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# Easier navigation: .., ..., ...., ....., ~ and -
alias ..="cd .."
alias ...="cd ../.."
alias ....="cd ../../.."
alias .....="cd ../../../.."
alias ~="cd ~" # `cd` is probably faster to type though
alias -- -="cd -"

# Shortcuts
alias d="cd ~/Dropbox"

briantjacobs

##How to get started contributing to a Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team task

###Overview

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is an open-source map of the world that anyone can edit. But like any map, it's incomplete.

The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) helps organize people to improve the OSM map for crisis areas, mostly so aid workers can find their way around and make decisions about undermapped places. The data in these crisis areas is often very poor, or completely non-existent. Therefore any contribution you make at all will be a vast improvement, and could materially help people who are on the ground right now, looking at this data as you edit it, and deciding where to go and who to help.

There are many HOT tasks active at once. As of August 2014, the highest-priority tasks are Gaza and areas affected by the West African Ebola outbreak.

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Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite GIS Setup

OS X Preferences

---

# Expand save panel by default
defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSNavPanelExpandedStateForSaveMode -bool true

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[Various details redacted.]

I'm currently about to start a Geography degree at the University of [Redacted] at [Redacted] with a focus in GIS, and I've been finding that I have an interest in working with imagery. Obviously I should take Remote Sensing and other similar classes, but I'm the type of person who likes to self learn as well. So my question is this: What recommendations would you give to a student who is interested in working with imagery? Are there any self study paths that you could recommend?

I learned on my own and on the job, and there are a lot of important topics in GIS that I don’t know anything about, so I can’t give comprehensive advice. I haven’t arrived anywhere; I’m just ten minutes ahead in the convoy we’re both in. Take these recommendations critically.

Find interesting people. You’ll learn a lot more from a great professor (or mentor, or friend, or tutorial) outside your specialty than you will from someone boring who’s working on exactly what you’re interested in. Don’t get i

briantjacobs

This script processes VIIRS Nighttime Lights 2012 GeoTIFFs from the Earth Observation Group at NOAA National Geophysical Data Center to prepare them for rendering in TileMill and uploading to MapBox Hosting.

Read Lights of the Night on MapBox to learn more about NPP the functions of this script.

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#! /bin/bash

# Convert Landsat 8 GeoTIFF images into RGB pan-sharpened JPEGs.
#
# Requirements:
#              * gdal http://www.mapbox.com/tilemill/docs/guides/gdal/
#              * convert (image-magick)
#
# Reference info:
#                 http://www.mapbox.com/blog/putting-landsat-8-bands-to-work/

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# This is a shell function to quickly grab the data for a given Landsat 8 tile ID from Google's servers
# For example:
# l8get LC81690352014169LGN00

# The echo at the end is to remind myself of the syntax for extracting bands 8, 4, 3, and 2. (Pansharp, Red, Green, Blue)

# On OSX this would go into your ~/.bash_profile file.
# Requires gsutil from https://developers.google.com/storage/docs/gsutil_install
# Most useful in conjunction with USGS' Earth Explorer: http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

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# https://www.mapbox.com/blog/processing-landsat-8/
task :landsat_2014 => :environment do
  dirs = Dir["#{Rails.root.to_s}/db/initial/raster/*"].reject {|q| q =~ /tar\.gz/ }
  dirs.each do |dir|
    scene_id = dir.split("/")[-1]
    [4,3,2].each do |band|
      `gdalwarp -t_srs EPSG:3857 #{dir}/#{scene_id}_B#{band}.TIF #{dir}/#{scene_id}_B#{band}-projected.tif`
    end
    `convert -combine #{dir}/#{scene_id}_B{4,3,2}-projected.tif #{dir}/#{scene_id}_RGB-projected.tif && \
     convert -channel B -gamma 0.925 -channel R -gamma 1.03 -channel RGB -sigmoidal-contrast 50x16% #{dir}/#{scene_id}_RGB-projected.tif #{dir}/#{scene_id}_RGB-projected-corrected.tif && \