Author: Andy

New Crosswalks on Alberta

The city (I assume) just painted crosswalks on each block along northeast Alberta. It’s quite a change considering there were only maybe 3 between MLK and 33rd. Anyway, I’m appreciative since it reminds folks to slow down. Alberta is much more enjoyable as a pedestrian anyway.

Oregon cross sections

I’m working on a map of elevation cross-sections of the state of oregon for my Digital Atlas class. There’s a great utility Profile Toolthat will create a series of shapefiles from a DEM and geology coverage for use in fancy geologic lithography maps. I just wanted to create an elevation profile, so I used the tool without using the geologic identifications and now I just need to figure out how best to explain the concept. This is for a children’s atlas after all. I’m trying out ArcScene to see if there’s a nice way to show the profile lines.

Oregon elevation - click for a larger view

Cheerio crud

I don’t have breakfast as often as I should lately, but I’ve been trying to get better about eating something in the mornings. Michelle got some fruity Cheerios recently, and the other morning while pouring a bowl, this fell in.

Cheerio Gunk

Growing up, I loved the last bowl of cereal because it polluted the milk with goodness. The extra grain and sugar sediment were a treat, especially when it stained the milk some unnatural pink color. So when I saw this hunk, my first reaction was “jackpot!” So, I bit in to it, started crunching, and immediately spit it out. It was compressed dye or something, but the flavor was foul, and my saliva turned an evil sludge brown.

All I can figure is this regular cheerio got stuck going through the flavor extruder and backed up with all the dye/flavor gunk. Not quite the prize I was hoping for.

Retraction: Needle Ice, not Hoar Ice

I mispoke – the ice the forms below the detritus is needle ice, not hoar ice. Hoar ice forms below snow and causes avalanches. Needle ice occurs in soil where water seeps to the surface. The water freezes when it comes into contact with the air, but water below keeps pushing.

Needle Ice

Here’s a picture from snowshoeing this past weekend. It was the largest heaving I’ve seen where the ice crystals extruded a good 6″ from the ground.

oh, and here are some cool ice ribbons.

Census politics

The two chiefs of the U.S. Census bureau have resigned their posts before the ramp-up to the 2010 census. This is slightly old news – from back in November, but it’s still of significant interest. To statisticians, geographers and politicians anyway. From the AAG Newsletter:

Political insiders have suggested that the officials, both highly regarded statisticians, were targeted by Republicans intent on appointing replacements who would be less likely to favor sampling for the 2010 Census. Sampling is used primarily to estimate the true population size of hard-to-measure localities and tally unaccounted for residents. Its heaviest influence is typically felt in urban communities that tend to vote for Democratic congressional candidates

The irony is that sampling could greatly reduce the cost of taking the census and provide more accurate information than a full census. Yes – a government program that is incredibly useful to the government itself, academia and research, and extensively by businesses in understanding our populace. A little more info here at washingtonpost.com. What a great beard.