Geo-Video: Lidar – Working with LAS Datasets

Esri staff give an overview of how LAS datasets can be used to manage large collections of LAS files. Part of the 2013 Esri International User Conference Technical Workshops Series.

Cool Geo-video - Steel Monsters Battle under a Desert Night Sky

Neat video from desert town of Borrego Springs, California. Dragons, Dinosaurs, Giant Scorpions, Wooly Mammoths, and much more created by steel sculptor ricardoabreceda.com Credits to

BORREGO STARDANCE from Sunchaser Pictures for his post .

 

BORREGO STARDANCE from Sunchaser Pictures on Vimeo.

Bike accident - in review

This sign sums up what happened in a glance. Wheels locked up and over the handle bars I went. Of course, the pavement always "wins"; but luckily I survived.

 

 



What "not to do" on a bike



 

As the story goes, my cycling buddy Malcolm and I have been several years now. Our circuit is quite generic; a loop from his house wear he begin solo- to my house, then together to the beach, we ride north on A1A in Delray Beach, FL, head back west at Woolbright - cross the Inter coastal - I "drop him off" at the Duncan Donuts near his house - and I ride the last leg "solo" home. 
 
The circuit is 12 miles (I believe) & our top speed is well below 20 miles/hour. We call ourselves the "Red Faced Fat Bastards Club", as Malcolm is found of saying, "we're athletes for the first 5 minutes of the ride".  In truth, I'm there for the company as much as the exercise, and certainly the slower & heavier rider.
 


Look Mom! Kept all my teeth!

 
 
So as the Florida move to the Washington DC area came upon us for a new job, I'd begun to slowly moving things home one locale to the other.  One of my first "bright ideas" was that I might be able to ride to work, as the Esri office is close to home and has gym & locker/shower facilities.  So after shipping my "better bike" up north - I'm left with a "back up bike" for the infamous ride (and resulting images).
 
 I remember most of the ride. Malcolm met me as usual (though we hadn't ridden in a while). We exchange morning niceties with the family as they prepared for errands and school - and off our two red faced athletes went!
 


Glasses removed from skull - stitches added later

 
Well, somewhere along the return ride from A1A when crossing the Inter coastal, I remember having a bit of speed and power left in me, and I vaulted (more like humbly accelerated) past Malcolm on the bridge accent. I even quipped something snappy about having the strength in me that day. Then .... not much. My mind was quiet. I remember soft thoughts, like awakening from a deep sleep into a dream. There was a sense of satisfaction (I suppose about simply being able again to form a cohesive thought) ... & then the odd sense that I was in an ambulance, with much hustling, taping, strapping and wrappings around me.

 


Elbow preserving ice and cushioning apparatus

 
Of course, Malcolm was the "best mate & hero" who made sure I survived the whole event. He describes it quite differently. They story starts the same way - off goes "Mr. Round Energy" up the bridge. Somewhere on the descent my front wheel wobbles and I lose control. The breaks lock up and I go over the handle bars, cartwheeling from head, to elbow to knees .... to finally a "large mass of a man inertia" in the middle of the road - with bike cascading on top, over and elsewhere.
 
As Malcolm describes, "you know they're OK when the limbs start to move after". Well me? Nope. Concrete snoozing in a lump of gashes & blood. He manages to attempt pressure on my largest wound - my elbow - which he noted "doesn't feel like an elbow anymore" .... more a "bag of rocks all jumbled up" and bleeding profusely. Deep cuts to the eye & chin, shoulder gashed open, with road rage all over my hands & knuckles. In his story, (when I become conscious again) I start mumbling about being fine and other silly talk (I have no memory of this). He rightly convinced me I was anything but fine and to sit my "athlete's ass" down until the rescue vehicles arrived.
 


"Son, don't be like your Dad" speech goes well

 
Obviously Malcolm's story is much more interesting than mine (he's always been the better story teller anyways). His favorite bit is how, having nothing to really staunch the blood from the elbow wound, he was forced to use the sweat-drenched bike gloves as a stop gap. But hey, there padded right? And it doesn't feel like an elbow anyways!
 
So then the time lines coincide, and its time to go to the hospital in the "thousands of dollars" ambulance ride - to the emergency room, where after checking my neck and other parts with X-rays, outstanding medics determine I luckily have shattered my elbow (only) with other wounds being mostly flesh deep.  So with stitches to the eye, its time for surgery the next day.
 


Metal in my arm, but not "cool" like Wolverine

 
The result is a titanium plate with ten screws.  The "home run" screw goes into the bone, with the smaller ones securing the plate. The doctor points in the X-ray underneath the plate.  He calls this "bone goo", as it will take time for the fragments to re-solidify under the plate.  Amazingly I had no tendon or muscle damage, so the break has been the major recovery point. I spend an extra night in the hospital for safe measure to ensure a "tens of thousands of dollars" recovery experience - but we are thankfully alive because of great medics, doctors and a "one of kind" bike mate.
 


"Manly stitches" fails to impress the wife

 
 
After two months in a half cast, we have a manly scar to show for our silly bust of speed and battle with concrete (who, as I mentioned, always wins).  I have begun "home grown" physical therapy (much to the wife's anger) and my elbow mobility is about 90-95%.  Strength for "curling" is good, but push ups will take some time. So far, my biking is limited to the stationary trainer once stored in the garage.  It now keeps my girth to a "toe viewing" minimum.
 
 Best to all. Kiss your kids (and the wife, if she'll let you) every night.  Tell everyone you love them at every opportunity (even when you don't), because we all could lose the "battle with concrete" or other unforgiving object, surface or menacing life-form at any moment.  Cherish the ride!

Geo-Pic: Mapping a Hurricane from the "Outside In"

Found this post from NASA's Earth Observatory an interesting perspective to storm data.

 Quick "Cut & Paste" Description: 

".... one satellite—Cloudsat—peered inside the storm and observed its vertical structure. It did so with acloud-profiling radar that sent pulses of energy toward Earth and recorded the strength of the signal that bounced off ice and water particles."

"....The bottom map shows the storm as observed by Cloudsat around 2 p.m. local time (18:00 Universal Time) on October 29, 2012. The image shows a cross-section—what the storm would look like if it had been sliced near the middle and viewed from the side. (Watch this animation to see how Cloudsat collects data).... "

 Image: Vertical "cut-away" of storm precipitation: 

" ... The top image, acquired the same day by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on the Aqua satellite, is shown for reference. The yellow line is the north-to-south track that CloudSat took over the storm.

In the Cloudsat data, the darkest blues represent areas where clouds and raindrops reflected the strongest signal back to the satellite radar. These areas had the heaviest precipitation and the largest water droplets. The blue line in the center of the image is the freezing line; ice particles formed above it, raindrops below..." 

Credits:
NASA Earth Observatory image by Jesse Allen, using CloudSat FirstLook data provided courtesy of the CloudSat team at Colorado State University. Caption by Adam Voiland.

Instrument: 

CloudSat - CPR

Geo-Video: The Swiss Alps by Night

Brought to my attention by Holy Kaw! and Vimeo created by Alessandro Della Bella. The site link Helvetia's Dream includes a neat "play by play" of time-lapse points to look for during the fantastic night-time video journey.





A quick "cut & paste" summary:

‘Helvetia’s Dream’ takes you on a nighttime journey to some of the most beautiful spots in the Swiss Alps – from Arosa to Zermatt, including the world famous mountains Matterhorn and Eiger.

Please pay special attention to the following scenes:
@0:46 watch the persistent train of a bright meteor above Tijerflue Mountain in Arosa, December 2010, which was visible for about 20 minutes. A slow motion effect is applied for better visibility of the shooting star and its trail of ‘smoke’, which consists of ionized gas left behind as the meteor burns up in the atmosphere.
@1:14 clouds above Lake Geneva steam up the lens.
@1:36 on the very left: Climbers step into the unpredictable Eiger Nordwand.
@1:44 the Milky Way rises above the ‘Donkey’ rock on Pilatus.
@1:58 snowcats nearby cause the lighting of the summit cross on Fronalpstock Mountain. (Snowcat lights usually spoil time-lapse)
@2:21 the wind changes the reflection of Säntis Mountain in the Seealpsee.
@2:35 three settings showing orbits of stars. This is an alternative technique to display the movement of stars by sequentially adding the luminosity of each exposure. The result is basically a long exposure with a large aperture.
@2:49 the waxing new moon, not full moon, setting over Pilatus.

For the "making of" information and photo gallery check out the project website helvetiabynight.com.

When Maps & Art combine in Las Vegas - the McCarran International Airport web portal

This "cut ad paste" highlight of the ArcGIS Server Showcase took me to McCarran International Airport's Interactive map portal.  

Map Portal Landing page

The Flex application has a clean interface with the standard "point/click/zoom" functionality.

Terminal Zoom

 Certain "sub-header zooms" bring you to focus on particular areas of the airport, such as a terminal or parking area.

Pop-ups for terminal POIs

Each "zoom section" enables points of interest with additional pop-ups of relevant information.

Parking assistance info

I particularly like to pop-up assistance via my mobile device - relatively speaking the pages loaded just fine from my smart phone.

Menu options

The airport has a separate portal highlighting a children art mural initiative.  The photo mosaic works can we search by location or child creator.

Children Art locator

Locations for Art Murals

Full credits to ESRI, McCarran International Airport and Robert Silvers for the accomplishments displayed.

Mapping School Districts - an interactive map portal

Continuing my expose into public sites powered by ArcGIS for Server, I came upon one that is "near & dear" to the wife's heart as we contemplate relocating to a new school district in the Washington DC / Northern Virginia area. 

This site provides access to demographics, social characteristics, and economics of children and school districts from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the U.S. Department of Education. 

 Upon entering, it auto-queries you location to show that state of interest and provides a thematic map - customizable to the variable of interest.

The pop-up tool bars allow for changes in layer display, transparency and export/query options.

In this case, my goal was to understand the overlapping elementary, middle school and high school boundaries in northern Virginia's Fairfax Count school district to assist in our home search.

 Below is the resulting interactive map:

Full credits to ESRI and the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education.

Thank you, Space Shuttle Endeavour

You made us dream, you made us fly, you made us work hard for good science.  Time to end the journey.  Thank you NASA & Shuttle Endeavour.

Mapping Precision Agriculture's Future - Video & Article on IBM's Big Thunder project

Video on IBM's Deep Thunder - using predictive modeling to impact the "business of weather" (see below). 




Good article reference on "Precision agriculture - Using predictive weather analytics to feed future generations"

"Cut & Paste" highlights:
"...By 2050, it’s expected that the world’s population will reach 9.2 billion people, 34 percent higher than today. Much of this growth will happen in developing countries like Brazil, which has the largest area in the world with arable land for agriculture. To keep up with rising populations and income growth, global food production must increase by 70 percent in order to be able to feed the world...."

Full credits to: 

Meet the researchers

• 

  Ulisses Mello

  Distinguished Engineer,
  Associate Director,
  IBM Research - Brazil
• 

  Lloyd Treinish

  Senior Technical Staff Member,
  Chief Scientist - Deep Thunder,
  IBM Research - Watso

Mapping Frisco, TX - Online Resources for interactive mapping

Continuing my own professional research series on ArcGIS Server applications, the below are some screenshots from the City of Frisco TX online resource center.

Nice interactive application with points of interest, city cervices, DEMs, traffic counts & flows, rel estate developments and digital imagery mixed in a public facing portal of spatial information.

Powered by Silverlight & ArcGIS Server -  the legend details, searchable layers and address geocoding really make this a great public site.