No High Speed Internet for Rural Areas

I live in an idyllic part of the country in a rural setting.  We can look out our window and see nothing but farmland, distant homes and the horizon, it is beautiful.  However, because we live in the country we do not have that many choices for high-speed internet.  We used to have a wireless provider until the old coal power plant smokestacks were torn down to make room for a solar biofuel company.  Now our only options are dial-up, satellite or cellular.  We chose Verizon cellular “Broadband” which consists of connection speeds ranging from 0.2 – 1.2 Mbps.  We usually download about 12 GB a month (which is us scrimping) which cost $100 ($80 for the plan, 10GB and $20 in overage charges).

I previously mapped out which homes in my area had access to cable (http://curiousgis.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/broadband-access/) and determined we are 1.2 miles from where the cable terminates.  I contacted Time Warner Cable in an attempt to see how much it would cost to lay the needed cable.  Over the phone they told me it would cost $30,000 per mile, however they did state that if I wanted an official estimate I could pay $150.  The real cost was $24,381 minus my $150 and minus their labor $1,000.  So approximately $20,000 a mile, better than I expected but still too expensive for me.

 

3D Maps in Dungeons and Dragons Online

I grew up on Dungeons and Dragons and have loved the imaginary landscapes. Recently I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons Online with my kids. Turbine has created gorgeous and well thought out dungeons but their map system is 2D which makes it difficult to navigate unless you have run the quest multiple times.  I’ve worked on some of the maps to try to make them more understandable with limited success.

To overcome the limitations of a 2D map I have played around with creating a 3D map.  By plotting known locations within the game I can export these quasi X,Y locations into ArcGIS 9.3 along with a 2D picture of the dungeon and plot the layout.  Then by exporting a DWG file into Google Sketchup I can create a 3D environment and add other 3D models to the dungeon.

Using this process I went from a 2D map to a 3D map.  There are quite a few things I can do to improve my results but this is one of my first forays into 3D mapping.

ESRI UC 2010 MGIS Presentation

The ESRI UC 2010 was not as exciting as I remember when I first went there in 2005.  There were a few good discussions but overall it all seemed rather redundant.  However, there were a few notable exceptions. I also presented my Penn State Masters of GIS presentation. So now I have to make a few fixes to the paper and I’m done. I uploaded my presentation as unlisted, just follow the links below if you want to watch. Yahh!!

ESRI UC Almost Here

Finished up my Masters of GIS project and submitted the paper to ESRI and now working on the Power Point for the conference.  I will be presenting at the ESRI UC on Jul 15 from 3:15 PM to 4:30 PM in Room 29 D, in the Terrain Modeling and Analysis paper session.  My presentation is called, Viewshed Creation: From Digital Terrain Model to Digital Surface Model. 

I will be glad when this is all over. When the papers become available through ESRI I’ll post a link and when my Power Point is done I’ll share it here also.

Viewshed Creation: From Digital Terrain Model to Digital Surface Model

I recently presented to my faculty on my proposed Masters project.  My school does not have a do a thesis (thank goodness) instead we do a project and present at a conference.  Below is my proposed project given to my peers, faculty and my advisor.

Viewshed Creation: From Digital Terrain Model to Digital Surface Model

View more presentations from curiousgis.

Hiatus

It amazes me that I still get about 200 people looking at this blog every month, especially since I haven’t touched it since April.  I no longer work with GIS every day, maybe once every couple of weeks.  As such many of the ideas and thoughts concerning GIS have subsided.  However, I still have to finish up my schooling in GIS and I have decided to open this blog up from a strictly GIS blog to cover many other things that have a geographic touch to them.

Broadband Access

I currently connect to the Internet with a wireless carrier.  I get around one megabit down and 128 k up, not the best but much better than dial-up.  I have been trying to convince Time Warner that my area needs to have cable, however they informed me that there neds to be at least 15 houses per mile for them to consider laying cable in the area.  Using www.cablemover.comI mapped out the houses in my area that have cable and those that do not as well as how many homes are on each mile increment of road.  There seems to be a few exceptions to the 15 buildings per mile.  Unfortunately, Time Warner is not going to be running cable in my area anytime soon.

Endangered Runaways

On Sunday night I watched a few news stories on MSNBC concerning sexual slavery and prostitution, including “Sex Slaves in the Suburbs.”  The premise of this show was that young females are being kidnapped and forced into prostitution against their will.  Additionally, law enforcement treats the kidnappings as runaways.  The show was quite moving with a particularly emotional testimony by a young female.

I was curious how prevalent cases of runaways were in the United States.  I went to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) website and performed a search for all “Endangered Runaways” in the US that occurred between 1/1/2008 and 2/9/2009.  I found 621 individuals, both male and female.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) defines an endangered runaway as a runaway that has certain “factors such as substance dependency, use of hard drugs, sexual or physical abuse, presence in a place where criminal activity was occurring, or extremely young age (13 years old or younger).”

Endangered Runaways 01/01/2008 - 02/09/2009

One of the only studies I found concerning runaways was the DOJ study, Runaway/Thrownaway Children: National Estimates and Characteristics.  According to the report there were quite a few more endangered runaways back in 1999 that my findings at NCMEC’s website seem suspect.  The report states that there is “suggestive evidence” that the incidences of runaways have  declined in recent years.  But it seems my findings are quite low compared to the number of expected endangered runaways based on the report.  I am not sure the discrepancy, however it is probable that some of the endangered children in the DOJ report were recovered but still reported which is in contrast to the NCMEC which only lists currently missing endangered runaways.  Also there is the possibility that  the NCMEC and various state agencies have not identified the children as endangered, simply runaways.

GeoCommons

I have been tinkering with GeoCommons Finder and Maker of late.  Finder is a data repository where users upload spatial data (either csv, shapefile or kml) and others can easily view and download the same data.  If a user desires to map the data they can use Maker to create single variate or multivariate maps.

In the past when I have wanted to visualize data on the fly I either had to load up my GIS and create a base map, import the data and then make it pretty.  This process (especially if a base map was not present) could take quite a bit of time.  Google Maps was available to map small datasets.  If I took the time I could create a mashup and put it on a hosted site.  However, this can take a little bit of time, especially when I did not had a website to use for hosting.

Geocommons allows neophyte and experienced users a location to find data, or upload data and then quickly create a pleasing cartographic map.  Of course if the data is not available you will have to create or find the data.  Once found the data will probably need to be cleaned; it seems most datasets need a little cleaning.  Obviously if you are upload a shapefile or KML the data has spatial element, however if you are uploading a csv file (such as a list of businesses) you will have to geocode the list to obtain the latitude and longitude of each location.  Finder has some great tutorials on their site that show users how to use services such as Batch Geocoder to find the geographic locations of your data.

For my project I uploaded and mapped out the US Government’s fiscal year 2009 per diem rates.  The per diem rates show how much the government will pay its employees for lodging and meals while they are traveling the country on business.  For those locations that do not have any data the rate is $70 for lodging and $39 for meals and incidental, per day.

ArcGIS Flash Tutorials

Recently a friend asked me how to move a dataset from one feature to another in ArcGIS. I threw together the following tutorials utilizng Wink which is a tutorial and presentation software that creates flash shows. The files are relatively small and they can be put together without too much hassle.

How to Trace features in ArcGIS

Copy and Paste data into a dataset

Load data into a dataset from ArcCatalog