Thesis Maps at Musagetes Library!

Thank you John and Sarah for inviting me to display the maps from my thesis at the Musagetes Library!  They are still up... last time I checked.

-g

Defence Date

Happily I have a defence date for my thesis...

http://waterlooarchitecture.com/bridge/blog/2013/08/20/ariadnes-thread-a-letter-to-descartes/

Programming Update

Finally getting the hard-coding of .dxf files out of Processing down... below is the density map of 500,000+ GPS points for four people in Rome that I collected last year.

GPS Maps

Update on the progress of the maps (in processing).

Worked on integrating both velocity of travel (squares) and density (circles) in combination with gps traces.

Pantheon - Different View

I've been trying to figure out how to communicate to those people who may not be familiar with the Pantheon, or its interior: the nature of the space... its proportions and configuration, and then also the path that people took while inside of it.  

 Here's a quick sketch of what I'm thinking:

Work continues on the maps of the gps traces and sketches for the thesis.  I'm hoping to defend in mid-June. 

G

Million Person Study

"Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) are recruiting a million participants to join a decade long heart health study"

http://singularityhub.com/2013/04/03/a-million-smartphones-will-drive-biggest-heart-health-study-in-history/

Colin Ellard

Going to see him speak on Friday in Toronto at the Goethe Institute, 5-6pm.  http://www.goethe.de/ins/ca/tor/ver/en10376198v.htm

Thanks to Nicky for this!

G

Pantheon and Surroundings

Finally making progress on the maps of the Pantheon as well as the other churches of Rome again, after getting the copy of the Nolli Map from the Vatican Archives scanned at 1200dpi (I'll post link to download the full-size high-res Nolli map when I get around to it).   Here's where I'm at:

-g

Three Minute Thesis

As part of my participation in the Three Minute Thesis Competition at uWaterloo, we had to choose a single slide to represent our thesis (and present it in under 3 minutes). I decided to use one of the first plots I did of the GPS data collected from the uWaterloo Pedestrian Traffic Map study that I completed late last year. Curious to see how the event goes down tomorrow.

 -gc

uWaterloo Pedestrian Traffic Map

As part of my participation on the uWaterloo New Student Services Building Project Committee, I ran a research study to collect GPS points from students on campus over a 2 week period at the end of last term.



To do this we developed, tested and launched a custom built mobile application in 3 weeks. Students downloaded the app, filling out information about themselves, such as their faculty and expected year of graduation, and then let it run the background over the study period.  By leveraging uWaterloo's social media presence  as well as via word of mouth, videos, and an informative website, we had 367 students log 382,200 GPS points, which exceeded our goal of 1% participation of the student body.

To communicate results of this study, in the form of maps of campus, I developed an interactive html5 web app (see below or visit site here) that allows users to plot the GPS data in various ways.  This tool allows stakeholders of all technical abilities to engage and use the data to make more informed decisions.

 This "map app" shows how data can be made accessible and actionable to all stakeholders. My inspiration for this was from a project my friend Matt did which allowed a client to design their own suspended ceiling (here).





I'm interested to hear any comments or suggestions!

Processing and Meshes

I'm using Processing for a few projects right now.

Here is a screenshots of a test I was working on today:

Now time to apply this script to the 380,000 GPS data points collected during the recent uWaterloo Pedestrian Traffic App study (see earlier post here).

Geoff

America Revealed - PBS

Similar to Britian from Above but for the USA.

Watch The Dining Galaxy on PBS. See more from America Revealed.

Watch Connecting People on PBS. See more from America Revealed.

Watch Flight Data on PBS. See more from America Revealed.

Watch Flight of the Honey Bee on PBS. See more from America Revealed.

Watch Crop Spraying on PBS. See more from America Revealed.

Watch Wind Power on PBS. See more from America Revealed.

link to site: http://www.pbs.org/america-revealed/

Thanks to Malex for the link.

G

uWaterloo Pedestrian Traffic Map

Hi Everyone who goes to uWaterloo, or knows people who do:

I need your help. We are about to begin making a pedestrian traffic map of students on uWaterloo's main campus from Monday November 26 to December 7th.

Seeing how students navigate campus will allow us to make better design decisions and provide us with a valuable tool for planning the design of the new Student Services Building.

We have developed a mobile app to make participation easy. If you are a current UW student, please consider participating. There is up to $10 in compensation for the first 300 students!

If you are not a UW student please consider recommending this to someone who is.

More info: uwaterloo.ca/sso/map

To download app: https://play.google.com/store/search?q=uwaterloo+pedestrian&c=apps

* The iOS app is coming... we are waiting for Apple to put it up (US Thanksgiving).

Thanks, 

Geoff

Britain from Above

Via BBC



"Satellite technology reveals how the network of city streets is being pushed to the edge of capacity. Watch the GPS traces of 380 London taxis over the course of a single day."



"On a typical day, over 400 ships pass through the straits off Dover. This visualisation shows 24 hours worth of shipping recorded as it passes through the Channel."



"Every day, more than 7,500 aircraft crowd into Britain's skies"



"Activity of British Telephone System over the course of one day."

Open Street Map

Watch crowd-sourced cartography fill in environments:

Russia:
Russia: Edits to OpenStreetMap 2007-2012 from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

USA:
US edits to OpenStreetMap 2007-2012 from ItoWorld on Vimeo.

Wordlines of Rome and Ancient City

Overlay of the GPS data I collected from volunteers on top of Ancient Rome (photo from Gismondi's giant model of Rome in EUR, Italy)

Just a sketch... something might come out of it related to how even old, no longer extant physical artifacts effect our path...

-g

Reality Games

A few examples of smartphone based games, in which you play the game within the "real" enviroment.  The games are location aware: objects, tasks, or effects are stored at locations within a city: but you can only see these objects, tasks, or effects when you have you are looking at the enviroment through your smartphone screen. The thought of people running around the city, fighting off the attack of deamons and mages which only they can see, is terrifying. 




From the article: 

The idea of playing in an area that you are intimately familiar with or to explore your city more was intriguing. While other apps use geographical location purely for reference, Shadow Cities really emphasizes your particular neighborhood and surrounding ones. After all, there is an inherent desire to defend what’s ours, and neighborhoods are a good place to start. By using actual location, the iPhone becomes a window to a parallel world, hence the name of the game.

The iPhone is a magical device that allows you to become a mage and take part in battles against mages from the other faction, of which there are two, the Animators and Architects. You discover friends on your team near your location and working together through in-game chat, you conquer your city neighborhood-by-neighborhood. There are NPCs, which are roaming spirits, and real players around you that you can fight. You fight by learning spells, which you cast my using the iPhone’s touch surface to draw the rune shape. When you are on the move, you can patrol areas for enemies.

via: http://singularityhub.com/2011/07/08/players-rule-their-real-neighborhoods-with-shadow-cities-a-location-based-mmorpg-for-the-iphone-video/

And Google is getting involved (obv). 



AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!1111111

and: http://singularityhub.com/2012/11/17/a-google-surprise-worldwide-alternative-reality-game-ingress-revealed/

Geno 2.0 - DNA testing

In order to understand the story my genes tell about my ancient ancestors: where they lived and when, I am participating in the Genographic Project.  While the rhetoric of the Genographic Project is hubristic and trite, the actual science behind it, as well as the implications of the data base as a whole is interesting and important.

 I am sending in my DNA samples tomorrow (from cheek swabs mailed to me) to the lab to be analysed.  Fingers crossed everything goes well... and I have the results soon.

-g

Smart Geometry

Description:

This simulation is merging 3 things together : tangible table interface, video mapping, and particle system mimicking pedestrian flow. It's purpose is to help with quick assesment of the quality of space for pedestrian movement. This tool allows to use direct manipulation of physical objects in informing real-time simulation, thus visualising the impact of changes immediately. It might simply help to assess natural tendencies in movement of people through space, and to finetune the layout of buildings to allow spontaneous flow. Currently a prototype, still under development.. similar techniques will be used during Smart Geometry 2011 conference in 'Interacting with Cities' cluster. more info on smartgeometry.org Software : openFrameworks, Windows XP Hardware : Kinect sensor, table, DLP projector, laptop

From:

http://smartgeometry.org/index.php?option=com_community&view=videos&task=video&groupid=7&videoid=2&Itemid=0

Programming Update

Working in Processing, with java at the moment.  

Explored/attempted Voronoi Tesselation = unsuccessful. Below is someone else's script:

I've put that aside and now I'm working to implement a first two-dimensional array with identities.   The first dimension will hold location of cell (loc=x+y*i*cellsize), second will hold identity number, or the number of points occurring within a cell. 

From there I will plot the array, in the vein of a heat map:

"A heat map is a graphical representation of data where the individual values contained in a matrix are represented as colors"

Fingers crossed...

g