Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

Update: Due to issues with our download server, portable gis is not currently available. Investigations are taking place as to the exact cause and I will announce when it is fixed, though this may take a few days as I am away over the weekend. Thanks for your patience and your interest!

Version 1.2 of Portable GIS has been released today, addressing a number of bugs in Version 1.1. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback and spotted the bugs. If you use, or intend to use, the web-based components of Portable GIS, or the OpenEV viewer, then this is a recommended update.

The download is available here, along with a patch to convert version 1.1 to 1.2. Please read the instructions provided in the patch file as the process is slightly complicated.

Feedback is, as ever, greatly appreciated, and thanks to the 100 or so people who have downloaded the first version!

Well, I guess I shouldn’t really put it off any further…

The very first release of Portable GIS is now available for download here. Phew! While you don’t have to register to download, it would be nice if you did, so I know who is interested and can contact about updates. No spam, I promise.

For people that don’t read the readme: this is not cross-platform, it’s for windows only. Unzip it and move the folders inside to the root of a USB stick, then double-click on the menu exe to access the programmes.

Edit: don’t forget to run the setup programmes for those that need it to change to the correct drive letter.

Note the big disclaimer: Be nice- it’s working as far as I can tell, but there might be issues and I’ll try and address them as soon as possible but this isn’t my full-time job.

Note also that very soon I’ll be moving the hosting and maintenance of this to somewhere else, which is why there are different email addresses in the package. Use those, or contact me here, it’s fine…

Well, there was I just working away in the office, on my super-cool portable GIS setup, doing some work on a postgresql-driven database all working nicely on the USB stick. I should say that this has been working just fine in both my home (Vista) and office (XP) environment for months now.

Time came to head off home, so I stopped everything, ejected the stick nicely, took it home and went to start working on it again… only for postgresql to refuse to work. “Access Denied”, it said. “What do you mean, Access Denied?” I said. “Access Denied”, it said. So I tried it on my hubby’s Win XP machine. “No Problem”, it said. Repeat until you’re sick of trying.

So I remembered the Vista Windows Update on Monday, and restored my laptop back to before that. No joy…

Now, I have tried to be objective about Vista. I like my laptop, and to my mind the extra security measures were (until I turned them off) about as obtrusive as those on Ubuntu. I didn’t think it ran all that slowly, and had never found a programme or device that wasn’t compatible. Maybe I was just lucky.

Then, at Christmas, the rot started to set in. WinGrass doesn’t (or didn’t) work all that well. Cygwin wouldn’t play well. I ended up having to set up a virtual machine and run Ubuntu in it just to get to a stage where I could learn how to use GRASS. And now this. I’ll go to the mailing lists, of course, and try and figure out why it no longer wants to play, but please, just give me an operating system that lets me look under the hood and doesn’t unilaterally decide when to stop doing something it has quite happily done for months.

I’ll have to stick with Windows for the moment, because I need to get the portable GIS system working, and I have a sweet ITunes setup (and an even sweeter Ipod Touch), but I’m off to buy a copy of XP before it’s no longer possible to do that…

Thanks to everyone who attended my talk at FOSS4G and/or came up and offered me kind words of encouragement afterwards. I’m pretty overwhelmed in the level of interest in this. I’ve now done something I should have done before my talk, which is create a dedicated page on this site to do with it. At the moment it’s just a description of the project and what software is included- but hopefully soon it will include a link to a version you can download. You can also express your interest in the project there, and I’ll update it when new stuff happens…

Thanks again for everyone’s support!