Hamilton’s grave – visualising places by geo-location

William Hamilton’s grave on BuckabieOriginally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

I recently travelled to the Adavale district of south-west Queensland to place a grave marker at the resting place of a pioneer. Boundary rider William Hamilton was buried where he died in the bush in 1910, and the location of his lonely, unmarked grave was known to just a few people.

Hamilton's grave on Buckabie

William Hamilton lies at rest on what was Milo Station near its boundary with Nickavilla Station, between Goombie Creek and Buckabie Creek.
My grandfather John and his business partner Ralph selected Buckabie Station by ballot when it was cut from Milo after the Great War in 1919, and my father Malcolm grew up on Buckabie after this time. Marking Hamilton’s grave fulfilled a long-term wish for my father.

Simon's Quilpie set on Flickr

A Flickr map of photos taken in southern Queensland, Australia

Flickr hosts my Quilpie photo album, displaying images from successive visits. I usually choose to display the place where each photo was captured, using Flickr’s ‘map’ tool, but the map does not have fine-grained control in regional areas. I wanted to display the locations in greater detail.

A screenshot of Hamilton's grave location in Google Earth

Lacking a GPS navigator, I located Quilpie in Google Earth and ‘followed’ the track 70km to Hamilton’s grave. Adding a placemark bookmarked the location for future reference, and also gave me the latitude and longitude reference – located in the ‘properties’ field of the placemark. However, not everyone can access Google Earth. This requires free software download and a reliable Internet connection – I needed a URL for this spot.

Hamilton's grave located in Google Maps

Google Maps let me link Hamilton’s grave location to a URL. Copying and pasting the Google Earth co-ordinates, I then added the URL to each Flickr photo in this place.

The Canaway Downs Rd turnoff on the Old Adavale Rd

The Canaway Downs Rd turnoff on the Old Adavale Rd

One disadvantage is that the photos do not show up in the Flickr map, but must be added separately as an approximate location. Google Earth and Google Maps, however, show signposts I’ve photographed that are visible in detail right down to their shadow along the ground.

Editing Hamilton's grave photos in Picasa

I thought that my students might like to see photos of how I built Hamilton’s cairn, so I edited and uploaded them to Youtube using the Picasa movie maker.

A video clip of Hamilton's grave pictures on Youtube

I added a caption to each photo which displays as the video clip plays, and selected an audio track to accompany the images after uploading.

Hamilton's grave video in the stonemasonry ning

Youtube allowed embedding the video in the stonemasonry Ning community website, however, as Youtube is blocked in the student network, I instead uploaded the movie file to Ning from my computer hard drive.

In turn, this also allows embedding to other websites. I guess that all this would have been easier using a SatNav? It was fun doing it, though.

(near to) Where I live

surf report from burleigh heads

Originally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

This update is in response to Michelle Martin’s Bamboo Project Web2.0 Wednesday

I couldn’t resist walking on the beach when I visited Burleigh Heads after carrying out a skill assessment today. Although I had my swimming togs and a towel with me, I didn’t want to take time to get my work gear off and on again, so instead of swimming I just spent a few minutes watching the surfers ride the small but well-formed swell around the rocky point.

Burleigh Heads is at the Gold Coast (close to the New South Wales-Queensland border) about an hour’s pleasant drive south from where I live. Looking north, you can see the high-rise apartments of Surfers Paradise.

L-o-o-o-ng photos

splitting stone

Originally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

I’ve just learned that the Flickr photo sharing site is accepting videos up to ninety seconds long. I plan to use this feature extensively, encouraging my students to do the same so that we can build a public resource of stonemasonry activities. This is useful for people who may be considering a career in building and construction industry, and who wish to know what a stonemason does.

Photos and video clips uploaded to the stonemasonry online social network also provide useful evidence of competency when they are accompanied by descriptive text and supervisor verification.

I encourage my students to present their e-portfolios online as potential providers of stonemasonry trade skills to both local and global audiences.

Twiddeo

I had previously written about using sharing stonemasonry video clips online using Twiddeo. Twiddeo is useful because of its feed straight into my (brownsd) Twitter timeline. However, recently I had difficulty logging in to Twiddeo, so I was looking for another application with which to share video clips.

Feeds

The stonemasonry online social network used by my TAFE students features a Twitter feed, so that the latest entries in my ‘brownsd’ timeline are displayed on the main page.

Flickr photos are also featured in a similar feed, that us, any photo tagged with ‘stonemasonry’ in Flickr is displayed in a widget on the main page. Now that Flickr is featuring video clips, and each clip is treated just the same as a photo, recent photos or video clips tagged ‘stonemasonry’ are automatically featured in the widget.

Recording

Recording short video clips with my mobile phone allows me to instantly upload the clip to Flickr. I always record using the ‘MMS’ (Mobile Messaging Service) option so that the clip length is limited to 15 or so seconds. I try to keep camera movement to a minimum, and lighting to a maximum. Sometimes I will ask an apprentice to record me while I demonstrate an activity.

Uploading

Emailing attachments from my 3SkypePhone candy bar is not an option, so I access Flickr mobile and use its uploading option. This takes a minute or so. When the file has been uploaded, I can then add a title and description.

Organising

I have to access Flickr using a computer to add other details such as tags, location etc. At the moment, my stonemasonry videos are added to their own Flickr set. Currently, the set features four videos recorded during the previous (stage 3) five week block-release training session. I will upload Long Photos of the next class (stage 2) starting on Monday 14th April.

Sharing electronic drawings in Flickr and Slideshare.

Mobile drawingsOriginally uploaded by st0nemas0nry

Many years ago, old friend William Whitmee gave me his book “The Elements of Geometrical Drawing” (Henry J. Spooner, 1914). On pages 167-169, Spooner describes Problem 194: To construct the Spiral called the Ionic Volute, the circumscribing Parallelogram having sides 3 1/2″ and 3″

This construction method is useful for students who are required to draw architectural elements and moulding designs (BCF3069a and BCF3035a). The Ionic volute is just one type of architectural decoration.

I had previously experienced difficulty getting students to draw this diagram. Having just presented the lesson recently (with the same confusion) I decided to redraw my directions in the simplest way possible.

My students provided useful feedback during class time, and I realised that the problem I was having was that I always try to explain “why” that is, the philosophy of proportion in Ionic Order and Classical Style buildings. BORING! They just wanted to get in and do it!

Consequently, I photographed the processes on the whiteboard and blackboard that the students understood best. Then I prepared 24 progressive drawings stepping through the process.

As explained in a previous post, the drawing were prepared using CorelDraw11, exported as JPEGs and uploaded to Flickr. Flickr images are downloadable to basic mobile phones like mine, with the added advantage of having a URL so they can be embedded in a blog and further explained.

It really was difficult for me to skip the explanation and jump straight into drawing, but the students told me that they wanted to draw the three rectangles first, then follow with the quadrants. I still felt that they needed the explanation, so added it as the first few slides.

After the PowerPoint presentation was uploaded to my Slideshare site, I Twittered the link with a request for comment. http://twitter.com/botheredbybees answered within an hour (Peter, you’re an early riser!)

Peter commented “iconic ionic! would have put the pics first and wordy dot point staff last – now off to carve myself a temple…”

I altered the PowerPoint accordingly, but have left the original slideshow in place.

I shared the altered presentation in my SkillsTech Australia Teaching and Learning Network (TLN) for other construction trades skills teachers to use.

Now the presentation is ready to show to the class after the Easter break, prior to exams which include having to draw an Ionic volute from memory, using different dimensions. I hope they like the new format.

CafeChat Flickr tag

It was at the ACPET/Australian Flexible Learning Framework function we decided to meet as friends in Second Life, encouraged by Alan and Lindy.

Alan, Liza, Azim & Lindy

Joined by Marilyn, we are now EdHouse CafeChat, getting ready to explore Second Life for educational applications.

Our photos will be progressively uploaded to Flickr, tagged “CafeChat”