Usually I'm 100% focused on open source software, but couldn't resist talking about this side project. A couple months ago Geoff pointed out the new Autodesk Butterfly project, allowing you to share and collaborate on drawings using only a web browser. They have some geospatial examples on there too. Here are couple notes about my tests on it lately.

(ED: Enabling comments might help.. sorry about that, should work now. TM)

I talk a fair bit with various folks about book ideas they or I have. I'm curious on your thoughts for potential new books that might be popular - what's the next big "geo" book that you think you, your colleagues, the world at large needs?

Where do these books leave off? Or what new waters need to be charted?

Hope to see you at the MapServer introduction workshop at FOSS4G 2010 in Barcelona this September.

As usual, it's a team teaching approach for beginners, delivered by Jeff McKenna, Perry Nacionales and myself.

This workshop always sells out and people beg to join in or stand at the back - so sign up soon or you might miss out.

See you there!

I switched to running the Sidux distribution not too long ago, at the same time I upgraded to a 64 bit AMD machine. It's my first foray into Debian based distros and has been pretty nice until I went to install Skype. I won't regurgitate the other message boards, but in a nutshell here was my solution:

• Add Medibuntu repository to my apt sources. I had to manually select the hardy.list file to download since there were no sid.list files.

The biggest annual event for me and OSGeo is fast approaching. The FOSS4G conference event, held this year in Sydney, Australia, will be held in October. I'd love to meet you there if you would like to chat about open source, GIS, cartography, programming and all such related topics. Attend a workshop to learn to make maps or run web mapping sites. Or just come to hear talks from leaders in the open source geospatial community.

I recently came across the 40fires.org project - "a forum to develop energy-efficient cars using an open source approach.".

While waiting for more information from them, I did some thinking about what parts of this kind of project would interest me or how OSGeo or other geospatial projects could help them out.

There is a common online question about migrating from Apple's Mail app (Using .emlx format mail files) to Thunderbird (or any other non-Mail app). I looked at a few options and have decided, as strange as it may seem, that installing an IMAP service was the best solution.

I’ll describe here a procedure for the evaluation of the tranforming parameters necessary to effect coordinates change among reference frames materialized on different Datum.

In order to have the changing of Datum it is used a geometric transformation of correspond (conforme) type through the resolution of a last squares system based on a homologous points series, in order toobtain the direct changing from plane coordinates in one of the two Datum to the corresponding in the other Datum.

Over the past few months I've been picking away on various hardware projects, particularly configuring my Arduino board as a USB joystick device and fusing in Python code, GPS signals, etc.

During this time I met Massimo Di Stefano (aka epifanio) who is also doing a bunch of neat controller work with ossimPlanet. You may know him from the #osgeo channel in IRC. We both feel we are just playing around in our spare time, but have some common goals. We are both interested in open source, hardware, ossimPlanet, Python, GPS and UAVs.

His work is encouraging for me and I think it is really cool. To help share some of his work, he'll be blogging on here from time to time (he has his own feed).