Garmin Unveils Phone!!!

http://garmin.blogs.com/my_weblog/2008/01/garmins-new-yor.html

http://www8.garmin.com/nuvifone/

GPS company makes a phone !!! It looks like it integrates with Google Apps. If it integrates with ESRI I'm sold.

Tax Parcels Database & Ben Jervey's Green Guide

I've been working on tax parcel database and I have to air out some grievances. This database spans two counties (Rockland & Westchester) and over 10 municipalities, all with different parcel ID conventions. Slashes, dashes, periods should all be a thing of the past. Simple unique number strings are good. Don't name parcels 067.23-1/2.4-2! Name them 067002301002004002. It's time for a change. Time for TAX PARCEL GIS STANDARDS in 2008!!!
Sorry for the rant but this has been annoying me for quite some time.

On a more positive note, Ben Jervey's green guide to New York City has been a good read for whenever I have down time at work (waiting for ArcMap to process data) or a long elevator ride.
In the book Jervey lists green places and events in New York City and how to incorporate green living into everyday life. He also identifies with the grind of living and working in New York. I'd like to see more books by him for other cities. I hear he's also working on creating a Green Map Guide to New York. Here's an excerpt:

"Plenty of New Yorkers want to lessen their share of environmental burden, but simply don't know where to begin. The Big Green Apple: Your Guide to Eco-Friendly Living in New York City provides simple ways you can make a difference. With it, you'll discover a comprehensive set of tips and strategies of how to adopt a lower-impact life without compromising your comfortable and cool urban lifestyle. You'll also find profiles of organizations, businesses, and individuals around the city committed to bringing NYC a brighter shade of green, as well as a comprehensive directory of green goods and services throughout the five boroughs."

http://www.greenapple.northeaststandard.com/

Tuesday: Things Every Geographer Should Know

Just finished the last of my home brews. Started a new batch of Irish Stout on Friday. I'll miss the Continental Dark (think Carlsberg Dark or Heineken Dark) but I'm looking forward to drinking the Stout - which was the first beer I brewed way back in 2004.

Remember all the things to learn in geography class - like how to spell Erastothenes - and whatever it was he did with those wells and shadows, what "break of bulk" means, or how to make Thiessen Polygons. Well I sure as hell don't. I was too busy downloading music illegally to remember all that stuff.

So long as I remember, every Tuesday I'd like to bring up some random geography facts. Here's something I just learned of from Scott Davis's GIS for Web Programming book: "The meter is defined as 1/10,000,000th the distance from the equator to the pole."

This has been a great read so far - rehashing on some of the basics of geography and GIS. I'm sure I won't like it so much when I'm trying to set up an Open Source Map Server.

Missed the Vampire Weekend (often compared to sounds off Graceland or to the Talking Heads) CD release party up at the Virgin Megastore last night. Too tired to go at midnight. The record comes out today and if I get a chance to buy it I'll review it. Their demo is still in heavy rotation in my Ipod and it'll include many of the songs off it.

Super Bowl week!

Go Giants!!!

The NY/Boston feud continues with the Giants vs. Pat's.

http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/

Colin Beavan a.k.a. No Impact Man, also continues his feud with Michael Shellenberger, author of "Break Through: The Death of Environmentalism and the Politics of Possibility." The core of the argument is whether positive change for the environment will come from policy/grand scale change OR personal sacrifice and lifestyle changes. Beavan walks/bikes to work and has lived greenly without electricity, ate local, etc. in New York City for a year. He has improved his health and claims that he is in fact happier than prior to begining the experiment. Shellenberger (I've read less of his work) states there needs to be a global shift in attitude towards greeness from industry and government and disagrees with the 'holier-than-thou' stance by hard-core environmentalists. Both offer intelligent arguments and are posting their email exchange on their blogs.

Friday!

Picked up Scott Davis's "GIS For Web Developers" yesterday at Barnes and Noble. It already seems like a great find as all of the resources will be open source and also performable on a mac (where ESRI is dropping the ball, except for the few lucky individuals who have intel macs with windows OS)

I'll try to review it as I read it.

Last night I attended an event at Terminal 5 at West 56th Street. Free drinks were served courtesy of Rolling Stone Magazine and Malibu. DJ Steve Aoki performed.

Terminal 5 as a venue is sick. I'll be sure to catch some shows there as the sound/lighting/# of bars seems promising. The bar service was subpar. DJ Stevek Aoki wasn't terrible but seemed more of a party DJ than someone who should be onstage. He's definetely no DJ Z-trip. That said, the music was a decent mix but the free drinks were weak so we busted out early.

Google Earth Hack Code

View in Google Earth -- Get Google Earth

Powered by YourMap from Google Earth Hacks.

Want your own html code to show a map application on your site http://www.gearthhacks.com/yourmap/

The folks at Anything Geo ( http://gisuser.blogspot.com/ ) clued me in to this super easy/user-friendly code. Check it out its really easy.

Possibly going to hit up Terminal 5 in NYC tonight to see DJ Steve Aoki - review tomorrow...

by the way the map shows the location of a great bar with good beer and great old-school video games right in Brooklyn http://www.barcadebrooklyn.com/

UPDATE: THIS CODE APPEARS NOT TO WORK WITH SAFARI but seems to work great with Firefox and IE

NYGeog

In keeping with one of many new year's resolutions - many of which have already failed - I've decided to begin blogging.

I plan on drawing from stories about GIS (ie. Planet Geospatial), Music (Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan, College Music Journal), the Environment (No Impact Man) and anything else that I'm intersted in - Brewing & Beer perhaps!

Zillow (a property search web company) just released their neighborhood shapefiles of major US cities. Here's an image of some NYC neighborhoods...apparently Greenpoint has fallen into the East River or is waiting for the G Train!!!



http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/2008/01/16/zillow-releases-their-neighborhood-boundary-layer-over-7000-neighborhoods-available-to-download/