I am grateful for @foss4gna.bsky.social. Like last year, the people here reinvigorate me. At the same time, I am looking forward to shutting down until the new year. The last few months have been a lot and I am ready to regroup.
Bill Dollins
@geobabbler.bsky.social
Runner. Coder. Database hacker. Accidental geographer. Perpetual novice. Chaotic neutral.
A couple of great days the Northern California. I could get used to this place.
Literally every hotel room I stay in has these stickers. The data analyst in me says this is an indication that a few more hooks for hanging clothes are needed.
Exploring OlmoEarth Embeddings blog.geomusings.com/2026/10/22/e...
Exploring OlmoEarth Embeddings
I’ve written before about image similarity with pgvector and the usefulness of embeddings in geospatial workflows. The ability to represent observations as vectors gives us another way to search an…
blog.geomusings.com
I gotten interested in neuro-symbolic AI over the last few months, particularly in relation to geospatial. blog.geomusings.com/2026/10/19/n...
Neuro-Symbolic AI and the Geospatial Workload
Where It Diverges From, and Could Complement, Embedding Fields and Agentic Orchestration Geospatial analysis has long relied on symbolic representations and formal operations. A geographic informat…
blog.geomusings.com
Them, on LinkedIn: I did a superficial scan of your profile and your company. Have you ever thought of writing a book? Me: I’ve been writing about what I do for 20 years: (links to blog) Them: Sorry to bother you.
geoMusings by Bill Dollins - Narrative Maps in WordPress by Bill Dollins https://blog.geomusings.com/2026/10/10/narrative-maps-in-wordpress/
geoMusings by Bill Dollins - The “R” Word by Bill Dollins https://blog.geomusings.com/2026/10/07/the-r-word/
Me: We’re good hands, our Instacart shopper is an elderly lady. My wife: How do you know she’s elderly? Me: She has a full head of gray hair in her profile photo. Wife: So she could be our age. Me: Dammit.
Nothing amuses me more than the bemused looks I get when I say I have no intention of retiring.
Two unrelated hot takes in one post: 1) Dino nuggets are superior to regular nuggets because the feet an tails make crispy bit. 2) "Off the Wall" is superior to "Thriller" in every way.
I’ve gotten a few questions. While we’re not in stealth mode, I haven’t discussed it much. blog.geomusings.com/2026/08/11/w...
What We’re Building at Clairvoyint
If you visit the Clairvoyint website, it says that we turn expert analytical methodology into reusable agents that can perform analysis and produce reports, briefs, and assessments while preserving…
blog.geomusings.com
The 180th anniversary of the Smithsonian got me thinking. blog.geomusings.com/2026/08/10/g...
Geospatial Infrastructure Should Outlive Its Technology
On August 10, 1846, Congress established the Smithsonian Institution with a simple mission: “the increase and diffusion of knowledge,” and gave it “perpetual succession.” One hundred eighty years l…
blog.geomusings.com
We saw Young Washington a couple of weeks ago. My wife is a US history teacher so it was a must-see for us. A couple of notes: 1) it generally got the history right. Washington was a bit of a mess then and they didn’t polish it. 2) King George County, VA does not look like that at all.
Did you know that English ivy can cause contact dermatitis? Neither did I. I do now.
I’m sure the flyovers in DC were impressive but in our part of Southern Maryland, we were treated to the aerial ballet of refueling ops between the B-2s and KC-135s (not pictured).
50 years ago this weekend, I was at the Bicentennial Air Show at Andrews AFB. My dad pulled some strings and we were let past the rope so I could sit in an SR-71. I was too young to understand but it was cool. I wish 250 had been more, but I’m looking forward to Election Day.
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HABA-MABA and stuff. blog.geomusings.com/2026/06/25/i...
Interpretation and Ownership
In 1951, Paul Fitts edited a report on human engineering for air-navigation and traffic-control systems. One of its lasting artifacts was a deceptively simple allocation device that came to be know…
blog.geomusings.com
Following on to yesterday’s post… blog.geomusings.com/2026/06/23/g...
GeoAI and the Soft Middle of the Geospatial Market
My recent essay on the SaaS market argued that AI pressure is unlikely to apply evenly. The exposed segment was products in the middle of the market that are expensive enough to prompt examination,…
blog.geomusings.com
Essaying... blog.geomusings.com/2026/06/22/v...
Vibe Coding, AI Disruption, and the Restructuring of the SaaS Market
In early February 2026, a sharp software-sector selloff, widely described in market commentary as the “SaaSpocalypse,” erased hundreds of billions of dollars in SaaS and software-servic…
blog.geomusings.com
