[okfn-discuss] Data for a graph on Earth

Mon Jan 12 12:32:57 UTC 2009

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 10:29:10AM +0000, Rufus Pollock wrote:
> > This data is really nice. It sure can be useful to create a nice graph.
> > However, for my use in Mayavi, I would like 3D-positioned data, and the
> > US is not big enough for the curvature of the Earth to be significant.

> > What I am really looking for is graph data that is naturally embedded in
> > 3D. Hint, hint, if anyone on this mailing list has this kind of data, and
> > can release it in an open license, I'll try as hard as I can to do a
> > really nice visualization out of it.

> If only I'd know you were looking for /any/ kind of data and not just airports!

Sorry, I atcually changed my requirements in the mean time, realizing
that what I was looking for wasn't that easy.

> Geonames (http://www.ckan.net/package/read/geonames) has a whole bunch
> of info available for download under a cc attribution license. In
> particular they have conveniently split out a whole bunch of items
> including all cities > 1000, >5000, > 15,000 inhabitants, e.g.:

That's actually fairly fantastic data! I don't think it answers my
original problem, because I wanted graph data, but I will probably put it
to good use for another example. Thanks a lot.

It is really fun to see what an open source visualization software can do
with open data. I am just finishing a protein visualization using data
from pdb (http://www.rcsb.org/).

> (This is the kind of thing we'd like to split out in CKAN but haven't
> yet got around to doing ...)

I think CKAN will become very useful in the long run. Good luck with
that.

Cheers,

Gaël