Serving Maps – in the Cloud – for Free (part 3)

It was not my intention to make this a 3-part blog post series, but here it is anyway. (If you want to catch up, you can read Part 1 and Part 2 first). As I continued to work on, and tweak my new AWS Ubuntu server, I decided I might as well add website serving capabilities to it as well. That would allow me to embed my new web-maps into a customizable web page, allowing a more interactive experience, and a more professional appearance to anyone visiting them. The first step in that direction is to: Install Apache Server This…

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Serving Maps – in the Cloud – for Free (part 2)

(Note: This is the second part of a 3 – part blog post about setting up the OpenGeo Suite on a AWS Ubuntu server. Links to the other parts are at the bottom of this post) Starting Fresh with a New AMI At the end of my last post, I had my AWS Ubuntu-micro-server running smoothly, but the OpenGeo GeoExplorer was not very stable. It was crashing often, and for no apparent reason. I followed up with a few suggestions about data directory permissions, and swap-file space, but to no avail (Thank you @spara and @jeffbarr). I had been tweaking…

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Serving Maps – in the Cloud – for Free (part 1)

My latest personal project (still in progress) is to get a true cloud-based map server up and running, posting maps from a free-tier Amazon Web Services (AWS) Ubuntu server. This has not been easy. I’ve looked at AWS a number of times over the last year, and a few things have made me shy away from trying it out. Mainly, It’s incredibly hard to decipher all the jargon on the AWS website. And it’s not your everyday jargon. It’s jargon that’s unique to the AWS website. It’s jargon2. Amazon has been sending me multiple emails the last few weeks warning…

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Not Just Another MacBook

An account of my recent adventures in repairing and setting up a tri-boot MacBook Step one – Obtain the MacBook I do not recommend obtaining a MacBook the way I did (or wish it upon anyone), but I do believe in making lemonade from lemons whenever possible. Last week I got a call from one of my daughters explaining that her sister, who attends the same college as her, had spilled “something” on her computer, rendering it inoperable. Luckily my girls attend a college that’s not far from home, so the next day was spent bouncing between the Apple store…

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ArcGIS vs QGIS Clipping Contest Rematch

Round 2 in which ArcGIS throws in the towel. (Please note: This post is about clipping in ArcGIS version 10.0. The functionality has been improved, and problems mentioned have been fixed in later versions of ArcGIS) This is a follow-up to my previous post where I matched up ArcGIS and QGIS in a clipping contest. One of the commenters on that post expressed some concern that there might be “…something else going on…” with my test, and I agreed. It was unfathomable to me that an ESRI product could be out-done by such a wide margin. Knowing that ArcGIS often…

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ArcGIS–QGIS Faceoff

Is QGIS a viable alternative to ArcGIS? (Please note: This post is about clipping in ArcGIS version 10.0. The functionality has been improved, and problems mentioned have been fixed in later versions of ArcGIS) I’ve never enjoyed working with contours. They seem to bog down my system more than any other layer type I work with. However, most of my clients are so used to looking at USGS Topo maps they expect to see them on at least one of the maps I produce for them. I recently worked on a project covering a five-town area in the Catskill Mountain…

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Find duplicate field values in ArcGIS using Python

As ESRI is making it’s move away from VB Script and towards Python, I’m also slowly updating my stash of code snippets along the way. One of those little pieces of code I use quite often is one that identifies duplicate field names in a layer’s attribute table. I find this particularly helpful when I’m cleaning up tax parcel data, looking for duplicate parcel-ID numbers or SBL strings. Since I’ve been working a lot with parcel data lately, I figured it was time to move this code over to Python, too. So, here it is in step-by-step fashion… 1 –…

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Generating Vertical Buffers

One of the more popular analyses I’m asked to perform for my clients is a viewshed analysis. Beyond simply identifying what areas of a town are visible from roads or other public viewpoints, I’m often asked to help identify, and sometimes rank, areas that are most worthy of protection. One way to help a town identify and evaluate these high priority vistas, is to identify prominent ridgelines and the areas around them that are susceptible to inappropriate development. One way to mitigate the impact of development on highly visible ridgelines is to make sure new buildings do not break the…

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Linux OpenGeo Apache Server–Tweaked

Over the past week I’ve probably generated enough material for a half-dozen blog posts. However, since I have to get some billable hours in and invoices sent out this week, I’ll just post a short update for now on one aspect of project “Linux OpenGeo Apache Server”. In my prior post I described the steps I took to get an Ubuntu based Apache/GeoServer up and running. Since then I’ve tweaked the process, and with a lot of help, been able to get everything in working order. One of the roadblocks I faced was how to get Apache/Tomcat and GeoServer working…

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Linux OpenGeo Apache Server

Moving the GeoSandbox to Full OpenSource I’ve run into a couple of roadblocks recently, regarding my experiments with my GeoSandbox. I want to be able to play with some of of the JavaScript libraries available, so I can continue my education on those fronts. Some cross domain issues arose when I started putting JavaScript in my web pages as my website is on a different server than is my GeoServer. So, that means learning some more about setting up web servers and how proxy servers work. Also, my old Dell 600m is starting to feel the effects of the increased…

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