EDUCATION: GIS and Media Embedding

Today's training focus was on GIS software under the brand of Tableau Maps, as well as a return to web editing, specifically embedding media files in one's web pages. I expect to move on to PHP itself next Monday.

More on other topics to come.

Two Books

I found myself inspired to go digging for one book yesterday, and in the process of finding it, rediscovered another.

1. I was looking for A Stó:lō-Coast Salish Historical Atlas yesterday, inspired by the news that a guest starship on Star Trek: Lower Decks would be named USS Vancouver. I half-remembered that this book would have that Indigenous nation's name for the larger region including Vancouver, the one I was taught to call the "Fraser River Valley": S'ólh Téméxw.

(Which I dearly want to learn how to pronounce properly!)

It occurs to me that, before I die, I'd like to see that name, S'ólh Téméxw - accents and all - on the hull of a Starfleet ship, preferably one more prominent than a DS9-style runabout. They can name a runabout "Fraser" if need be. With the people running Star Trek as a while these days, I'm thinking that it might happen, provided the Trek people reach out properly to the Stó:lō. There seems to be at least one Trek fan amongst that nation living in the metro Vancouver region going by anecdotal evidence on Twitter.

(Note: Titmouse Animation, the company handling the actual animation work on Lower Decks, has a branch studio in Vancouver, BC. This might be at the heart of the shout-out to the city.)

2. In the process of trying to find the first book, I accidentally rediscovered my copy of the second one, Ikonica: A Field Guide to Canada's Brandscape by Jeannette Hanna and Alan Middleton. Which contains a number of historical overviews of some two dozen Canadian brands of note and longstanding in our memories. I don't know if it's still in print. My copy became mine thanks to an airplane ride out to PEI back in 2008. It was a family trip, and my mother and I were travelling together by plane for the occasion, everyone else taking their families' respective cars. I think I posted some of the pix from that trip on my Flickr account...?

Two Anniversaries of Note and Substance

1. The 57th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, given thereat.

2. The 103rd anniversary of the birth in New York City of Jacob Kurtzberg, best known today as Jack "King" Kirby, comic book artist of legend, co-creator of Captain America, and of so many more afterwards.

Both, I think, are worthy of remembrance in their own ways. Both Dr. King and Mr. Kirby were, in their respective ways, anti-fascist to their respective cores.