North River Geographic Systems Inc

Spatial Problem Solving

Rambling

Pesky Work Anniversary Again

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You’d think I’d remember – but I don’t. Linkedin reminded me though…..”Hey you’ve been in business X years”. Was it 12? 14? 11? I can’t remember.

I always try to write something just to remind myself of “where I am” in life. This year I find it exceptionally difficult to write anything without going back and doing a complete edit. So I decided this was the final Edit.

One February 12th I drove to Charlottesville VA for a quick speaking engagement at a conference. Went out to eat with a group. Had some excellent conversation. I finished up the talk and left the next day and headed back. Remarkable? No. What is remarkable is that may actually be the LAST IN-PERSON CONFERENCE I have this year. IN FACT – I said this weekend “Had I known I would have stayed an extra day or done something to enjoy some place greater than 5 miles from my house.

Every year I dig myself deeper into Open Source and deeper into data. I look back at me in 1992 and GIS was this fun thing to make maps with. I haven’t made a map as a final product in years but I’ve churned through a lot of data. This year things were looking up more than other years and I’ve been toying with “Maybe put someone on contract to help” which would give me more time for canoeing and what not.

Well…..Pandemic. I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t grasp the initial idea of a pandemic when it started. I’ve been through several: AIDS, Swine Flu, and watched in horror at Ebola. None of those actually hit home or caused me any personal discomfort. AIDS Should have. Swine Flu seemed to have came and went quickly. Ebola was one of those things you watched as a GIS person with some morbid fascination.

…But Covid 19.

So I watched work die. Finally 8 (are we at 10?)  weeks in things are starting to loosen up as people are calling and today I at least do an estimate.With work starting to look probably again my mental attitude has gotten better.

….but…My Stupid Home Town. YELLOW ISN’T GOOD

 

It’s a somber work anniversary. Four weeks into Quarantine I had decided “this might be it”. Eight weeks in and “What could I do if I wasn’t doing this…”. There are parts to this job I love and parts I hate – but I do love maps. I do love data. I do love the Community I’ve wedged myself into.

With that – I have no great end to this post.

Good People – Stay Safe!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Working from Home

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I told myself this year I was going to just type more and I’ve failed miserably at doing that. I’ve been caught up in projects, marketing, and life.

I work from Home. I know what you’re thinking – “How do you keep this international business running so smoothly from Home?”. It’s a struggle. Lately in the news there’s been a mass of “Don’t shake hands” or “Wash your hands” or “Avoid crowds” going around. So Check, Check, and Check.

Why do I work from Home? It’s just me at the moment. From the day I started this business I’ve had a home office. Sometimes I can close the door. Sometimes I can’t. Occasionally I’ll get fed up and have to leave and go work somewhere remotely be it a coffee shop or a friend’s office or something. Some days you have to get out. Most days I’m here with some music playing the background and working at something…be it a job….or marketing…or just writing.

Over the last 4 years  probably 90% of my work has become remotely driven. When I first started I was constantly driving to clients to do what was needed and over the last bit it’s been more and more remotely logging in and doing what I need to do. Most of my clients still house everything in house vs the cloud – BUT – the cloud is starting to slowly influence my life as clients move to remote hosting options.

It is hard though. In a past life I was married to a nurse and we dreaded August. Why August? Start of school. Kids would get sick and go to the Hospital and she would get sick and bring it to me and I’d get sick. For a month it was pretty miserable. After two months we were pretty much walking antibodies and were free from whatever was plaguing the normal world.

I get sick now like two times a year now – maybe less. Even one of my friends said the other day “You never get sick”. Well I’m hardly ever around people. The first  few years or so that was fine…well – it wasn’t fine because I was never really “getting out” except for work. The last 5 I’ve been actively getting out be it hiking or canoeing or taking small trips. Work can wait. My life and health can’t. Which if you’re ever thinking of working from home I would encourage you to monetize what you’re saving and invest in something to make you happy be it gym membership, outdoor something, or tickets to a sporting event.

Also – no kids. So if you just look at me in general I live in a bubble. A self contained germ free bubble. The last few times I’ve actively dated there were kids involved (for I have the brain of an 11 year old at times). I think the entire time that happened I stayed sick because I’m out of my bubble. “Oh My God why are you sick all the time”. I would then explain through my hacking and coughing that I live in this self contained environment. Send me to a conference for a week and by the end of it I’m starting to sniffle.

What does this all have to do with anything? Not much. How does this relate to the Covid 19 outbreak? For me not that big of a life change but for some it will be. So if you find yourself working from home:

  • Eat something good for you. Plan a meal you need to cook. If you go out to eat go somewhere you enjoy.
  • Do something – go for a walk/run/hike/bike ride/something that makes use of something other than your brain.
  • Stop when you get tired of sitting there. Do something else for a bit.
  • Set hours and stick to them.

So for all of you at home – enjoy something different. Eat your vitamins. Wash your hands. Stretch!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The 10th Day of XYMas….QGIS

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……….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

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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”.

<crickets>

…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

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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.

 

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