matlabor http://matlabor.posterous.com Most recent posts at matlabor posterous.com Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:45:00 -0700 Export Table to ASCII http://matlabor.posterous.com/export-table-to-ascii http://matlabor.posterous.com/export-table-to-ascii Under the Spatial Statistics Tools, under Utilities, there is a tool called Export Feature Attribute to ASCII. This tool will write out a .dbf Attribute Table to ASCII, thereby negating my previous bitching about it. You can choose which columns to write out, and you can choose the delimiter. Great, Way to make me feel dumb, arc. I can still complain that this tool is hidden where it is - why

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Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:02:00 -0700 refreshing and labeling http://matlabor.posterous.com/refreshing-and-labeling http://matlabor.posterous.com/refreshing-and-labeling In ArcCatalog, if you've just created a new layer in ArcMap, it may not appear until you refresh the list. To refresh the list, use F5. Labels You can label features (ugh, an arc word...) with their attributes (ugh, another arc word). There is a toolbar for it. You might need to be in an open Edit Session for this to work. View -> Toolbars -> Labeling The first icon is the Label Manager.

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Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:14:00 -0700 linear referencing and hatch marks http://matlabor.posterous.com/linear-referencing-and-hatch-marks http://matlabor.posterous.com/linear-referencing-and-hatch-marks Linear referencing: point location along the line as an alternative to expressing the location using an xy coordinate. Useful, for example, for measuring distance along a stream. An Overview of Linear Referencing Here are steps outlining a way to put hatch marks (with distance labels) on a polyline (e.g. following a stream). 1. When you create the polyline shapefile in arc catalog, you need to

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Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:49:00 -0700 in the beginning... http://matlabor.posterous.com/in-the-beginning-207 http://matlabor.posterous.com/in-the-beginning-207 Sometimes you have to start from the beginning, there can be useful information in the beginning. LaTeX  "haha, if you're not smart enough to figure this out, too bad for you." http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Introduction http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Importing_Graphics  Arc "haha, we don't give a fck about user experience, too bad for you." http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.2/

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Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:51:00 -0700 jabref and TeXnicCenter and BibTeX http://matlabor.posterous.com/2010/07/jabref-and-texniccenter-and-bibtex.html http://matlabor.posterous.com/2010/07/jabref-and-texniccenter-and-bibtex.html BibTeX, I hate you for making me feel stupid. But I love you because you are going to make my life a lot easier. right? Right?! RIGHT??!! 1. JabRef databases are saved in .bib format, which are just .txt files and can be opened with WordPad or vi or whatever. They might have a bunch of extra crap in them like full abstracts, the notes you typed into JabRef, whatever. Export the entries for your

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Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:28:00 -0700 dealing with .e00 files http://matlabor.posterous.com/dealing-with-e00-files http://matlabor.posterous.com/dealing-with-e00-files .e00 files are from an older version of arc. a simpler time. but now it is complicated to open them. I ended up importing some .e00 files that were in a .tar.Z file (1996 USGS Open report) in a very roundabout manner, and later found some other more straightforward procedures (but can't figure out how to get those to work with my version of Arc). I'll just post them all here. 1. Official

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Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:09:00 -0700 contours http://matlabor.posterous.com/contours-4 http://matlabor.posterous.com/contours-4 Simple: Toolbox -> Spatial Analyst Tools -> Surface -> Contour Specify input raster, output name, contour interval. Creating contours in spatial analyst

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Wed, 07 Jul 2010 18:00:00 -0700 x, y, z table for a bunch of points http://matlabor.posterous.com/2010/07/x-y-z-table-for-bunch-of-points.html http://matlabor.posterous.com/2010/07/x-y-z-table-for-bunch-of-points.html This is how I got an xyz table of a bunch of points. (There is probably a better way out there.) 1. Using arc catalog, create a shapefile of points. Then add columns to the attribute table, x, y 2. In arcmap, start an edit session and click away on the points. 3. End and save edit session, I think. 4. Right click on shapefile in Table of Contents column and open Attribute Table. All of the

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Wed, 07 Jul 2010 17:37:00 -0700 aspect-slope map plus other stuff http://matlabor.posterous.com/aspect-slope-map-plus-other-stuff http://matlabor.posterous.com/aspect-slope-map-plus-other-stuff While hunting around for some guidance in producing a slope map (a matter of a few mouse clicks), I came across this page [aspect-slope map], which is useful because it gave an example of how to implement the following things: Styles (predefined colors, symbols, map elements, etc.) Slope map (with link to how it works) Aspect map Reclassify: redefine the default number and width of display bins

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Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:18:00 -0700 lazy about tex equations http://matlabor.posterous.com/lazy-about-tex-equations http://matlabor.posterous.com/lazy-about-tex-equations It's only been a 15 year hiatus but i am now seriously working on a .tex file. Although I have no problem with brute-force typing in equations, the lazy part of me wishes there were something that would take the MathType output and generate the equation code. Just for efficiency's sake, you know? There are a lot of equations. I found this thing, which helps. You have to click in the symbols,

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Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:13:00 -0700 .dbf files http://matlabor.posterous.com/dbf-files http://matlabor.posterous.com/dbf-files ArcGIS output may be saved as a .dbf file, with no immediately apparent way to save as a .txt, or even to copy and paste the cells to a simple spreadsheet program (why? why?). I had no idea what to do about this so I just downloaded a small program that converts the .dbf to .csv. http://www.fileguru.com/DBF-To-CSV/download I did this a couple days ago so now I have no recollection of how it

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Mon, 21 Jun 2010 21:10:00 -0700 Elevation statistics of traced polygons http://matlabor.posterous.com/elevation-statistics-of-traced-polygons http://matlabor.posterous.com/elevation-statistics-of-traced-polygons I wanted to find the mean, min, max, stddev elevation of a bunch of traced terraces, but this can be done with any input files of a zone dataset (i.e. shapefile of polygons) and a value raster (i.e. raster of elevation values). 1. Make the zone dataset, in my case, make a shapefile of polygons [make polygon layer] 2. Add field(s) to the Attribute Table to define the zones. I have a separate ID

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Fri, 18 Jun 2010 19:50:00 -0700 make polygons http://matlabor.posterous.com/make-polygons http://matlabor.posterous.com/make-polygons To make some @#$*%$@#% polygons in arcgis (e.g. trace fluvial terrace deposits): 1. Open Arc Catalog 2. In the Location bar, navigate to the folder where you want to put the polygons (shapefile) 3. File -> New -> Shapefile 4. Name it and choose Feature Type -> Polygon 5. If you want, edit the Coordinate System Select -> Projected Coordinate Systems -> (UTM NAD 1983 10 N for local stuff) In

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Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:19:00 -0700 obtain and view seismic data from IRIS http://matlabor.posterous.com/obtain-and-view-seismic-data-from-iris http://matlabor.posterous.com/obtain-and-view-seismic-data-from-iris This is deteriorating from a pedagogical tool to a storage place for cryptic notes. But, better than nothing. One way to get some seismic data from IRIS and look at it 1. Use the GMAP (google map) interface on the IRIS site http://www.iris.washington.edu/gmap/ The instructions tell you what to enter in the URL lat/lon example: http://www.iris.edu/gmap/?minlat=46&maxlat=49&minlon=-125&maxlon=-

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Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:32:00 -0700 hillshade from seamless data http://matlabor.posterous.com/hillshade-from-seamless-data http://matlabor.posterous.com/hillshade-from-seamless-data It's ArcGIS time. First, let's reflect on how Arc is the anti-google in terms of user-friendliness. It's a constant source of exasperation and I am here to document my exasperation and hopefully avoid some in the future. Starting from the beginning, here's an example if you want to download high resolution topographic data (1/9 arc second, where 1 arc second at the equator is ~31 m)  from the

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Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:37:00 -0700 LaTeX on windows http://matlabor.posterous.com/latex-on-windows http://matlabor.posterous.com/latex-on-windows Matlabor is back, but not only about matlab. It's a place to put things that I would otherwise forget. Today we're going to document how to do LaTeX on windows. Why? Let's just assume the following (1) I had ubuntu working but when I tried to upgrade it yesterday, I ended up three hours later very demoralized with no more ubuntu on my computer (the fault of incomplete wubi uninstall, and my

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Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:36:00 -0800 profile & tic & toc http://matlabor.posterous.com/profile-andamp-tic-andamp-toc http://matlabor.posterous.com/profile-andamp-tic-andamp-toc it seems like i have exhausted my knowledge of matlab functions. i am still waiting for guest blogs for patch and ode45. i won't hold my breath. or perhaps i will. here's something pc told me about once, i haven't used it much because my programs aren't that intensive. (not intensive for the computer, but very intensive for me to produce) profile The profile function helps you debug and

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Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:39:00 -0800 textread and ignoring columns http://matlabor.posterous.com/textread-and-ignoring-columns http://matlabor.posterous.com/textread-and-ignoring-columns okay, say you have a .csv file (comma separated variable, excel likes those) and for come reason you don't want to use csvread. i found textread to be more flexible. roka collected some data that has 22 headerlines, and then 4 columns of data. i only care about the first column of data. so this is what i used to read in the file: [kilograms] = textread(namestr,'%f %*f %*f %*f', 'delimiter', ',',

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Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:14:00 -0800 break your plot. breakplot http://matlabor.posterous.com/break-your-plot-breakplot http://matlabor.posterous.com/break-your-plot-breakplot there are several options on file exchange for putting a break in your plot axis if you have a region of uninteresting data. for example if you have 12 subplots and 11 of them have the same y-bounds, but one of them has a very high value, you can put a break in that plot and standardize the rest of the axes bounds. got it? breakplot breakxaxis (you can modify it so it's the y-axis) i haven't

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Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:30:00 -0800 fread: read binary data http://matlabor.posterous.com/fread-read-binary-data http://matlabor.posterous.com/fread-read-binary-data probably the moment that i felt like the biggest matlab stud (although there are so many i cannot even count, haha JOKE), is when i finally decoded the binary data from the laser scanner my flume. the folks at SAFL had written the program to store the voluminous data in binary format, and ever since dec. 2006 i knew that one day i would have to figure out how to read it. fread reads data from a

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