Bill Dollins
@geobabbler.bsky.social
Runner. Coder. Database hacker. Accidental geographer. Perpetual novice. Chaotic neutral.
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
I’m starting to feel like I’m the only one in Maryland’s 5th district who isn’t running to replace Hoyer.
Turns out the best way to do research is to do research. Taking page from my grad school experience during the pandemic, I have forced myself into the habit of writing term papers when learning new concepts. blog.geomusings.com/2026/06/05/o...
On Essays
A few weeks ago, I was on a catch-up Zoom call with a friend I hadn’t chatted with in a while. He made mention of the recent uptick in my blogging activity and then, very good-naturedly, took…
blog.geomusings.com
Who would have known that the juxtaposition of Lucy Dacus and New Order would be rocket fuel for productivity?
Forgot to share this one the other day. Noodling through QA tasks and deciding to write up some of what I found. blog.geomusings.com/2026/06/02/a...
Applicability of Small Models for Agentic QA
I’ve been doing some recent work related to automating QA in AI workflows. Most recently, I built a small jury pool app to assess agreement across generated outputs, which got me interested i…
blog.geomusings.com
In part three of my anniversary series, I look at the constant iteration of the geospatial stack over 20 years, the opportunity costs of that iteration, and the responsibility conferred by the technical capability achieved over that time. blog.geomusings.com/2026/05/28/t...
Twenty Years, Part Three
I recently finished implementing a network analysis through PostGIS and pgRouting, exposed through an MCP interface so it can be called by AI. I have done versions of this as a Lambda and as a Goog…
blog.geomusings.com
Sean Trende’s piece on his son’s last day of school is full of joy and sadness and love and is well worth your time. www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/202...
The conversation around AI in the geospatial community has been evolving rapidly over the past couple of months. I pulled together a summary of what I've been seeing and reading. blog.geomusings.com/2026/05/25/g...
Geospatial AI State of Play, April–May 2026
This post summarizes themes that emerged across multiple sources curated by GeoFeeds during April and May 2026. Taken together, these themes suggest that geospatial AI (GeoAI) is moving through a f…
blog.geomusings.com
Open data was built to be used, but AI-scale consumption is changing the equation. Using OSM as a thought experiment, I explore what AI-optimized infrastructure that preserves openness, attribution, community values, and operational sustainability may look like. blog.geomusings.com/2026/05/14/o...
Open Data and AI
Open data projects are seeing a new kind of consumer in the form of automated systems that can consume public data continuously, at scale, and through access patterns that were not designed with th…
blog.geomusings.com
Without fail, the social media exhaust from GEOINT every year has me queuing up Black Flag.
I had a dream last night that I was stopped at a traffic light when a car pulled up next to me. Its windows were down and it was blasting “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” by Good Charlotte. This is not a big song for me but it’s now stuck in heavy rotation in my head. Damn subconscious.
I am convinced the phrase “Under-promise and over-deliver” was first uttered by the parent of a toddler.
I wonder if the ETL/ELT/iPaaS segment will survive past its current round of enterprise and annual contracts.
The phrase "generate a CSV formatted for easy import into Postgres" is magic with Claude. Even if you don't plan to use Postgres, it gives you a nicely cleaned up CSV. I usually also ask it to make a metadata markdown file to preserve richness it may need to strip out.
Spatial finance can see assets, hazards, emissions, and exposure with increasing precision. But places are also shaped by institutions, memory, liability, politics, and trust. This post looks at what spatial finance cannot yet see from orbit. blog.geomusings.com/2026/04/28/w...
What Spatial Finance Cannot See From Orbit
For eighteen years, I drove past the Morgantown Generating Station on my way to work. Its stacks were part of the background geography of my daily life, sitting along the Potomac River in Newburg, …
blog.geomusings.com
