in which my job is fun

[ilanarama]

As some of you know, I am somewhat underemployed - not that I mind. I do end up doing a lot of mindless drudge work that really doesn't need my advanced degrees. On the other hand, sometimes the mindless drudge work is kind of cool.

One of the things I do is publish climate model data to the Earth System Grid, a web interface to a distributed data library. Users need accounts to retrieve the data. I have a list of all of the institutions people have listed on their account information and am going through the list with Google, Wikipedia, and Wikimapia, making a spreadsheet of institution names, URLs, and latitudes and longitudes with which to make a Google Earth KML file that will show all the places our users come from. It's sort of like archaeology, starting with a fragment of pottery (CIHEAM-bari, IRI, PIK) and trying to recreate who, what, and where. Plus, yay for getting paid for playing around the web all day!

Comments

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

I would love doing that. : D

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

It's fun! I mean, some of these are easy, like American universities with spelled-out names, but some of them are real challenges. Like, is CSCS the Swiss Scientific Computing Center, or is it Center for the study of complex systems, U. Mich?

[alembicresearch.livejournal.com]

I made a KML file last year of all the upcoming Beer competitions
listed on the BJCP website:
http://www.bjcp.org/apps/comp_schedule/competition_schedule.php

So then maybe I could figure out a way to optimally travel
to as many of them as possible, and to save gasoline
(when I "retire" I might buy somekind of camping RV and drive
around the country judging beer and camping and hiking).


The problem is I don't know any mathmatics, or enough, to do it. :-(

(Its kind of like a travaling salesman problem, I guess,
except the location include "time" a factor, and some beer judging
events are better than others: county fairs aren't as "interesting"
to judge as State fairs or Nationals, etc.
So you might want to go 100 miles out of your way for a state fair,
but you might not for a county fair)

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Hee, the Optimal Beer problem! :-)

[alembicresearch.livejournal.com]

Optimal Live Problem! :-)

I've been having so much fun with GoogleEarth
lately ... I don't know if it is them getting
better or having a faster computer now ...
but the terrain mapping is nice now,
if I want to go hiking somewhere,
I can take a 3-D look at the whole trip.

I've gone back and looked at some of the treks
that I've done in the past (Nepal, New Zealan),
and go "wow, look at that!".

Hee hee ... it must be nice being un-employeed,
but working for the government is the next best
thing. :-)