Sunday 20 January 2013

Back to University after a 17 year break

After a 17 year break from formal University Study, I have decided to return to university and undertake a second Master degree. My first Master degree was in Geographic Information Systems (MGIS), this one will be a Master Business Administration (MBA) from Southern Cross University. 

I have been thinking for a while about doing some more study for the last several years, and was thinking about either a PhD in Aerospace or a MBA in marketing, and have decided for a few reasons on doing the MBA at this time. For the last several years, it has become evident to me, that marketing is something that I need more knowledge and expertise about. A friend of mine, the one who  flew the 737 Simulator  is also enrolled in this course at this time, and I thought the opportunity to study with some one I knew would make it more fun and easier, as I will have someone to discuss the topics with.

This will be an interesting experience as when I last studied (1995), the Internet was just starting to take off and the earliest forms of Yahoo, where around and could just be used, whereas now they are a large part of education. The second interesting aspect of this for me will be how it is taught, I have always been interested in online education since I completed my first Master thesis on that subject, and have worked as a researcher for some institutions researching online education. The course I am doing is offered offline, rather than online which slightly disappointing

I am excited but also slightly nervous about starting education again, as I was never a big fan of exams or exam conditions, although the more I work, the more I realize how often I am actually in exam conditions, such as when in meetings with clients, they do not want to see me looking up an answer to a question, they expect me to know the answer.

The last time I applied to university, I needed to physically show up on campus, meet an academic and agree an area of study, complete paperwork and wait, this time I completed a fairly detailed online form in the morning and by lunch time I had my acceptance and was able to start reading up on the course. Within 48 hours of my mate mentioning that he was doing this MBA, I was enrolled and starting to study for it

Where I can I will be attempting to use my internal projects for projects and assignments, so that I can begin to see improvements and the changes to my projects as I complete this study. This will also meant that I am familiar with the 'current data' and do not have to spend time trying to find companies / projects to do assignments on.

Work Load. 


There is 12 subjects that I must complete, 6 of which are compulsory and  I can choose another 6 from  a list of about 50 other subjects, presuming that all subjects are the same structure as the 6 compulsory ones, which is

  • 10 sections 
  • 2 assignments 
  • 1 exam

This means that I will need to complete 120 sections (which will take about 10 or 15 hours each section), 24 assignments and 12 exams. Having had a quick look at my 6 electives options, there are some that are purely project based, so I will be able to reduce the number of exams that I have to do, which is my preferred option.

Each subject is meant to be about 150 hours of work, all up a total of 1800 hours of expected work to complete this masters.  Which reduces down to 45 weeks of 40 hour weeks.

There are three trimesters a year, which is my preferred choice of study, there is no reason, that I need a 4 month break from study over the Summer period.

Provided material.


At the moment I am undertaking two subjects namely


so I have been sent the material for these two subjects. Which arrives by mail as one parcel containing everything that is needed for each subject. The structure so far appears to be

  • Text Book (the information)
  • Study Guide 1 (the Study Guide)
  • Study Guide 2 (readings) 
  • CD - 


There was some small errors and inconsistencies between the website, packing list and what actually arrived, nothing major was wrong just small errors, such as the website has the text book listed as the Australian edition, but I was sent the Global edition, small issues like that - that make you do a double take and check that you have the right source material.

What I have read of the study guide and textbook so far look well laid out and easy to read and seem to make sense, I have nearly completed my first weeks work for the marketing subject.

WHY ? 


There has been several questions lately on the GIS & Technological Innovation Forum and GIS on linkedin in the last few weeks with people asking if they should undertake their master degree in GIS, and to me its a more generic question should people undertake more study.

I have always been an advocate of education, whether formal or informal, and consider life long learning a core part of what I am and what I do, and is necessary for me to do my work. I feel that i have benefited greatly from having had a Master degree in the past sometimes in informal ways and sometimes as a requirement to 'getting the job'.

The style of work that you do and are expected to do after having a master degree I have found in my personal experience to be a better 'quality' of work and more interesting projects, I have also noticed that by having a master degree, more trust or respect is given to you when you start at a new organisation or with a new client. I have tended to do a fair bit of R&D style work, and having a master degree has made it possible for me to work in those areas.

I see this second master degree as rounding off my original education, rather than it taking me down a different path to the path I am on now.



Thursday 10 January 2013

Why do I have 6 monitors ?

Why do I have 6 monitors on my desk ?

The short answer is to make me more efficient, and the WOW factor when people / clients walk into my office. Nearly everyone that has been here remembers seeing my desk and monitors ;), I will run into people and they will not recognize me, or my name, but once I start talking about what I do, they will often remark, I remember you now, they guy with all those monitors.

It was originally set up to show clients that our water management software, Jobs2Crews was able to scale to a large multiple monitor setup, and is still often used for this scenario.

I have a good stand up desk, that has many levels, which allows me to have monitors on multiple  different levels, I have four different swing arms of which three are attached to my desk at the moment, allowing me many combinations of monitors.  This post is a discussion of varying setup and what I have found has worked for me

For the last four or so years, I have had my current monitor setup and a fairly used to it now, there are basically four configurations that I use, namely


Dual landscape 24" monitors - normal every day use, used with every scenario. This uses the least amount of power, generates the least amount of heat, which can be a factor in a Queensland summer. One problem with this layout is that the mouse can disappear into the top three monitors, which are still connected, but are just powered down. I am very used to this happening and know if I lose the mouse to move it down and it will reappear, it is interesting watching first time users of my setup lose the mouse often when in this mode ;)




Dual landscape 24" monitors, 1 portrait landscape 24" monitors normal use, monitoring a few other processes. I rarely use this setup.








Dual landscape 24" monitors, 3 portrait landscape 24" monitors usually used for demonstrating mapping software. This is Demo mode or impress the clients mode. This would be my second most used option. Unfortunately this configuration does not play movies well I have tried but its more annoying and just better to watch it one either the TV, the projector or just on one of the 24" monitors.




Dual landscape 24" monitors, 3 portrait landscape 24" monitors, 1 19" monitor rarely used.This Layout is only really used if we are doing demonstrations of Australian maps, as the very western point of Western Australia sticks out into the 19" monitor.




At the moment I only have 4 of my monitors connected as I have not had the time to replace a broken video card, but will do soon. I have 5 Dell 24" monitors 2 at eye level in landscape mode and three above that in portrait mode. There is a sixth monitor on a swing arm to the left.

The top three monitors are slightly tilted horizontally relative to the bottom three so that the cursor lines up better when I go from the top to the bottom or go back to the top.

I have tried various combinations and find that this current setup is best for me, and my work style and what I do. Others may find that different setups work better for them.

I have tried just using two of the 24" monitors in landscape mode and two 19" monitors on swing arm either sides that were swung in so that they were about 65' to my left and right, but I found this very awkward to use and felt very claustrophobic to use. I originally thought that this would be a very good setup where I was 'surrounded' by monitors but it just didn't work for me, and I have not seen many people that have set up multiple monitors this way.

I can not physically reach or really read the information easily at the very top of the top three monitors, the top of these monitors would be about 8 foot high, which is higher than the ceiling height in modern average homes in Australia, luckily my home has 12 foot ceilings. The top three monitors are generally used for review, so if I am running a process that I have to check on regularly, I can put the window up there, and if I need to interact with that window drag it back down, I often have the weather radar maps there. They area also to show large maps. The reason these monitors are so high, is due to the fact that they are on a stand up desk and I am over 6 foot tall.

Tuesday 8 January 2013

I can see something over New Zealand from Brisbane

The other night I was watching the International Space Station (ISS) over passing Brisbane and by using the ISS tracker I realized that as the ISS disappeared over the horizon it was now above New Zealand. This meant that while I was standing on the road outside my house in Suburban Brisbane, I was able to see an object in the air that was currently located over New Zealand.

Usually when i am looking for the ISS to fly over, there has been minimal cloud cover so it has been easy to spot it, but the other night, there was a lot of cloud cover, so I used the tracker to help me align where to look, it was then that I noticed where the ISS was currently which was over Emerald about 650 km North West of where I was now (Brisbane) , and the ISS had been above the horizon for a few minutes already,

I was pretty amazed that it was still that far away and I could see it, as I continued to monitor the ISS as it approached the horizon I was able to see that it passed fairly quickly South of Sydney and was still easily visible. I lost sight of the ISS when it was about 10 degrees above the horizon behind some trees and noticed that it was about to cross the coast of New Zealand which was about 2300 km away.

Path of International Space Station Click for Larger Image.
I estimate from where it disappeared that it would have been visible if I could spot it early, about 10 degrees above the horizon that it would be visible from the middle of the Gulf of Carpentaria (A in the image). Over B, which is where i was located all the way to the coast of New Zealand (C in the image ) a total distance of 4600 km.

The distances it will be visible from will vary depending on the height of the ISS, the orbit decays (gets closer to earth) and then rockets are used to increase the distance from Earth, I do not know when the ISS flew over if it was high, middle or a low height. The time and hence distance it will be visible for will also vary on how close the overpass is, this over pass was at 62 degrees so was a medium length overpass, a 20 degree overpass (Such as the overpass tonight 8th Jan 2013) would be noticeably less distance. If you are not sure why - get a tennis / basket ball and mark a dot where you are and move your finger over the ball as if it was the ISS.


Thursday 3 January 2013

See the International Space Station pass over Brisbane to tonight.

Click here for an updated overpass times 22 January 2013

At the moment there are six men, who are working and living in an artificial environment 370 km above the earth, travelling at nearly 8 km per second (28,000 km per hour) and tonight as it does every few weeks it will pass over our heads. This is the International Space Station.

At 8:10 pm for about 6 minutes it will be visible, over Brisbane, Queensland as small bright dot crossing over the sky. It will appear from the NW and will disappear to the SE, it will reach a maximum height of 76'. I have been monitoring the ISS for a few months now, and this is the highest and hence longest duration overpass I have seen,

Image courtesy of NASA.gov
From my experience last time, you won't be able to spot it until it is about 10 or 15 degrees above the horizon and will be pretty easy to spot. It's appears a lot brighter than the background stars and is noticeably moving across the sky. The space station is the third brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the moon.

I will be in Graceville park (with dogs) which is a good location to see it from as it is a large space so the horizon is very low. If anyone wants to come along feel free to come over and say hello.

Here is a link to the NASA site about how to see the Space Station, and you can sign up here http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/ to be notified of when it is flying over your location.

I think that this is something fantastic to show the kids as it may spark their imagination about space, and get them thinking about science. And since it is school holidays they can stay up a bit later if young.