British Student .ca

This is my one class this year outside of the Computer Science department. I was egar to take it as I’m already a ‘neogeographer’ meaning I go out surveying roads adding them to a copyright-free map database, OpenStreetMap.org, as a hobby using volunteer created programs and systems. Now I’ve joined a class to learn how the professional geographers do it.

Immeditetly I noticed a difference in the people in the room and being a Computer Science student I only have the ability to interact with other Computer Scientists. The first lecturer the instructor, Jose Aparicio, asked a number of hand-up questions which included “Who’s used GIS before?”. I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who raised my hand. In the first lab a shocking number of students struggled with following the instructions to zoom in and out of the map in ArcGIS (click the plus magnafying glass icon, click the map with it). Points to me for being ahead of the class already.

I finished the first assignment in that 2 hour lab, although we had been given next week’s lab and our own time until the 3rd lab to complete it. Since then I’ve always tried to complete the assignments in the lab time. The 3rd assignment I needed an extra half hour. Currently I’m on the 4th assignment and I didn’t finish the last page, but then I did turn up about 25 minutes late because I was decorating a dinning hall. Perhaps I should be using some of the time to make friends in my lab class, as apparently there will be a group project.

Two weeks ago I went to a Geography Students Association(GSA) social with Sam the 5th floor RA and final year geography student. I had a good evening out of Totem Park for a change, sang a little bit of karaoke, and my team did terrible in the quiz. This night also came with the discovery that geography students are known for being the ones that know how to party/drink! I may or may not have been drinking beer in a lecture hall.

The lectures are interesting, especially as I relate most topics to discussions (and arguments) I’ve had amongst OpenStreetMappers. As I don’t need to fully concentrate on the lectures, I now make use of the time by editing OpenStreetMap and uploading the data I collected at the weekend. Switching between my neogeographer’s GIS program (called JOSM) and note typing. I’ll have to be ready to pay more attention at the end of term when there will be a lecture(s?) on data sources and I can make sure OpenStreetMap is accurately represented.

Yesterday I sat down close to someone I briefly met at the GSA social, and she remembered me enough to say hi. Yay I have a friend, I think she’s even in my lab class, which could prove nice come project time!