The bug is a critical part of our lives. Without her we would be stranded on a Maine-land peninsula with the seals.

This is the Otter house. Mila and Liam go there on fridays to socialize with some of the local kids. When we go and pick them up they refuse to leave. Mila is saying so many words in english. Today she said 'this is papas hat' and 'dinnnnnnner!'

Mum Mila and I are on the beach in front of their house.

Pat and Anne are on their way to graduation. Pat is a assistant professor in mathematics and Anne is a massage therapist and personal coach.

Concerning MapServer config files there is a lot of grunt work necessary to configure a new set of data using an existing map design. The map file is just one part of the configuration. One needs to set up query templates and initialization files. The majority of this work can be done by using some simple tools for reading shape files.

find /cygdrive/c/GIS/MarionCoIL -name "*shp" > shapefiles.txt

This find command gives us a list of all shape files in a given directory. We want to find all the attributes for each shape file so we use the ogrinfo command.

ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\ALI Census > Census.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\ALI Tiger > Tiger.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\Delivery Streets_Geo > Streets_Geo.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\Delivery Streets_Proj > Streets_Proj.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E Airports > Airports.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E centraliadissolve > centraliadissolve.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E clippedstreets > clippedstreets.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E Hydrology > Hydrology.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E JeffersonCounty > JeffersonCounty.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E landmarks > landmarks.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E Rail > Rail.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E tgr17121cty00 > tgr17121cty00.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E tgr17121plc00 > tgr17121plc00.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E TigerRoads > TigerRoads.txt
ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E WashingtonCounty > WashingtonCounty.txt
ogrinfo -summary ogrinfo -summary C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E Water > Water.txt

The above script will write a file for each shapefile containing the attributes. The following is an example of the output.

INFO: Open of `C:\GIS\MarionCoIL\GISData\NAD83E'
using driver `ESRI Shapefile' successful.

Layer name: Hydrology
Geometry: Line String
Feature Count: 2238
Extent: (752169.261907, 658660.185483) - (881047.118353, 786642.635521)
Layer SRS WKT:
PROJCS["Custom",
GEOGCS["GCS_North_American_1983",
DATUM["North_American_Datum_1983",
SPHEROID["GRS_1980",6378137,298.257222101]],
PRIMEM["Greenwich",0],
UNIT["Degree",0.017453292519943295]],
PROJECTION["Transverse_Mercator"],
PARAMETER["False_Easting",984250],
PARAMETER["False_Northing",0],
PARAMETER["Central_Meridian",-88.33333333333333],
PARAMETER["Scale_Factor",0.999975],
PARAMETER["Latitude_Of_Origin",36.66666666666666],
UNIT["Foot_US",0.30480060960121924]]
TLID: Integer (10.0)
FNODE: Integer (8.0)
TNODE: Integer (8.0)
LENGTH: Real (10.5)
FEDIRP: String (2.0)
FENAME: String (30.0)
FETYPE: String (4.0)
FEDIRS: String (2.0)
CFCC: String (3.0)
FRADDL: Real (11.0)
TOADDL: Real (11.0)
FRADDR: Real (11.0)
TOADDR: Real (11.0)
ZIPL: String (5.0)
ZIPR: String (5.0)
CENSUS1: String (1.0)
CENSUS2: String (1.0)
CFCC1: String (1.0)
CFCC2: String (2.0)
SOURCE: String (1.0)

We are only interested in the end of the file so we use grep with a regular expression to get only the lines containing attribute names.

grep -e ": [Integer\|String\|Real].*([0-9]*\.[0-9]*)" Hydrology.txt

This results in the following output.

TLID: Integer (10.0)
FNODE: Integer (8.0)
TNODE: Integer (8.0)
LENGTH: Real (10.5)
FEDIRP: String (2.0)
FENAME: String (30.0)
FETYPE: String (4.0)
FEDIRS: String (2.0)
CFCC: String (3.0)
FRADDL: Real (11.0)
TOADDL: Real (11.0)
FRADDR: Real (11.0)
TOADDR: Real (11.0)
ZIPL: String (5.0)
ZIPR: String (5.0)
CENSUS1: String (1.0)
CENSUS2: String (1.0)
CFCC1: String (1.0)
CFCC2: String (2.0)
SOURCE: String (1.0)

Entrepreneurs

One way to make a living in Open Source is to create a proprietory format based on Open standards with proprietory extensions. Here is an example. You modify and build a custom portal from an Open Source portal. Your tool creates JSR-168 or JSR-286 war files (open standard) with proprietory extensions. Give it a .portal file suffix. The majority of the format respects the portlet standard and the extensions make it proprietory. With some modifications from a professional it can become standard therefore interesting to the Free Software Community.

I am working on a funded project for government emergency response management in the united states. There is an early open source version of this, http://www.mapimage.com/openaddress.org/. It is derived from MapServer and MapTools software.

I have contributed a MapServer integration project to the Apache Portals project. The source code is here, http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/portals/bridges/trunk/mapserver. The documentation is here, http://wiki.apache.org/portals/MapServerPortlet.

I studied general geology and computer science leading me to a career as a independent consultant. My products include portals, internet mapping apps, xml utilities, database tools, development and compile platforms derived primarily from Apache projects.

The Java platform is my preferred development environment although I am also a competent database and Linux system administrator. I have been programming in Java for 8 years and have been working with open source software for 5 years.

Squeezing the Dojo Toolkit and AndroMDA into Apache Portals Jetspeed 2

Apache Portals Jetspeed is a component based Enterprise Portal Server implementing the JSR-168 Portlet Standard. The Dojo Toolkit is an Ajax ready rich client interface for creating Web 2.0 pages. AndroMDA is a code generator that make using UML useful. When combined these three tools make data integration fun again. All stacked up in combination with the Apache httpd web server and Apache Tomcat and Apache Harmony to bring database Apache DB Derby cross platform web applications to the browser of your choice. This talk will demonstrating using an integrated Apache web platform with tight single sign on security to web applications running on the Internet.

It will be a big day when Microsoft distributes a Linux client. This is what proves Linux is not gaining much of Microsofts turf. For now there is smb://192.168.0.2/e

Cartographic Symbols and Lines



Getting a common street lines to render using MapServer is done using the symbol directive. Define the symbol.

SYMBOL
NAME 'circle'
TYPE ELLIPSE
POINTS 1 1 END
FILLED TRUE
END

And define your line layer with two style objects. One for the solid line and one for the outline.

LAYER
NAME Streets
TYPE LINE
STATUS OFF
DATA StreetsRR/CompletedCenterlines1-3

LABELITEM 'Fename'
CLASS
STYLE
SYMBOL 'circle'
COLOR 180 180 180
SIZE 3
END
STYLE
SYMBOL 'circle'
COLOR 255 255 255
SIZE 1
END
LABEL
ANGLE auto
TYPE truetype
FONT luxisr
MINFEATURESIZE 40
MINDISTANCE 150
SIZE 12
COLOR 0 0 0
END
TEMPLATE "templates/StreetsRR/Streets.html"
END

HEADER "templates/StreetsRR/Streets_header.html"
FOOTER "templates/StreetsRR/Streets_footer.html"

END

Linux ODBC

When you get the following command to work you've got Linux ODBC working but getting there is not always easy. I'm using Debian 3.1 other distros may vary.

isql -v myDatasource

The argument myDatasource is the name defined in /etc/odbc.ini

postgres@debian:~$ cat /etc/odbc.ini
[pg]
Description = Rose
Driver = PostgreSQL
Trace = Yes
TraceFile = /tmp/psqlodbc.log
Database = rose
Servername = localhost
UserName = postgres
Password = myPassword
Port = 5432
Protocol = 6.4
ReadOnly = No
RowVersioning = No
ShowSystemTables = No
ShowOidColumn = No
FakeOidIndex = No
ConnSettings =

Notice the username is the default postgres account. The Driver and Database are also key values.

The Driver is defined in /etc/odbcinst.ini

postgres@debian:~$ cat /etc/odbcinst.ini
[PostgreSQL]
Description = PostgreSQL ODBC driver
Driver = /usr/lib/odbc/psqlodbc.so
Setup = /usr/lib/odbc/libodbcpsqlS.so
Debug = 1
CommLog = 1
FileUsage = 1

Marvellous discovery. The GPX format. An xml schema for GPS data. I just used it with my GPS. A garmin legend c. To sample this out I used Debian 3.1 and an excellent tool called gpsbabel version 1.3.2. It worked right out of the box.

sudo apt-get install gpsbabel

sudo gpsbabel -t -r -w -i garmin -f usb: -o gpx -F gironde.gpx

The format stores way points with latitude longitude name description current time symbols and elevation.

Tracks are stored as track segments with track points containing the latitude longitude time and elevation.

Spatial Network Travel

Emulating Windows XP on Linux using QEMU

Quoting the quickstart guide.

Create an virtual Harddrive

qemu-img create -f qcow windowsxp.img 3G

Install Windows XP

qemu -cdrom /dev/cdrom -hda windowsxp.img -m 256 -boot d

This command means to boot from the d drive using 256 megabytes of RAM. The -cdrom option indicates where to find the device.

Networking is configured by default and Windows XP should configure itself with DHCP.

OpenSuSE 10.1 Network Install on AMD 64 Athalon

Requirements

cdrom read write
network connection

Prepare the CD

Download, write, and boot from the miniiso.

Specify Resource

At the boot menu type,

install=http://ftp.opensuse.org/pub/opensuse/distribution/SL-10.1/

Great News! Apache talks to Tomcat through the AJP proxy. Check out mod_proxy_ajp. To enable this great service add the following to your httpd.conf file.

ProxyPass /jetspeed ajp://127.0.0.1:8009/javacontext

Geospatial data units, commonly refered to as features, can be related to one another in one of three fundamental ways. Mutually exclusive meaning that there is no space common to both features, partially inclusive meaning that each feature overlaps the other but not entirely. They occupy space that is both common and unique to one another. And all inclusive meaning one feature si defined entirely within the bounds of the other. Points, lines and polygons can relate to polygons in this way. Yet lines can only intersect one another. Points can be part of a line and can be included in a polygon or be part of the polygons bound definition.

I've been doing alot of security lately and I need to backup some derby databases from one machine to another. The backup strategy is simple create an compressed archive and copy it using a secure connection to another machine. I'm documenting the process here. I want to backup a directory found at /path/parent/data. And I want the archive to maintain the directory data so that when it is expanded it writes one directory data and all the contents below it.

cd /path/parent
tar czf /tmp/data-`date +%j`.tar.gz data

The archive name is created with a %j indicating the day of the year. Therefore maintaining a year of backups. The next year will start to overwrite previous backups.

Then we want to copy the data to a remote machine. A secure encrypted copy can be sent to the remote machine. But in order to incorporate this in a cron job the remote machine must accept a password-less connection. These are the steps to generate the key. Run ssh-keygen without providing a passphrase.

ssh-keygen -t rsa
scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub remoteuser@remotemachine:.ssh/authorized_keys2

Now remote connections can be made without providing a password. Meaning the remote machine trusts the local machine.

OpenSSL

sudo openssl genrsa -des3 -out domainname.key 1024
sudo openssl rsa -noout -text -in domainname.key
sudo openssl req -new -key domainname.key -out domainname.csr
sudo openssl req -noout -text -in domainname.csr

Setting up an Apache2 SSL and SuSE 10 Firewall

Setting the SuSEfirewall2 to accept https connections requires a modification to /etc/sysconfig/SuSEfirewall2.

FW_SERVICES_EXT_TCP="ssh www 443 8888"

This definition allows the Internet to connect via ssh http https and a backdoor tomcat server. Apply the new rules with,

sudo /sbin/SuSEfirewall2 start

Configuring the Default SuSE Apache 2.2 SSL

Useful guides can be found in /usr/share/doc/packages/apache2. Check out README, README.QUICKSTART, README.QUICKSTART.SSL and README.SUSE.

Define a NameVirtualHost in /etc/apache2/listen.conf

NameVirtualHost www.example.com:443

Enable the ssl configuration by copying /etc/apache2/vhosts.d/vhosts-ssl.template to vhosts-ssl.conf (only files with the extension conf will be read). Change the line with _default_ as indicated below.





Create a Test Certificate

cd /usr/share/doc/packages/apache2
sudo ./certificate.sh

Restart Apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart