North River Geographic Systems Inc

Spatial Problem Solving

QGIS

The Ninth Day of XYMas…..Fail Big

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Fail big.

Fail hard.

You learn a lot from Failing.

I hesitate to use the word Fail or Failure because it’s pretty harsh and maybe it’s not a good indicator of trying something new and sucking at it. Except I deal with Failure every day as a person in a technical field and a small business owner. I have failed a lot. About 5 years ago I stopped really hating the failures and looking at it as an opportunity to be better at everything from Tech to Business to just being lower case me.

How hard have I failed?

  • One year I made so very little money I don’t even want to give you a dollar amount.
  • One year I tackled a job that had hundred of flat files and I should have loaded it in a database. Instead I decided to muck through it using Python. Oh that hurt.
  • One time I let a client call the shots on a project and I went along convinced they knew what they were doing and ignoring every red flag up until I took the hit for the job failing.
  • I have yet to write a QGIS Plugin (that was my goal for this year).

BUT

  • I learned more about business
  • I learned more about database
  • I learned how to say “No” to clients.
  • I still learned a lot from my failures and got a chance to communicate with some QGIS Developers.

So I’d highly encourage you to take a chance and fail at something. Maybe don’t flag it as a failure – but not succeeding at everything has taught me a lot. I had a question a few years ago of “Hey I want to be a rock start like you in the GIS field!” and I said “A. I’m not a rock star and B. You have got to F*&%^ up a lot….and fix it. If you can break something you can put it back together and that’s the first step.”.

Which – my super power early on in my career was not worrying about things breaking. If it broke I would fix it. I might have to sit at my desk for 12 hours but I was going to learn and make it work. I did. Be it a computer issue or a data issue – break it and fix it.

Bonus – I fail every week at something….BUT – my repeatable failures get fewer and fewer. The new failures are a whole other discussion – but I do get the chance to learn.

My new favorite thing: People screw up and this guy fixes the screw ups (I have a jeep and dream of being a tow truck one day so it’s the best of both worlds)

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.

 

The 12 days of XYMas

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First off this might be the 13 Days of XYMas.

Inspired by Nyall Dawson’s 24 days of QGIS (which you should check out on twitter) I’ve decided to do a 12 days of “Tools” or “GIS” or “GEO” or something – but 12 things I dabble in and enjoy and relate to my life in Geo and at least one or two of my life outside of geo. I’ve been on a bit off on the whole blogging thing as of late. I start a post and never finish it. I may finish it and then go “What’s the point” and it never gets published. So this will be a bit Therapeutic also.

In starting off it was pointed out:

I really wanted to have fun with this so it instead of the boring Xmas I decided to make it XYMas. To which:

https://twitter.com/atanas/status/1202952348135497729

 

I mostly know what I’m going to cover – and this might end up being a little of “Year End” housekeeping also. So come in for the “Holy Crap” and Stick around for GDAL, PDAL, SQL, QGIS, Canoes, and Life.

Anyway – till the next post……

QGIS Workshop January 2020

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The first class of the revamped QGIS Workshop is coming up January 15th and 16th 2020. This class is going to be a little bit different than the other iterations. I’ve slowly been adding/taking away content to drive toward this being a class focused on an Enterprise Open Source implementation. It’s lead to a lot of back and forth on this end for the future of the training class.

Right now the 16 hour class covers:

  • Interface
  • Symbology
  • Geo-processing and Plugins
  • Editing
  • Layout manager
  • Raster Tools
  • Field Calculator
  • Forms
  • Processing

Day 1 is certified by the QGIS Community and I’m working on Day 2 getting certified – so I should have an answer on that shortly (so this class will support the QGIS Community). Of Course that leaves me wondering where Day 3 goes – and I’m staring down the barrel of PostGIS. Which has been my most talked about non-existent class at this point. Every time I start on it I back off and wonder if I’ve done enough in QGIS to prepare you for that angle.

Anyway – Hope to see you there! Any questions give me a shout!

Training Schedule for the QGIS Workshop for 2020

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QGIS Classes have been scheduled through 2020 – which is a first.

Changes – oh there are several:

  • QGIS Workshop is 2 days now making it 16 hours total. We’re covering everything from the interface to editing to building forms to symbology. It’s going to be a busy two days.
  • Class is still hands on – so show up with a little bit of background in GIS. We hit the ground running in this class.
  • We’re holding the class at Chattanooga State in an actual classroom. Which settles the massive issue of parking and facilities.
  • If you can’t come to Chattanooga – the class can come to you.
  • Bring your laptop with the latest and greatest of QGIS. We aren’t providing equipment (but I’ll help you get your equipment ready).

Dates for Chattanooga:

  • January 15-16 2020
  • May 13-14 2020
  • Sep 16-17 2020
  • Nov 18-19 2020

Cost: $700 for two days – and this comes with a certificate from the QGIS Community. I used to give people the option and it’s now mandatory for the class.

Registration: https://www.campusce.net/cscc/course/EventDetail.aspx?C=106

Location: Chattanooga TN

Where can you stay? Several places within 15 minutes of Chattanooga State. I would suggest downtown Chattanooga just for the fun of being in downtown. Plus if you bring significant others there is plenty to do.

Participants: Locked at 12 per class.

Anyway – I look forward to seeing you come to Chattanooga for a QGIS Class!

 

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