Q. What do a row of Bacardi bottles and a loxodrome have in common? 

A. Both are rum (rhumb) lines.
 
Q. What do you get when you cross a cowboy with a mapmaker?

 A. A cow-tographer.

 

Q. Did you hear about the map that was mugged?

  A. It was rolled by the map librarian.

 

It was our first experience as a vendor at Washington URISA Conference in Tacoma.  We enjoyed meeting lots of new people and seeing a little of downtown Tacoma.  We attended sessions on Census 2010 and what's new with ArcGIS 10.  John also attended GIS-in-Action in Portland and met up with old friends.

We will be teaching a one-day Spatial Analyst class on July 8 at the annual conference of the Society for Conservation GIS near Monterey, California.  See conference website for details. 

 

We will be teaching a two-day Geodatabase class on September 13 - 14 at the NW ESRI Users Conference in Spokane, WA.  See conference website for details. 

We have added an Amazon Bookstore to our website.  You can find recommended GIS books and order them instantly -- Juniper GIS Bookstore. 

 

Check out who has been added to our Juniper GIS Hats page.  Demian Rybock & Janet Nackoney are in Djolu DR Congo, and George Kolb is rafting in Belize. 

 

Follow Juniper GIS on Twitter.  So far it's not very exciting, but we will get better.  Let us know if you are on Twitter. 

The schedule is looking pretty sparse right now because ArcGIS 10 will be out shortly and there are lots of unknowns.  We are exploring ArcGIS 10 now and will convert our Juniper classes to this new version as quickly as possible.  All of our classes are available for onsite training at your offices. We have ArcGIS classes that focus on planning and engineering scenarios and classes for natural resource applications.  From basic ArcGIS to Spatial Analyst, Geodatabases, ModelBuilder and more.  Request a Juniper GIS price quote to find out how cost-effective it can be to bring GIS training to your offices for your staff of GIS users and potential GIS users.

 

ESRI is making significant changes in how it authorizes its instructors for ArcGIS 10.  There is a new authorization process and we do not know when those classes will be available.  We will be offering some classes this fall in 9.3 and then will switch to 10 as soon as possible.

 

Check our website for the latest schedule updates - Juniper GIS Class Schedule.  

ESRI has added some very useful functionality for exporting to Adobe PDF. Not only can you turn layers on and off, you can also do an "identify" and a "find" on any data in the layers and extract the Latitude and Longitude from any point on the map while in Adobe Reader. For these advanced functions, you need ArcGIS 9.3.1 and Adobe Reader 9 or later.
 
When you export a map, first be sure to look at all the options. For example, be sure to check "Embed all document fonts" when exporting to PDF to be sure that all your fancy symbols are exported correctly and will print properly.
 
To add more viewing choices and query abilities, click on the Advanced tab and select Export PDF Layers and Feature Attributes. Also make sure that Export Map Georeference Information is checked. If you have a lot of tables with many fields, you can improve performance by turning off all unnecessary fields.
 
To turn on the table of contents in Adobe Reader, just click the layers symbol and you can then turn all the ArcMap layers including annotation, on or off separately. However, if you have any raster layers or layers with transparency, they will be lumped into one layer.
 
To access the "identify" and georeference functions select Tools>Analysis. To use the Object Data tool, click the object you want to identify 3 times. (Remember Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz?) The first click highlights the map; the 2nd click, the layer; and the 3rd click, the object you want, opening a dialog box with all the attribute data. 
 
The data for that object will now be showing on the left-hand side of Adobe Reader in the Model Tree. You can also select features from the Model Tree and they will be highlighted in the PDF document. If you want to know the Lat/Long, just move the Georeferencing tool to a place. If you want to search the database, just type a word into the Find box at the top of the PDF. For example, typing in "rest" would select all the restaurants in Mahahual.
 
Using these advanced functions is a way to make your exported PDF files much more dynamic and useful for others and is a good way to share data with people that don't have ArcMap. One drawback to this is that symbology is not scalable in Adobe Reader, so simpler symbols and smaller areas work best.

These classes will focus on beginning/intermediate skills sets for those who want to learn GIS or enhance their GIS techniques with a focus on conservation applications.  Go to Mexico Classes on our website for more details. 

October 18 - 22, Akumal 
October 25 - 29, Cancun

I am sure going to miss my GIS buddy, Gus.  He has to move away from Bend just because his person got a good GIS job in Portland. Gus' person is Paul Ferro of GeoTrek who just started working for the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries.
 
Here I am with Gus during the Sunriver conference last year.  We have figured out adjacency, but not quite coincidence.  John thinks we could improve our alignment with a little more training in topology.