learn gis

Finding myself in a job market that has no funding for social science types, I’m looking at what I can do in this area with my C/S, engineering, analytics, and physical sciences skills. One of the largest non-medical employers in the area is ESRI, maker of the best known Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in commercial circles.

So I’ve set off to learn something about GIS, enough to be useful. I began my journey with Gary Sherman’s excellent book, Desktop GIS: Mapping the Planet with Open Source Tools.

So far I’ve learned a modest amount (about 7 chapters in). The chapter on PostGIS doesn’t have particularly good examples, and doesn’t provide enough background on using PostgreSQL to help one navigate through the text. I found a Getting Started with PostGIS: An Almost Idiot’s Guide that has enough information in it for me to get PostgreSQL working with PostGIS and start working with spatial information.

Stay tuned, more to follow.

I learned as much of it as I could…but it really didn’t help much. I know how to use the mapping programs pretty effiecntly, but don’t ask me how many bands lidar has…I’ll just laugh.

yeah…lots of material, not my thing.

but I got a ‘B’ in the class, anyway! hurray!