Tech and Open Source

I've been looking at how to refactor our campus maps app from being Drupal based to sometihng that is based on a RESTful API so that data can be easily shared with other apps. Drupal has gotten us a long way, but the map stack of modules we're using has some limitations. I need to pull some custom map work stored at Mapbox.com giving us deeper zooms and styling rules we've decided upon.

The MEAN stack offers one refactoring option. So, I spent Christmas vacation doing some reading, configuring and thinking about how the MEAN stack might work for our needs.

I'm still getting up to speed with SmartOS. Here are some notes I took while trying to get PostgreSQL on SmartOS to parse OpenStreetMap (osm) files. My intent is to use Mapbox Studio to do some custom styling for OSM as we develop some "single purpose" maps.

Here's the summary I wrote at LAX when I came home from MMWCON down at UCLA in September 2014.

I was ultimately successful in getting data parsed in the VM and can use Mapbox Studio to connect and style the maps. Now to find some time to finish that little project...

June 10, 2014 

Updated August 2015

Here are some rough notes on the process for getting a mapbox.com served set of tiles for the http://mobilemaps.ucsc.edu site (discontinued in June 2015).

I'm starting to work with our smart data center project. I stumbled around looking for a recipie and came up with this basic list of instructions for getting a LAMP stack on a sdc:sdc:base64:13.1.0 image.

Objective - setup a lamp install, then install Drupal 7

Apache 2.4

pkgin install apache

MySQL

pkgin install mysql-server, mysql-client

PHP

sudo pkgin install php54 php54-extensions-5.4.13

NOTE: the php54-extensions drops lots of extras module files into /opt/local/lib/php/20120301

I got turned on to Yeoman back at the Modern Mobile Conference back in September.

In October, I started working with Yeoman to build up a small mobile Bootstrap based site of a dozen pages or so. My objective is to use a team of students to help with development, keep the app as browser-based and make it work on mobile devices. 

The plan is to integrate some simple features. These include:

• leaflet
• leaflet-hash
• leaflet-locatecontrol
• touchSwipe
• handlebars

Here's some notes on how this project is progressing.

MWFCON 2013

I attended the Modern Mobile Conference down at UCLA 9/10 and 9/11. Here are some of the highlights I took away from the conference.

The content of the conference expanded this year and included presentations on javascript frameworks, responsive web design subjects including tables, images, event schedules and email. For each session, the speaker notes are available and often include additional resources worth reading. http://mmwcon.org/sessions 

I started with the TileMill support docs (Crash Course and Guides) to get my basic info and configurations. This is some of the best support documentation I've seen. Well written in a step-by-step approach. Admittedly, I need to re-read some sections until it sunk in, but after seeing some demo's by @springmeyer and @ian_villeda at SOTMUS, it started to become more clear.

After attending the State of the Map (SOTMUS) conference last week, I started working on a project I had been thinking about for some time. I'd been particularly interested in figuring out how to use TileMill to style or override data coming from OpenStreetMap. Beyond that, I've been trying to figure out how all the different components would fit together. I should note that I'm not a cartographer, I'm just into mapping and the technology.

The Setup

Back in September, I attended the UCLA Mobile Web Framework conference. This was a group of about 100 UC and CSU folks gathered for two days to talk about the MWF and its direction.

I was brand new to the notion of MWF. We'd been looking at adopting it as a strategic direction for our campus mobile strategy, so I wanted to learn more about it for a management perspective and see what and how I could adapt it to our Drupal work.