Redefined Horizons

The Early Days

Landon Blake spent the majority of his pre-teen years living in several different states west of the Mississippi River, including California, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, and Nebraska. His father worked in heavy construction and his family regularly traveled through Idaho and Washington in addition to the frequent relocations. When Landon was an early teenager, his family finally settled down in northwest Montana. His parents bought property near the North Fork of the Flathead River, a stone's throw from Glacier National Park and about 30 miles south of the Canadian border with the United States. Landon worked several jobs in Montana during his teens and early twenties, including two dishwashing jobs in the town of West Glacier, Montana; a six (6) year stint at the Safeway in Whitefish, Montana, and several winter and summer seasons working in the facilities maintenance department of the Big Mountain Ski Resort.

College Education and Marraige

At Flathead Valley Community College Landon enrolled in the land surveying program, where he enjoyed instruction in land surveying and GIS from Dave Dorsett and Bob Beall. He received an AAS degree in land surveying in the spring of 2002.

Landon moved to Stockton, California shortly after his college graduation. It was there that Landon met his wife Monique. They have been married for 8 years. Landon is now part of a large family in Stockton, including many neices and nephews.

Work as a Land Surveyor

Landon passed the national land surveyor exam in the fall of 2007 and the California state land surveying exam in the Spring of 2008. He passed the Nevada state specific surveying exam in the Spring of 2010. He is currently licensed to practice land surveying in both states.

In his employment with KSN Landon's primary role is Project Land Surveyor. In this role he manages the various surveying aspects of large public works projects and smaller commercial development projects. This includes survey control; topographic surveys; boundary surveys; preparation of maps, plats, and legal descriptions; and drafting of maps and civil engineering plans. He also oversees the implementation of GIS technology at KSN.

Work in GIS

Landon's first exposure to GIS was in classes he shared at Flathead Valley Community College with the forestry program. He became interested in the open source desktop GIS program JUMP after starting his employment with KSN. He was so intrigued with the program that taught himself the Java programming language so he could customize and improve the program. After a couple of years of involvement with the program he founded the JUMP Pilot Project with another JUMP user and developer, Steve Tanner. He still contributes as a user of OpenJUMP (the descendant of JUMP maintained by the JPP).

Landon is constantly seeking ways to improve the integration of GIS, land surveying, and civil engineering. This includes applying GIS technology to the problems he encounters as a land surveyor through the use of open source software and open technology.

Landon is the founder of the California Central Valley Geospatial Professionals Group.

Code Slinging

Landon is the most comfortable programming in the Java programming language. Python is his second favorite programming language. He also slings a little code in C#, Visual Basic .Net, Clojure, and Ruby. All of his code is shared with others under an open source license and is typically released through the Survey Open Source Project (SurveyOS Project).

CAD software is an important tool in Landon's work as a land surveyor. He has been using Autodesk's AutoCAD software continuously since he took his first CAD class at Flathead Valley Community College. He has worked on several different versions of AutoCAD, including Version 2000, Version 2004, Version 2007, Version 2008 and Version 2009. He is currently using AutoCAD Civil 3D on a daily basis, and also work with AutoCAD MAP and AutoCAD Raster Design. He began to learn AutoLISP programming shortly after my employment at KSN.

Volunteer Work

Landon volunteers with several organizations. At the non-profit advocate of open source geospatial software the OSGeo he serves as an author, editor, and reviewer for the OSGeo Journal. He has also served as a mentor for the OSGeo Google Summer of Code program. The California Land Surveyors Association Central Valley Chapter has a San Joaquin County Government Liaison Committee, of which Landon is a member. Landon also sits on the CLSA GIS Committee.

Landon also works on a couple of volunteer projects hosted and supported by Redefined Horizons, when his time allows.