Happily, the world did not come to an end today and so we're able to write you one last newsletter before the end of 2012. This week, hear about a mapping project in Uganda, check out the work residents around the Gowanus Canal did after Sandy and view new maps from Wisconsin, Hawaii and Massachusetts. Enjoy!

1. Mapping Sandy at the Gowanus Canal. Check out the incredible images and documentation (click here for the follow up note) from aerial mappers at the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn as they took to canoes after Sandy to get aerial images of sewage flows in the Canal.

2. Balloon mapping in Uganda. A nice write-up on mapping the Jua Kali Village to document physical occupation in a, "fight against paternalistic displacing values on land tenure."

3. Greetings from a big red balloon in Seattle. We enjoyed watching a video from LMN Architects in Seattle who created a holiday card based around a big red balloon, people and place at play.

4. WinterCamp in Louisiana. A last reminder that WinterCamp in Cocodrie and New Orleans will be taking place the weeks of January 7-18. If you're available to join for a couple of days or the entire time, please fill out this form.

5. Spectrometer update and glitch. There has been a bunch of activity on the plots-spectrometry list in the last week, so if you're interested in following the technical conversations, please sign up! We've also sent out two updates in the last week, one that gives you all the resources to get going with your own spectrometer and the other to highlight and correct an error in the instructions.

6. Public Lab staff on break. Please excuse slow responses from staff over the next week. Although we're all usually hyper-connected, beginning tomorrow we're on a break through January 1st. If you need technical support, now is a great time to try sending that first email to the GrassrootsMapping, PublicLaboratory or Plots-Spectrometry communities!

7. SciStarter and Instructables Citizen Science contest. If you haven't seen it already, SciStarter.com and Instructables are teaming up on a contest that is looking for, "entries that create a solution to one of the challenges listed (see the link above), a new citizen science project or a tool that may be used for current/future citizen science projects." Prizes include things such as a telescope and time lapse cameras.

8. Research notes NIR camera calibration (posted by Babu) Calibration pictures (posted by ckmurt) Portable energy scavenging kit 0.1a (posted by donblair) New map: UW Fox, Menasha, Wisconsin (mapped by Andrew Shears) New map: Kukuiula, Koloa, Hawaii (mapped byKate Chanba and Katrina Nygaard) New map: Tidmarsh Farms Boston (mapped by Public Lab Boston)

Hope that everyone has a great weekend and we'll be back with more news from Public Lab in 2013! Warm wishes for a great Winter break and/or holiday season, Shannon