Rambling

The 10th Day of XYMas….QGIS

rjhale · Jan 3, 2020 ·

……….andthis was a given…….So what am i going to tell you that you don’t already know about QGIS. If you’ve even remotely been up here for any length of time you know I’m a fan and use the software for work, attempt to train people in it, and just generally enjoy it.

So here’s something a bit different: QGIS Community

Yeah – it’s not a technical post but a post about the group of people I’ve gotten the chance to talk to over the last year:

Nyall Dawson – he completely rocked the QGIS meeting we had in Chattanooga. Remotely. He stayed up from 11:00 PM to over midnight (Australian whatever time) to talk to a group of people in Chattanooga. Not paid and never blinked. He’s a major contributor/programmer in the QGIS Community. He’s awesome.
Nathan Woodrow – The first person to answer my first QGIS Question (maybe in 2012?). He randomly pops up in the morning and we chat. Why? I have no clue why anyone wants to talk to me but I appreciate the random notes, google chats, and questions. Plus he has to put up with me asking random python questions.
Saber Razmjooei – So Saber popped up one day and asked “Hey have you heard about Input?” and he patiently waited for me to get time cleared out and walked me through the software. Even did a video hangout which meant for him it was after hours. It was awesome.

Why is QGIS So much fun? It’s these people. Not necessarily ONLY these people. It’s the interaction with the community. I’ve been in GIS for way to long so you can jump up and point at your technical support and I’ll go “meh”. Show me the people using the software and other people I can talk to at this point.

The QGIS Community starts here:

…and it builds out from there. Communication happens over the email lists. I tune in there and twitter for news and noise. It’s a good group of people who are friendly and good at answering questions. Bonus you get to watch this all get made if you want. Yes – watch this all come together as debates are held, questions raised, and problems are all out in the open. It’s awesome. I have filed terrible bug reports and good bug reports and people answer them. I have complained and they’ve responded with just being super nice about my complaining.

So I’d encourage you to join the email lists, donate time and resources, and contribute to a great project. So for the 10th day of XYMas – I give you a community of people.

The Sixth Day of XYMas…….North

rjhale · Dec 24, 2019 ·

Well – so much for wrapping this up before Christmas. I’ve got one more “general” post and then some specifics on QGIS and other things. Well – maybe not. I really don’t have much of a plan except write. in fact – writing with little to no editing.

So a few years ago I had a certification and I was looking at renewing it and people were talking about a test. There was a lot of discussion. In the middle of the discussion someone said “Well what if we make it too centered on one piece of software” and then someone else was worried “what if we make it practical” and anyway someone had the bad idea to turn to me and go “Hey what do you think?”

I said “I think you should take every GIS Person out with a map and a compass and turn them loose and if they don’t show up where they need to be they fail”.

…and that didn’t happen. As geo people we’ve turned maps into this art form to convey information while others of us have turned the information into bits and bytes and don’t care what it looks like on a piece of paper. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. I wished I was better doing both. I often sit and look at maps I make and wonder “Is this is usable for Navigation”. I’ll go out on a limb and say we rarely navigate with the maps we make. To be honest – why would you. We’ve got enough information on our maps it’s hard to get lost in an urban setting. What about out in the wilderness?

Way back in 1994 I won a compass for being smart or something during my BS Degree in Geology. More than likely “something” because back in the day I was a hair covered geologist. Back then you might have to make measurements and make notes on a map and possibly have to connect Point A to Point B with a pencil. I’ve rarely used the compass for much because not much long after getting this I dove into the world of computers and lost my hair and my rigged chiseled six pack abs.

For 2020 my plan is to make a map and go out with a compass and navigate around. Worry about Magnetic declination. Measure my pace. Make notes. No mobile data collection. No Maps on the web. Maybe I’ll stick a compass on my canoe and just worry about direction. Will it make me better at my job? Maybe. Will it be nice to get back to basics with a map and navigation. Oh yeah. How many of you can read contours on a map? Worry about contours! Do you put magnetic declination on a map?

So – get outside if possible and navigate around. Make some notes. Hey – you might try to make a map from scratch. Buy a compass (no clue what kind or type). Get out.

I had to look hard for someone that wasn’t a bearded-male-end-of-the-world-prepper to describe maps and compasses. Enjoy.

The Fifth Day of XYMas…..My Workstation

rjhale · Dec 20, 2019 ·

What? Hardware? You’ve only been complaining about Python for 3 out of the 4 articles….

So yeah I decided last night to talk about my computer…or at least my history of “computing” and how I ended up with this workstation. When young Randy walked out of college I’m not entirely sure that he had a computer. It wasn’t until something like 1998 where I made my first purchase of a large unwieldy desktop (Gateway). Most of my computing needs were handled at work (Federal Gov’t) where we had this mix of Sun Sparc stations, Intergraph Hardware, and some HP workstations.

When we made the move from ESRI Software on Unix machines to Windows machines I suddenly had to care about hardware and all the parts inside of a computer because the IT Department didn’t care. So we’d sit down and go “well we think we need this so lets double it” and we had some very very expensive computers back in the late 90s to early 2000s. How expensive? I can’t put my fingers on any proof but at one point we purchased a Dell Workstation that cost about $14,000 dollars. I think that was right about 2001 or 2002. We had a Silicon Graphics Workstation that I’m 100% sure cost something like $35000 in 1999 dollars.

hp workstation — I didn’t get rid of it. Vintage Dell running Windows XP from 2006

Flash forward to “Randy owning a small business” and what did I do? My first purchase was a Dell mobile workstation ($3000 pictured above). Next was a Dell lower end workstation that was about $1500. One day for fun I bought a cheap HP Laptop in late 2012. I think it was 14inch and it had a 100 GB hard drive and a whole 4GB of RAM for $350. I loaded Linux on it and started playing around in my spare time with it and trying to see what could I do GIS wise. Over time the answer was “I can actually do quite a bit in 2013 with this laptop”. Sometime that same year I started my move into a mixed environment of ESRI/FOSS4G. Sometime late in 2013 I decided to move my main workstation (Desktop) over to linux and run windows 7 in a virtual machine. That led to more experimentation.

What did I learn from all of this? FOSS4G runs light on the hardware end. I can work with cheaper equipment – not that I like or advise doing it but I can if I have to. I decided this year to go more high end than I have in the past so I bought a System76 Laptop.

What does this get me? Well – I’m looking at at least 4 to 6 years of service. I carry it out with me to clients. I might carry it into the field. I went canoeing with it once (no it’s not water proof but I didn’t feel like leaving it in the car). 32 GB of ram is a bit much – but I wanted as much as I could afford for longevity purposes. I went slim on hard drive space because more of my life is going “in the cloud” so to speak.

I’ve got another laptop with 16gb of Ram and it’s very capable – I just like the system76 one better. It’s a lenovo business class machine and it’s fine. I’ve done one thing with it and that was stick a SSd drive in it to speed it up – other than that it’s stock and boring.

What do I do when I get my laptop?

I also run whatever is current from Ubuntu. Yes – Current. I don’t do Long Term Releases except on servers and one desktop machine. Although I’m currently using Pop-OS and enjoying it (it’s based off Ubuntu).

…and I do more things – but this is a good first whack at a workstation. My assumption is when I go to a clients I have no internet. I can’t tether to my phone is my next assumption because cell service won’t be available. It’s pretty much me and what I take with me (so I take all the software). No joke – I went to a client’s location in NW Tennessee and had no phone service for 4 days (Thanks Sprint) and at least one day of 0 internet. I was at the mercy of the Hotel and the Client for internet most days and that wasn’t a given. I was left with my brain to get work done – no “hive mind” for me that day.

laptop — Stickers are the Prison Tattoo of the 21st Century

What do I tell my clients? Get what you can afford. Maybe go just a bit better than you think but this isn’t a long conversation of gaming computers vs workstation vs nvidia vs radeon vs etc etc. It’s actually nice to look at a laptop and go “If you don’t blow up you’re good for 4-6 years”. I’m all for equipment with warranties and not running hardware to death – I just don’t care a lot about hardware anymore. My current fantasy is linux on a chromebook to see what I can do with some lower end computing power where my battery runs a good part of the day. Can I have a decent workstation with the cheapest of cheapest hardware? I think so.

“Yeah but what if I run Windows?” That’s 200% fine and there is nothing wrong with it (and some days I wonder if it would make my life easier). You may need something a bit better than a business class machine but you don’t need a gaming computer to run your FOSS4G. If you’re running ESRI Software there is enough info out there on what you need – but whatever you get your FOSS4G will work just fine on it. I say that and don’t be completely ignorant about your hardware – but you don’t need to worry as much as you think you need to worry. I’m big on not worrying these days.

So anyway – Hardware. Something I don’t worry a ton about BUT it is important BUT it’s less important than having good clean data.

My People

rjhale · Jul 8, 2019 ·

Let’s flash back to 1996. The Olympics were in full swing. I was 2 years out of college and working for the federal government. I had only been to one “conference” and that was only a state level academy of science meeting. I found myself standing at the underused Chattanooga Airport headed to Cincinnati and then to Palm Springs to the 1996 ESRI users Conference. Coolest part was I was so inexperienced in flying when we were delayed leaving Chattanooga because Al Gore was coming to the Olympics – I had no worry. I would make my connecting flight because there was no way they would leave Cincinnati without me on board. In Cincinnati I was standing in front of the near empty gate because the plane had left. So I was then routed to Chicago. I ended up in Palm Springs at nearly midnight. No rental car because somehow that had gotten cancelled. I stumbled into my room and sat there hungry and hating life with no luggage. The Luggage eventually turned up a little worse for wear. I think it went somewhere far away and was driven in….

The next day I found myself at registration at the Conference center in Palm Springs. I registered and went for a walk. I dragged my giant bag of stuff around with me. The Palm Springs convention center was big – but not terribly large. You could draw a dot on a map on “where are you from” and surprise there was only a few TN dots there. There were special interest groups. There were developers walking around. There were users. There was Bob Hope’s house down the street. There was golf. There was a lot of wind.

Two things happened that week.

I was blown away by a conference. I think there was only 3 or 4 thousand there. Maybe less. It was a good group of people. I mean the conference was nice – but I found a lot of like minded people there making maps and worrying over data. So I talked to people. I spent a lot of time just wandering the halls taking notes. The one talk that still sticks with me 23 years later – the guy that wrote ArcPlot gave a demo of “Tricks and Tips for Arcplot” (I think). As I was the guy who was getting hit by a lot of map requests I was pretty overjoyed to know I could edit data from Arcplot (plus copy files and move things around on the network without leaving ArcPlot). I also got a chance to hassle one of the arcpress developers (look it up – I’m not explaining it). The guy (whose name I can’t remember) finished the demo and turned to the near silent crowd and went “TADAAAAAAA” and everyone clapped. I may have stood up and clapped – Printing was a big deal back then.
I was sitting in the audience when Jack (who seemed really irritated at the Conference Center) announced “We are going to San Diego next year”. I think I went back to San Diego in 98 or 99 and once more in 2002.
(Third thing) – Some guy from ESRI Pulled up at a door in a VW bus. He had a keg or three crammed in the back and it was all held in place by some Sun Sparc Servers (look it up). I helped him Unload the beer. We didn’t drop a server. Imagine that happening in San Diego…….

The move to San Diego ended up doubling the crowds. To me it was more of a pain to get a room and navigate your way downtown than it was worth. Yeah it is nice to see 10,000 other people who were doing “GIS” things – but I really don’t remember much from those years except for the times I snuck out of the conference and went to the San Diego Zoo and was probably almost eaten by a shark in La Jolla.

I’ve been watching Twitter and the ESRI UC is coming up for 2019.

I won’t be there. Which – no joke if I bought a ticket I doubt I’d be let in the front door….and that’s completely fine. That side of my career isn’t that exciting currently.

If I look back at my entire career in Geo (now at 27 years) it’s always been a never ending pile of new things coming down the pike that were earth shaking getting announced at this conference. Learn Arcview Avenue – hey now we are switching to VBA. You can compile ArcINFO with TK for a better ArcTools Experience. Lemme learn VBA and now we’re at VB. Hey we have MapObjects…no wait ArcObjects…….no wait we’ve got SDE for databases…….and look a map on the web…Hey Python I should learn that now…3D (Which I saw a demo of in 1996) is going to be revolutionary. My social media is exploding with posts and pics and that was me pre-social media on cloud 9 talking to people and learning that:

“HEY WAIT YOU MEAN YOU’VE HAD ARCMAP CRASH TOO…..IN FRANCE….OMG WE ARE SO CONNECTED”. Hah. I joke. Mostly.

Anyway – where was I going with this. I have no idea to be honest. I spent an hour looking for the pics I took in Palm Springs. I took a ton of pics with my fairly new 35 mm camera (look it up) – and they are somewhere in a box.

I did crank up ArcMap 10.2 this week to fix a problem I had that couldn’t be fixed in QGIS. No Joke. I sat there just staring at the screen. I couldn’t remember how to dump a DWG to a file based Geodatabase. Back in 2014 I spent an inordinate amount of time wishing for functionality that wasn’t in QGIS that I had in Arcmap. Friday I spent an inordinate amount of time wishing for functionality that wasn’t in ArcMap that I had in QGIS. Plus I really need to look at Pro at some point. Sigh.

If I could bounce back in time to 1996 Randy and go “Hey in 2019 you can’t remember how to work ESRI products” he would probably laugh and throw something at me. I would also yell for him to enjoy that hair while it lasted which won’t be much longer. Oh yeah – trade the truck sooner. Go ahead and buy a dumpy house in 1997 on the North End of town and don’t worry – it will be fine as you won’t leave your job for another 10+ years.

For all of you out at the ESRI UC – enjoy yourselves. It will be a massive week of demos and things happening within the ESRI Ecosystem of products. What will I do this week? Teach a QGIS Class for a group who just transitioned out of the ecosystem. As much crap as I give the ESRI people at times – I do miss it a little (a little).

Anyway – I’m gonna go watch a movie and hope 1996 Van Halen doesn’t Break up.

2018 Year in Review

rjhale · Dec 17, 2018 ·

I’m going to do this a bit different than in previous years – I would do these huge multi-posts covering all sorts of things from work to life to social media etc. As I’ve not been particularly motivated to write much over the last couple of months I’m going to boil this down into one longer post.

Social Media.

In general, this year Social Media was one giant dumpster fire. I started removing people off Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook. I actually unfollowed probably half of my facebook crowd just because. I’m still fairly active on twitter – but the posts aren’t that serious or relate to work. I put less out there on social media – which if you follow me you’re probably going “no you’re quite active”. While yes – it’s silly stuff or music. I decided my personal life and social media need some separation. I probably tossed 300 people on twitter. Maybe 100 off Linkedin. I need to toss more. Everyday I see less need to be on Facebook except I have people from far and wide on there and enjoy the stories. The increasing security blunders and data mining though makes it harder every month to stay.

After some internal arguing over the Newsletter – I restarted it and am doing one about every 2 months. It’s tough – I may stop doing it in 2019. I really feel like it’s outlived it’s purpose for me as people are finding me through the QGIS community or the open source community. It does serve as a “I’m not dead yet” reminder to people though.

Geohipster

I didn’t get a ton of interviews done this year – but the ones I did were a blast. I think I ended up with 3 – and they were a good 3 (or 4). Howard Butler, Tina Cormier, and Maggie Cawley all made the pages. I did a quick search and pulled those out – if I missed one Sorry! I’ve got a few more lined up – and I’ll get to you just bear with me.

Life

So 3 or so years ago I figured out I was working too much. Which – as a one person shop it’s easy to do. So I started Canoeing again. Biking. This year I probably biked and hiked more than I’ve done in a long time. I need to do more of it because I like junk food. My habits are slowly changing and I’m shedding some weight.

I did get some spectacular sunsets in my canoe though

On the personal personal front – A good friend died back in 2017 and this year we made large steps into wrapping up his personal affairs. No will and no plan will cost you about a year and a half of blood, sweat, and tears for those that are left. It’s tough. Many a day I would work here and leave to go to his place and work…then leave and come back and work more on my stuff. It’s hard – I do wished he was back – but if he was I’d probably kill him.

Double Bonus this year – the jeep made it’s appearance back on the roads of Chattanooga. Too much neglect had left it in disrepair – and the cure for that is money. So tires, thermostat, hoses, 2 U joints, a top, some fuses, some paint….and it’s back and sucking gas like it’s the year 1999. I should get rid of it but it makes me happy.

and in this picture I hadn’t yet to realize a u-joint was about to break. Luckily it didn’t.

Conferences

I made way too many conferences this year: TNGIC, FOSS4GNA (in STL), 2 FOSS4G SE Meetings, and the Alabama 811 Conference. With all of those I did some sort of training on QGIS or I spoke about Open Source Software.

Slightly different view of the Arch in STL

I had the first ever flat on the way to the 811 conference which made me late rolling into Montgomery Alabama. I left with plenty of time – IF NOTHING HAPPENED – and something did. I did break a land speed record making up lost time – but I was still late. Planning is not for dullards. I have to allow myself some wiggle room where people are relying on me to be “there”. In general I don’t – and I have to break that bad habit.

Finally – WORK

Work was up. I moved two clients into a mixed environment this year of ArcGIS/QGIS/PostGIS/Fulcrum. In doing so I learned a lot. What did I ultimately learn though from these two exercises:

Both were were concerned with data and making sure that data remained accessible, usable by everyone, and was maintainable. 110% doable with all the software I’m using.

In both cases the movement from ArcGIS to QGIS/PostGIS was mostly painless. What was painful was process. Customers don’t want to change their process. You have to change the way you work. So almost every wall I hit fell back to process. That made me tired. When I point and go “You can’t do it this way anymore” I’d no more get out the door before the phone rang “Hey we tried it the old way and it doens’t work this ain’t good”. Which – as a reminder ArcMap has been out now 20 years(?) – so I understand the change isn’t easy and it’s something I’ve got to work on more and more.

I desperately need to spend more time with postgresql/postgis. One of my clients called with a problem: the database was slow. Things were not working and I spent an inordinate amount of time trouble shooting database size, table size, triggers, the VM it was running on, and anything else I could figure out. I don’t want to be a half-ass database admin – BUT – I need to be knowledgeable if something doesn’t work right. So – I’ll be a better than a half-ass database admin.

I talked to more people this year. There is a general “want” to know about Open Source Software – be it out of general “I want to know” or “I’m tired of doing what I’m doing”. I’m also forgetting ArcGIS Skills and that bugs me a bit. I haven’t cracked open ArcGISPro and really have no desire to do it. On the one hand I need to as a consultant. On the other hand I’m busy enough with plenty to learn and enjoy on this side of things.

Conclusion

Overall I felt fulfilled with work this year – and that’s a rarity. I’m not burying jars of money in the yard but things are working better, I’m busy, and I’m funding my existence. I want to do more – and in doing so I assume I’ll have to get pickier in what I pick up as far as work. No was once again my favorite word as I did turn some clients away as it was work I couldn’t do or didn’t want to do. It’s hard saying no when you’re pushing possible income away I always have to stop and weigh “Is this the right thing to do for me”. In general – I think it is if I remember to stop and ask that question. Which – A happier me is better for everyone these days.

It was a good year. That’s weird to say. I’ve had enough bad years to make any normal person insane. I always second guess myself – but this year there was less insanity and less second guessing. It’s a good thing. More work. More technical. More enjoyment.

So – for those of you who helped – thank you. If you lent an ear – thank you. If you hired me to do something – I thank you most of all. If you stopped to hassle me at a conference thanks for the conversation. I don’t do what I’m doing without a little bit of a push from all of you.

So what do I do in 2019? Fight until I can’t. There’s a ton of bad data out there that needs fixed and explored. Bills gotta get paid. I need to learn more.

Rambling

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