The venerable Smith Tower, built in 1914 by manufacturer Lyman Cornelius Smith, is just a few blocks away from the LizardTech offices. Despite this proximity, none of us on the Dev team had ever been to the observation deck on the tower’s 35th floor, which we felt was pathetic. To rectify the situation, we went on a field trip over there today and got a big eyeful of panorama.

It was quite an experience. There are other observation spots around downtown. The most famous one is the Space Needle at the other end of the city. Most tourists go there instead. It’s a humdinger of a view, but the Needle is pretty removed from the downtown core, so that it seems a little like you’re looking at an effervescent photograph. There’s also an observation deck on the 76th floor of the Columbia Tower, Seattle’s tallest building (the curvy black one). I’ve never visited that viewpoint but I’ve seen the view from “43″ and even from half the building’s height, the city looks flat. You can’t discern any topography. It looks like you’re staring down at an aerial photo.

I thought the Smith Tower was just right. It’s pretty close to the downtown high-rises, so you get a sense of being “among” the tall buildings, but it’s posted almost like a sentinel at the southern edge of the downtown grid, so that views to the east, south and west are expansive. Also, the observation deck is only a little over 500 feet high. You can see a lot of detail in the buildings below and you still get the sense that Seattle is built on hills. We’re thinking of moving our offices. (Jealous? Here’s the link to our careers page: Jobs at LizardTech.)

I thought I’d share with you just a few of the many photographs we took.

A tall drink of water. The observation deck rings the top of the tower. Photo copyright Matt Fleagle.

This is the motor that works elevator #6. Note the famed Otis name. Photo by Walter Wittel, licensed via Creative Commons as noted below.*

Engineers drawing inspiration 500 feet above the city. From left, Walter, John, Michael, Glen, Mike, Kirk. Somehow, Chris got lost. Photo copyright Matt Fleagle.

The downtown core, with some of our old favorite buildings nestled among the newer giants. Photo copyright Matt Fleagle.

Ah, there’s Chris! And John, and the hands of Glen (we think) in the middle. They’re looking east over First Hill here. Photo by Walter Wittel, licensed via Creative Commons as noted below.*

Looking south to the historic King Street Station and to Quest and Safeco ball fields. Photo copyright Matt Fleagle.

*Image by Walter Wittel licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

You’ve heard of Open Street Map, right? You can think of it as Wikipedia for maps: people from all over the world map their own neighborhoods, and the results are made available for free, to all, with no copyright restrictions. For most of the US the road network has been pretty well mapped already, via free data available from the government, but it can get out of date surprisingly quickly and of course it doesn’t list the really important stuff like where to get the best ice cream.

These brave souls are about to redefine the leisurely walk.

On March 13th, nineteen people from CUGOS (including three Lizards) and one dog met up over on sunny Bainbridge Island for an Open Street Map mapping party. It was a diverse group — academics, kids, hackers, spouses. We met in the morning at the Bainbridge ferry dock, took a picture to commemorate the event, and divided up into four groups. Each group then spent the next few hours walking around a different part of Bainbridge’s downtown core, recording the coordinates of any “features of interest”:

• roads that had changed or been renamed
• “street furniture”: bus stops, park benches, fire hydrants
• points of interest: pharmacies, libraries, museums, pubs, ice cream parlors
• walking trails
• and much, MUCH more

Holly reviews her route while Dane gets “walking orders” from Michael.

Altogether we collected a few hundred different way points, using everything from handheld GPS units to iPhones to laser range finders. Over a leisurely late lunch by the waterfront, and in a subsequent CUGOS meeting, we worked to get all our GPS tracks and waypoints uploaded to the OSM databases.

Leaving no avenue uncharted, no point of interest unheralded, Michael, Walter and Roger investigate.

A walk through Bainbridge on a sunny day with friends — and GPS gear. What more could a GIS geek want?

Roger and Tifani display the elements of their GPS walking kit (bus stop sold separately).

Photos courtesy of CUGOS’ own Roger and Tifani.

No really, I mean literally, in the alley behind our building. The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) was scanning buildings in Post Alley between Madison and Spring this morning, creating LiDAR point clouds.

I ran into these guys a few months ago on my way to work, where the alley between First and Second meets University Street. As the technical writer here at LizardTech I’ve seen plenty of LiDAR data, but I’d never seen a LiDAR scanner before. I had once worked on a survey crew and used a theodolite, and thinking this was just a topographic setup I almost walked by these brightly vested crewmen and their tripod without a second thought. But then I noticed that the machine atop the legs was bigger than a theodolite and it was moving, very slowly, by itself. On the wall of the alley opposite the machine, a small green light pattern was flickering.

Since we make products for losslessly compressing and viewing LiDAR files, I was fascinated and engaged the men in conversation. On a laptop lying there on the cobbles and plugged into the scanner, they showed me how they programmed the machine using Leica software to scan from here to there, and at a desired density. A viewer enabled them to see the LiDAR data that was being captured right then, or an image of the alley from the perspective of the scanner, or both together.

They said they were scanning all the buildings within a certain radius of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which, if you’re from around here, you know is due to come down soon and be replaced with something better, or at least something newer, safer and more expensive. WSDOT doesn’t want anyone coming back after the viaduct project saying that their activity caused their building’s walls to shift or its foundation to sink.

WSDOT has to take all these measurements in the warm weather of summer, then repeat them in winter, because buildings heat up and expand enough that their outer walls actually move. Also, down by the bay, the earth expands and contracts with the ebb and flow of the tides, so they’ll have to take measurements at high and low tides. It had not occurred to me that our buildings and even the ground they sit on were breathing in and out, as it were, with tide and temperature.

You could have knocked me over with a LiDAR point. 

The night the first snow fell, back on the 19th of December, we Lizards had our annual holiday party at McCormick and Schmick’s on First Avenue, right around the corner from our building. The food was great, and a greater percentage of us were able to make it than in the past few years.

We used to have karaoke at our holiday shindigs, but we went through a corporate phase of imagining that we were more dignified than to stand up in somebody’s restaurant and bellow like water buffalo in the ears of the dining public. We grew out of it, though, and this year we said “we’re bringing noisy back.” We rented a machine, and for a monitor, Pooya managed to wrangle a TV the size of a small hotel into his Forenza.

It’s surprising the number of Lizards who were willing to sing on a full stomach. I was going to post the little movie I took of Skiff’s startling rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean”, but a horsehead showed up on my chair at work recently, which I took to mean that I should reconsider.

The world will have to wait.

As part of National Geography Week we at LizardTech have been asking ourselves what GIS and geography mean to us personally. What usually comes to mind for me (aside from work) is images from space on Google Maps. I like to scout places before I go, and perhaps show where I’ve been afterwards via GPS tracks like the ones displayed in Google Maps using this KML file.

It’s also cool to stumble on places I’ve been in the past. For instance I found the cheap hotel we stayed at in Jamaica in the mid-80s before this technology was available to the public. Here’s a link.

It was easy to spot because it is the only one up the road from the airport with a pool. It was one of the few Montego Bay hotels that would allow native Jamaican’s to stay (most were exclusively for tourists).

Lots of fun!