One thing I’ve been interested in (for both curiousity’s sake, as well as practical applications) are geology related programs that run on my home computer. Here is a small list of mostly free/cheap programs that I have come across in my experience. Do you have any suggestions for programs or applications that should be added? Comment below and I’ll add them to this post!
Windows
- Earthquake3D - Nothing more than a simple application that brings up a wireframe globe of the Earth and downloads the last 7 days of earthquake information. Basically an application form of the USGS earthquake website.
- Google Earth - Runs under either Windows or OS X, while not neccesarily a geology program, it has been an interesting tool for looking at our planet in new ways. Whether looking up where you grew up or examining volcanoes and glaciers, Google Earth is a great tool.
- Stereonet - Free for academic use, this program allows you to plot and manipulate various data using stereonets. A very handy tool for structural geologists. Runs under both WinXP and OS X. Check the website for other geology related programs.
Mac OS X
- Google Earth - See above description.
- OSXGeolCalc - Another structural geology tool using stereonets. Other geology programs for OS X are available on the website.
- Stereonet - See above description.
2 comments
Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 3:28 pm
yami
GrassGIS - for *nixes, including OS X. It has a steep learning curve, but it’s badder-assed GIS than Google Earth. Dunno if it would run under Cygwin or not.
Octave - free, open-source Matlab equivalent. Tremendously useful for all kinds of scientific computation. For *nixes, including OS X and Cygwin.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Dave Schumaker
Yeah, I was wondering whether or not to include various Unix/Linux programs in here. Some of them can be quite specialized, though might still hold an interest such as SAC, though that might be difficult for the lay person to setup (I have it running under OS X… you have to email the author).
Another one that is sort of GIS’y would be GMT which can really produce some beautiful maps with a lot of data (ugggghhhh to programming batch files to get it to do what you want though!).
Anyway, keep them coming, my list is quite lacking. :)