GIS

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At work, I've recently gotten involved in Geographic Information Systems(GIS). Haven't done alot with it, but am having fun making simple maps with Arcview 8.3. I'm finding it quite fascinating.

Anyone else work with it?

My brother works with GIS. It sounds interesting to me because I am interested in U.S. Geography and Meteorology.

I've never used GIS, but I've seen maps that have been made using GIS.
It's quite the impressive piece of software.

Hey PrisonerSix,

I *love* GIS and have been working with it for a little under two years now, and have a Certificate in ArcView GIS 3.x - by the same company as ArcGIS. I also have ArcGIS 8.3, and have used it quite a bit.

View my website (http://mentalsightseeing.tripod.com) - it's got a little GIS section, and I can also point you to a link that has several maps I've made using ArcGIS.

Glad to find another GIS enthusiast here. You can send me a private message or post here again to talk more!

mentalman

I did a geography BSc at Glasgow uni, and GIS was part of the course (we used Arc* too, but I don't know which version). I found it quite suited me, and might have developed an interest in it, but circumstances dictated that I not pursue it. I've been meaning to check out GRASS - http://grass.itc.it/ sometime, but GIS isn't likely to become an occupation for me.

Hello Peter,

Funny you should mention that you did a BSc in Geography - after I finish my current two-year degree in Computer Technology, and maybe get an associate of arts, I am planning (mostly) on getting that same degree here, at the University of Montana in Missoula.

I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on that degree and GIS in more detail, if you'd like to post them here or via Private Message or e-mail.

I just downloaded a version of Knoppix (Linux) that has GRASS and several GPS tracking/downloading/uploading programs as well, but like you, haven't had much time to mess with it. The thing for me is that GRASS's concept of "regions" and stuff is a litle foreign to me coming from ArcView 3.x/9.x. Also, *grumble*, you usually have to manually define the geographic boundaries of data that you want to manipulate in GRASS and I'm not comfortable doing that.....so I'm also discouraged by that.

Well, hope to hear from you soon, and have a good day.

mentalman

I've got a boot cd for quantain, but it's an old version that doesn't include grass. It's only in the past few months that I've started looking at linux, but so far my experiences with it haven't been very good. I installed Mandrake 10.0 on my main rig as a dual-boot, but it fails to recognise my speedtouch 330 adsl modem, my SB128 and SB audigy value (leaving me only with crappy motherboard sound) and refuses to run 3D stuff through my Raedon 9600 (leaving my CPU to creak under the load). I seem to have every peripheral that Mandrake specifically doesn't support (and I've checked that it actually doesn't support them, rather than it just being me that's unable to configure them).

Quantain at least gives me decent sound, though I haven't checked the rest with it.

My experience with geography at uni was tainted by never fitting in, not having any friends in class, finding it was all work and no play and generally being permanantly stressed by it. The culmination of this was when I slipped into a recent depression at the end of my third year and dropped out (I was going into my honours year, but will instead graduate this summer with an ordinary).

I suppose the subject matter was fairly interesting, but I was always distracted by other things. I tend to have a whole bunch of interests at any one time, and geography was always out-competed by other things, so I'd only touch it while physically at uni or if there was an impending essay or exam (during which times I'd get incredibly stressed and start having violent nightmares and stuff).

It's only now that the stress has been removed that I'm starting to actually like the subject, and can appreciate better it's merits.

I didn't do a great deal of GIS, since it's really a subject in itself, and though I started a course in it at the beginning of my honours year, I was too depressed and ill to be able to attend many classes or absorb the material. The only real experience I have with it is the labs I did in my third year with Arc*. Still, I did see enough of the subject to know that there was a lot of potential in it, and it looked like it would have been very interesting if I'd been better placed for it. It's one of those subjects that leaves you with the impression that it's about to change the world, and it's kind of like playing simcity when you're finding locations to build hospitals and so on.

Also, the various algorithms and computational aspects to representing and processing GIS data were interesting, and really got my brain working with all the possibilities there were.

Mandrake sucks IMHO. Try MEPIS - the SimplyMEPIS live CD will let you know if all your hardware is supported (I'm pretty damn sure your speedtouch is supported), and can be installed from the live CD. And Grass is in the repositories, as its a repackaged Debian distro.

Dunc (who has finally sacked XP completely as MEPIS does everything I want it to)

I checked MEPIS here - (http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mepis), but there's no mention of GRASS in the package listing. I can install it seperately easily enough though. So many distros to choose from, so hard to know which to use...

Besides my main rig, I have an Armada E500 laptop with a 10Gb HD, 64Mb ram and a ~600mhz Intel Mobile P3, and want to stick a linux distro on it that'll not bog everything down. I heard vector linux was both lean and usable, but would you recommend something else? I want it to be a portable work station, so it won't have to be overflowing with fluff.

Too true... I am fairly new to Linux myself, and settled on MEPIS after trying out Fedora, Mandrake and Ubuntu. I'm not too familiar with other distros (particularly lightweight ones) but personally I preferred the Debian-based ones as they ship with little content actually with them (both Ubuntu and MEPIS are on one CD) but using the repositories through Synaptic or apt the Debian libraries have almost everything you could want. That's where GRASS is - sorry I wasn't very clear

Thanks, I'm downloading simplyMEPIS 3.3. Any idea about issues with my boot sector? I know windows will overwrite the boot screen for mandrake if given the chance, but am I likely to have problems setting up a triple-boot win 98SE/Mandrake 10.0/SimplyMEPIS 3.3 machine? I'd rather not blow mandrake before I'm sure I won't want it.

argh... check the settings for GRUB/lilo/whatever the boot manager is carefully when installing before proceeding with the full install, as it is far too easy to overwrite the MBR. it isn't quite as 'are you sure?' as mandrake's installer. there is generally a way to make sure the existing GRUB configuration recognises existing partitions/OSs, but I got overexcited and inadvertently overwrote it....fortunately I wasn't bothered lol.