

Show HN: I made a sexier tax parcel map for my hometown - michaelcolenso
http://iswordfight.com/

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c0nfused
It's too bad the dairy lodge doesn't quite show up so well on google maps, but
at least I know what it's assessed value is.

Turns out that if you compare it to the surrounding properties, having a very
phallic sign does not increase your property values.

For those of you who don't have family in the area:
[http://www.interestingideas.com/roadside/signs/dairylodge2s....](http://www.interestingideas.com/roadside/signs/dairylodge2s.jpg)

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michaelcolenso
We love the Dairy Lodge! The other iconic ice cream place in town is Bardon's
Wonder Freeze, and they have Sputnik on their roof.

[http://i.imgur.com/XdF5QdE.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/XdF5QdE.jpg)

So that's awesome, too.

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michaelcolenso
Here's the github repo if anyone is interested.

[https://github.com/michaelcolenso/tcplatmap](https://github.com/michaelcolenso/tcplatmap)

I used d3.js, and data from an ArcGIS REST endpoint that was linked on the
City Assessor's website.

[http://arcserver.tclp.org/arcgis/rest/services/City/CityParc...](http://arcserver.tclp.org/arcgis/rest/services/City/CityParcelViewer/MapServer/layers)

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mkr-hn
It's _sexier_ than something like QPublic, but much less functional.

For example:
[http://qpublic7.qpublic.net/qpmap4/map.php?county=ga_barrow&...](http://qpublic7.qpublic.net/qpmap4/map.php?county=ga_barrow&layers=parcels+roads+lakes)

Ugly, but it's easy to get at all the data.

~~~
michaelcolenso
Agreed. It's way less functional than the ArcGIS server that's maintained by
the municipality. It was a weekend project to play with d3, mostly. There's
lots wrong with the site as it is, but it's a journey, right? Thanks for the
feedback.

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Duhveed
Nevermind the folks complaining that ESRI's years-old template site is more
functional than what you built in a few days. I've built a few gis sites for
municipalities and I think it's pretty great.

~~~
michaelcolenso
Thanks! I appreciate the positive vibes. My favorite trick I learned was how
to use the GDAL tools (ogr2ogr) plus Topojson to fetch the data (the geometry
plus the sales db exposed on the arcGis REST endpoint) and convert it to
geoJSON in order to deal with it via D3. Pretty rewarding to finally get
something to project properly after spending roughly eleventeen hours trial
and erroring on the command line with those (very powerful) tools...

It was super fun to make. Thanks for checking it out.

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freehunter
What are the odds of finding a TC hacker around here? I vacation there at
least once a year and every time I consider moving there but I always figured
I would never find a tech job in Traverse City.

~~~
cschmidt
I'm going to Traverse City tomorrow on vacation. I did a double take when I
saw the map.

~~~
michaelcolenso
It's a lovely place, really. On a map or in person. Enjoy your vacation.

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Doctor_Fegg
Very pretty!

You need to add on-map attribution to Stamen (whose map tiles you're using)
and to OpenStreetMap (whose data they're based on).

~~~
michaelcolenso
Thanks! I appreciate the heads up on the attribution...I knew that, and I
actually included it in the code where I add the leaflet tile layer, but I
guess I need to include a leaflet control to display the attribution. Here's
the code I'm using:

[https://gist.github.com/michaelcolenso/e89bc327cb31e7f0b6d9](https://gist.github.com/michaelcolenso/e89bc327cb31e7f0b6d9)

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cmsj
No part of "tax parcel map" sounds even remotely sexy to me, so you're setting
a pretty low bar ;)

~~~
michaelcolenso
I know, right? "Sexy Taxes" isn't really a thing.

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Methusalah
Sexier than what? I work with a lot of GIS software and this is incredibly
basic.

~~~
michaelcolenso
Yep. It's way basic, and not terribly useful other than as a novelty site. But
it was fun to make. So that's good.

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gdilla
nicely done! Zillow or trulia could benefit from this improved UI - married
with image content, it'd be a pretty hot tool.

~~~
michaelcolenso
Thanks! I think it's pretty far from being something Zillow or Trulia worthy,
but it was fun to build.

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rasz_pl
takes 100% cpu - main loop keeps querying for new property data even when the
mouse doesnt move

~~~
michaelcolenso
So I believe I fixed it. I __think __it was b /c the socket.io server was
emitting on the 'io' object on every db query, and it should have been
emitting on the 'socket'. I think. It was definitely all jacked up, though.
Thanks so much for checking it out...

