Simone Cortesi » english

NOTICE: Contact & Twitter

Simone — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:01:29 +0000

If you need to contact me, you can use the contact form, I usually answer quickly.

Please be aware that I post on this blog only seldom. My main channel of posting updates, lately, has been twitter.

mapping illegal horse tracks with OpenStreetMap

Simone — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 00:33:39 +0000

One of the most interesting things about OSM is the fact that it allows you to “map the reality”, map the ground-truth, not what the State-run maps tells you it’s there, but what is actually there.

Recently, on 10. January, an illegal horse racing, in a sort of clandestine racetrack was blocked by the military police in Pachino, Syracuse (Sicily, Italy). The blitz has, so far, allowed to identify more than 20 horse owners, jockeys and 3 veterinarians. The land placed in the open countryside, less than 2km from the sea, where the race was stopped, was a clandestine race-course, complete with boxes for the horses.

Just after discovering the news, I went hunting for that track on aerial images. We have been lucky enough to have been granted access to some 25cm resolution images, these images were made by the Regione Sicilia, after some more research I ended up discovering that the racetrack is located in Contrada Granelli, and not nearby the inhabited part of the Pachino town, so in the end, I was able to find it on the map, and tag it accordingly.

Here is the result:

Surely this is not as important as what my friend Mikel is doing in Kibera, but still a declaration of indipendence from the canonical mapmakers.

OpenStreetMap Haiti Statistics

Simone — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:14:44 +0000

For a poster I’m working on for the Geomatics for Crisis Management conference, I did run some simple stats on the Haiti Planet extracts. After the recent Earthquake, and after the donation of free/libre aerial imagery there has been an increase in user contributions.

These are the total number of users in the Haiti planet extract as of today (the 29th), and dating back to the 14th. For comparison purpose I’ve added the data for 30th dec 2009. It can clearly be seen that the biggest spike was on 16th, reason being on the 15th the first high quality images were made available for retracing. Then, same thing, same reason, on the 22nd.

first column: date of the extract
second: unique users contributing to the Haiti map
third: Megabytes of the uncompressed extract file (useful for gathering a rough idea of “detail”)

Date	# users	Size (MB)
2009-12-30	38	44
2010-01-14	71	49
2010-01-15	96	51
2010-01-16	183	60
2010-01-17	245	77
2010-01-18	286	93
2010-01-19	300	106
2010-01-20	327	117
2010-01-21	365	126
2010-01-22	494	188
2010-01-23	515	197
2010-01-24	573	211
2010-01-25	585	219
2010-01-26	642	229
2010-01-27	649	234
2010-01-28	655	238
2010-01-29	663	239

geo search using Lucene + SOLR + OpenStreetMap

Simone — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:55:47 +0000

An interesting article on finding geo data (OpenStreetMap) using common-use search software as SOLR a java frontend to Lucene. Apache Lucene is a Java™-based, high performance search library. Apache Solr is a search server that uses Lucene to provide search, faceting, and many more capabilities over HTTP. Both are licensed under the commercial-friendly Apache Software License. Both Lucene and Solr also offer the ability to restrict the space being searched by applying one or more filters, which are key to spatial search. Range queries and range filters are among the essential mechanisms for restricting the space.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/j-spatial/index.html

Old Map of Pavia

Simone — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:40:38 +0000

This is an historical map of my city, Pavia, Italy, scanned from out copyright source. The file is large enough to be printed on a 50 by 75 sheet of paper.

cubed art

Simone — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:50:40 +0000

To my non-artistic eyes this smart artist creates folding cubes that you need to donwload –> print –> cut –> fold with no need for glue. An amazing piece of art.

Japanese Addressing

Simone — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:30:55 +0000

Stolen from Steve’s OpenGeodata blog post:

digiKam 1.0 with OSM

Simone — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 10:28:50 +0000

Release 1.0 of digiKam the open source software for professionally managing pictures just came out. It will work under Linux and Windows and this coming release boasts several enhancements including support for geotagging images using OpenStreetMap carthography. All it takes is selecting some images from your library and locate them to the right spot on planet Earth using the Map Widget.

cheap startup office

Simone — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 13:54:04 +0000

Rubato al napo, come arredare un nuovo ufficio in maniera accogliente e geeky.

http://dontrepreneur.com/2009/12/14/how-to-create-a-great-startup-office-space-while-being-abusrdly-cheap/

First let me tell you I furnished my entire office for about $4,500 complete with four workspaces, including chairs, desk lamps, wastebins and office supplies. A lounge area complete with futon couch, area rug and end table. Lamps, rugs and some strategically placed whiteboards. Throw in a microwave, printer, a wireless router, TV stand, 32 inch HD television and Xbox 360 entertainment system. Finally, I almost forgot a refrigerator, storage ottomans, extra chairs, three bookcases and some very nice standing lamps. All for $4,500—purchased and set up in 7 days.