Sayonara

Well fellas.

I have to say so long. I hate it, but it's true. Took a tumble that put me down for a good while. I hope to be back next time around, but it depends on progress in physical therapy. I had lots of fun while it lasted--the dream class for sure. Just the right amount of not too much snarkiness, and plenty of levity. Good luck with the program, and keep in touch. I sure can use the distraction about now. I'll check in now and again to witness the awesome cartography you're sure to crank out.

Later, taters.

Oct. 3, 2007

Started a big map project of western NC, starting with Lidor raster data of elevation and hillshades, and adding cities, waterbodies, and points of interest, etc. I'm still having trouble with file management, and wondering if I'll ever understand computers well enough to be good at this. Anyway, I'm waiting for files to download, so I thought I'd get started on tonights blog. I took the exam before class (makeup) and feel I did pretty well. Now if I could only be so confident about my data management! And Pete just told me how to export map data and I completely spaced out on how to do it. But it's 9:30 and I'm tired of this mess, so I'm just going to upload my map, if possible, and be done with it. I say if possible, because the last time I tried to upload a raster-based image, it didn't work. But that was in Arcview. All the little dots are a city file that I haven't clipped to my region. But clips can't be performed on raster data, so I have to merge my county boundaries to create a layer file that I can perform edits on and clip layers to. That's where the whole export map data info Pete just gave me would come in handy. There's some way I can select attributes I want to keep (cities in my region) and export only those cities and automatically exclude the others. There's always next week, but I'm feeling discouraged, and wonder if it's all worth the effort. And work takes alot more out of me than I thought it would. I LIKE the work, but it certainly makes coming to class more difficult. I just wish I weren't such a computer dunce.

Killer Exam

I can't believe how hard Pete made the test tonight! Nothing like he was last semester! He asked questions about every little thing and it took forever to finish. He made up for it afterwards by sharing files for using google earth in ArcMap, so we could download shapefiles and connect with google earth to have the shapes and the aerial in one data frame. Pretty awesome. He let us play around with that a little bit and I flew all over the country on google earth--wisconsin, grand canyon, smokys, atlanta. It was pretty amazing. He also shared a short video about RSS feeds and how to set up an account on google reader--very entertaining. Alot more entertaining than the exam, for sure!

Missed having Edward in class tonight. We could have commiserated over the exam! If you read this, watch out Edward!

Class 4

Downloaded celltower info and played around in xcel to reformat data to make this nifty map. These are all the cell towers in North Carolina, at least the ones that meet criteria for the list we downloaded from the fcc website. I made some math mistakes in excel and my cell tower points all ended up in a diagonal line. I tried loading the file again, and they showed up as a big black "L." Pete helped me trouble shoot my source data and found an error in my excel formula. Frustrating, but I'm glad the map finally worked out. Then Edward helped me do a definition query to isolate NC counties from a US map, after he fastidiously removed the lint and cat hair from his sweater. He accumulated quite an impressive pile.

Josh really likes the sunshine layer we downloaded last week, and I wouldn't mind another look at that myself.

Pete did a power point on Earth-Map relations, and reminded us we have an exam next week. I'm really tired and ready to go home. Music night at our house tonight, so I'm not sure what I'll find. I'm hoping to find an adult beverage or two!

Class 3

Tonight I slogged through the ESRI 3D tutorial for draping images to display in 3D, and crashed a couple times trying to save my "scene." So, unfortunately, I don't have any pretty pictures to show you--yet. I'm presently downloading some data for Buncombe county that may evolve into a map. It was pretty cool, though, manipulating the 3D image of Death Valley. But now it's taking forever to download the county data, unzip the files, and add layers to Arcscene. I wish we'd learned about this in intro class last semester. And it seems as though my computer is taking the longest of all to download and recover from crashes, which only adds to the complex I'm getting from the Y-chromosomes in the room. I'm in the company of some pretty savy fellows. But we had a nice look at Edward's tiny cam photos, and some google streets from San Francisco while we waited.

Anyway, I finally got the elevation and streets layers added, but I'm not able to export and save the image in Arcscene (.sxd) as a .jpg and upload into the blog, so you'll have to take my word about how cool it looks. The blog seems so inadequate without some graphics and I feel compelled to say something clever and entertaining, but alas, it's late, my brain is mush, and my wit is not on command.

More next week.

Winging the lab

Class 2, catching up on the lecture and all kinds of freedom for lab. I downloaded layers from the City of Asheville file and some from the buncombe county website. Some simple things took me a long time to accomplish because I couldn't remember exactly how to insert symbols and create new layers--I'd just been adding layers so far. Last semester was a loooong time ago. Anyway, I was trying to do a proximity map, similar to the landslides project last week, but got too caught up to finish. Here's what I have so far.

For some reason, I had a hard time figuring out where the parcels were located.

Josh was in class tonight--I was wondering if he was still in the class after missing last week. Nice to see him.

So, another long day, and I'm ready to head home. Music night at our house tonight, so I'm looking forward to a nice cold adult beverage.

See you next week. Same map time, same map channel.

I'm Baaaack

First day of GIS fun this semester and we've already made a map. Man, it was hard remembering how to DO some of this stuff. But I AM remembering how stupid this can make me feel. I really have such little experience with computers--just saving files and getting them into my map can be confusing. Am also remembering how much I like Pete as an instructor--very patient and helpful.

I didn't quite have time to add the legend because the insert function automatically uses the titles in the table of contents. The descrptive titles for the symbols would have been file names without being changed in the table of contents. Also, the scale needs tweaking a little bit, and if Id had more time, I would haave played around with the colors a little bit.

Only 5 of us in here, and only one new classmate. Was nice seeing familiar faces--especially my friend Edward. I'll have a tendency to rely on him for help--he's such a computer whiz, and I'm more like a computer whatsit. Hope he doesn't get too annoyed.

Also, I need to remember my flash drive next week.

I'm a little worried about all I have going on right now, too, and hope Ican devote the time I want to the class. I'm certainly in a time of transition. I think having GIS to focus on will be helpful.