Like in 2009, I attended the OSGeo Code Sprint (and Hacking Event) in Bolsena, Italy during June 6-12, 2010. For one week developers from various Free and Open Source for Geospatial (often abbreviated as FOSS4G) projects get together in a monastery near Bolsena for code sprints, cross-project collaborations, presentations and geo-hacking in general. This all takes place in a relaxed atmosphere mostly outside. Thanks to the cook Enzo we enjoyed the Italian kitchen. This year I did some work on GeoNetwork and more in depth on INSPIRE FOSS, a new FOSS project I initiated to support the development of INSPIRE using FOSS. In Bolsena I worked closely together with the deegree lead developers Markus Schneider and Andreas Schmitz from lat/lon. At the spot we were able to construct a demo that showcased the power of the upcoming deegree version 3 WFS/WMS in supporting INSPIRE Data Themes. Meeting project leads and developers and following presentations from other projects like GeoServer, deegree and MapBender was really worthwhile. Like last year I have made a video impression you can see below or on YouTube.
Last summer I participated in a full-day guided tour along the second world war (WWII) invasion beaches in Normandy, France. Specific subjects of the tour were Omaha Beach and places where events of “Easy Company” (E Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th IR, 101st Airborne Division, US Army) a.k.a. the Band of Brothers took place. These true events are described in a book by Stephen Ambrose from which the famous TV-series was made in 2001 (the book is also worthwhile!). The tour was organized by Overlord Tour. This tour, in a company with mainly American WWII-buffs, was very in-depth and worldwhile, in particular in combination with the landscape. The Dutch painter/writer Armando once coined the phrase “guilty landscape” (“schuldig landschap”).
Since I have an interest in WWII history, geography, geospatial, GPS and multimedia, I made a trace with my Garmin eTrex Legend® HCx, shot photo’s/video and uploaded all to georambling.com, one of my pet projects. You can view the trace with geotagged media there as well. I’ve also created a video with iMovie from all materials including the GPS traces (see below).
Subsequently I got a message from Google that my video was banned in Germany ! First I thought because of some swastika’s appearing (carried btw by American soldiers as a trophy after conquering Marmion’s farm), but the reason was more modern: it has to do with a long-standing dispute between Google and the German collecting society, GEMA. This makes more sense and may also explain the ads popping up to buy the music (roll over Beethoven). So it is not a “Don’t mention the war” thing. BTW I am a pacifist.
On friday march 14, 2008 Mayor Job Cohen of Amsterdam was the first player of the GamesAtelier product that Waag Society launched. We at 7Scenes have worked hard to get the software done.
News travels fast on the Net. My website for the mobile GPS project GeoSkating went from 10s to 1000s of visitors a day when it entered the international blogsphere and the Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant. On Google “geoskating” went from 10 hits to 16900 in a week.. I want to thank everyone for their interest, also for the many kind emails I received. It encourages me to proceed with the project.
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