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Sandy Macdonald

@sandyjmacdonald.bsky.social
39 followers 188 following 21 posts

Microbiologist, data scientist, Raspberry Pi tinkerer 🦠 📈 🥧

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Sandy Macdonald @sandyjmacdonald.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Over the summer, I set up a Raspberry Pi 5 with BirdNET-Go. It listens to the audio from a connected microphone, then runs it through an AI model running locally on the Raspberry Pi (no data centres involved!) trained to detect bird calls. #raspberrypi #citizenscience #birdnet 1/6
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Sandy Macdonald @sandyjmacdonald.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
☀️ Picked up the solar eclipse nicely on my @pimoroni.com / @raspberrypi.com Enviro+ weather station's light sensor! #solareclipse #eclipse #raspberrypi #pimoroni
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Sandy Macdonald @sandyjmacdonald.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
This weekend I've set a Raspberry Pi up with the fantastic BirdNET-Go software. It uses a microphone (in this case, the audio stream from a CCTV camera) to listen for, and identify, nearby birds by their calls, using local AI models. 🧵 1/4 #birdnet #birdnetgo #citizenscience #raspberrypi #ai
Screenshot of the BirdNET-Go dashboard, with counts of species identified during the day. Lots of wood pigeons and crows identified, along with a few smaller birds like dunnocks and blue tits.Summary of birds identified, with 689 total detections, 18 unique species, and bar plots of the top ten species and the detections by time of day — dawn has by far the most.
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Sandy Macdonald @sandyjmacdonald.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Given the state of @github.com, I've moved all of my active code development (apart from a handful of repos that require specific actions for now) to #Codeberg codeberg.org/sandyjmacdon...
media.tenor.com
a man is carrying a bag in front of a garbage can that says 04 60573
ALT: a man is carrying a bag in front of a garbage can that says 04 60573
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Sandy Macdonald @sandyjmacdonald.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Just deleted my #ChatGPT and #OpenAI accounts, and I’d encourage you to do the same. #DeleteChatGPT
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Reposted by Sandy Macdonald
Martin Kleppmann @martin.kleppmann.com · 06/05/2025
Stop stressing about the energy and carbon footprint of ChatGPT. It’s not a big deal www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/carbon-foo...
sustainabilitybynumbers.com
What's the carbon footprint of using ChatGPT?
Very small compared to most of the other stuff you do.
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Sandy Macdonald @sandyjmacdonald.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Borne out of frustration at seeing so many posts about how bad ChatGPT was for the environment with little to no data to back it up, or rational comparisons to other common activities, I made some infographics. #ChatGPT #AI 1/6
Bar graph showing ChatGPT carbon emissions (35.2g daily) compared to other activities like YouTube (143.2g daily) and TikTok (133.8g daily).Image saying "The average ChatGPT user makes about 8.2 queries per day. That's 35.2g of CO2 emissions."
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Sandy Macdonald @sandyjmacdonald.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
Me walking out the amusement arcade after spending £500 on the claw machines.
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