Merry Christmas Everybody! Not much going on today just relaxing, stuffing my face, gabbing on the phone and of course spending some time on the computer. I’m stuck in Upstate, NY again for another Christmas except this time there is no snow. Wish I was in Florida eating my mother’s cooking. Guess I should count my blessings… at least I’m not stuck in other places because of cancelled flights. I still wish my Mom would send me a care packet of curried goat, rice and peas, black cake, and sorrel. Yummmmm… I haven’t had curried goat and sorrel since I was in Jamaica back in spring. Not cool I was almost able to get some goat so I could cook my own but it didn’t work out. Perhaps someone will have mercy on me and send/ bring me some. Who knows. Well, hope ya’ll had a great Christmas and Happy holidays to the folks out there who don’t celebrate Christmas
Nollaig Chridheil,
Catt

Let me start off by commending ESRI on the fine job they have done with the new usability enhancements in ArcGIS 9.2. That said, there are a few more that I would like to see…

That display vs. selection tab blunder- where am I?

Maybe its just me, but I find it a bit difficult to tell when editing a layer if the selection tab is active or the display tab is active (especially I have gobs of other layers in the TOC). I know that the selection tab is the one with the yellow icons by the Layers list at the top but when you have a tons of layers and you are down in the middle of the layers list its hard to tell which tab is active exactly without having to look at the bottom or the left. This results in me clicking in the display tab thinking that I’m specifying which layers are selectable and clicking in the selection tab thinking that I’m turning layers on/ off. I’ve caught myself doing this more than a few times now to blame it on the interface. Here is what I think ESRI can do to make things easier for us payin customers: Make the contents of the two tabs visually different. Simply making the boxes in the selectable layers tab bolder or a different color would help to reduce these common mishaps.

The Topology Editing Options won’t stay put after closing my MXD

While using the modify edge command to move several feature classes via Map Topology I notice that the selected nodes are way too large and usually covers over myproperty lines when zoomed in closely. To mimimize this problem, I’ve developed a habit of changing the topology elements symbology to .30 for selected nodes and .001 for selected edges. I do my edits, save the changes and the MXD file and finish up for the day. Next day I open said MXD again to do more edits… select the modify edge tool to move some more nodes and edges and notice that when I select a node its large again (didn’t I change this the last time?) I go to Editor—-> Options—-> Topology Elements Symbology and low and behold the nodes have reset themselves to 5 and the edges are back to 2. I set them back to .30 and .001 next day I have to set them back again. Next day after that, its OK, I get .30 and .001 I’m happy OK maybe now it will stick, next day we are playing the 5/2 game again. I’m unhappy about this, what a time waster.

A minor enhancement request oh beloved programmers

I like the new calculate geometry tool, I have to admit that my old calculator has gotten little attention since I upgraded to 9.2 almost a month ago. There are two ways to make this tool better. The first way is to include the ability to use a default calculation option. For example, I mainly calculate polygons so I use Area/ Acres US. I notice that the calculator remembers the map projection why can’t it remember that I like to calculate areas in Acres US? There should be some kind of option to specify this so I don’t have to pick it from the list every-time. Also would be nice if it saved these default between sessions. The second request is to put a button on the toolbar to click on a polygon in the main ArcMap window instead of having to go to tables everytime. I thought that this was doable from a demo I saw but I can’t calculate the geometry for a selected feature w/out going to the table. Odd… I think that you can do a graphic but not n actual feature… Still have to look into this one, have been so swamped with work I haven’t the proper time to check out all of the new stuff yet.

ArcGIS Server (via ESRI)

I was very excited a couple of days ago to find out that although we weren’t one of the folks that won the ArGIS Server Stratus Grant. We did however, receive an ESRI ArcGIS Server Software grant. This grant allowed us to upgrade our ArcGIS Server Standard to ArcGIS Server Advanced free of charge (minus the time spent wrting and sending off the grant). This is what we needed to do our project in the first place so I was very excited. I got receieved the new codes in my inbox just yesterday. Its funny, I did not want to spend the time applying but I sure I’m glad I did. The praying also helped esp. since we tuned it in at the last possible minute.   Now we can proceed with our project (more on that later) as planned esp. since we were successful in obtaining another grant to offset the consulting and other fees.

I just started to read a book that I won at a GIS Day Drawing titled “From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps, Name, Claim, and Inflame” by Mark Monmonier (its generally about the political influences on toponymy in the US over the years thus far) so when I came across this story: Mapmaker puts tiny towns on road to oblivion – CNN.com I was quite taken with it. Basically, a cartographer in Georgia removed 488 communities from the latest version of Georgia’s official map, among some of the names that dissappeared were Experiment, Hemp, and Dewey Rose and one town called Hickory Level just put up new welcome signs… The story is an interesting read if you care about such things. Having just erased a bunch of old data from a few maps the other day I can’t imagine what it would be like to erase a whole community… Yikes we couldn’t get away with this kind of thing around these parts, we can’t even rename a street without having multiple hearings, debate, upset citizenry and other such issues.

Blogged with Flock

This iPod pillow thing is just plain weird. For $20 you can get this soft squishy pillow that apparently has built in speakers so that you can hook up your iPod to it and play your tunes. The buttons on this thing actually works (how cool is that) and it has a built in FM radio.  I wish I could get my hands on one to check it out instead of having to plop down $20 for it. I already have enough iPod related accessories in my life. I have to admit its cute though and it comes in pink. This would be a good gag gift for someone at work… hmmpf.

Blogged with Flock

I like to have some toasted bread for breakfast mainly on weekends when I have the time to sit down and have a long drawn out breakfast. My current toaster take a few minutes to toast so I don’t do this before work, crumbs everywhere and all that jazz. Anyway, as I was thumping around on my internet travels today I came across an Industrial designer from Singapore -Jaren Goh (wonder if he’s related to my friend Liyen Goh?) who created a toaster he calls the Roller Toaster. Basically you stick the bread in one side of this thing and you get toasted bread coming out the other end. Quite frankly the device looks like my Mac Mini power adapter with a heated core in the middle. A bit longer but it has that neat Apple-ish look to it. I noticed that a few other items in his portfolio had a Mac like look to them as well. Not sure that the toaster would help with my crumb problem perhaps if you put a tray right next to it. I wonder how you can prevent your fingers from getting burnt if you are making extra toast fro friends one right after the other. I also wonder how long it takes to toast?

I found out that we didn’t get the grant that we applied for today. Congratulations to all the other places that did receive it. We haven’t gotten our rejection letter yet I found out by going to the grants website after my Boss informed me that he didn’t received any word one way or the other. It would have been exciting scrambling around to get the project done in six months and we were looking forward to it but guess we have to try again somewhere else or put the project on the shelf for a later time. The project has to get done some way or the other so its just a matter of coming up with the funds to do it.