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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 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 Eigth Day of XYMas…OpenJump

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Yeah – What?

So my one dirty secret is I use OpenJump more than I ever talk about. What is it?

From the website:

OpenJUMP is an open source Geographic Information System (GIS) written in the Java programming language. It is developed and maintained by a group of volunteers from around the globe. OpenJUMP started as JUMP GIS designed by Vivid Solutions.

So what do I use it for? I’ve got GRASS, OGR, and QGIS…so why?

Why Not. It works. This year I was dumping out Geopackages for a client. Client couldn’t read them. QGIS could. OGR2OGR could. GRASS was happy. ArcPro wasn’t giving the client an error log anywhere to make life easier when it wouldn’t read the Geopackage – so I loaded it into OpenJump and I got an error with an explanation. I fixed it. Life moved forward.

Sometimes If I get data (screwed up shapefiles) that won’t work in QGIS I toss it in here. Maybe I need just some random check so things get opened here. It doesn’t seem there is any developer overlap between OpenJump and QGIS/GRASS/Anyone. So it’s my sanity check…and yes it has a small user base but it’s worth playing with if nothing else than “you can because it’s free”.

The developers aren’t quick on a release candidate and that’s fine – I sorta like that it’s trailing the pack a bit in cutting edge things.

So for this eighth day of XYMas – show a random little known project some excitement.

The Seventh day of XYMas…PostGIS

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You knew this was coming….which I should have put this in the SQL post but I really felt like it needed it’s own short article.

I was introduced to PostGIS about 6 years ago. It took me about a year to wrap my head around it. When I started using it my first inclination was “Well this isn’t much different than SDE” except I had never used SDE for anything more than data storage. Suddenly I could use SQL and muck around in the data and do things.

I enjoy postgis – I still suck at it. I sit and struggle with the simpler things (In my opinion) but it’s the most satisfying tool I use daily.

If you went back to my second day of XYMas where I said ‘Learn GDAL’ and I’m going to somewhat contradict myself and go ‘Learn Postgis’ and at the very least learn Spatial SQL. Earlier I was talking to someone who was just starting out her career in conservation and her question was “I want to learn more about GIS so what do I need to do?”. She has a wide array of tools at her command from the current offerings from ESRI to QGIS. My response was “Let’s load all your data into PostGIS/PostgreSQL and you start working with it” (that’s the one tool we don’t have loaded). Which then lead to more of a discussion on why I thought this was important. I know what will happen:

  1. She will be slow to get started
  2. There will be one day where she’s alone in the office and the tech bug will hit and she will start working her way into PostGIS
  3. Suddenly you realize you’ve got a whole new world of ways to look at your data.

Anyway – yeah I know I’ve not dove into anything practical – but I actually have no idea how to do anything practical in the short space these articles take up. All I can say is learn:

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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