Archive For The “Open Source” Category
I’ve just today learned how to make a map with TileMill, using the tutorial found at http://mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/crashcourse/introduction/, and uploaded it to MapBox. I also installed a plugin that allows me to display MapBox maps within WordPress. You can use the mouse to pan and zoom from within the post. I’m looking forward to experimenting further […]
Welcome to Step Six in our exploration of open source GIS using Ubuntu. In the previous installments, we uploaded some spatial data into a PostGIS database, and experimented with spatial SQL. Finally, we’re ready to install QGIS, the most popular open source GIS desktop available. QGIS is a lot like ESRI’s ArcMap, in that it […]
Welcome to Step Five in our exploration of open source GIS using Ubuntu. In the previous installment, we uploaded some spatial data into a PostGIS. database. The next logical step is to install QGIS and add start visually analyzing this data, which we’ll get to in Step Six. But before that, I wanted to take […]
(Note – this post was updated on October 28 to include new information!) Welcome to Step Four in our exploration of open source GIS using Ubuntu. In the previous installment, we spatially extended our PostgreSQL database server with PostGIS. Now we’re ready to load some geographical data into our database. PostGIS includes a tool called […]
Welcome to Step Three in our exploration of open source GIS using Ubuntu. In order to grasp the full power of GIS, we need to spatially extend our database (PostgreSQL, which was installed in the first step). The spatial extension for PostgreSQL is PostGIS. In the second step, we installed GEOS and GDAL, two major […]
Welcome to Step Two in our exploration of open source GIS using Ubuntu. In order to grasp the full power of GIS, we need to spatially extend our database (PostgreSQL, which was installed in the previous step). The spatial extension for PostgreSQL is PostGIS, which we will eventually be installing. But before we can get […]
After a recent hard drive crash, I decided to try out Ubuntu, the most popular consumer Linux distribution. Ubuntu has become popular because it is more lenient than other distributions with regard to proprietary software – it can use Flash and play mp3s out of the box, without installing additional software. Ubuntu, like other Linux […]
This afternoon, I opened QGIS, and was greeted with a strange error message: Couldn’t load PyQGIS. Python support will be disabled. Traceback (most recent call last): File “”, line 1, in RuntimeError: the PyQt4.QtCore module is version 1 but the qgis.core module requires version -1 QGIS will still open if Python support is disabled, but […]
Slashgeo linked to an incredible web-based QGIS tutorial last week. I’ve been looking through it, and so far it is excellent. It’s not really designed for total newbies – there are other places to get your very first introduction to a desktop GIS. Instead, this tutorial seems to be aimed at those who are familiar […]
Chances are, you’re not familiar with OpenStreetMap. The market saturation of Google Maps and Bing Maps is such that they’re the tools we turn to, sometimes without even thinking. Both these services have an incredibly beatiful and usable design aesthetic, which makes them easy to read. There’s no real reason why you’d need a third […]
