super-cooper

Ok, so what I’m about to show you is hardly rocket science. It is however, the first chunk of math I’ve done with PHP that is more than 2 lines long. So I figured why not, I’ll post it. I was coding up a USGS gaging station finder and realized that I had latitude/longitude values for the stations in decimal degrees (such as 32.872352° latitude, -91.867904° longitude), but couldn’t I convert these to degrees/minutes/seconds (such as 32° 52’ 20.47” latitude, 91° 52’ 4.45” longitude)? Surely I could figure this out.
Read more »

Tags: php

Let’s face it. New toys rule. Especially when they are geeky new toys. We got a new HP DesignJet 800PS 42 inch plotter at work a few months back, and I’ve been dying to use it. Hell, I’ve been so busy with other stuff, I never got around to printing anything on it. But I finally got mapped to it on the network and decided to put her to test with this map (200KB) of mine I made last spring. It has several very large rasters, tons of annotations, and lots of very small text; all good trials for any plotter. I must say, I am very pleased with the results and the speed of this plotter. One thing I don’t like about it is that the paper roll loads from the rear, which is pain due to the fact that our plotter is located in a glorified closet, so you can barely pull the plotter far enough away from the wall to get back there and change the roll. And man, has loading paper into plotters come a long way in the last 5 years. Hell, my 2 year old could load paper into this, if he could only lift the roll of paper. All in all, I’m very pleased with this plotter so far. But then again, I haven’t gotten any cryptic error messages on the front panel yet.

Tags: computing

While attending Mississippi State University and earning my Bachelor’s Degree in Geology, I attended the Summer Geology Field Camp of the University of Arkansas during the summer of 1999. The following tale is a write-up I did for the Geology Department newsletter at State after we returned. It’s amazing what you can find on those old ZIP disks that are lying around in boxes. Read more »

Tags: retrospect

Here’s another find. My fishing license from the summer I stayed with my grandparents when I was 16. All my grandad and I did was fish. And fish. And then fish some more. Those were the days. I just realized the license only cost $19 for a non-resident annual license. Wow, you can barely get a resident license anywhere for that these days. And how ’bout that “funky-fly-trying-too-hard-to-have-a-cool-signature” signature?

Tags: retrospect

Finds like this are one of the many joys of being a packrat all of your life. I found this in a box packed away when I was younger; my fathers late parents 50th wedding anniversary announcement.

Tags: retrospect