In a previous post I talked about my aunt that died and we couldn't find the cemetery. Found it! Welcome to the Bethel Cemetery. I will tip my hat to the inherent creepiness of the whole thing. Who is rising second? So I want to add cemeteries to OSM. In my first adventure with Find-A-Grave, I came up with 167 cemeteries.

OpenStreetMap data extracted into thematic layers and converted to cloud-native file formats that are easy to use with software from DuckDB to QGIS.

When I talk to people in public service about open source GIS, I typically hear one of a few things: They are avid users of FOSS GIS software already They know about it, but are worried about hiring people or integrating with existing technology They know about it, but are concerned about o

It's been a while since I've done a QGIS US meeting. Part of it was burnout and part I've been busy with work and life. So we're talking projections tomorrow. Proj is a bigger project than just QGIS - but it's nice to know how that project is moving along. Meeting Link: Google Meet meeting Time: September 22, 2026 11:45 AM→ 1:00 PM (New York)

Above is a map from the 2026 Geohipster Calendar by Antonio Smith - Noteworthy because it's East Tennessee. The 2027 Geohipster calendar is now accepting admissions. You may think "Well it's a bunch of open source weirdos over at Geohipster" and you could be right - but we're also a group of Map weirdos. The above map used about everything you can use for maps and graphs.

I was asked today how I rated this trip and I give it an 8 out of 10. As I was telling people in class it's been "Pre-Katrina" since I was in Louisiana. I'm actually down here training people on using QGIS. It's been a while since I did the 8 hour intro class. It's been even longer since I did the Intermediate class.

Through a long series of events I found myself teaching QGIS in a classroom again. It's been a while. I used to just "hold" classes and sometime during the pandemic I jsut stopped. Occasionally I'll get a call for 3 or 4 people that want training but generally I've been moving stuff online. For added mysteriousness: So during training, the question came up on basically "What do you do when you have no internet access".

I had mentioned it some but it's probably been coming up on 6 months since I even mentioned training. Right before I decided to attempt to die in 2025 I had started building a training website at training.northrivergeographic.com. Basically it's my Intro to QGIS class spelled out. The plan is to add more training but I've been a bit uninspired.

I've been trying to stop once a week and do something fun with QGIS. Post Heart Incident I do a lot of walking. I've been re-exploring some places I used to go in town to exercise and one is the TN River Walk. I realized the other day I needed to do some OpenStreetMap updating along the riverwalk. So what did I find....A sign I've been walking past and ignoring.

I sad at the start of the year I wanted to blog once a week. I've been simplifying my website and I just want to put "more stuff" out there. Some posts may be work related - some may not be. So this isn't work - but it is work: QGIS-US. I've not said a ton about the QGIS-US Group because I've been busy organizing meetings and trying to get some work done for clients.

A few posts ago I babbled about cartography. I've never had the patience for Cartography mainly because two things usually happen...well three things: the map can't be bigger than 8x11 the map must have everything on it Make the map however you want except we will change it at the last second. A couple of years ago I did a map for a local park.

...aaand I'm back home. So I've been to a lot of conferences. Some Good. Some Bad. This one was good. Better than I had hoped. So what was my main takeaway from it? They keynotes were a great contrast of people/computers. OSM is all about the people. I had no clue how active OSM US has become. The things they are doing caught me completely off guard.

By the time you read this I will be sitting in the outskirts of Nashville Tennessee for the annual State Wide GIS Conference. I've attended this conference for the last 15 or so years off and on. There were come years I missed - some I went joyfully...some I just went. One time....maybe 3 times I was a vendor. A few times I was a business partner of some sort with the conference.

I can sum it up: It's not much of one. Way back in my younger days I was infatuated with ArcPlot (which was the plotting portion of ArcINFO). From there I moved to Arcview, ArcMap, and eventually here to QGIS. All of my work typically revolves around Data. I usually deliver data. I hardly ever deliver a map. In the few instances I've delivered a map it's always lacked "soul" or something.

A few years back I jumped in way over my head with QGIS/Postgis. I had moved a process out of one software and into my favorite two (QGIS/PostGIS) and little did I know the final output had to be a ESRI File Geodatabase. So what did I do? I shamed them into using a geopackage. It worked well for a few years and then with almost every release of new ESRI software there was some hiccup with the Geopackage and it was causing issues.

I could argue I'm doing that on multiple levels these days. Except I want to talk Geometry, QGIS, and Forks in the Road. I haven't done just a "QGIS Tech Post" in a while. I talk about it and training and generalities but hardly dive into the specifics. So here is a specific fun something that QGIS does. So I have a polygon I need to chop into pieces and to do that you usually go to the Advanced Digitizing Toolbar and use the split tool.

I said this year I was going to babble up here more and I've basically not been because I tend to loose interest in whatever I'm about to say. I've got to change up my attitude on all things technical....and not technical. So the classes are starting to come out on the training.northrivergeographic.com site: I've started looking at transitioning the Intro to QGIS class to cover 3.44.

So last year I didn't do a year in review because I was sitting in the hospital with one serious thought: I was probably a few days away from the year in review not mattering anymore. How do you sum up this year. Usually I pour through a pile of things from Social Media to Work to just life in general.

The 2026 Geohipster Calendar is out with 17 original maps from 16 cartographers. Help fund the website by purchasing.

So back last year I started something and have just finished one small part of it: The Intro to QGIS class has a new home and that new home has a lot of room for a lot of different things. Something like 12 years ago (or more - 2013 to be exact) I started doing "online" training. At the time I was using a commercial platform and the theory was I could upload my class and record some content and you could offer training online.

I've been trying to write my thoughts down more and have just been lost in life. The last 30 days have had me in Oak Ridge, Murfreesboro, and Reston Virginia. Yet another reason I mumble I really need to cut down on traveling. Which reminds me I need to discuss Foss4GNA 2025 sooner than later. I haven't been to the Doctor in 3 months.

The 2026 Geohipster Calendar is out with 17 original maps from 16 cartographers. Help fund the website by purchasing.

QGIS is a free, open source, cross platform (lin/win/mac) geographical information system (GIS) - qgis/QGIS

So welcome to my crossover post. Which I hardly talk about Geohipster. Geohipster is one of those "side things" that's been happening for over 10 years now. Back in the dearly days of twitter......or I should call it the "Golden Age of social media", Atanas Entchev had an idea to Document the industry. So a handful of us post articles highlighting professionals in the industry AND - We have this Calendar.

Learn how others are making use of PostGIS, pick up some tips and tricks, and share stories about bringing this excellent tool into your organizations.

I've been trying to write more as I get into this "New Life" thing since January. I'm not a developer. There was a time I did give it a go and it wasn't my thing. I can write small programs that scratch an itch but they aren't for mass consumption. I have found a large amount of happiness in SQL and GDAL as of late and PyQGIS....but the PyQGIS blog post is another post for another time.

I said last year I was going to cut back on conferences and forgot about that in the lead up to January. So far this year there's been three conferences I've attended. I've got another 2 plus one speaking engagement and then I'm done for a bit. Of course that leaves me wondering about next year. My typical conference experience is: …

It made me sad. I'm working on a project involving 911 data and it's made me do quite a bit of thinking. The short story on this is it's not in Tennessee. I'm taking data in it's raw form and shoving it into that state's NG911 format. So I have about half of it "pre-written" with existing scripts. I was lucky in Tennessee as the Standard was written around a database and left the user to "fix" the data by whatever means you wanted.

Submit a calendar for the 2026 calendar year by october. Fame and Fortune (there is no fortune) await.

I realize as I type this I should have said something sooner. So I'll be in Reston November 3-5th 2025 talking, hanging out, and annoying people at FOSS4GNA 2025. If you're at the conference track me down. If you're in the area and you're interested in QGIS track me down. This one hits a bit different because at the last one in 2024 I did my best to die during it.

For outstanding contributions to any of the core tools, systems, processes or resources. Not limited to systems under OSMF control. The Rails port, osm2pgsql, openstreetmap-carto, iD, JOSM, mapnik…

Eric Theise manipulates projected digital maps while Ed Osborn wrangles live electronics & saturated field recordings.

Cartographer Andrew Middleton presented "How Maps Lie" at Dickinson Memorial Library, discussing the different shapes maps can take and how they distill perspectives, while encouraging the audience to...

Sometimes things happen at a slow burn. One thing I've been trying to do in what spare tim eI have is resurrect the QGIS-US group. It's starting. I've reached the point now where emails/virtual hangouts are about to start happening. So I made a google form and in general I'm just trying to figure out "who" and "where". So if you're interested in a QGIS US Users group add your name to the list and we will attempt to get things rolling. I'm not sharing your info with anyone - this is more for me to gauge on how to proceed. Loading…