weeknotes: week 11

Things I got up to in the last week:

• published blog post: systems, processes, and tools
• read an essay on systems design: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201227 (via this tweet)
• phone link dump, all the way down to zero tabs open…
• got stuck into Observable Getting Started guides and the like and…
• started playing with my own dataset on powerplants
• did more of the Esri Cartography MOOC (running a bit behind, need to catch up!)
• discovered, fixed an issue with, and blogged about QGIS MapSwipe Tool Plugin
• published blog post: Spilhaus World Ocean Map
• started drafting up a new About page for my website (I’ve just had placeholder text there for a few years now…)
• started shopping for proper storage for my atlases and maps collection
• signed up for OpenStreetMap!

And some more words about a few of those…

phone link dump: in recent months the capture side of my notetaking system hasn’t been operating as smoothly as it has been in the past. Basically I had let open tabs accrue in the browser on my phone instead of saving interesting things into my notes. Once again I saw the :D in place of a tab count in the top right… For the first time in a little while I cleared all those open tabs down to zero which feels about as good as tidying your desk or finishing some spring cleaning.

Observable: I’m really liking what I’ve seen in the Data Visualization Fundamentals and Best Practices course lectures so far. Observable seems like a really nifty platform for data exploration and I’m excited to get to grips with a basic set of operations to apply to a dataset of interest. I’ve started playing with the Global Powerplants Datasette which seems to be becoming my go-to test dataset these days.

storage for my atlases and maps collection: I’ve mentioned in a couple of previous weeknotes posts that I’ve acquired some old atlases from some auctions. I’ve acquired more than has been explicitly mentioned on my blog so far, enough that I could do with somewhere better to store them. I recently learned that Really Useful Boxes are seemingly “preservation grade” and places like museums use these for long-term storage of things that might be sensitive to the atmosphere and their environment. So that I may be a better caretaker of these old books and documents I’ve elected to possess, I’m planning to get some of these boxes (and those little silica gel packets for absorbing moisture).

OpenStreetMap: I finally signed up for OpenStreetMap! I’ve had it in mind to give StreetComplete a go for quite a while, so hopefully I’ll get around to that now that I have the pre-requisite account :)