drewp for 2005 March 29 (entry 0)
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[Trackback URL for this entry] 2005-03-29T08:11:57 tmrs and mapping:

http://sumitbirla.com/software/tmrs.php is a really simple set of C programs for processing TIGER map data (and others) into maps and directions. After a slightly awkward install, you can find your address and draw a map of it. That's really cool.

Last night, I hacked the mapper into python with pyrex and pygame, and now I have an approximately equal clone. (My maps look like http://bigast.com/post/shot/pygame-map3.png) But what I also have is a better-factored Python interface to the data and mapping functions, which means I will be able to much more easily overlay http://gisdata.usgs.net/Website/Seamless/viewer.php aerial/satellite/etc photos; render to other targets such as opengl; and plot my own GIS data (e.g. rental prices).

Interestingly, in the five hours I spent on this project so far, I started out by writing an auxiliary program to auto-download selected counties from the census.gov server even though that task is an easy-to-do-by-hand, fixed-cost part of the project. And, I'd already downloaded my county when I was evaluating the original tmrs. What's interesting is that I started my video editor project the same way: I spent a big chunk of time on the program to pull DV from tapes even though I had a pretty good solution to that already. In both cases, I got partway through the warmup project and then abandoned it to go write the actual meat of the project. Apparently, that's how I start my projects sometimes.

Pyrex is a total winner, BTW. It's how C was meant to be written. :)

Code at http://cvs.bigasterisk.com/viewcvs/gis/ (or cvs -z3 -d :pserver:anonymous@bigasterisk.com:/srcmirror co gis)

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