As I delving into “my future” I am continually finding out new things, which simultaneously invigorate me and frustrate me (because I cannot focus on just one thing).
I have joined a forum called CartoTalk initially because they had mapping samples and partially because I need to hear what other cartographers - professional or otherwise - are saying. There is no one at my current job who is even remotely interested when I start talking about why too many symbols and rainbow colors are a bad thing. I won’t get started on that topic - it’s useless to even contemplate - I just try to do my best and learn better practices from others out there whose work I admire.
In my lurking about the forum I came across a few posts on the topic of “exyonyms vs. endonyms”. I know what “exo” and “endo” imply but I was unaware of this whole discussion about names. It’s kinda cool and ties into my post of awhile ago about toponyms and why I though it was being used somewhat incorrectly.
So I am now learning more new things and someday may even be able to contribute to the discussion.
This PPT presentation is pretty informative: lazarus.elte.hu/hun/tanterv/ferjan/ormelingsgn12.ppt
While trying to figure out spheres, spheroids, ellipsoids, and geoids I came across this page: http://earth-info.nga.mil/GandG/geotrans/index.html
It’s the DoD unclassified coordinate transformation tool called GEOTRANS.
I haven’t used it, but hey, another tool is another tool.
The NGA Coordinate Systems Analysis page has some links to other cool tools and reference information.
So it seems that most of the hits on my site are from people looking for coordinate conversion info.
Besides the links for online conversion that I listed a few posts ago… there is a great desktop program for coordinate conversion. It is called Corpscon.
The link is here: http://crunch.tec.army.mil/software/corpscon/corpscon.html
This is by far the most accessible and easiest to use coordinate conversion program and I used it all though my Geodesy/GIS/Remote Sensing/Photogrammetry studies way back when. This program
“…allows the user to convert coordinates between Geographic, State Plane, Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) and US National Grid systems on the North American Datum of 1927 (NAD 27), the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD 83) and High Accuracy Reference Networks (HARNs). Corpscon uses the National Geodetic Survey (NGS) program Nadcon to convert between NAD 27, NAD 83 and HARNs.”
It totally kicks ass and I have used it many a time to check where coordinates should be in a particular coordinate system.
