Mobile GIS Training Lab
Well - I’m the proud leasee/leaser of 10 dell vostro laptops for the North River Geographic Systems Mobile teaching lab……or the North River Geographic Systems Mobile training Lab and Pawn/Bait Shop Tanning Salon emporium.
Anyway - I picked out the Vostro because, well, it was the only one I could get within my budget. I received a temporary license of ArcINFO and it ran - actually ran extremely well. I had to rip Macaffee off since it was continuously shutting down the license manager. I reinstalled arc twice trying to figure out why the license manager kept dorking up - apparently it was the firewall that came with Macaffee that was causing it.
Anyway - Authorized training is just around the corner.
Tags: Training
On the Business of GIS……
Some people have and will continue to call me nuts for having a small business in an economy like the one we have created. I accept the criticism - and possibly to small extent agree. So I sit and watch/read the news (I’ve turned into an online news junkie - unfortunately) you are pounded by the word bailout. The banks need a bailout. The auto industry needs a bailout. Newspapers need a bailout.
I disagree with the whole bailout action. Things are changing. The Auto Industry itself is changing. So why prop up a failing business model. There are a multitude of blue collar jobs at stake - if you bail them out how long do those jobs remain intact. A few months. A year. Two…….
So all this got me to thinking. The business model of a GIS. GIS is such a new thing in some respects that everyone is still wrestling with it. Everyone goes at it differently. Some people decide to roll the whole thing into a CAD environment - if you aren’t doing that then you are rolling out an ESRI solution. The more wealthy the organization or savvy the bigger a chance it has of succeeding. Some dive in and get only so far and the whole thing collapses. Some worry about one aspect of the big picture and unfortunately the Geographic Information System only encompasses one small aspect of an organizations spatial footprint. Some hire a consultant to go at it - in some cases this works and in some it doesn’t. If you’re lucky enough to roll it out then you have to contend with employees moving on and away. It makes me wonder if we aren’t going about this all wrong. Does there need to be a different way to go about this to ensure success? Possibly we’ve gotten so wrapped up in the way it’s currently being done that we are missing out on how it could be done differently. How many times has a GIS had to be bailed out? The GIS has taken a twist and a turn and bottomed out through no fault of it own. Of course I assume that the organizations hasn’t gotten nailed through a software/hardware upgrade. My argument is not for one software vs another - mines is the thought process of laying a GIS out and building it according to some framework.
Anyway - it’s a thought - take the whole idea of a GIS and throw it out and start over.
Tags: Rambling
Mobile Training Lab
Wel, the laptops came for the training lab. I leased 10 dell Vostro Laptops. They aren’t the fanciest laptops in the world but they will run ArcGIS - or actually it will as soon as I get a Temp license to make sure.
…and they run Vista - Vista Home Premium to be exact. So far the one I’ve unboxed I’ve had to reboot probably 5 times due to security updates. I’m ordering the training kit tomorrow.
It’s a hard thing being an Operating System agnostic…or would it be Unitarian. Anyway, I’ve never been a large fan of Microsoft. When I originally started using ArcINFO there was a slash in the name (Arc/INFO) and it ran on Unix or more specifically Solaris. Sun Sparcs were the hardware of choice. I’ve always been a fan of Unix more recently of Linux (Ubuntu). I set up Ubuntu on a laptop and was using it with Samba as a print server, but given everything else I was doing it was too big of a pain to set up.
Really it doesn’t matter. Data is data is data and it doesn’t matter as long as you get the needed result. Still it would be nice to set up all 10 laptops and just remote into them from the command line and do a controlled update. Right now I plan on opening up two at a time and letting them update and reboot at will.
If (Not Good Programmer) Then (get Better) Else Keep doing what I’m doing
So I’m getting old(er).
Back in the Good Ol’ Days when ArcWorkstation and AML were all the rage I was pretty good at hammering out a script to do about anything. Make a menu - fire off a plot - assign attributes for a data collection project….<sigh>.Avenue came along and I spent a large amount of time working out Avenue solutions for ArcView 3.X.
….and I miss AML/Avenue. Actually I miss script writing. I miss hammering out a script to get something done. Yes - It’s possible in Arcmap to write a quick script in VBA and execute it. You can whip out a python script/model to handle geoprocessing tasks. What I’ve been finding is that I really don’t have to program to get from start to finish. In the last two years I’ve made numerous GP models - a few VBA scripts - mostly I haven’t had to program at all. I feel like I need to to be a better programmer to be a better consultant but I don’t want to get into providing and supporting software.
I had the chance to go to two presentations at the Ga Urisa conference: One by Binary Bus and one by Geocove. Both presentations were focused around custom solutions - Binary Bus implementing a custom solution with ArcGIS Server and Geocove implementing an ArcGIS Mobile solution. I like going to presentations that make me feel stupid. These two made me long to program again - to create something. It also made me want to dive into ArcGIS Server - I haven’t had the chance as a consultant to dive into that arena yet. It also made me think that I need to get into the ESRI Developer Network…except that goes back into developing, deploying and supporting custom solutions. I’m not a big enough company to do all that. At some point I hope to get a chance to work with one or both of these companies - it’s good to watch people do something at which they are good - and these guys are good.
Anyway - Enough Whining. Back to work.
Tags: Rambling
ESRI Authorized Instructor
You’re supposed to have a business plan - or at least that what everyone tells you when you’re starting out. I have on in my head - and have been following it pretty religiously. The time frame at different moments has been off but more or less its working. So one of the things I’ve been struggling with is getting my ESRI Authorized Trainers “license” or approval. Well I finally got it.
It took a couple of tries - in the middle of getting it ESRI changed the requirements - but I got over that issue and completed it. So after basking in the afterglow for about a week I’ve started trying to hammer out classes and a plan.
Can I fill up a class with 10 people?
Tags: Training
Ga Urisa Conference
Sorry for the length between posts for all 6 of you who have been reading along….
I’ve been wrestling with alot of things popping up - the biggest currently was the Ga URISA Conference in Athens GA. I decided to present the work I had been doing for the Conasauga River Alliance. I’ve mentioned several time in the newsletter and mentioned a couple of times in the blog things I’ve been doing with them. The amazing thing for me was that for the exception of about 1 hour of complete and total panic the paper went smoothly….and people were entertained. It appears the Powerpoint slide will be published from their website - So I’ll actually be published…which will help with re-upping the GISP when it comes time.
Sanford and Son Junk Barge
So this weekened - Actually Saturday - was the Tn River Rescue. For the Last 20 years, people volunteer to go and drag garbage out of the river and off the shoreline. I participated 14 years ago and actually haven’t paid attention enough to remember when it happens. Except for this year - I remembered. So I dragged the canoe out, grabbed a neighbor, and decided to go. I was under the impression that you went from the starting point (Boat Dock) to the ending point (Cabin). Actually everyone just hovered around the starting point - or actually the starting point was the ending point. Except I and my neighbor never quite figured that out - so we floated 5ish miles collecting anything we could put in a canoe. Actually in a 15 foot 8 inch canoe you can put one tire, two 40 gallon trash bags of cans, 1 piece of Styrofoam, 1 drift net full of dead stuff, and a bunch of bottles. What really topped off the volunteer effort were people asking us if we were part of the River Rescue to which we replied that we weren’t - We were just hanging out collecting crap.
Anyway, working off the idea that any advertising is good advertising I made a map. Ten Meter DEM data converted to a hillshaded raster and then hypsometrically shaded. Streetmap Data was the source of the roads. NHD data provided the streams and water polygons. One interesting thing I did was add some 2007 NAIP at something like 75% transparency. So you get the a hint of imagery and a look reminiscent of a bump mapped tree pattern. This map really needs to be done at a larger scale to be useful. I’m thinking about just keeping the map - or actually spending some time to set up a mxd and geodatabase and keep collecting data - like houses and camping locations to assist in the 2009 River Rescue Effort or help the Tn River Gorge Folk.
Tags: Cartography, Conservation
Processing in the Cloud
I felt like I needed to mention Cloud Computing….possibly the stupidest phrase to come around since Web 2.0. I’m Done.
Tags: Rambling
Excuse me while I whip this out…..
Way back in College I was a Geology major. I had run through about every major and couldn’t really find something to sink my teeth into. I was a Environmental Scientist major for a while - until I finally got disgusted with the program and switched to Geology. The Environmental Major seemed to only make you good at arguing - or just throwing out innocuous statements about whatever you were doing at the time. The great thing about Geology is that you need to perform well in alot of subjects to be successful. The same thing with GIS - Things are tied together spatially - be it fossils, environmental data, habitat, wells, etc, etc. So in order to really be good at it you need to know a little about everything.
The curse of GIS are plots. Too often GIS is really boiled down to a plot with no analysis involved. So you end up with alot of people who “are good at GIS” but really they are just good at collecting data and making plots. Don’t get me wrong - data collection and map production play a huge role in a functional GIS. For the last few years that’s all I’ve done. Collect some data and hammer out some plots.
So the other day one of my clients slipped up and gave me too much data…or actually gave me data and didn’t really realize what could be done with it. So the Forestry guys I work with gave me some “plots”. Forestry plots are (as far as I can figure) are done at specific intervals and describe tree quality/type/forestry type stuff. By the time they are done they have a tremendous amount of data that gets fed into a database for reporting purposes. Until about a year ago all this was done manually. Running the data through Arc allowed me to lay out the plots beforehand and load them into a GPS unit. Since they are using a recreation grade unit (but a good rec grade unit) they record all the information on a pad of paper.
So I took all the points I had previously generated and attached a description to them. I then ran the resulting feature class through the Inverse Distance Weighted Technique. I took the elevation model (10 Meter DEM) and produced a degree slope and removed all data with a slope greater than 45 degrees. Voila - Acres of usable timber. Of course I’m not entirely comfortable with my approach - I need to research the IDW function greater to make sure it’s sound. Anywho - check out the maps. At the end of it all - A Plot. BUT - A plot with intelligence. At least I felt it had some though behind other than what color do I make this road. So am I a Forestry Person….No, but I have a greater understanding of what they are trying to do now. So I have a small amount of Forestry know-how to file away under my hat. Not bad for a washed out Geologist. Just so you know - the Sequence Below are the Plots, Plots on a Hillshaded dem, IDW created surface, Plots on a slope, Feature class of surface with areas above 45 degrees removed. I tried to keep the map symbology a red-green color scheme - where red being less desirable and green being desirable.
I’ll try to stick the final map up here shortly.
Tags: Analysis, Cartography, Forestry, Geoporcessing
My Chances…..
Throw the laptop in a bag, grab my compass, get in the jeep and go….
Take the test
Tags: funny