North River Geographic Systems Inc

Spatial Problem Solving

FOSS4G

QGIS 3.8.0 and QGIS 3.4.9 Released

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First off – sorry for the lack of talking on my end. I’ve been sitting/thinking more than usual which has led to a pile of things I want to talk about. This blog has always been good for an outlet and that will happen soon enough. In between the random essays I’ll dive back into my comfort zone of technology like today. The dust has now settled and you should be seeing a new QGIS version(s) out and about.

QGIS 3.8 has appeared. For those of you in the know or not in the know – QGIS gets a new version every 4 months. You never have to sit back and wonder when exactly as it’s all been planned out. I’m going to dive into some 3.8 tech things shortly – but for those who want to read the changelog: http://changelog.qgis.org/en/qgis/version/3.8/

The next important thing – the 3.4 LTR (Long Term Release) has moved to 3.4.9. So for those of you who value having software that doesn’t change for 1 year – update! I get to talk (thankfully) to a lot of people who are using QGIS and I always run into 2 situations: “Hey we just updated to the new release” or “We’re running the LTR and we never update”.  Every release of the LTR brings a new round of bug squashing and improvements but no new functionality which makes it perfect for corporate environments or educational environments.

So choose wisely and happy QGIS’ing.

Tallahassee FL FOSS4G Meetup on April 3rd 2019

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Florida people – well at least panhandle Florida people – there is a FOSS4G meeting happening in Tallahassee Florida on April 3rd 2019.

For more information I would direct you toward: Seth and Rick

When

  • Wednesday, April 3 2019
  • 6:00 – 8:00 PM

Where

  • Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson, P.A.
  • 106 E. College Avenue, Suite 700, Tallahassee, FL 32301
  • *This is the Highpoint Center off of College and Monroe. Enter from College Avenue and go to the 7th floor. Meeting will be in the boardroom.

Food and Drink Options

  1. The firm of Stearns Weaver Miller et. al. have graciously offered to buy beer for pizza to anyone that wants to take advantage.
  2. I’m running a pizza and beer potluck for anyone that might have conflict of interest concerns about free food and beverage. I’ll pick up a pizza and beer on the way over and you guys can throw me some cash out of pocket to help cover costs.
  3. Bring your own.

Thanks again to everyone for their interest in participating, and a big thanks to Christopher Smith for his help securing a great space for us to meet and talk about FOSS GIS!

2018 Year in Review

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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.

How much Crap do you need?

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.

Wooo – the teacher is late for class. 

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.



A tale of two FOSS4G meetings

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In the Spring of 2017 I had a small FOSS4G meeting in Knoxville TN and the general feeling after it finished was “When are we doing this again?”. So the conversation started and surprise – we had two meetings.

The first meeting happened in Knoxville on August 13th 2018. We had 9 presentations. The big headache I had with this meeting is it all comes down to sponsorship. I wanted it cheap – but I didn’t want to do in the hole again to do this. So we had sponsors. We also had a $10 dollar charge that could be offset with a scholarship if needed.

We had right around 50 people and covered everything from postgis tricks to measuring vegetation in the Great Smokey Mountains with LIDAR.

The second meeting was in Huntsville Alabama on August 14th 2018. The GIS Association of Alabama stepped forwarded and covered all the expenses. There was no charge for this one.

Fifty people came from the North End of the State to hear about QGIS, working with FOSS4G tools, and Jupyter Notebooks.

So what is the point? Actually is there a point? I sat around most of the day playing with how I wanted to summarize these two meetings. Meetings like this are hard. You have catering, a worry no one will show up, and a bigger worry no one will come and speak. We gave close to 100 people a chance to see something different. Which was double of what we did last year.

When I first started going to GIS meetings back in 1995 it was exciting. People would get up and speak and we’d all compare notes and figure out that we were all wrestling with the same problems. We were writing AMLS and buying workstations and digitizing old maps. Everyone had some sort of ESRI based user group. Maybe they were Intergraph. Maybe they had bought other software.

Flash forward to now and I’m consulting and not working for the Feds. User group meetings have morphed into these multi day extravaganzas that meet in your area…possibly not. You have to budget time and hotel reservations and it’s just a pain. So you end up not talking to your fellow geo people….or as we saw over the last two days people with specialties where geo is another trick in the bag.  Of course there is twitter and slack and facebook and linkedin and 100 different ways to talk to one another. What if you don’t?

So lets have a meeting centered around FOSS4G……or meetings. They don’t have to cost much. Maybe they cost $10 a person. Maybe they are free.  For Knoxville I poured about 2 to 3 hours a week over the course of 3 months…so about 40 hours. It wasn’t that hard – get a few people together and it’s less difficult. Find a low cost/free location. Huntsville had theirs in a courtroom. Knoxville had theirs at the University.

So in 2018 – I would like to get people together to talk about FOSS4G. Maybe you have a friend with a commercial solution in place for his organization. Maybe they have nothing. I think ESRI owes a large part of their success from the early days of getting people together to talk. We can do the same for QGIS/PostGIS/Geoserver/GDAL/etc. It’s a big world out there – you can mix and match about everything. I may not be able to make a North America Meeting (FOSS4GNA). Maybe these smaller meetings can scratch an itch for people and I can do that instead.

There’s no one to tell me I can’t. So what am I going next year? Workshops and a meeting in Knoxville. It sounds like the same thing will happen in Huntsville.

QGIS 3.2: Metadata

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On the heels of the “document your data” post  I’m about to turn my writing towards QGIS 3.2.

One of the things you should worry about with your data is documenting. Why did you do what you did with attributes and fields? Amazingly enough – most of my clients don’t know or just go “OK” and add whatever they think they need. They are busy. Busy people sometimes don’t slow down enough. In the case of your data – slow is better.

Which brings us to – Metadata. I don’t know the current state of metadata in the world. I searched the internet. My eyes went crossed as I read things and I restarted this post.

If you look at 2.18 (Current Long Term Release), metadata in QGIS looks like this:

 

qgis 2.18 metadata

Not bad considering the this is a newer development in the life of this Open Source Desktop.

If you take a look at QGIS 3.2:

qgis 3.2 metadata

You can write metadata. You can save it. You can reload it for later editing. This was a funded feature for QGIS by Arpa Piemonte ( The Italian EPA – which I would assume is comparable to the US EPA) and implemented by North Road. How excellent is that? Actually – very excellent. Imagine if my fellow users here in the US pitched in for development? Good things will happen.

So my next go around I’ll most likely be using this feature for documentation. For fun I might document parts of the current project and see how it blends with the FGDC Metadata standards.

Any documentation is better than none – so write!

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