Yesterday, I attended TUGIS 2017, which was the 30th installment of Maryland’s annual statewide GIS conference. It was a great experience as there is a lot of innovative work going on in Maryland. The one-day format is specifically designed to be a high-value experience. Attendees trade the minimal impact on schedule for the fact that…
Triggered Notifications Using PostGIS, Redux
A while back, I wrote a post about using Python to generate triggered notifications in PostGIS. The approach described in that post is somewhat fraught with peril and I’ve learned a little bit more since then, so I have a different approach, using PostgreSQL NOTIFY and LISTEN, which I’ll describe here.
Engagement
A few years ago, we sold our house and moved into a new one that we had built. The old house happened to be the one in which I had grown up. The process of disconnecting from that house got me back in touch with a lot of tasks that had become muscle memory. For…
Making a Change
Most of my January has been a process that culminated in today’s announcement that I will be moving on from Zekiah and joining the team at Spatial Networks, where I will be taking on the role of Vice President of Engineering and Technology. https://twitter.com/tonyquartararo/status/823870924478906368 I’ve been at Zekiah for fifteen years and have had the…
HIFLD Open January 2017 Updates
I just got an announcement in my inbox of a major update to HIFLD Open. A number of new data sets have been added, along with updates to many others. The announcement also addressed HIFLD Secure, but I won’t touch upon that here. From the flyer attached to the email, here are the updates. If…
Thank You for 10 Years
My last few posts have been bit…shall we say…retrospective, so I won’t dwell there too much this time. The beginning of this month saw the ten-year anniversary of my first post on this blog. A lot has changed during that time in the geospatial industry. I am fascinated by the tools, concepts, and issues that…
Post GIS
Early in my career, I was interviewing for a job with a large, three-letter, consulting firm. I was going to be the “GIS guy” on the team. The interview was wide ranging and went well. We eventually got around to the topic of dynamic maps on web sites. To place this in the proper technology…
A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to a Calendar
The call for maps for the 2017 GeoHipster calendar has closed and review is underway. I haven’t begun collating the responses yet, so I have no idea how it will turn out, but I can say that, for me, the process so far has been personally rewarding. I was not involved in the making of…
Quick Takes From the Southern Maryland GIS User Group
The Fall meeting of the Southern Maryland GIS User Group happened on 5 October 2016. I’ve been involved with the organizing committee for two years, now. It’s been a learning experience trying to build a consistent community in a rural area. In addition to my colleagues of the organizing committee, I’ve met a lot of…
Directions
The 10-year anniversary of this blog is rapidly approaching and it is not lost on me that it has been laying rather fallow of late. I know others with long-running geospatial blogs have experienced similar situations at around the decade mark, and that only seems natural. If you are living your life well, the motivations…