Curious.Judith

I find myself wondering about sharing unique interests. It seems to point to a belief that interests are an external state, that one might timeshare, like a unique cottage….

I’m not sure if i like my birthday or name derived classification better.

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Today’s installment from macmap (Macintosh Mapping and GPS Group) had a notice about HoudahGeo 1.4.12 release, in turn from MacInTouch.com. I have a few projects from July where i’ve photos and my GPS tracks, and i’ve been experimenting with using iShowU to record the GoogleEarth animation to include in a slide show. So, i’m ready to play with HoudaGeo.

I imported my three hundred plus whale watching photos (from our great Sanctuary Cruises trip) into HoudahGeo. That took noticeable time, but wasn’t long enough to get distracted. Then i imported the tracklog in GPX format (after a quick conversion with MacGPS Pro). HoudahGeo has a function to import from the GPS , but i did not test that. A quick prompt to verify whether there was time difference in the camera, and voila, a lat long for every image. I’ll note that the interpolation wasn’t well tested in this experiment, but it sufficiently automates what one would do without the code. Most importantly, the software is very easy to use. There’s an opportunity to title and write descriptions within the HoudahGeo interface, and since the application makes standard sidecar files or (presumably) will produce new EXIF data, i find that more appealing than creating image data in iPhoto.

Exporting, with the trial limitation of three images per project, was straightforward as well. (Note that the second image i exported wasn’t the nice image of the Risso’s Dolphins i expected. Pout.) My note about “presumably” above is because i produced sidecar XMP files the first time round, and my subsequent change of configuration did not rewrite the image with edited exif. Bug or limitation of trial or user error are all possible explanations.

The Flickr export went well, although i’m disappointed to find Flickr’s map doesn’t import the geolocation tags.

The win is, in my opinion, the kmz export option. Viewing in Google Earth is very pleasant, and it’s a format one can share with others. If you have a place to host your kmz file, you can give folks the URL and they the photos and the track in Google Earth: houdahgeotest.kmz (248 kb). Note that the time line function in Google Earth is supported! With a hosted location, i was also able to import the kmz into my maps at Google Maps. I’m not sure why there’s an offset between the trail and the red dots. If Google Maps is your destination for the images, it looks like you should edit the kmz in GoogleEarth (or your KMZ editor) before posting. Still, it’s a neat way to put your images in a place. I admit that the “featureless” ocean surface may not be the best example of this; the track over the USGS relief map of the Monterey Canyon gives the whale’s view of where we were.

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Nevertheless, after a month of attention to nothing but work, really, i am happy to pick up on other things. Laundry is probably at the top of the list, joined by streamkeeping and locative media toys like Fire Eagle, brightkite, whrrl, and plazer. At my Meeting, we are looking into digitizing some of our older books which have a bit of a mold problem. We plan to do this in partnership with The Internet Archive.

This blog languished as i didn’t have much time to figure out the DoS problems earlier this spring, and once resolved, i had no time to post. I look forward to a return of sharing my little adventures.

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I would love to say, “Don’t touch the parks!” but i understand that this budget crisis is significant — no easy solutions. I’m sure there are bureaucratic salaries that could be cut, and so on, but closing parks and then
considering them excess property seems far to far. It’s beyond mortgaging the future.

I couldn’t find much in the short time i had to think and write about this. If anyone else knows more about AB 2392, Excess state land: state park system (introduced by Garcia), please leave a comment.

Following: my hasty note to my representatives via California State Parks Foundation’s form. See more at http://savestateparks.org/.

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First, news that the Stevens and Permanente Creek Watershed Council has been notified that it will receive a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Federation (not the Fish and Wildlife Service) that will fund the current projects for the next three years.

***

In an article on Gilroy city government officials’ complaints about the cost of recertification of the Uvas creek levee, there’s news about the need for Stevens Creek levee to be recertified as well. Water District documents (pdf) provide a background on the FEMA project [CEO Bulletin, Week of January 26-1 February, 2007, p 6 of 8] to modernize their flood zone mapping and recertify levees. As of the Jan 2007 memo, the district had identified levees which had paper documentation that demonstrated they met the new standards and which were in the process of being recertified, and were in the processes of identifying which levees could be recertified or may not be able to be recertified. Levees that might not be able to be recertified were those built or designed before 1986 when the last set of requirements were in place. I haven’t found more recent documents. Apparently, fro the Gilroy Dispatch article, Stevens Creek needs an inspection to be recertified.

In the that board document and one from Dec 2006 there reporting about the bait stations on the levees which i noticed in October of 2006. If i recall, the reason I never posted an update is because i was waiting on a planned meeting with the water district. On the other hand, my worry was that they were not managed by the water district but were put out by the trailer park. I’ve found the water district’s Q&A on the rodent “management” plan which explains the type poison used and explains why the squirrels on the levees are a hazard to levee integrity. I do wish there was a better way, but this sounds like the most sensitive process in light of the abundance of ground squirrels in the area.

I’m reading Cradle to Cradle, a reevaluation of how one should approach design from a systems view with the goal being a system that doesn’t have an endpoint. The book begins with a critique of designing to be less bad. I find myself critiquing the land use out at Shoreline as a bunch of mitigations on mitigations. Land reclamation for farming (which, like farming on the Nile flood plan, one could have imagined being a compatible use of the land), but then more people lived on the land, so buildings needed to be protected from floods. And a dump was built, and a park on top of the dump, and major office complexes on top of the old willow flood plain (i think; i believe no construction is on fill) with mitigation wetlands and pump stations, and now talk of hotels and sports fields competing with burrowing owls, and the levees to protect all this, which require eradicating wildlife (note the squirrels help the endangered burrowing owls by starting burrow complexes). The authors of Cradle to Cradle suggest a view that moves out of a competition between needs and for resources to a much more holistic collaborative solution. It is incredibly idealistic, yet little bits of this seem to happen out at Shoreline and around the bay as it becomes clear that returning wetlands to wetlands helps meet human water management goals.

levee management, ground squirrels, cradle to cradle, flood management, stevens creek

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Blogging while out of it with a cold is probably only slightly less risky of public embarrassment than filing bug reports while out of it. To get the embarrassment out of the way, why, yes, i watched the highlights of the Puppy Bowl and Kitten Halftime Show.

Another set of videos i’ve been watching include YouTube clips a friend is using while teaching a Classics course. Some clips are probably not hosted at YouTube with the History Channel’s blessing, an issue Google can address. The interesting video was a montage of images for Iron Maiden’s “Alexander the Great”. This particular video scrolls the text of the song, which may be why it was selected, and ends with the flag of the Macedonian region of Greece. I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it, except i broke one of my rules of visiting YouTube: i read a comment.

Also learn to loose cause as you know that the star of Vergina-the sign of ancient Macedonia is legally use ONLY FROM GREECE and you don’t have any rights since 1995 to use it to your flag!!!

This put a new spin on the sort of “you can’t use that” that challenges the remix culture. Can’t use the copyrighted song? No, can’t use an ancient symbol, part of the cultural commons. What?

Apparently, in 1977 a casket was discovered in an archaeological site near the town of Vergina, in which some archaeologists believe are the remains of Philip II, father of Alexander the Great. The symbol on the casket became known as the Verginal Sun, and became adopted as a symbol of Macedonian identity. From wikipedia, “It became the subject of international controversy in 1991 when the newly independent Republic of Macedonia used the symbol on its flag. This outraged Greek public opinion, which saw the use of the symbol as an insult to its historical heritage and implying a territorial claim on Greece. In 1995 the Republic of Macedonia agreed to drop the use of the symbol.” The Macedonia naming dispute continues, with the Republic of Macedonia being recognized in the UN as “the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (FYROM).

I couldn’t help but check out The Artist Formerly Known As Prince a wikipedia, and found that he’s involved in a lawsuit over the incidental use of his music in a film of a baby bouncing.

All this reading was while i was waiting for Parallels to run through a number of Windows updates and installs that were needed to watch an Educause Live presentation on a study on the economic value of fair use (balanced use).

Matthew Schruers
Senior Counsel for Litigation and Legislative Affairs
Computer and Communications Industry Association
Copyright Fair Use and the Economy

The discussion was quite interesting, generally demonstrating how the open aspects of copyright law have a significant and positive effect on the US economy. Hopefully, this economic analysis will be able to balance the clamor of large industries intent on arguing for stronger protections.

I’m all set to watch the next in the series:
February 29, 2008
Update on Key Copyright Developments in the U.S.
James G. Neal
Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian, Columbia University

Cryptic notes from the presentation follow:
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Christmas in January! Traction for FOAF! I was excited to read Tim O’Reilly’s announcement of Google’s release of the Social Graph API, and immediately went to poke at it. My FOAF, how i’ve longed to have something other than FOAF explorer parse you.

Poke, poke, poke.

Why doesn’t site connectivity see all the sites connected? It turns out foaf:holdsAccount is listed as unstable, and thus — i infer — has not been implemented in Google’s parsing of the FOAF. Perhaps i’ll find out if that was it some day.

I’ll take this as an opportunity to move the following notes about the Social Graph vision and some observations about some specific awkward implementations of OpenId out of my “should make this into a blog entry” and release them into the wild. I’m ready for a widely adopted solution to profile exhaustion.
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First, a link to an older story about a Zeppelin possibly making use of Moffett Field. To my uninformed eye, that looks like a delightful co-use of the space, and my steampunk sensibilities prompt me to wonder if the bay area needs lots of zeppelins for disaster relief. About the time i ran across that article I found Steve Williams‘ site. He is “a pilot and aircraft owner from Mountain View. [His] goal for [his] web site is to record news and opinions about public use of Moffett Field, and especially civil aviation use.” He is such a well measured correspondent and his site provides such a useful service, i hope that civil aviation use can be found to have no negative effect on the wildlife refuge. He’s provided an update on the Hanger One report from the Navy, delayed until January.

In other news, the SF Chronicle ran an article about the release of the South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project report with this supportive blog entry from a hiker. I wish i could have taken more time off from work to be involved in the report development, and wonder if i should volunteer to be on the Alviso Ponds & Santa Clara County Working Group. There seem to be no surprises. The Chron reports that, “Today’s plan favors converting 90 percent of the former ponds to tidal marsh,” and mentions the concept of adaptive management (explained in a KQED segment) and how that may change that target date as observations are made about the effects of the early changes. I’m personally delighted to hear that, “A 2 1/2-mile segment of the Bay Trail will open between Mountain View’s Stevens Creek and Sunnyvale for hiking, biking and watching wildlife.” The December Newsletter reports, “Next year should be particularly exciting as we plan to … open the segment of Bay Trail adjacent to Moffett Field.” I’m not patient enough to dig out an exact date, but i think the work i’ve been observing has been of trail development. I hope it’s soon. When i walk out to the bay on the trail beside the creek, i really enjoy the sense of being so far away from sub/urban life and the changing views of the Moffett Field buildings. I think this will be an exciting addition. I do hope that in opening it up to public use that the public can respect the wildlife habitat and that i don’t have any more encounters with runners with their dogs off leash. (Dogs are not allowed in the Don Edwards section of the Stevens Creek Trail.)

Just as as side note, as i look at the maps being put out as part of the restoration planning, i note the well marked Hetch Hetcy aqueduct and ponder again whether Santa Clara parcel data has grounds for not responding to freedom of information requests for data on the grounds of a threat to homeland security. Hrmph.
Hangar One, Don Edwards NWR,South Bay Salt Pond Restoration Project,salt ponds

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The following advice paraphrased from Marin Water’s advice:

Every household should keep a minimum of three day emergency supply of water handy, at one gallon per person per day. The daily ration is divided into two quarts for drinking and two quarts for food preparation and sanitation. Note extra water is needed for pets and/or family members with special needs.

With this calculation, a 2.5 gal container of water is probably a day’s worth for our household of two persons and three cats. From random reading, cats are supposed get their water needs met best by eating moist food. Thus, it’s probably best to have tinned food available for the cats in an emergency. I’ve bought four of these containers. I think we have another similar water container (with very stale water!) in the front closet.

I note other sources say three to seven days of water and the possibly paranoid flutrackers call for a thirty day supply. Um, no. Not thirty.

Tap water, if properly stored in well-sanitized plastic containers like soft drink bottles, can be stored indefinitely, but we recommend cleaning the containers and refreshing the water once a year. Avoid using containers that will decompose or break. You can also purchase commercially bottled or packaged water for long-term storage. Store your emergency water supply in an easily accessible dark, cool, dry area away from any solvents or chemicals.

One challenge has been trying to figure out a storage location that would be reasonably accessible if there was a significant quake locally. Burying the water in a barely accessible corner of a storage closet might be OK if one could assume that the main problem would be interruption of the water supply, but what if there was significant building damage? I’ve decided to store the water on our deck letting it act as a plant shelf, putting a black tarp over it. This experimental solution has some risks. Freezing is unlikely, mitigated by the black tarp. The black tarp should help the water absorb enough solar heat to last through the coldest local night. The warmth, on the other hand, could induce growth of algae. One would hope that commercially purchased water would last without that problem. I think I want to cycle the water in the summer, when i most need to water the container garden on the deck. I’m going to mark these containers for renewal in June through September 2009, so they’ll over a year old by that point. I’ll keep an eye on the containers for algae growth or any other clouding.

If you are unsure about the safety of stored water, you can disinfect it with a 5.25% sodium hypochlorite solution (household chlorine bleach). Use 8 drops for clear water and 16 drops for cloudy water per gallon. Mix thoroughly and let stand for 30 minutes before using. You should notice a slight chlorine odor. If not, repeat the disinfection process.

I’ll add small bottles of bleach for the emergency kits to the list.

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First, to note that the Weed Mapping Coordinator for the creek, Cyrus Hiatt, has produced an excellent resource at the SPCWC – Weed Mapping website. Particularly nice is the implementation of a Google map of the weed locations.

I regret that I’ve not been able to participate in the meetings of the SPCWC this year. I’m not sure how this will change as the OCLC offices move from Shoreline to San Mateo.

We’ve had first rains in the area this past week — on Wednesday the 10th and on Friday the 12th. I had observed a heavy downpour at home on the morning of the 10th. I was able to get to the creek about lunch time and observed the tide coming in. The air was filled with the rich scent of wet reeds and soil, but i didn’t observe much in the creek that was due to the rain. I could see in the distance the Charleston Marsh out-fall pumping out.

invasive plants

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