Throw away one thing a day

March 28, 2024 By in AOL, Bucket list, Compuserve, Inverse bucket list, Marie Kondo, New Year's resolutions Tags: , , Leave a comment

My Inverse Bucket List calls for getting rid of stuff. But how?

According to Marie Kondo and her KonMari method, you must do all your “tidying up” in one go, or else you won’t do it at all. Tidying up little by little doesn’t work, she says.

However, tidying up everything in one go can be a daunting task – more so emotionally and psychologically than physically. Looking at a slew of trinkets and mementos from 20-30 years ago, deciding what to keep and what to let go, can be draining. So big is this psychological barrier that one never ventures into the endeavor.

What if instead of facing — and perpetually avoiding — this gargantuan task, I break it down into tiny morsels? One thing a day, one decision a day, every day. Simple, easy, manageable.

Move over, Marie! There’s a new guru in town! 🙂

Me on Day One™: Getting rid of this collection of 3.5” AOL and CompuServe floppies.

AOL and CompuServe 3.5″ floppies from the 1990s

Is my phone listening to me?

March 26, 2024 By in Social media, surveillance Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Is my phone listening to me?

Yes. Or, rather, it was.

For the longest time I would experience these weird coincidences — I would talk about something, and soon after I would see an Instagram ad about that thing. Am I crazy? Paranoid? Are these just coincidences? Once an accident, twice a coincidence, three times a pattern. How about three hundred times?

These occurrences were proven beyond doubt when I spent a week away from home with family. In the course of a week three witnesses confirmed what I have been experiencing for months. We would even run tests — talk about a brand or generic product, and the Instagram ad would pop up within minutes. It was disconcerting how quickly the ads appeared.

I got a new phone. Unlike previous upgrades, I did not copy all my stuff (data, apps, settings) from the old phone to the new. I set up the new phone from a clean slate. I did not activate Google Assistant or voice typing (voice-to-text), and restricted microphone access.

The “coincidences” stopped.

Is my phone still listening to me? If it is, it’s not tipping its hand…

Inverse bucket list

February 17, 2024 By in Bucket list, DO LESS, Inverse bucket list, New Year's resolutions, resolutions Tags: , Leave a comment

In keeping with my 2024 New Year’s resolutions, I started an inverse bucket list – a Marie-Kondo-style list of things to get rid of. Not material things. Mostly mental and intangible things like maintaining presence on a social network, or a long-standing vague intention to do something.

For example, I deleted my LinkedIn account. I stopped using Twitter, and rarely look at Facebook. Just today I let a domain name registration lapse – a registration I have been carrying for years with the intention to “do something” with it. Today I decided that I never will. It was a relief.

Checking off items on my inverse bucket list frees up time and resources to dedicate to my bucket list proper. The idea is that as my bucket list gets closer to complete, my inverse bucket list gets closer to depleted. In the end the bucket list is full, the inverse bucket list is empty.

A.T.’s ultimate sartorial guide: Wear whatever’s on top

February 14, 2024 By in blogging, clothing, Commentary, fashion, sartorial Tags: , , Leave a comment

I accidentally wore red today, and everybody’s like “Awwww… you dressed up for Valentine’s Day! How cute!!! <3”. Which caused me to publish my long-overdue ultimate sartorial guide:

  1. Every article of clothing matches every other article of clothing. Wear whatever’s on top.
  2. Making an effort to color-coordinate your outfit is lame. Wear whatever’s on top.
  3. The only thing more lame than item 2 above is making an effort to mismatch your clothes if they accidentally match. If whatever’s on top accidentally matches, wear it.

ArcMap is dead, long live ArcMap!

January 18, 2024 By in GIS, shapefile Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

My friend Bill Dollins published a well-deserved and timely farewell to ArcMap. My story is different.

I used ArcMap yesterday, and I’ll use it tomorrow (literally). 

Am I a luddite? No. I have been using ArcGIS Pro since the beta, and I continue to use it daily. I use QGIS daily. I keep my master database in PostgreSQL / PostGIS.

I also have a business process (not my choice) where I periodically must ingest Microsoft Access data and join an Access table to a shapefile. Pro doesn’t see Access, so I use Map for that.

Can I do my job without Map? Sure, I have done it, and I have blogged extensively about it. I have developed a process for bringing Access data into Pro. But using Access with Map is just simpler. So I will continue to use Map.

With my career as a GIS professional itself on a path to sunsetting, I wonder whether I am an outlier by continuing to use Access and shapefiles (as it would seem from just looking at Mastodon), or whether there are thousands of other quiet souls who don’t toot, yet silently continue to perform their daily GIS tasks using shapefiles and Access.

We may never know.

My New Year’s resolutions for 2024

November 30, 2023 By in blogging, Cycling, DO LESS, eddington number, New Year's resolutions, resolutions Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

I have never before made New Year’s resolutions. I have often made fun of people who make New Year’s resolutions. And here I am now, making New Year’s resolutions.

  1. Be extra judicious with how I spend my time
  2. Be extra judicious with how I spend my attention
  3. Bring my Eddington Number up to 36 (aspirationally, to 37)

I have been making inroads towards these for a while. In what is a first for me, I am formalizing and publishing them.

UPDATE: Here is the companion t-shirt:

What is your Eddington Number?

August 5, 2023 By in Cycling Tags: , , 1 Comment

Mine is 33 34 35 36. But let me back up a little.

I am a map geek, a data nerd, and a cyclist. As such, I always look for and find and tweak ways to measure my rides. I measure distance (of course), and speed, and elevation climbed, and power output. I throw it all into a home-grown formula that accounts for my age in days (such as if today’s ride has the exact same parameters of a ride a year ago, today’s ride would count for more because I’m older). Then I visualize it all in three different Google Sheets charts. … Normal stuff 😉

Imagine my excitement when I learned about the Eddington Number! One more data point!!! 

The Eddington Number was devised by Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) as a measure of a cyclist’s long-distance riding achievements. It is defined as the maximum number E such that the cyclist has cycled at least E miles on at least E days.

For example, an Eddington number of 70 would imply that the cyclist has cycled at least 70 miles in a day on at least 70 occasions. Achieving a high Eddington number is difficult, since moving from, say, 70 to 75 will (probably) require more than five new long-distance rides, since any rides shorter than 75 miles will no longer be included in the reckoning. Eddington’s own life-time E-number was 84.

I found out about the Eddington Number from Ben Lockwood on Mastodon, who pointed me to a great resource, eddingtonmap.com, which takes your Strava data and calculates your Eddington Number.

My Eddington Number (E) is 33. I must ride 34 miles 3 more time(s) to reach the next Eddington Number.

What is your E?

Shapefile button bonanza

July 12, 2023 By in GIS, shapefile Tags: , Leave a comment

You get a shapefile button! And you get a shapefile button! Everyone gets a shapefile button!!

Send a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE) to:

Entchev
P.O. Box 6462
Somerset, NJ 08875

I will put two (2) “I❤️.SHP” buttons in your envelope and will send them back to you via the US Postal Service.

Standard disclaimers apply. Offer good while supplies last. No international delivery. Not responsible for lost mail. Or broken envelopes in transit. Or triggered shapefile haters.

NYC-area GeoMeetup on Bikes?

October 22, 2022 By in Cycling, GIS Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

[UPDATE 2023-01-21] I just registered for the Five Boro Bike Tour on May 7, 2023. Let me know if you want to ride the Tour together. If you are not up for the Tour but would still like to meet up on bikes (like some poll respondents), let me know your location preferences.

I have broached this subject a number of times over the past few years, got little traction. I’m giving it the old college try one more time.

Many geo people in the NYC area ride bikes. How about we meet up? A geomeetup on bikes. In the NYC area.

Help me gauge interest in the form below. We’ll play it by ear, depending on responses.

SQLite for ArcGIS Pro FTW

October 10, 2022 By in blogging, Computering, GIS, shapefile Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

I work in an Esri shop. My workflow includes periodic ingestion of MS Access and shapefile data. ArcGIS Pro doesn’t recognize Access. This has caused me to stick with ArcMap for one particular process. Esri’s suggested alternative to Access (“Use Excel”) has proven problematic for me to use with Pro for a variety of reasons.

Enter SQLite, which I wish I had tried sooner. Pro works with SQLite. Unlike Excel, SQLIte does not try to guess your fields’ data types (though it will if you ask). Access ⇒ CSV ⇒ SQLite ⇒ ArcGIS Pro is my new workflow. I haven’t opened ArcMap in a while.

Back in February 2019 I used Pro instead of Map for a full month, as a test. I went back to hybrid Map/Pro after that, until now. I may never open ArcMap again.