Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mining

How to retrieve shares in UK company

Daddysugar — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:55:02 -0800

I recently discovered that I am a shareholder of a UK listed company, Anglo Asian Mining Company. I base this discovery on my recent receipt of proxy materials and notice of the annual shareholders meeting, which was held today. I realize the best way to retrieve or have replaced shares of stock in the United States is to contact the investor relations or financial department. This seems like a daunting challenge. Is this the best/only way for me to retrieve whatever number of shares I have in the UK?

How to find dead parent's Texas mineral rights?

Anonymous — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:29:51 -0800

Finding deceased parent's Texas "mineral rights?" How can I do this cheaply? My pop was married twice. He and his first wife had property in Texas. They sold the land but kept the mineral rights. At least I believe it was called this. My pop told me about it decades ago when I was a kid, so I may have the name wrong. If someone were to find something underground, he would have the rights to it.

Pop and his first wife divorced. He remarried and had me. He passed away decades ago.

I would like to track down any mineral rights he has or had prior to his divorce in the 1950s. The property would be in Texas, possibly Bexar County. How can I do this for cheap / free? Internet methods especially appreciated.

First wife is unavailable & unreliable, so looking for official sources for this information.

Newspaper Clippings 2.0?

[insert clever name here] — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:36:38 -0800

Can I automate archiving/saving news articles on a certain topic I pull from google new's rss feed? For a while, I was manually copying and saving all news articles from google on a certain topic I got in my rss feed. But it became cumbersome so I stopped. Now I've looked back at those articles from a few years ago, and wish I had kept up. Is there a way to automate something like that? A modern day newspaper clipping collection only automated? I don't want to save just the url, but the actual text of the article, where it is from, date, and possibly pictures.

This is for my own personal use, so I doubt it would fall under any copyright issues (I would assume).

I did a search but my google fu is failing me. I keep coming up on the google news archive, but thats not really what I'm looking for. I want my own personal copies. I don't now how google news archive works, but I know that some articles I had gotten from google news originally are not in their archive (I just checked.).

pan. zoom out. repeat.

sponge — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 15:04:30 -0800

gmaps filter: what am i looking at? seems to be related to mining, there are oil derricks in the area.

i cant imagine how much fun it was to make alllllll those lines...

Python and Data Mining

elationfoundation — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:01:31 -0800

Is Python a logical choice to learn if I want to create Data Mining programs. I have never programmed before but have interest in createing long term data management and mining programs for my research. I heard from many people that python is an easy enough programming language to learn: I dont want to learn the easy but useless language for my interest. I am looking to create a simple data interface for the users to imput data with a strong analitical back end. Think, teh computer screens that starbucks and mcDonalds use but with a few other bells and whistles. Is python capable of doing this (mostly concerned about the analytical part)

shine on your crazy tourmaline (or whatever)

luriete — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:09:47 -0800

When I was a kid living in La Mesa, California, my mother got to poke around in the tailings at local tourmaline and mica mines as part of weekend classes we took at the natural history museum. Are there any kinds of similar gemstone mines anywhere near where I live now - Sacramento, California - that offer similar opportunities?

How does an Aussie geo get to Canada?

twirlypen — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 19:49:29 -0800

This time next year I'll be a freshly graduated Australian geolgist. I'd like to work overseas, and I'm tempted by Canada or the US. What should I be aware of while trying to arrange all this, and how easy would it be to work as close to New York as possible? This November, I'll be graduating with honours in Geology from a university in Australia. I've done some vacation work along the way, I've got good grades and references, and I usually interview well.

Any advice about what to expect, what the job market's like, what the job conditions are like, what the life's like etc. would be really appreciated.

I'd love to be as close to NYC as possible, but I'm aware that it probably isnt' the easiest thing.

I'm not interested in working for a company with a poor environmental record.

Thanks in advance.

Politics and environmental issues in the US Southwest: good sources for news and gossip?

salvia — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 22:55:14 -0800

Anyone follow environmental issues or general politics in the US Southwest (AZ, NM, UT, CO)? I'm trying to get a crash course about what's happening in the region and then stay up to speed. What are the best sources for political gossip? For environmental news about the region? All I've got so far are the major newspapers, High Country News, and a couple (rarely updated) blogs.

I'm most curious about the key environmental and regional planning issues in the southwest now. Who are the big players (nonprofits, state agencies, cities, others), and what are they working on?

I realize this is a broad question, but anything will be much appreciated. I work on these sorts of issues in the Bay Area, and since I love the US Southwest, I wish I had a better understanding of what is going on down there.

Anything electronics components/etc worth harvesting from an old desktop image scanner?

Quarter Pincher — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 10:19:31 -0800

Is there anything worth mining/harvesting out of a random old desktop scanner? I was about to throw this heap away, when I decided to take it apart. There's a few long narrow mirrors, a mototech motor, what appear to be a few rings made of lead (?), the little tank-tread band, and the long narrow bulb. I could probably use the glass with a picture frame. Would there be any hidden treasures native to desktop image scanners that'd be worth trying to sell, like a specialty lens or something? A rare kind of capacitor? There seems to be a number of hunks of lead in this sucker.

Seeing the industrial and political landscape of the southwest

salvia — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 16:25:55 -0800

I'm taking a road trip through the southwest, and I'd like to see places with an interesting backstory or that show you "behind the scenes." I'm interested in places with political, economic, environmental, or industrial significance. Can you recommend some? Here's the route: Phoenix, Tucson, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Moab, Phoenix. I have 11 days. I've done most of this as a tourist before, so I'm interested in seeing some of the more hidden sights.

As I said, I'm interested in the politics, economics, history, environmental, and industrial factors behind the landscape. I'm still modifying the route so I can check out interesting places. Here are the kind of places I'm talking about:

- power infrastructure (Black Mesa, the Glen Canyon Dam)
- water infrastructure (aqueducts, river diversions?)
- the nuclear program (I'm missing the Trinity Test Site visitor day by a week! Should I still go to Alamogordo? Where to go near Los Alamos?)
- mining booms and busts, related pollution (Moab's uranium tailings pile; oil, gas, and coalbed methane development)
- industrial-scale production of anything from cattle to computer chips
- Native American history (the Cochise stronghold)
- prisons, military bases, and other nearly-blank spaces on the map (obviously, I can't enter, but I would like to know they're there)
- anything else related to political, economic, or cultural geographies (I really like Jake Kosek's stuff)
- wildlife protection or environmental restoration areas, current environmental disputes

I'm interested in current or upcoming issues, not just history, and I have just started trying to get up to speed about some of the work going on now. If you have anything interesting you'd like to share but would need kept fairly quiet, my email is in my profile. (I work for an environmental nonprofit, so I understand that certain information is sensitive and needs to stay fairly confidential to keep sites from being defaced or overrun with visitors, or to protect ongoing acquisitions, negotiations, or investigations.) Thank you!

What is a good (free or low-cost) program to mine text from large numbers of patents?

underdetermined — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 16:52:55 -0800

What is a good (free or low-cost) program to mine text from large numbers of patents? I'm looking for a text analysis tool to help me organize information from large numbers of patents into categories or clusters. There are commercial applications that do this, but they are exceedingly expensive. Ideally, I would like to be able to dump the results of my database query into the program and let it go to work to identify relationships between things that are non-intuitive and/or obscured due to huge amounts of information.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Books on the 19th century South African diamond industry

stammer — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 06:36:39 -0800

What are the best books about the South African diamond industry during the mid-to-late 19th century? I am distantly related to Barney Barnato and would like to find out whether he was particularly evil, but I'm also just interested in the period generally.

What to do with rough sapphires?

Phyltre — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 21:55:06 -0800

I'm no lapidary but I need to separate some sapphires from the surrounding rock and polish them (slightly, I want them to stay rough, no shaping/mounting.) How can I do this without spending multiple paychecks on professional lapidary stuffs? After unexpectedly befriending the owner of the Old Pressley Sapphire Mine in NC, I got some (delicious) personal time with a chisel, hammer, and bountiful cliff side. As a result I've got several pounds of specimen sapphires still in their gleaming white surroundings...and, in a month, will probably have twice as much. They're not quite ring quality but they're beautiful grays, the sort that become cabochons. Because they're useless locked in the rock, I need to extract them. I also want to polish them slightly so they're more appreciable.

The problem is, I can't afford professional lapidary equipment. As a corollary, though, I don't need professional results--so what can I do? I've done some preliminary research online but I can't find any good resources with the obvious keywords. And I know firsthand that commonly available diamond Dremel tips grind down/disintegrate(!) when faced with rock, but maybe I need special tips? Rockhounds, unite!

Nethack-like copper mining game? In space?

cobaltnine — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 07:14:45 -0800

Help me identify a computer game! Mid-late 90s, Windows, visually a Nethack or Roguelike but thematically entirely different: you were sort-of mining for copper nodules, crystals, oxygen bubbles, and possibly seeds for plants. There were high ASCII symbols for the copper (other metals, too; I think silver would show up later) nodes, which kind of looked like paisley shapes, or a teardrop with a hook on the end. There were three different representative sizes and it would tell you how many grams each was.

I am pretty sure you had to get oxygen bubbles to survive, and that there was some sort of plant or seed involved as well. I say 'sort-of' mined because I don't think it gave you any sort of personality. You may not have actually mined - it might have been 'absorbed' or 'eaten' or something instead. There may also have been crystals. It was not an online game. (Most definitely not Motherlode, although the theme is similar.) I'm pretty sure I played it in college, which means it was downloadable in the late 90s. Serious bonus points if you actually find me the game.

Web scraping onling banking sites?

mphuie — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 16:28:36 -0800

Is there an tool/tutorial to web scrape secure sites like Online Banking or other sites that make sure that it's you that is logging in? I've been self learning web scraping and found it extremely useful, building proxies for my Nokia tablet, automation, through Perl & LWP.

I want to write something that will grab my bank balance, but those online banking sites seem to go through lots of hoops to make sure you are the one sitting at your computer trying to login.

I've tried deciphering all the tactics they use, javascripts, cookies, but it seems like theres more tricks they are using that I don't know about.

Is there some util that lets you analyze the actual behind the scenes events, headers, cookies, etc.. so I can just repeat them?

A low level tool would be great, but I'd be happy with a web recorder/automation program that would log me in (based on keystrokes, etc) and save the html so I could get my balance.

Mining accidents 101

goethean — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 13:26:28 -0800

My brother claims that the miners who died "could have walked right out". Is he full of it?

Number of coal miners?

viewofdelft — Fri, 06 Jan 2006 12:35:40 -0800

How many coal miners are there in the US? I can't find a current and definitive number anywhere. The Bureau of Labor Statistics website gives the number of miners (spread across several suboccupations), but I'm looking specifically for those American workers whose job it is to extract coal from the earth.

Lost MeFi link to Mining Pictures

Mid — Wed, 13 Apr 2005 16:10:33 -0800

I can't find a link to some photography that I swore I saw on MeFi in the past few years. The pictures are aerial photos of huge mining operations, in Montana, I think. The photographer's site talks about finding beauty in pictures of huge monstrous mines and other ecological monsters. I think it refers to the idea of "reclamation"--reclaiming the messed up areas as something beautiful. Googlefu not working.

What are the ethical consequences of using up an uninhabited planet?

crumbly — Mon, 21 Jun 2004 09:54:18 -0800

What are the ethical consequences of "raping" a lifeless planet like Mercury or Venus of its natural resources. Assuming there's a way to establish with absolute certainty that there is no life on, above, or inside the planet, and with the understanding that we won't remove more than .001 percent (or some reasonable number) of its total mass, what's the problem?

Mining news sites for data.

PrinceValium — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 17:02:47 -0800

Is there a way, without constant human intervention, to (1) mine either Google News, Yahoo News, or the AP for new obituaries and (2) drop the name, age, blurb, and URL into a database? I've pondered this for a while. A really crude way would be to search headlines for ", [0-9][0-9], " and " dies at [0-9][0-9]." But I'm not sure this would pick up everything. For example, if I search Google News for "kangaroo" I get only two links out of about 20 that identify Bob Keeshan's name, the reason for his fame, and his age. Most say simply "Captain Kangaroo Dies". And only the NYT headline has all the data elements separated by commas (and is likely not consistent on that point with each obit.)

Any cleaner ideas?