iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Robin Wilson

Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 15/04/2024

I created a cool web app using Ordnance Survey data - British Placename Mapper (placenames.rtwilson.com). It allows you to search for place names that match various criteria (starts with 'great', ends with 'burgh' etc) and plot them on an interactive map. #gis #geospatial #mapping

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Just finished my slides for #foss4guk 2026 in Leeds in 10 days time. I was starting to run out of time, as work has been very busy recently, but I'm pleased with how they've turned out. I even managed to keep to time in my first practice - which is unusual! Looking forward to seeing everyone soon!

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

My closest main station, Southampton Central (SOU). My Mum uses Birmingham New Street. My Dad does it on hard mode, using the previous day's answer as his starting place for the next day which I would find wayyyy too difficult.

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Definitely never heard of it in the UK. The most similar thing I can think of is people setting off the fire alarm to get out of an exam or a boring lesson

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

If you attended the lace making workshop at #emfcamp and would like some help, support or follow-up then my wife Olivia is running a Zoom help session at 8pm UK time on Sat 1st August. Register here: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

docs.google.com

Lace debugging and catch-up session

This form is to register to attend a follow-up Zoom call for people who attended Olivia Wilson's lace making workshop at EMF 2026. The aim of the call is to help you debug problems you've run into whi...

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Reposted by Robin Wilson

Electromagnetic Field @emfcamp.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Our talk and workshop line-up is live! Please favourite things to help our scheduling robot make sensible decisions. www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026 Keep an eye on the list - Family Workshops, Music, and installations will be announced in the coming weeks.

emfcamp.org

Line-up

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Reposted by Robin Wilson

Jonty Wareing @jonty.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

[deep sigh] After being let down again, I call upon the powers of the network: Does anybody have an inflatable planetarium they would be willing to bring (or lend) to @emfcamp.bsky.social?

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Geofabrik (download.geofabrik.de) have OSM extracts available for download, including as GeoPackage. The GeoPackage download includes a land use layer, as I was using it the other day - I haven't checked for allotments in it, but I suspect it covers all the land-use tags.

download.geofabrik.de

Download OpenStreetMap for OpenStreetMap Data Extracts | Geofabrik Download Server

Download OpenStreetMap data for OpenStreetMap Data Extracts for self-hosting or data analysis. OSM PBF and Shapefiles available.

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Reposted by Robin Wilson

OSGeo:UK @uk.osgeo.org · 02/05/2026

In case you missed it FOSS4G UK 2026 is happening this year in Leeds! The conference will take place on 12th and 13th of October. We are actively looking for sponsors to take part, please contact osgeouk@gmail.com uk.osgeo.org/foss4guk2026/

Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

FOSS4G UK is always a great conference - I'm already thinking about what talk I could submit...

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Ah yes, that's tricky. You may be able to find a fairly high 'normal' car that you could buy second-hand and fit a hoist to, but it might be tricky.

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

What sort of wheelchair do you have? And what sort of car? My electric wheelchair folds and fits in my normal car (VW Passat), with a hoist to lift it in. The hoist cost a bit, but far cheaper than a special vehicle. I have some friends whose wheelchairs don't fold, but still fit in taller cars.

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

What satellite are these images from?

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Reposted by Robin Wilson

json singh @jsonsingh.com · 30/03/2026

For the upcoming 'London "Geo" Meetup #2', we have our 2nd speaker Gabriella Edghill, from Rebalance Earth presenting on "UK Power at Risk: Using open-source to assess power loss risk from flooding" RSVP and more details here: lgm.jsonsingh.com #OSM #OSGeo #Geospatial #Opensource #London #meetup

Gabriella Edghill will be presenting on "UK Power at Risk: Using open-source software to assess power loss risk from flooding" at the 'London "Geo" Meetup #2' on 8th April, Wednesday at Geovation, 65 Goswell Road, London. Event starts at 6PM

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

I'm looking forward to PyData Southampton next week - talks on Azure AI Foundry, astronomical image alignment and AI for sign language. Sign up at www.meetup.com/pydata-south... and come along at 7pm Tues 17th at Carnival's HQ, Southampton @pydatasoton.bsky.social #pydata #python #ml #ai

meetup.com

PyData Southampton - 22nd Meetup, Tue, Mar 17, 2026, 7:00 PM | Meetup

**Venue**: Carnival House, 100 Harbour Parade, Southampton, SO15 1ST **📢 Want to speak 📢: [submit your talk proposal](https://bit.ly/pydataSoton-talks)** **Main Talks**

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

It's an email on a personal domain not something @gmail.com or anything, but it works for everything else. I'll DM you the email if you want to look into it.

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

I get this error when I try and subscribe - any idea why?

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

The nursing and midwifery building at the University of Southampton had a sign at the front for many years saying "Deliveries at rear"

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Southampton, UK, English and I call it a Fire Engine or if I want to be really fancy and am talking to actual firefighters or my friend who works in Air Traffic Control, a Fire Appliance.

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

This article is in the paper copy of the FT today, which is nice :) Quite chuffed that my little data analysis project has ended up in a national newspaper. And I think it's an important topic too. #uk #health #pharmacy #data #datanalysis

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 04/02/2026

Did you know that the number of pharmacies in England open after 9pm has decreased by 95% in just three years? I did some data analysis on this, inspired by needing an out of hours pharmacy over Christmas, and it has been featured in the Financial Times today: as.ft.com/r/4333cab1-6...

as.ft.com

Number of late-night pharmacies in England plummets

[FREE TO READ] Decline comes after cash-strapped chemists reduced opening hours to cut costs

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Reposted by Robin Wilson

Kurt Schwehr @kurtschwehr.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

2025 GDAL User Survey is now active for the entire month of December! Visit gdal.org/survey/ & tell the project how you use it, where you get help, what it should do in the future, & how/if it should use LLMs going forward. (optionally) give us your email, we'll even enter you to win a GDAL t-shirt!

gdal.org

2025 GDAL User Survey

In 2024, the GDAL User Survey solicited feedback to help focus GDAL Sponsorship Program activities. Your contribution mattered. Last years' results triggered the project to embark on the GDAL CLI Mode...

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

...where it took me 30mins via a couple of outside streets to get from one conference room to another. Etc.

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Totally - I've found this a big problem. I can list off the conferences where it took 20mins from the conference room to get to an accessible toilet, the one where I had to ask a security guard every time I wanted to go to the toilet...

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Yes though I was brought up bringing it to the boil on the hob. Only started using a kettle once I met my wife

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Reposted by Robin Wilson

OSGeo:UK @uk.osgeo.org · 17/10/2025

We have now uploaded all the recorded sessions from #FOSS4GUK 2025 in Leeds. 📹🦉 We would now invite everyone else to our youtube channel if you would like to catch up on the 35 recorded session. www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCKv...

youtube.com

Welcome to FOSS4G:UK 2025

YouTube video by FOSS4G:UK

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Very proud of my former student (now colleague!), Gabi, who just gave her first conference presentation at #foss4guk in Leeds. #geospatial #gis #osgeo #postgis

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 30/09/2025

The new 'gdal raster neighbours' function is pretty cool - it does convolution across a raster, with configurable kernels and other options. Not yet released, but available in dev builds. See gdal.org/en/latest/pr... for details.

gdal.org

gdal raster neighbors — GDAL documentation

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

Looking forward to #foss4guk this week in Leeds. I'll be attending with a colleague, running a workshop on producing live vector tiles from PostGIS and my colleague will be giving a talk. Now just to hope that the trains work better than last year: I got stuck in Bristol TM because the lift broke!

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 27/09/2025

Debated about buying some heavy water today...for my #emfcamp talk/demo but a) it's very expensive and b) it'd probably get me put on a list. I'm consoling myself by buying high wattage halogen lamps instead.

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

This is one of the weirder comments that I've made on BlueSky, but...we have that Z80 chopping board!

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

(Partially prompted by reading Exploding the Phone, a good book about phone phreaking in the US, and realising that from that and various other similar books - eg. Kevin Mitnick's - I know significantly more about the US phone network than the network in my own country!)

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 23/08/2025

Does anyone know any good books about the UK telephone network? Ideally I'd be interested in a history of the network, exchange development, memories of working on the network, big events (eg. phONEday etc) - but I can't seem to find anything like this

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Reposted by Robin Wilson

Eric Ness @eric.ness.net · 08/08/2025

Orbio Earth just open-sourced their full methane detection pipeline—models, tools, synthetic-plume engine & validation notebooks—for Sentinel-2, Landsat 8/9, and EMIT. #Methane #ClimateTech #OpenSource - orbio-earth.github.io/Project-Euca...

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

I'm also quite surprised that I hadn't come across this previously, having been working in geospatial for quite a long time. Every day is a day for learning!

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

So, TIL that a MultiPolygon is invalid if any of its polygon parts touch at more than a single point. Eg. a MultiPolygon where two 'polygon parts' share an edge is invalid. I can see why this is the case - those two polygon parts should be merged, but it's a bit annoying. #gis

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

I won't be able to make this as my wife is in the US at the time and so I'm needed at home - but I've had a great time at PyCon UK in the past, and I'm already looking forward to watching the videos of some of these talks.

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Gabi, a MSc student I've been supervising, will also be giving a talk about developing a system to look at secondary flooding impacts, specifically loss of power and loss of road access, on businesses in the UK. She'll be covering use of pgRouting, complex PostGIS SQL queries etc. #foss4guk

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Pleased to announce that I'll be giving a workshop at #foss4guk entitled 'Live Vector Tiles from PostGIS with pg_tileserv: A Hands-on Workshop' - I'll take you through the full process of using pg_tileserv to serve vector tiles to web maps (using MapLibre, Leaflet etc) and QGIS. Come along!

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

I might have to steal one of their section headers as my tagline, as I tend to refer to myself as a geospatial software engineer: 'Geospatial software engineering as its own weirdo niche' #gis

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

The Placing Technology blog (placing.technology) is utterly fascinating - someone blogging parts of their PhD research about the history of GIS and geospatial technologies in general.

placing.technology

Placing Technologies

The latest entries posted on Placing Technologies

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

I don't normally write long threads, but was suddenly inspired. Hope that helps @ajgwords.bsky.social - I'll be attending FOSS4G UK (and presenting myself), so hopefully I'll be able to hear the talk!

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

It needs to have changed a lot from my days as an undergraduate (~20 years ago - ugh!), but I suspect it either hasn't changed that much, or the sort of things you can do in an undergrad practical session don't let you explore what is *really* done in RS any more.

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

now with cloud-based systems, STAC and so on. I'm not sure how we should deal with this as a community, and I'm not sure how modern methods will 'trickle down' to non-code based environments. Like, what do you do in an undergrad RS practical session these days? 8/n

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

4) There's a big gulf between what is possible with remote sensing if you can write code, and what is possible if you can't. That's fine for me - I can write code and enjoy doing so - but not everyone can or wants to, and that limits what you can do hugely. Potentially that applies even more 7/n

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

3) Practical remote sensing is often taught poorly, and often taught using inappropriate software. It's a long time since I've taught remote sensing at uni level, but back then and still now I keep coming across massively silly ways of teaching you how to actually do stuff with RS data 6/n

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

2) Loads of methods are developed using very high resolution data which can be a problem because the data is *really* expensive (sometimes you can get it free in academia), making those methods too expensive to use in the real world. Often high-res data isn't actually needed - it's 'too high' 5/n

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Robin Wilson @robintw.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

much more that can be done with remote sensing than that. That's my biggest bugbear, others are: 1) Far fewer people care about calibration and atmospheric correction now, as they don't normally need to worry about it. That's mostly ok, but *someone* needs to worry about it or it breaks down 4/n

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