Fun Personal Uses of Golden Software Products for Geo-Nerds

We here at Golden Software are geo-nerds (or geo-geeks, if you prefer). We really are passionate about maps and map-making, both on the job and in our free time. I’m not saying I’m a workaholic, but it’s hard to separate work from home when you love what you do! As such, I was very excited to show my kids the books listed in the 15 Picture Books That Support Children’s Spatial Skills Development article (in case you’re wondering, our favorites were Shrinking Mouse, Big Bug, and You Are (Not) Small).

I also often think of uses for our software in my personal life. One project I have ‘on the books’, so to speak, is mapping out our unfinished basement in Surfer, so we can design a finished product in order to procure a building permit. Another work-in-progress is a MapViewer pin map with locations and attributes for each of the playgrounds that we’ve visited locally. A project I have recently completed is designing a play area for my kids. We live in an HOA neighborhood, so everything outside belongs to the HOA, and we need to get approval to put or build anything out there. Since our patio is too small for a playground and we have some space that’s hidden from the road between our garage and our house, I thought I would get approval to build a sandbox there that we can put a slide in and perhaps add a swing set to later. Here is the result:

When we presented this to the HOA board, a board member (one of our neighbors who also has kids) made us aware that our town might offer grants for a neighborhood playground, so I’ll begin the task of looking for a bigger playground set to purchase for our whole neighborhood to share. You can bet that when we go to the city to ask for grant money, I’ll have some pretty Surfer maps to back up my ideas. Wish me luck!

Leave a comment to let us know if you have a fun personal use for mapping/graphic software, and then check out these other blogs highlighting more fun personal uses of our software:

• Using Didger and MapViewer to Build a Site Map
• Make a Tough Mudder Race Info Sheet in Surfer 11
• Who Am I? Working with Personal Genetic Data using Grapher and MapViewer
• Golden Software’s Adventures in Yellowstone
• An Antarctic Adventure!