Category Archives: mapping

Hack Your Town

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“If guns are about power, then hacking is about secret knowledge, and knowledge is also power.” – Charlie Stross in The Fear Factory

“Live so that when your children think of fairness and integrity, they think of you.” – H. Jackson Brown

Chicago Trib news app developer leaves Chicago and moves to small town of Tyler, Texas to be a responsible parent. Instead of mostly moaning about life in the boondocks (and, unlike D and me, who used to simply leave Smalltown Ohio for other actual cities), said developer uses his experience to “improve the things [he doesn't] like, either through application of will or technology or both.” Enter Hack Tyler.

Tyler has information that could be freed. Tyler has government that could be opened. Tyler has news that could be hacked. Moreover, Tyler has an almost completely unexploited market. There are no hackers there. The small number of high-tech businesses that exist in the region are either web development shops serving local businesses or robotics companies.

… Is this all going to go off without a hitch? Not a chance. I expect to spend many nights being painfully underwhelmed with the place and with myself, but this is the best way I know how to deal with it.

So far, Christopher Groskopf (@onyxfish) has changed Tyler’s bus transit system from an online PDF to Tyler On Time. And then the city announced they are overhauling the system and routes with it. While (I guess) that project is on hold, Groskopf is now looking at what to do with the city’s demographic and other data.

To be honest, what grabs me about Hack Tyler is not at all Future Boy Brings Fire To Australopithecus And Amuses Himself In Process, but this guy’s surrender to his circumstances as a divorced father. Once you make that decision to be present in your reality and your child’s life, keeping yourself occupied, going and useful comes with the territory, I suppose. And he admits that it is terribly hard. Good parents have always been a heartening puzzle to me – they selfishly procreate and then spend the rest of their lives willing to give those very lives for their children if necessary. When the aliens come and ask why we must be spared, I will point towards parents. That will keep them busy.

What also tickles me is this statement from the O’Reilly Radar interview: “Texas has a history of transparency projects that I was unaware of.” We’re working on cool projects NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT. Solid. Also, no one tell Rick Perry.

The Morganza Spillway Is Now Open

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The Pointe Coupee Banner | Corps directed to open Morganza Spillway

The Morganza Spillway has been opened to protect Baton Rouge and New Orleans from the Mississippi River potentially overflowing its carefully-carved banks in these cities. According to Tim, this does not keep New Orleans river levels from subsiding, but stabilizes the flow rate downstream from the spillway. “Operation of [the] spillway and floodway will keep [river] stage from going above 17 [feet] at [the] Carrollton [gage].”

The US Army Corps of Engineers designed the spillway to be opened “when the flow of the Mississippi at Red River Landing, Louisiana, is greater than 1,500,000 cu ft/s (42,000 m3/s) and rising.” With 125 bays, that’s 12,000 cfs per bay. As of this writing, one Morganza bay is open. More from Tim: “The spillways operate to maintain 1.5 million cfs flow at Baton Rouge and 1.25 million cfs at New Orleans. Doing the math, 0.25 M cfs flows out [of the] Bonnet Carre [spillway].”

WWLTV New Orleans reports that the spillway may be open for several weeks.

My heart is with you, Acadiana.

==

 

Day 46 Links

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The LMRP tophat is in place. Closing the vents in the cap is slow going with the formation of hydrates and high flow pressure out of the well. Indeed, we are still watching and discussing.

The Oil Drum | Lessons Left Unlearnt From 2003 Gulf of Mexico Near-Spill: “Reading through some MMS reports, it seems that near-misses happen a lot.”

A good maritime law blog on the legal machinations surrounding the oil spill. As Brad says, “He begins each day with a summary of the relevant legal developments pertaining to the spill, then expands on them individually and includes hyperlinks to underlying documents.”

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So, this has been puzzling me for the last couple of days: Both IfItWasMyHome and Paul Rademacher offer the ability to overlay the latest geographic extent of the oil spill on a location of your choice. It’s a good exercise in geographic scale, but if they both source their data from NOAA on any given day, why do the maps look so different?

IfItWasMyHome.com June 4, 2010

Paul Rademacher Oil Spill June 3, 2010

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Are the American people and media so naive that they cannot discern between disaster and disastrous response? How many times must these things happen before they get it? America, keep this in mind as you go into another weekend (and Pistolette sums it up very nicely): “I didn’t blame Bush for Katrina, but for failing to act after. I don’t blame Obama for the oil spill, but for failing to act after.” Disaster prevention is one thing, while effective response is wholly another.

No, Not With The Google Maps!

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Slashdot | High-Tech Burglars May Get Longer Sentences In Louisiana

Burglars and terrorists should be careful not to use Google Maps if they plan on committing crimes in the state of Louisiana … a bill approved 89-0 by the Louisiana House will require that judges impose an additional minimum sentence of at least 10 years on terrorist acts if the crime is committed with the aid of an Internet-generated ‘virtual map.’ The bill, already approved by the Louisiana Senate, defines a ‘virtual street-level map’ as one that is available on the Internet and can generate the location or picture of a home or building by entering the address of the structure or an individual’s name on a website. If the map is used in the commission of a crime like burglary, the bill calls for the addition of at least one year in jail (PDF) to be added to the burglary sentence.

Because you have to case a joint the old-fashioned way, dammit, sitting outside in a sketchy van with binoculars! Not using this cold, heartless, new-fangled Internet!

I … hmmm … uhhhh … I don’t know where to start with this one. Nothing else of import on the legislative agenda? Conducting a terrorist act isn’t bad enough, you get 10 years, y’heard, 10 WHOLE YEARS EXTRA for using the series of tubes for reconnaissance. That the Louisiana legislature should encourage the use of Google Maps for such activity because it will most likely send the would-be criminal to the wrong location? The bill was approved 89-0 in the LA House after passing the Senate; are all of the state’s elected representatives tech-illiterate geezers?

For the love of justice, David Vitter is giving away the keys to the castle and you’re worried about common criminals and imagined terrorists using digital cartography?

I suggest an amendment to the bill that jails people for geolocating their home addresses for others and then blasting to the world when they’re away from home. If you’re that stupid, you need to be put away for your own good.

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While its idiot politicians waste taxpayer money, the rest of Louisiana fights the good fight in the throes of deep, horrifying, sickening despair. From Charlie Mac and His Junk Shots, a remake of the musical classic Jambalaya (On The Bayou):

Goodbye Joe, me gotta go, me o my o
Oil slick come and it’s as big as Ohio.
BP says they gonna clean the mess but they lie-o
Son of a gun, oil by the ton on the bayou.

St. Bernard gonna take it hard, and that’s a shame-o
Plaquemines just can’t win, and who’s to blame-o?
Big oil slick make the little fish sick, kill the game-o
Son of a gun, they got us on the run on the bayou.

Southeastern Louisiana Is Officially Screwed

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The containment dome failed, Top Kill is looking like a no-go, the flow by now is higher than 5000 barrels per day and Joe Lieberman says, “Accidents happen.”

There’s a difference, senator, between Accidents Happen and The Accident Is Still Happening 21 Days After And Nothing Can Stop It.

BP is now attempting a smaller Macondome, giving me the impression it’s time someone else took over this operation. The Department of Interior under both Bush and Obama is a hot, zero-oversight mess (even the Government Accountability Office is scared). Meanwhile, southeastern Louisiana is done for.

NOAA’s spill location forecast for 6pm CDT today:

Oil Spill Forecast Location For 2010-05-10 1800CDT

University of Southern Florida Ocean Circulation Group’s spill trajectory hindcast/forecast based on West Florida Shelf ROMS for 4pm CDT tomorrow:

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trajectory hindcast-forecast based on West Florida Shelf ROMS

How Big Was The Oil Spill As Of May 6th?

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Paul Rademacher has created a Google Earth mashup in which you can overlay the extent of the Gulf of Mexico oil spread as of May 6th on any place on the globe. How big is the slick compared to where you live? Remember that the gusher will only keep widening in extent as long as the oil continues to spew out of the leaks in the riser.

The oil spill on New York City (and New Jersey and New York state and Connecticut):

The oil spill on Chicago (and Gary, IN and Lake Michigan into Michigan):

On Houston (D notes that the eastern arm spill stops just short of the Louisiana border):

Buckle Up, Florida & East Coast

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Here comes the Loop Current.

Marion Laney, a realtor on Dauphin Island, has uploaded the following video from the Ocean Circulation Group at University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science. It uses drifters tracked by satellite to follow and forecast the movement of the Gulf Gusher (note that this is based on one model, like in hurricane tracking). The modeled circulation resembles a starfish with two arms stretching south and eastward over time. If you think Louisiana’s problems are only in the Breton/Chandeleur area, though, check out that one arm circling the peninsula to the west and headed up towards Barataria Bay. Bad news.

Wisconsin In The News

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1. Finally, Wisconsin is recognized for something we’re really, really good at. Thanks to Nathan at Flowing Data for posting this FloatingSheep gem.

Flowing Data | Where Bars Trump Grocery Stores: “Red dots represent locations where there are more bars than grocery stores, based on results from the Google Maps API. The Midwest takes their drinking seriously.” Actually, it’s just Wisconsin that does. Central Minnesota, Chicago and southeast Illinois lightweights need not apply.

2. USA Today Science Fair | Tectonic Plate Model Lets Users Play With 3D Planetary Puzzle

Dubbed MORVEL, for Mid-Ocean Ridge VELocity (because much of the data comes from the mid-ocean ridges) it was created by University of Wisconsin-Madison geophysicist Chuck DeMets and collaborators Richard Gordon of Rice University and Donald Argus of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

MORVEL lets allows users model the relative movements of 25 interlocking tectonic plates that account for 97 percent of the Earth’s surface. It’s being presented in the April issue of Geophysical Journal International and is based on work the scientists have been doing for the past 20 years.

A dynamic three-dimensional puzzle of planetary proportions! Chuck was on my MS thesis committee and we used older versions of MORVEL in our graduate geophysics classes. Glad to see this great research and teaching aid get the attention it deserves.

A Response To “All These Earthquakes”

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@geologynews wanted to know where he could find “a list of all earthquakes from 2010 (say, >M5.0+), not just from the past week or month.” At the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) Earthquake Browser, of course!

The following map shows all 3228 earthquakes between January 1st, 2010 and today.

In two months, a tiny fraction of a percentage of a blink of the geological eye, there were around three thousand recorded movements of the lithosphere. They nicely outline Earth’s plates and some intra-plate activity: Oceans subducting under continents, the mid-Atlantic rift quietly creating new crust, the furious Pacific Ring of Fire, the East African Rift, India ramming away at Asia and America unraveling at the Basin and Range. The Earth is alive and doing its thing. Earthquakes aren’t oddities, they are the natural norm. Never forget that.

Next up are all earthquakes of Magnitude 5.0 and above for the same time frame.  These make up around 20% of all earthquakes in the last two months.

The IRIS Earthquake Browser uses the Google base map and interface, so you can zoom in on particular earthquake-hit regions and look at satellite imagery and terrain data along with regular map view.

I urge everyone to donate as much as they can to the victims of the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti, and also ask you to take an objective stance towards why natural disasters happen. As I explained to my physician brother who was concerned about the frequency and severity of recent earthquakes and attendant natural disasters, think of the earth as the human body, i.e. it’s all inter-connected and there is a perfectly plausible reason for all “ailments,” even ones we don’t yet fully understand.

Let’s use Haiti and Chile themselves as examples. Haiti is an impoverished and deforested former French island colony sitting on the steep, clayey soil over an active strike-slip fault which just moved in a catastrophic manner in the lead-up to the rainy and hurricane seasons. I hope to still be alive when the nation is rebuilt and recovers from its ongoing and upcoming physical, emotional and social trauma. The geographic shape of Chile could not have been fashioned more disastrously by the gods themselves. The nation parallels an active subduction zone to the west and a highly-explosive mountain range to the east.  When were this earthquake and associated tsunami NOT going to happen? (As it happened half a century before. And how long until the Andes let one loose?) Thankfully, Chilean buildings are more sturdy in build and the earthquake occurred offshore and not directly underfoot as in the case of Haiti. This also highlights the difference between the magnitude and intensity of an earthquake and why a 7.0 in Haiti wreaked more havoc than an 8.8 in Chile. Again, this time around, the generated tsunami did not take as many lives as in 2004.

Each new natural and unnatural disaster definitely weakens our collective will, but it’s not an excuse for brain rot. This is why I’m glad to be alive in the internet age. We use this interconnectedness to give and get help, hope and knowledge. Vive Haiti. Vive Chile.