A Geocaching HOWTO: Waypoints
Now that I finally have a GPS receiver, I want to get out and use it! My current workflow for getting caches onto the GPSr is to use GeoToad to search for caches and generate a GPX file, which I send...
View ArticleA Geocaching HOWTO: Maps
After I finally sprang for a GPS unit I was a little disappointed to fully realize that they wanted me to pay another $200 for the maps. There has to be a better way, I thought… These notes are for my...
View ArticleGIS Coordinate Systems
From just playing around with GPSMapEdit I was able to figure out most of the shape file import options. Sometimes, however, I’d open a shape file and be confronted with a big red square, a mass of...
View ArticleUtah Maps and GIS Data
The Utah Department of Transportation’s GIS site is pretty bare. The Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center has a Geographic Information Database which has all kinds of old data, broken links, and,...
View ArticleFlorida Maps and GIS Data
Florida has all kinds of great data available. The two sites I’ve been working with are Florida Department of Transportation GIS Data Directory Florida Geographic Data Library FDOT has many different...
View ArticleGIS File Formats
Of course there’s no Open, widely adopted standard for map data. Here are dome of the file formats I’ve encountered: .dem Digital Elevation Models. “The USGS DEM standard is a geospatial file format...
View ArticleWashington Maps and GIS Data
One of the best sources of Washington map data is (surprisingly) Washington State Office of Financial Management. WA OFM Geospatial Data Some useful Census data (like water features), but as Windows...
View ArticleLatitude and Longitude Representations
Latitude and Longitude is usually reported in one of three formats, using degrees, degrees and minutes, or using degrees, minutes, and seconds. There are 60 seconds to a minute, and 60 minutes to a...
View ArticleOne Map To Rule Them All
I recently found a great source for maps from every state: the OpenStreetMap. You can download any portion of their maps in .osm format, and they provide tools specifically for converting them to...
View ArticleIt gets better
After more than three years I’ve finally updated my GPS maps. I found a blog post or other reference to GPSFileDepot which has many more and much better maps than MapCenter. They have some really nice...
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