Paul Romein

I was talking with Christine about topo maps the other day and I was reminded of something I found online a few months back. I did a little further looking into it, and I think some people might be interested in utilizing this resource sometime! I’ve created a really short description, and a longer detailed description on how to use it below:

About the Topos

The library of maps (titled “CanMatrix”) was produced by scanning federal-government topographic maps at the 1:50 000 and 1:250 000 scales.

How to Use Them – BASICALLY

In order to find out which files and folders you need to browse to find your specific map, you will need to visit a website, and use their map program to find a sort of “grid coordinate”. From there, you need to browse to the website with the list of files and use the “grid coordinate” to find exactly which map you are looking for.

How to Use Them – DETAILED

In order to find out which files and folders you need to browse to find your specific map, you will need to visit the following url:

• http://geogratis.cgdi.gc.ca/geogratis/en/product/search.do?id=08F1CB77-F351-0F8A-EF30-CA081CA0CE61

Right away, you will see a map of Canada with numbers in a grid pattern on it. These numbers are the first number to the grid coordinate you’ll need. You can double click on it to zoom in closer on it. Once you’re zoomed a little more, you will see a smaller sub-grid with letters on it – these are the second part of the “grid coordinate” you will need. Zoom even a little further and you will find another numbered sub-grid, which makes up the last part of the “grid coordinate”.

For example, I found that Vancouver is in grid 92G6.

Once you have the “grid coordinate”, browse over to this URL:

• http://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/canmatrix2/

First thing, inside this directory there are two zoom settings (1:50k or 1:250k). I would suggest viewing it at 1:50k, because it is the more zoomed of the two. Open the folder “50k_pdf”. Next open the first grid-unit – for my example of Vancouver it would be the folder “092″. Then open the next grid unit – for my example it would be “G”. Last, you will be presented with a list of .zip files. Locate the final grid unit in the filename – for my example it would be the file “canmatrix2_092g06_pdf.zip”. Download this file!

Once it’s on your computer, you can open it up and you will find a pdf file in there with a few other html and xml files. Open up the PDF, and this should be a nicely detailed topographic map of the location you were looking for!

Click here to download the PDF for Vancouver as a sample to see the detail of these maps.

From the article:

Facebook sometimes makes very curious decisions with respect to user privacy. Recently, one of them came to my attention, and it is so comprehensively wrong that I had to put up a public service announcement about it.

You’ve seen the Facebook “Like” buttons all over the Internet, right? Liking anything lets the owner spam you. No, really. If you doubt me, click the Like button on this page: you’ll find a message from me on your News feed (the big list where you see updates from your friends) within 5 minutes, unless Facebook has shut down this tech demo since publication.

Read the full article:
http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/facebook-like-button-spam

PS – This goes well with the new poll on the side of my blog!

Jason brought home a Canon PowerShot SD4000, which I’ve been dying to purchase ever since he showed it to me!  It’s basically the super version of my Canon PowerShot SD1000.  The major feature that everyone’s excited about is it’s ability to shoot at 240fps (frames per second)!  The following is a reel of us playing around with it over the last two days!

It should be noted in case anyone cares, that when shooting at 240fps it only comes out at 320×240.  The video here is basically blown up 2x.  It can also shoot at nice 1280×720 at 30fps (720p)… but you can’t do any other framerates aside from 240 and 30.  Oh well – buckets of fun already!

When my Windows XP “server” stopped working yesterday, instead of spending the time repairing the OS, I decided to split the C: drive in half and setup an Ubuntu dual-boot!  I’ll get around to fixing (or re-installing) Windows XP later when I get some time.

I’ve always wanted to setup Linux as my file server because it’s faster and much more reliable, but I’ve been a little fearful of what would happen should I screw it up.  Linux can be complicated, and I’m very familiar with Windows already.  This way (after I’ve fixed my XP boot), I can feel much better about running Linux as my server because if I ever screw up in Linux, I can jump right over to XP and keep all the files sharing properly without having to spend hours fixing it!

Now if you think a little further down the road to when I’m even more comfortable with Linux, it could still be a good idea to dual boot maybe two linux distros – or two XP installs – etc!  Not to say that those combinations are practical what-so-ever for most people, but just the concept is a little neat of being able to simply switch over to another OS and come back and fix the problem one when you have time.

Anyways, Ubuntu has been great so far, and so far seems like a great idea to host my files with.  And for those of you who are wondering – yes I’m running the desktop version and not the server.  My network needs aren’t all that complicated and the desktop version works great so far.  From poking at the Ubuntu Server edition, and even the Windows Server versions – they aren’t worth my time to learn them for the benefits I would gain from them.  Maybe one day.  But when that day comes, a smart idea for testing those would be to dual boot my server with something I’m familiar with so I always have a backup OS to keep my files going should I screw things up!  Aha – I’ve come full circle, and so my post is complete!

Back in mid-February, we upgraded our web host and migrated all of our websites over to the new servers. However, the transition broke the code which allowed me to very easily upload my digital camera photos from where I store them on my servers straight to my web albums! I’ve definitely missed it, and it’s taken a while but I’ve finally spent a few hours fixing the glitches and making some upgrades! I’ll have to go back a couple months and upload photos for the last little while, but now I’ll be able to photo-blog a lot faster and easier again!

I suppose my main motivation is that there’s a group of us hiking up Golden Ears this weekend and I’m really excited to share the photos with everyone really quickly and easily!

I’m not sure how many of you out there watch Big Bang Theory… but it’s an awesome show! And to top it off and make it even more awesome, I’m sharing a clip in which they bring up Lego Stop Motion! Now, I’m not saying they’re directly talking about the Lego Millenium Falcon Stop Motion that Greg and I made because there’s a tonne out there, but I’m taking this one as a personal win either way!