July 2023 Learn the Planet Notes

Tuesday 25 July 2023

Borrowed concepts

• Biome: a biogeographical unit consisting of a biological community that has formed in response to the physical environment
• Climate: the long-term weather pattern in a region, typically averaged over 30 years. More rigorously, it is the mean and variability of meteorological variables over a time spanning from months to millions of years. meteorological variables
  • temperature
  • humidity
  • atmospheric pressure
  • wind
  • precipitation
  climate system
  • atmosphere
  • hydrosphere
  • cryosphere
  • lithosphere
  • biosphere

The Genesis Project

The Genesis project consists of three steps.

• Searching for transiently habitable planets.
• Sending interstellar robotic crafts for detailed investigations.
• Seeding the candidate planet with in situ synthesized lifeforms.

World building

Worldbuilding on stack exchange

Terraforming

Terraforming habitability requirements

• Temperature
• Water
• Energy
• Elements

Thursday 27 July 2023

Motivation

Pros

• Familiarity in environment e.g. when hiking better able to see/perceive what is there
• Sense of greater awareness and acuity (visual and to a lesser extent, auditory)
• Some kind of 'deeper' (atavistic) knowledge, or satisfaction/relief
• Record of observations (iNaturalist) shows progress, expresses knowledge
• Context: knowledge has meaning in place; knowledge in situ equates to control/power/meaning/security/comfort

Cons

• Context: mismatch between knowledge and needs when needs satisified by global supply chains
• Frustration: knowledge has little or no purpose day to day (and for essentials of life)
• Unease: species that are of daily use are often non-native
• Powerless: little or no control over necessities of daily life; which may be fine until things go wrong

Domain

• Universal filter and sort functions that can act on: date/time, place, source (person/place)
  Use cases
  • Filter species by date
  • Filter scores by correct/incorrect
  • Sort species by date
  • Sort traits by frequency
  • Filter species by species observed

Origin in food

• Origins of food crops connect countries worldwide | The Royal Society
• The UK’s Top Food Imports And Where They Come From

Starting position

• Explicitly link to iNaturalist
  • Login or name look up
  • Option to create custom lesson
  • Or pick from curated lessons
  • Create blank filter
  • Update filter (optional) i.e. taxa type/s (plantae) or level (species)
  • Request species/observations
  • Compare observed species with supported species; determine what options are available
  • Basic test limited to name, common name, visual identification
  • Possible additional tests for commonality (#observations), the parent group (?) and location (atlas)

Filter options for iNaturalist request

• Number of items
• Whether sorted/ordered
• Taxa
• Research Grade
• Optional incorrect answers
• User feedback: tag poor images

Filter options for iNaturalist response

• Number of items
• Whether sorted/ordered
• Taxa
• Union (with LTP species)

Friday 28 July 2023Research

• eBird Photo + Sound Quiz
• Trees of Britain ~ Leaves | memrise
• Quiz Game Development Opportunity | iNat forum

Saturday 29 July 2023Objectives

• Mark start of phase
• Basic version using raw iNat data
• Create standard, universal, calls and arguments
• Ask for feedback based on this UI
• Mark end of phase

Sunday 30 July 2023Objectives continued…

• Least number of clicks or keyboard shortcuts to acheive aim cf. The Verb
• Trial different UIs
• Vanilla JS?