The Story Behind Earthgoogle
If you search my blog you’ll find an interesting post titled earthgoogle. Well it really isn’t that interesting, it just has a link to download Google Earth and a link to my blog. So what is this thing and why does it have such a weird title?
For those that might not remember, 2005 was a crazy time for GIS blogs. Katrina brought satellite imagery to everyone and people searched the internet for ways to find out more. Google Earth was probably the easiest and best way for the average person to learn more about satellite imagery and get some really helpful tools to mark up the area.
This was about as amazing as anything anyone had seen outside of our industry.
About this time in September 2005, I noticed a lot of people arriving to my blog due to the search term “earthgoogle”. So as most people who blogged back then, I loved to talk about blogging. I created a simple blog post asking what was this all about.
To all those reaching this site using MSN search with the term “earthgoogle” hello. You’ve been filling up my server logs with this request. I’m curious why you’ve typed this in to only MSN search and not Google/Yahoo/other search engines.
So obvious, right? MSN users, not typing a URL correctly? Anyway, what this blog post of mine actually did was make this page the number one result in Google for the search term “earthgoogle”. I got so much traffic by being the way most people, who didn’t understand how URLs work, find Google Earth. Eventually I changed the page to what you see now.
I put Google AdSense on that page too. I mean everywhere (really wished I took a screen shot because it was so tacky). The result from that tacky was that I was making over $1,000 a month in ad revenue from that blog post alone. People who wanted to find “earthgoogle” apparently also like to click on ads.
Eventually the page died down, people stopped being directed to my blog via search for “earthgoogle”. I probably pulled ads off the blog in 2006 and couldn’t care less. But the page remains, a reminder of how crazy Google Earth was back in 2005.
Foot Surgery Self-quarantine
I felt sorry for myself with my achilles surgery. That I couldn’t go out, see spring training games, have brunch in crowded restaurants with all the spring tourists.
No, I picked the best time to get my foot operated on. I’m able to give it the rest it needs because there is no where to go. I feel lucky that I was able to time this so perfectly for myself and my family.
Please, everyone. Stay safe!
Back in the Day
This is probably 80% of what I remember about ArcView 3.x. I also remember VTab and FTab.
At least we could open the APR in Notepad….
PHXGeo
I started the PHXGeo Meetup group way back in March 2013. It actually wasn’t the first version of PHXGeo, that was started in November 2010, and that group actually put on the first and only WhereCampPHX. You can see what it looked like back, then. When I left WeoGeo in 2013, I decided to move from that WordPress site to Meetup to better help run the group. Eventually, I turned over management of PHXGeo to Ryan Arp sometime in 2016 and set off to the land of CAD and BIM. He’s done a great job keeping it running along with the help of some great volunteers which warms my heart.
There was a meetup last week, but alas with my foot I was going no where. But I am excited to engage the local geography group again and hopefully help them continue to grow it. If you live in the Phoenix metro area, make sure you join the meetup group so you can learn more about what they are up to and when the next meetup will be. Don’t forget, State of the Map US 2020 is in Tucson this year so there is more reason to get excited about Geo in Phoenix.
I still control the PHXGeo twitter account and domain, so if you aren’t a meetup kind of person, look at those and they’ll be updated with the meetups.
The Newsletter is Back
As I announced on SpatialTau, the newsletter is back. Before I go on, click and subscribe.
So as I mentioned on that first edition (well I guess it is the 3rd first edition of the newsletter), I’m going to do my long form writing on the newsletter. It will come out every week on Wednesday. The blog isn’t going away. As you’ve seen, I’ve started blogging again. Think of Spatially Adjusted as my relief valve. The place where I let go the thoughts without spell check or figuring out if the Simpsons GIF makes any sense. I’ve been blogging daily, but I suspect it will devolve into couple times a week.
The newsletter is where I want to talk about the industry more. Getting at the why. I look at it as the book I never will write. I hope to get more into the why rather than the how. I figure there are so many more people these days who do the how better than I, I’ll leave that for them. I know that’s not always what you see here on this blog, but that’s what I want to write. Maybe someone will print some PDFS and throw it in a 3-ring binder one day.
I won’t be linking to the newsletter much here so if you want to follow along, please subscribe. I’ll be cleaning up the format a little bit this month and hope to settle into a nice rhythm. So I think I’ve got my bases covered, this blog, a podcast and a newsletter. I’m just a Renaissance man….
Toolkits
Bill and I have a podcast that we do almost once a month. Podcasts are a lot of fun because you can talk about things easier than writing about them. There is a free flow of ideas (or maybe garbage) out of your head and on to a mp3. One topic we talked about months ago was GIS clients. We talked about tools we use but I just happened to be listening to it last night and I realized maybe I wasn’t as honest with myself as I should have been.
GIS users, if you need a friend, get a dog.
I’m not a GIS user…
Fair point though, what is a GIS user? I think of it as someone who uses GIS software. But even that it is somewhat of a mess because one person’s GIS software is another person’s toolkit. Ignoring that issue for a second, what do I use for GIS?
- GDAL/OGR
- Turf.js
- Elastic
- PostGIS
I think that pretty much covers it. I mean there is some Shapely and some other libraries, but that short list is all I use anymore. That of course has a lot to do with my job, if I was GIS Manager at the City of Townsville I might need other tools, but that list above is pretty much it. I can’t help but think of these things as Toolkits rather than GIS software. They are all part of a deeper workflow that I use when I need to use it. The end result is never QGIS, ArcGIS, uDIG or whatever madness you use in your daily life. It is either GeoJSON or “database” (where database could mean a lot of things).
God made men. Men made proprietary software systems
This blog is about to have it’s 15th year anniversary and I can’t think of a better example of how things have changed since that moment. I also think GIS lends itself for this workflow orientated environment anyway. Ignoring the crazy ArcGIS Desktop years with wizard based GIS, mostly GIS has been scripting workflows to accomplish your needs. Fortran, AML, Python, you name it. We use these methods to not only get results but document them. In the end I think all the tools we use for GIS are Toolkits and not software. Yes, one must put a name on something, but GIS has always been about toolkits, even in proprietary workflows, and will always be this. Maybe when we check in right before I retire in 2035 we can see how we are doing with this.
My guess? Still using toolkits.
Toolkits are a “real genius” move…
March 3, 2020 elasticsearch gdal postgis Thoughts toolkits turf.js