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Jon Reades

@jreades.bsky.social
747 followers 194 following 434 posts

Prof of Geographic Data Science & HoD @ CASA, UCL. Python, Housing, Neighbourhoods, Industrial location, and Text. Sometime DB, MTB & 🍄 nerd. Co-auth: “Why Face-to-Face still matters” (bit.ly/3cW5gSr)

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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Probably not the book for a true beginner, but I found this #APA book by Thomas Sanchez on #AI for #UrbanPlanning a good, accessible intro for linking up types of deep learning with planning application areas.
Artificial Intelligence for Urban Planning
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
And that long list of “things I will definitely fix before next year” which is about to have a brutal encounter with reality. But in the meantime…
A glass of wine in Termoli.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Really enjoying a talk on software dev and decision making in an AI-age that has gone in a very different direction from what I’d expected (all about human communication and voice and being heard). #BITES20206 in Termoli
Slide says notice -> interpret -> voice -> be heard -> change the outcome
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Summer is always a good time to #VisitScotland ❤️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (for for scale)
A collection of very large boletes and lactarius mushrooms. At least one sadly no longer edible.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Scotland delivering on the little pleasures of variable weather after months of frankly terrifying sun in London.
View from near Glencoe of actual weather.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
What new devilry is this? First, why are tech companies obsessed with LoTR? This in-school, anti-shooter drone company is apparently called ‘mithril defence’. Second, whaaaaat??? A “nest” of drones that fan out in the event of a school shooting to recon and, potentially, ram into shooters. 1/2
A fake person is falling over, having just been rammed by a drone.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Those of us who sometimes [1] use AI to shorten our long-winded emails… [1] Probably not enough according to colleagues.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
Can I just say how simultaneously amusing and heartwarming it is to get an invoice printed on a dot matrix printer with tear-off strips? My main interest here is which part of the process is still tied to 1986/7.
Dot matrix printout.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
But the (shared) lunch space is the highlight!
CASA’s (shared) courtyard garden.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
And @casaucl.bsky.social has a new home! Goodbye 90TCR and hello Maple House
CASA’s new office space.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 18/03/2026
@casaucl.bsky.social’s Thomas Murat kicking things off in his #AAG26 session about simulating bus-mobility.
A presentation at AAG 2026
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
The R&R benefits of the festive season and some quality time in the Highlands have not survived past the first five minutes of contact with my MS to do list. But here’s a nice photo of a Scots pine from that period.
Scots pine in Glen More.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 24/12/2025
Quick visit to see the extended family’s new neighbours before getting started on the festive cooking. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🦫
Birch tree gnawed by a beaver 🦫 Birch tree gnawed by a beaver 🦫 Birch tree gnawed by a beaver 🦫
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 16/12/2025
@casaucl.bsky.social @ the #V&A Storehouse before stepping it up a bit with classic arcade games for an end of term 🎉
A view of the V&A Storehouse interior
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
I’m going to push out the boat a bit further: the 2011 OAC shape file download from #GeoDS includes scores for the subgroups but the 2021 CSV doesn’t… 🤨
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 07/11/2025
Struggling to know what to do with all the money coming in from the royalties on my book. Irritatingly, I still think it’s a damned good book.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 12/10/2025
Oooh. Hen-of-the-woods is a new one for me.
Photo of a tasty mushroom
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
One upside to the “summer ended the day school started” change.
Parasol mushrooms and likely inkstain boletes. Plus random USB presenter dongle I found in a drawer.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
With the exception of the background all of this is dynamically generated from the CLI in ffmpeg — my Rube Goldberg node+Python+Ocen pipeline can auto-generate/-update pre-recorded videos from Reveal.js slides and an audio track. Quite proud of that even if it was likely a poor use of time.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Dinner. Sorted.
🐓🪵
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 28/08/2025
Ahhhh yes. Science.
Using data to objectively measure societal events “is the new paradigm for studying human dynamics”, says a computer scientist specializing in complex systems at Sapienza University of Rome, who has studied the spread of misinformation online. The study focuses on “something that we can measure”, he notes. “So, it’s science. It’s not only speculation.”
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 25/06/2025
#CUPUM25 poster session in full swing at @casaucl.bsky.social East.
View of UCL’s One Pool Street atrium.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 20/06/2025
This just feels like it needs a GIF. Ok, really I just want to know how someone who didn’t know enough to answer a question about their grant could have made it to the interview stage.
Man expressing surprise at something (aka. “Come again?”).
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Randomly selected example of why UPRNs don't solve the data issues around joined up housing research in the UK: looks like two units sharing the same (building?) UPRN and therefore missing the parent/child relationship. Guess I should be happy they point to the same building at least!
An example showing what is likely to be two different housing units sharing the same UPRN: both are at 5 West Lawn, but one indicates that it is a 'downstairs flat' while the other does not.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 31/05/2025
For when you just can’t be ars*d to do a proper job of it.
A company called Token Cleaners
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
HoD at an actual international academic conference be like…
Gandalf saying “I have no memory of this place”
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
In which, like an idiot, I knock my ski pole 20’ down a 35° slope covered with loose ‘boulders’ of mixed ice and snow and have to knock in toe- and finger-holds using only my boots. Photo courtesy of my partner, who was laughing at me most of the time.
Me recovering from being a dumb-ass and having to hack my way down and back up a 35° slope using only toe-holds knocked in by my boots.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Massively unimpressed with @WalthamForest for their treatment of Hackney Brewery. If losing one local business is unfortunate, and two is carelessness, what is four? cc @walthamforestecho.bsky.social
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Nice to be walking through here without the anxiety of a massive UG intro to geography chat to teach though.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 20/02/2025
For all you people wanting to work with archives...
https://www.xkcd.com/3052/ – To request data from the archives fill out this form. The pages will be scanned, encoded to CD-ROM, and mailed to you within 10 business days. Download the decoder for our proprietary  format here (Requires Windows 98 or XP).

Archivists actually have everything in digital repos now, but they still do this to provide enrichment for researchers, the way zoos hide food for animals in hard-to-open boxes.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
And, of course, why ‘tech’ is only a tiny piece of a much larger puzzle. #gender #mobility
Some of the basic challenges faced by women and girls.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Getting underway at our UKIERI workshop on the challenges raised by smarter city tech for the study of mobilities in Indian cities. @casaucl.bsky.social
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
Because I can’t cope with any more news, here’s me demonstrating that, if (iff?) you watch enough gardening shows, you learn the importance of marking out and buy yourself some biodegradable orange spray-paint and a string for drawing circles. To be filled in later.
Edging on a path I’ll eventually build in the garden.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
Seeing out 2024 as best we can…
View over the Highlands west of Inverness. Two muddy MTBs leaning against a fence.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 25/12/2024
Not sure what the stuff in the right is, but that’s the day sorted.
A selection of whiskies, tequila, sotol, brandy, and port.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 12/12/2024
As someone who works on housing stuff I find these kinds of juxtapositions… intriguing. *Someone* is going to be very wrong. Presumably someone who fancies themselves an expert. (There may, of course, be some incentive to be this wrong…)
A house in Walthamstow on the market for £865kThe same house, listed with a different estate agent, for £571k
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
WTAF AI am I training now? This came after questions showing a kangaroo and asking me to compare it to other animals shown (but *not* seemingly to other kangaroos). I can’t *wait* ‘til we get to syllogisms and short critiques of Shakespeare to get a delivery update!
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 25/10/2024
View south from edge of Assynt.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 25/10/2024
Status update.
Go to the mountains to read the immeasurable course of time.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 10/10/2024
A touch breezy according to the BBC.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 07/09/2024
Hah, hah. /ht ErrantScience
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 03/09/2024
Credits:
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 03/09/2024
Nice to see a cartographer focusing on open source software and reproducibility. #SchoolOfCities’ Jeff Allen
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 31/08/2024
OMG, i just realised that i have had this backup CD-R for 50% of my life.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 31/08/2024
My off-site backup plan: leave stuff in my parents’ basement for 25 years. IIRC, that would have been JavaScript 1.1; QuarkXpress for MacOS 8.6/9, and object-oriented development in Perl. However,`perl -i -p -e ‘s|…\…|’` remains part of my repertoire for getting stuff done.
A backup CD from 1999 for classes I took at NYU and SVA.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 30/08/2024
Data geek that I am I actual said “Oooooo” out loud upon reading this letter.
An invitation to take Parton an ONS study
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 26/08/2024
I was wondering why BlueSky was going mental over the bank holiday weekend: every time I went over a pass and got back into a coverage area in the #PeakDistrict I discovered I had 23 new followers.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 20/01/2024
Good Saturday evening.
A selection of whisky for the evening.
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Jon Reades @jreades.bsky.social · 22/12/2023
Official start of the holiday season. Still rather surprised to find all my trains went as scheduled. LNER was even… pleasant?!?!
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