Transit planning and GIS

 My research for a  term project last year lead me to a lot of new and interesting sites related to transit.  I'd like to highlight one of them.  I would like to look at Jarret Walker's blog  (http://www.humantransit.org/).  Mr. Walker has years of experience working on public transportation and has even written a book on it.  His blog has a ton of general information related to mass transit as well as specific parts dedicated to individual cities.  So far I have only had time to read the Portland Oregon part of his blog.  It has a lot of information and I can only assume his other sections are just as detailed.  I like his blog because it isn't just one or two paragraphs per subject.  He really dives into the material.   I'm sure his blog will be a huge resource for me when it comes to public transit.   

python programming, and more

This term I took a python programing class.  I had done a little programming a few years ago but didn't remember a lot.   Taking this class remind  me  how useful program can be for running automated tasks.  If you have never heard of  python and you do a lot of geoprocessioning  I recommend checking it out.  Here's  link to my programming class webpage http://gisgeek.pdx.edu/wordpress/gis-programming-python/.  There are lots of good links so you can start exploring python.  Python is a very simple programming language and is easy to get started with. 

Taking this class also made me realize how much we are dependent on programing.  Every webpage relies on programing.  The interactive pages require a lot of programing.  Today I read an interesting article on wired.  ( http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/03/facebook-hack/) Some engineers from Facebook have created a new programing language called 'Hack".  A lot of people think this will be the language of the future.  The cool part is that it is open source and has been tested on one of the biggest  platforms there is, Facebook itself.  I haven't had a lot of time to look into it further, but I'm interested to learn more and see how it works.