After last week’s post I was asked in the comments to explain how to convert British Ordnance Survey Grid Squares to sensible Eastings and Northings, for use in a GIS. So here goes… Firstly- to quote from the Ordnance Survey website: The National Grid, like its military predecessors, consists of a systematic breakdown of the Grid area into progressively smaller squares identified first by letters and then numbers. The largest unit of the grid is 500km squares each designated by a prefix letter alphabetically from A-Z omitting I - the first letter to be quoted in today’s National Grid Reference.

Access 97 is still a popular choice for databases (especially in archaeology!) but the default ArcGIS 9.2 geodatabase is in Access 2000 format and cannot be opened in earlier versions of Microsoft Access. It is possible to create a geodatabase that can be used by both programmes. Create a blank database in Microsoft Access 97 and save it to the location where you want your geodatabase to be stored.

For all you linux n00bs out there just getting into compiling and installing programmes, this is really handy when your compilation fails and you’ve just watched reams of text scroll past with no chance to read what it says. Basically it records the I/O of a command line session into a log file for later perusal. Before entering your command in the terminal, type: script yourscript.log At the end of the session, press: