via Flickr http://flic.kr/p/uN4Prr

After looking through a few LiDAR and Landsat image databases, it became clear that what I really wanted wa the compexity of a contour map, so I’ve decamped to a PC lab to work on QGIS today. It’s really good and actually quite simple to use – maps can be exported to PDF format and then wrangled into shape using Illustrator. (Life would be considerably simpler if the combination of QGIS, Illustrator, After Effects, and Mac Pro could all be found in the same location.)

Alongside this, I’ve been watching the tweets roll by from the Data Power conference up the road at Cutler’s Hall. There have been a lot of interesting sources linked and I’ve been sifting through them while things have been rendering and saving. As a result, I now have a lot of Sage journal RSS feeds in my inbox which can only be good.