Blog
Applied Spatial Analysis Using QGIS - Professional Print Layouts & Atlas
Week 7 (Project 5A) live: turn analysis into a clean, printable map. Use guides in the Print Layout, build main map + inset, add grid/scale/legend/north arrow/notes, lock the map, then set up Atlas with admin2_districts to generate one sheet per district and export a multi-page PDF at 300 DPI.
Applied Spatial Analysis Using QGIS - Raster Analysis & Demographic Planning
Week 6 (Project 4B) live: pixels to decisions. Reproject the DEM to UTM 36N, clip it to Red Sea state, derive slope and aspect, turn site criteria into a boolean raster with the Raster Calculator, then raster to vector, a dissolved 5 km railway buffer, and an intersection that leaves the best sites over 150 acres.
Applied Spatial Analysis Using QGIS - Spatial Proximity & Multi-Criteria Analysis
Week 5 (Project 4A) live: Study Area → Clip → Buffer → Spatial Join. We prep data first (normalize by clipping to study area), filter main roads with expressions, run 30 m/100 m buffers, then use Spatial Join to find impacted vs unimpacted buildings in metres (UTM 36N).
Applied Spatial Analysis Using QGIS - Attribute Queries, Expressions & Selection Math
Week 4 (Project 3) live: the attribute table is the real dataset behind the map — sort it, read the field types, compute each pipe's length with the Field Calculator, style by status, then build "status" = 'active' by hand. The best 30 seconds of the session: why OR refuses to work until you repeat the field name.
Applied Spatial Analysis Using QGIS - Cadastral Boundary Mapping & Topology
Week 3 (Project 2) live: cadastral or topographic — the difference is not the subject matter, it is the intent of the map. Then we build the Attribute Form, set snapping up before digitizing, draw neighbouring parcels that share ONE boundary, and prove there are no gaps and no overlaps with the QGIS Topology Checker.
Applied Spatial Analysis Using QGIS - Permanent Metric Transformation
Week 2 (Project 1B) live: we create data from scratch — a LineString and a parks polygon layer digitized in QGIS — then permanently reproject from WGS84 to UTM Zone 36N (EPSG:32636) and compute real areas in square metres with the Field Calculator and $area.
Applied Spatial Analysis Using QGIS - Field Data Import & Contextualization
Week 1 (Project 1A) live: the standard GIS project folder structure, a first tour of the QGIS interface, importing a CSV of field points as real features, symbolising, exporting to GeoPackage — and a GPX track for contrast.
Applied Spatial Analysis Using QGIS - Orientation & GIS Literacy
GIS for Surveyors 2026 opens: spatial vs aspatial, vector vs raster, why 70% is data cleaning, framing a fundable GIS proposal, and configuring QGIS for metric work in UTM 36N — with the full Sudan dataset loaded.
It Starts at the Keyboard: Why I Teach Open Source from the Bottom Up
From teaching high school finals on my vacations to carrying 8TB of open source knowledge to Sudan — and the department that could not save its own letters. Why I start every learner, no matter their degree, at the basics.
One Route, Two Branches: The Training Route Map
From the typing gate and Linux foundation to LibreOffice, GIS & QGIS, Python, PyQGIS, and AI for geospatial analytics — the whole journey on two pages.
Don't Throw It Away — How Linux Gives Old Laptops a Second Life
An old laptop is not obsolete — it's just running the wrong software. Why Linux revives old hardware and makes powerful, free computing possible for everyone.
How Linux and Open Source Enhanced My Computing Skills
My journey from proprietary GIS software to Linux and open source — and why I now teach it to people with limited resources, because tools should decide who gets to learn.
What LLMs Can and Cannot Do for GIS
An honest guide to where large language models help spatial work — and where they fail.
Prompt Patterns That Produce Working PyQGIS
The exact system prompts that make a local AI generate clean, runnable spatial scripts.
RAG for GIS: Ask Your Documentation
Build a retrieval-augmented generation knowledge base over QGIS docs that runs offline.