The art of persuasion

After telling a friend of mine about a crazy project that I want to work on, she encouraged me to begin this blog to detail my madness, frustration, and overall accomplishments (and failures).

A little bit about me: I'm a 24 year old self proclaimed Gamer girl. I've been larping since I was 16, I also play warcrack. I have a BS. in Geography, and have a fairly basic understanding of GIS because I've taken some courses in it. I work at starbucks full time, and live way west of Chicago. I will more than likely be moving to Florida and I'm looking for jobs there currently.

The First project is a combination of multiple things. I'm beginning by learning a completely new GIS system (Called GRASS, which it assures me is considered one of the most used public domain GIS programs around). Moving from very high end expensive software to public domain software is terrifying. It's got a lot more computer lingo than I'm familiar with. I think, thus far, that the general idea however, is pretty much the same. (Although at this point in it all, I'm regretting terribly not ever taking any programing courses.)

From there, I'd like to set up a ... data system? For a LARP (Live Action Role Playing) game of Vampire: The Requiem. Yes, it is terribly terribly geeky. Its been an idea that a friend of mine and I have been discussing in snippets. In an attempt to continue to digest just _exactly_ how to accomplish this task, I've decided that instead of just thinking about it, I'd start trying to put some pieces together.

Another possible project on my docket is a map for a friend who is running a post apocalyptic tabletop psuedo zombie game. It takes place a few hundred years in the future, so hes asked me to project some very very very basic climate data. In so doing, actually seeing the things he and I have talked about is ticking in the back of my brain, so its completely possible that this will also take up my time.

My basic plan is to create a GIS, and then import what I've done into google maps. Today I verified that GRASS is indeed capable of performing this task (I think!).

I'm working on finding the raw data that I need, and then I think that some basic geocoding won't be too difficult. I think that from there I will create a microsoft access DB file for the data I'd like to program in. I don't even know that I'm following the steps in the right order, but I figure that this will be a great learning experience, if nothing else.

So. Here goes.

I'm starting with a basic map file of state borders. I am also adding in Major Cities so that I have a good solid foundation. The map is going to be national in scope, although I only need detailed data for a few major cities. (St. Louis, MO; DeKalb, IL; Des Moines, IA; Cleveland, OH; Topeka, KS; Seattle, WA; Colorado Springs, CO; )

I know that I will run into problems because my GIS software is on the laptop, which has no microsoft access, or excell on it. (I know I know!) However, thus far the things that I know from my degree are being useful. I've downloaded 7- zip (an open liscence unzipping software) that can unzip the files that I need.)