Spaced Out :: 05 2011

I blogged ages ago about how I tend to organise my IT…. that is a portable hard drive with as many apps on it as possible so that my entire IT “ecosystem” is portable.

One small, but irritating, problem has been when moving from a multiple to single monitor setup. Many apps remember the screen coordinates of any windows when they last shut down. That means when starting on a single monitor they are off-screen. One “hack” is to hit Alt-space which brings up the window menu, then “M” which allows you to use the arrow keys to move the window. There are some apps which just don’t allow you to do this…. so Force Window Visible is a nice simple (portable) app to allow you to reset app window coordinates. Does what it does on the box!

Following on from my earlier post Alasdair Rae at Sheffield Uni has now updated to include earlier years. From the horses mouth (so to speak):

“Just click on an area for a pop up with chart showing IMD ranks from previous years. I’ve included the chart (a bit of code which has been difficult to figure out!), the numbers and the rank change between 2004 and 2010. Hopefully this is of interest.”

Get it here. Very useful stuff.

Nice article over at Lifehacker

I gave a talk yesterday about using Kindles in HE and, in particular, using them for marking, reading research papers and briefly pondering about their student use. This really comes out of my initial reactions to using the Kindle and further experience. Slides are linked below if they are of interest.

ESRI have released their Change Matters Viewer which provides dynamic access to the USGS Landsat archive and allows you to explore change over time using pre-defined band combinations. Its a good tool to demonstrate the utility and power of geoinformation and the importance of maintaining an archive. OK, its not a “power” tool but the interface is engaging and easy to use. Also a useful blog entry here.