tommy's scratchpad

I thought I’d put in my $0.02 CAD after reading a few similar posts out there. So here are some from my point of view (in no particular order):

Geospatial

• GeoRSS is here: GeoRSS made v1 this year at foss4g2006 and has proven to be a simple, yet very effective way to tag feeds. I’ve used and integrated in all my projects (I use the GML flavour) which produce RSS content by way of outputting an overview map based on the position. It gives the developers endless possibilities, and folks just love to see ‘where’ a post is
• Getting to Know PHP: Earlier this year, ignorant to PHP, I decided to take the plunge and see what all the fuss was about. Boy was I glad I did. So easy, even I could figure it out. So easy that I’ll be porting bits of my website to PHP in the coming year
• MapServer SOS support: It’s great to see OGC SensorWeb support in MapServer. Given that MapServer can already do stuff like spatial, temporal and aspatial queries, I think SOS was a relatively easy initial implementation effort. The more complex effort is the data bindings (sensor data is quite complex and multidimensional, and getting in and out of MapServer, in a generic framework is quite the challenge
• ResEau portal launch: I was very fortunate to work with a great bunch of people to have finally released the ResEau water portal after two years of planning, design and development. I think this portal is a great example of the benefits of using standards-based approaches all the while providing useful information to a vast audience
• MapServer commiter access: I was very honoured to be nominated this year for commit access to the codebase. My main focus was and is to implement the OGC OWS Common Specification for use by other OGC implementations
• Web 2.0, Time article and information overload: Such a good article. And so true. As a result, we are overloaded with information! At one point, I refactored all my bookmarks to be pure RSS feeds just to handle it all. Whoever said computers would lessen the workload!?
• foss4g2006: This was a great conference. The lighthing talks, BOF sessions, and demo fest, as well the gathering of the OSGeo crowd further solidified OSGeo’s existence. Can’t wait until next year’s event!
• Catalogue woes continue: the Cat2.0 ebRIM vs. ISO implementation debate continued. Add to this the lack of (especially open source) implementations, and stuff like owscat, and other catalogue-ish projects continued to exist. The OGC has recently endorsed ebRIM as the future base for Cat2.0 implementations, so hopefully we should start seeing some interoperability between catalogues
• Atlas of Canada 100th Anniversary: Congratulations on the 100th anniversary of this valuable Canadian resource. Kudos to the Atlas!

Other:

• Cool travel: Charlottetown, Alabama, Washington D.C, Lausanne, Las Vegas, San Diego, Moncton, Winnipeg were among some of the neat places I visited this year
• Home renovation: I did my biggest renovation job ever on my house this year, which lasted almost 6 months. I’m really glad the way things turned out, and I’m looking forward to doing some more stuff in 2007
• Condo putters along: construction continued on my condo, and is now ahead of schedule, ready this coming June. Looking good!
• Website changes: This year, I finally succumbed to using software packages to manage my website content. This website originated in 1998, as an HTML learning experience, so I was inclined to do *everything* by hand. While very useful, as time goes on, I find myself with less and less time (go figure!), and there’s so many solid tools out there to make things easy, and standards based (i.e XHTML, CSS, etc.). So why not use these great tools and concentrate more on the stuff you want to do, right?

Looking forward to 2007:

• Further OWS Common support in MapServer: mapowscommon.c/h is almost complete to spec (missing some operations support). The next step will be to begin integrating into the OGC specs as they migrate to OWS Common for stuff like GetCapabilities XML, etc.
• OWSContext: look for further formal development on this specification. OWSContext has been used frequently in the OGC testbeds, and interest is increasing in seeing the spec push forward.
• Further development on discovery and cataloguing: I’m hoping to see some development / experiments on this track. It will be interesting to see how packages like deegree2 progress given the recent motion passed at OGC
• Publications: I’ll be published in two Springer London books this year (The Geospatial Web, as well as Open Source Approaches to Spatial Data Handling)
• MapServer Brazil: I was honoured to be invited to this event, and look forward to speaking on OGC and open standards. Looking forward to this!

Did I miss anything? What else was geospatial-worthy in 2006?

A Beautiful Wedding Photography Season

Compared to 2020, 2021 was a more hopeful and even in some ways “better” year. We had both good and bad moments, but with the bad ones, we need to remember the good ones forever and that’s what Fame Park Studios is specialized in, to save and preserve those beautiful moments, either with your family, with your partner or even by yourself.

At any rate, this closes out 2006 for me in the blogosphere. I wish everyone a great Holiday season, and all the best for 2007!