okansas.blogspot.com
Occassional thoughts about orienteering


Sunday, September 19, 2010

"National O' Day" courses

 

Orienteer Kansas hosted a "National Orienteering Day" event today. We tried a new (for us) format. We had 4 courses and orienteers could run as many (or few) of them as they wanted. Most people ran a course, then rested a few minutes, then ran another course (or 2 or 3). It is basically the format from an "Urb-O' Cup" in Norway.

Courses ranged from about 1.1 km to 1.6 km. If you ran all four courses, you did 5.4 km of orienteering. That's a lot of orienteering for an area that is 1/4 square kilometer.

We started people who'd never orienteered before on the first course below:
















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posted by Michael | 4:14 PM

3 comments




Monday, September 06, 2010

Another day, another basemap

 

Another day, another experiment with a lidar basemap. The image below shows 2 meter contours, trails that I added last winter (based primarily on GPS tracks from a few trail runs) and the lutning image created in OL Laser.



The image is shaded based on the slope. The darker the area, the steeper the slope. I think that the slope is based on comparison of surrounding points. I don't know the details. A very dark area is vertical. A very light area is horizontal.

If you look at the north east section of the image, you'll see some rectangular dark areas. Those are buildings.

If you look in the bottoms of the larger reentrants, you can pick out some of the stream beds. The image shows the bank.

The hillsides are covered with irregular dark shapes. The hillsides at this area are forested. The forest is a mix or hardwood and cedar trees. The larger blobs generally correspond to cedar trees, individual or small groups. The cedar trees make useful points for fieldchecking. You wouldn't generally put them on the final map, but they help in locating point features and tweaking the trails. The smaller dark spots were generally the trunks of larger deciduous trees. It took a bit of practice to match up the trees with the spots. But, after a bit of practice, I felt like I was matching them up pretty consistently. The individual trees provide more points that can help with fieldchecking.

As Jerker pointed out in a comment, "lutning" means "slope" in English. But, I'm sticking with lutning. As I'm working with the software, I'm keeping some notes and it is a lot easier to use the Swedish terms (since the menus in OL Laser are in Swedish).

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posted by Michael | 4:08 PM

1 comments




Sunday, September 05, 2010

Blank paper to basemap in 20 minutes

 

One of the really cool things about lidar data is that you can create a decent basemap really quickly. It took me about 20 minutes to find and download the data, create the contours and generate the "lutning" image that results in the map below.



The "lutning" image does a great job of identifying buildings, trees and walls. But, it doesn't show roads and parking lots. So, another few minutes and you can get the roads, parking lots and sidewalks. The image below is an intensity image.



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posted by Michael | 7:20 PM

4 comments




Friday, September 03, 2010

More lidar experiments

 

I spent some time today playing around with lidar data and trying to learn how to get more out of it than just contours. Here are three images based on the "all returns" data from an area nearby. If you're familiar with Lawrence, you'll recognize McCollum Hall in the top left of the images.







For my previous lidar experiments, I've generated contours and used the intensity files (which is basically a fuzzy, black and white air photo). I think using the all-returns data gives me access to a lot more information.

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posted by Michael | 8:07 PM

3 comments




Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Collecting some data

 

I've been playing with an app on my phone that buzzes at random times and asks me to collect some data about how I feel and what I'm doing. First, you rate how happy, relaxed, and awake you feel (on a scale). Then you record some information about where you are (e.g. indoors or out; home, work or someplace else), who you are with, and what you are doing.

I started doing it out of curiosity. But, it might be a good tool for tracking data that might be useful for training. It is a bit like a training log but it has an interesting advantage (or maybe difference is a better way to put it). Because the data is collected at random time periods, it catches you a bit off guard. You quickly enter the data, almost without thinking. When you write in a training log, you're thinking.

I've no idea if I'll learn anything interesting.

The app is called Mappiness.

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posted by Michael | 7:11 PM

3 comments


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