Well, here we are December 17, and the term is almost finished. I can't believe how time has flown. Its almost incredible how fast time has passed, but I guess thats how it goes when your busy, and busy I have been. When I first considered returning to school, I knew it would be challenging, but nothing could have prepared me for these last three months. I had heard all the "horror" stories about COGS, but me being me, I just figured "ahh it won't be that hard". Well I can tell you, that the last three months of my life have probably been the most challenging times I have ever faced. Trying to balance a home life with two young children, and a mountain of school work is no easy task, not to mention the challenges of getting back in the groove after being out of school for ten years. Its kind of funny to think back of how I couldn't even get the dual monitor to work my first few days of school, but now I can create an atlas from scratch, and can use a GPS to create a sidewalk survey good enough to be used by municipal council. It hasn't been an easy road, but I have learned a lot. Hopefully my marks will allow me to return in January, and I will be able to start it all over again!

ASTER Imagery

Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Ratiometer (ASTER) is a satellite that was launch as part of NASA's Earth Observing System back in December '99. It is the product of the cooperation between NASA, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Tades and Industry, and Japan's Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis Center, and it is being used to collect detailed maps of the Earth's surface temperature, reflectance and elevation.

This a Global Digital Elevation Model (GDEM) that was made public on June 29, 2009.

It was created through the process of processing and stereo-correlating 1.3 million optical images from the ASTER archive.

Along with this image, you can go to the NASA website to learn more about this very interesting satellite, as well as see a few other images that were also captured by the ASTER satellite.

GIS Wiki

The folks at ESRI have launched a GIS Wiki where GIS professionals will contribute information on industry related topics. What's a wiki you ask? Well, its a repository of information edited and updated by the people who specialize in the wiki's theme. Bookmark this resource, you may be contributing to it in the future.

Geomatic Canada

Here is a website that I cam across.

http://www.geomaticscanada.com/index.cfm

This website will give you the opportunity to look at Geomatic job posting. You can sign in to a e-mail alert, which mean that, they will send you a e-mail every time there is a new job posting. Jobs are posted across Canada. You can create a resume and submit through the website. You can look at different links from companies, and find out what the company are providing for service, and what kind of jobs they are offering. I do believed this is a great place to get started.

Atlantis Found?

There was much excitement early this year when an aeronautical engineer stated the grid like pattern that appears on Google Earth, just off the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, at 31 15'15.53N 24 15'30.53W looked like an aerial map of a city. The location is one of the main possible areas where Plato's Atlantis existed.

Have a look for yourself:



As it turns out, according to Google the odd grid pattern is the result of the boats as they collected the sonar data in the ocean. Atlantis remains undiscovered, but with the ever expanding geomatic technology it won't be long before we awaken it from its watery slumber.

The Grow Home

"Big houses may someday look as outdated and impractical as big cars, for many of the same reasons." -Witold Rybczynski

In reference to an email that a classmate, and friend, sent to me, it was brought to my attention that Grow Homes, which was an experiment of McGill University, back in 1990, are now becoming more popular. These homes are about 1000 sq. ft. in size, and are about $60,000 once you consider lot costs, etc.

I think these arent only good for pricing, but also this means less area required to clear-cut forests for these small homes.

Here is the link for anyone who is interested.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/91feb/9102house3.htm

Continental Drift

Well, I'm writing a blog, this isn't something that I've done before but, I'll give it a shot. I'm writing about the theory of continental drift and the person responsible for it. The person responsible for this theory is Alfred Wegener(1880-1930). He was a geophysicist and meteorologist born in Germany, as well a published writer having his book "The Origin of Continents and Oceans" published in 1912. Alfred Wegener also coined the term "Pangaea" in a expanded version of his book "The Origin of Continents and Oceans" published 1915.

Wegener developed his theory of continental drift as he studied maps of the coast lines of South America and Africa looking for a possible land bridge connecting them. After looking at the maps he noted that "The east coast of South America and the West coast of Africa seem to fit together like the piece's of a big puzzle." Wegener tried to support his theory by studying the fossil records. In the fossil record Wegener noted that many of the same plants and animal species were found on different continents. He used this information to support his theory of continental drift.

When Alfred put his findings in a expanded version of his 1912 book "The Origin of Continents and Oceans"(1915) it wasn't well received in the scientific community due to a lack of solid scientific evidence. Point being he couldn't explain how the continents got to their present places, he thought maybe they ploughed through the sea floor but couldn't explain why.

Although Alfred Wegener wasn't able to convince the scientific community of his theory of continental drift in the early 1900's he laid the ground work for what we know today as plate tectonics.