experiences of Spatial.   Happily today was no exception. Albert Godfrind (part of the Oracle Spatial development team) gave a great insight into the likely Spatial enhancements in the 12c R1 database release (the 'c' if you are wondering stands for 'cloud' which was obviously one of the key directions announced at Oracle Openworld earlier this month) all delivered in his wonderfully no-frills Gallic style. 12c is currently in 'beta 2' so will probably not hit the shelves until at least mid-2013. In summary
Read more