That person truly did great things for Civilization.

Yes, but blue (Mercator) preserves direction and shape, which were all that really mattered for navigation by sea, so Mercator was a fantastic projection for centuries.

And we still use it today for smaller scale areas, since it does a remarkably good job at preserving all 4 features (shape, area, distance, and direction) close to the map origin line. Universal Transverse Mercator is a system that has 60 zones of Mercator turned sideways.

The reason it’s Transverse is because, unlike lattitude depending on a defined equator, longitude has an arbitrary meridian, so by turning the map sideways we can move the distortion point, and any map area that doesn’t stray too far East or West will be very accurate.

Think of trying to map something like Chile or Florida, where the area of interest is pretty far North to South, but not East to West.

I love QGIS so much. I use it professionally every day. The city I’ve worked for has used it for years.

We are about to bit the bullet on a few ESRI seats mostly for interoperability with some of our consultants and easier use of REST servers and stuff, but we’re getting the absolute cheapest licenses because all the spatial analysis tools thay cost thousands extra per license are free in QGIS, and I can still use it.

The Zune software could be run on XP. Running that in a VM on a more modern system shouldn’t bee too difficult.

Small rant, but people saying they believe in science is a pet peeve of mine. Belief has no place olin science.

You can’t “believe” in science any more than you can “know” in your religion.

Belief and faith are the realm of the unknowable. Knowledge and fact are the realm of science.

I got lucky in that my publication was through a journal that doesn’t charge money for access or submissions. It’s part of our professional organization and our annual membership fees cover the journal’s expenses.

Reminds me of this:

Municipal development guy here.

You’d be amazed how many contractors and architects have issues with stair math.

Yeah. Those guys all work on Futurama.

Picked by slaves.

I think we also need to be careful about what we consider low-quality clones of other work.

Reproduction of research is extremely important. It isn’t glamorous, but it’s how we verify shit.

They don’t want the leaves covering up the unnaturally green grass, and if they clog up the storm system that’s someone downhill’s problem.

I work in municipal government, and I have very strong feeling about leaf blowers.

All these assholes blowing all the great fertilizing trulimmings and dirt off their lawn and into the street to clog up the storm drains.

That was last year.

Now it’s… Tylenol?

So is it bad that I’m on prescription amphetamines and had to do some unexpected work on the wiring on a 3-phase compressor after having a beer?

That’s true almost everywhere these days. Climate change and pesticides did a number on them.

I used to see hundreds floating around at night. Now I’m lucky to spot one a year.

Also, lovebugs. There were so many everywhere it was difficult to drive sometimes. I haven’t noticed any in years.

And then there was quantum.

As a percentage, forklifts always way more incidents, and the incidents they can cause are BAD.

An F-150 isn’t gonna make a warehouse’s worth of product domino onto workers because someone leaned on the wrong lever.

HK-47 is one of the best RPG companions of all time.

Don’t forget the rolling view counter and the guestbook!