iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 31/07/2026

Happy birthday Marie Tharp! She was a pioneering cartographer and geologist that produced the first full picture of plate tectonics and their impact on the seafloor of the Atlantic Ocean.

Mug full of coffee, with a picture of Marie Tharp smoking a cigarette in front of her map. Computer screens behind the mug showing various hydrographic data.

Back of the mug with the quote: "I had a blank canvas to fill with extraordinary possibilities, a fascinating jigsaw puzzle to piece together: mapping the world's vast hidden seafloor. It was a once-in-a-lifetime—a once-in-the-history-of-the-world—opportunity for anyone, but especially for a woman in the 1940s."
~ Marie Tharp

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 13/07/2026

Evelyn Uuemaa showed a very similar plot in her talk at #Foss4ge2026 titled "Teaching geoinformatics when tools are no longer the challenge" but with students fully allowed to use AI. talks.osgeo.org/foss4g-europe...

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 30/06/2026

Appreciated this last slide from the Tuesday keynote from Dr Mihai Daniel Niță #FOSS4GE2026

Instead of conclusions...
We are living in a digital
revolution era; it is up to our
generation to keep our
expertise level high and
integrate technology without
loosing our humanity

"Once, men turned their
thinking over to machines in
the hope that this would set
them free. But that only
permitted other men with
machines to enslave them."
- DUNE

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 09/05/2026

Sawyer Island circa Oct 2008. NOAA Ship Fairweather installed a tide gauge on the island while surveying Endicott.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 22/03/2026

Was really pleased to have to confirm this in the process of submitting a presentation abstract to #FOSS4GEurope 2026.europe.foss4g.org

"I confirm that Al / LLMs have not been used in the creation of this presentation nor abstract.
If your work has been done using Al/LLMs, there is no basis to give away rights under CC as there is no way to know for sure that the machine was not trained on copyright material."

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 08/02/2026

I mean... these things do happen...

Screenshot of Rotten Tomatoes Boondock Saints page showing 26% critics and 91% audience scores.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 11/01/2026

www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm...

1. TV news will fixate on incidents of violence, even if rare and uncharacteristic of the overall event.
2. Opponents will try to delegitimize protesters by claiming they are "paid" or otherwise dishonest. This is almost always untrue.
3. Measuring crowd size is an imprecise, politicized enterprise. Be skeptical of hard numbers: view aerial photos and compare sources.
4. Beware loaded terms such as "riot" and "rebellion." They often reveal the political leanings of the media outlets using them.
5. Crowds at protests are so diverse that the media can tell any story they want.
Beware broad conclusions based on extreme people or events.
6. Coverage often considers whether protesters left a mess, or helped clean up — a subtle jab or praise. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
7. Protest coverage tends to be episodic, not long-term. Seek out stories that place events in their larger political and historical context.
8. The media will try to tabulate immediate successes and failures of protests.
Remember, their impact may not be felt for years.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 07/12/2025

#Utrecht celebrating the upcoming anniversary of #Syrian liberation.

Demonstrators carrying Syrian flags seen through the passage under the Dom Toren.

Demonstrators carrying Syrian flags, celebrating in Dom square.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 15/10/2025

Headed out on a work trip. Wanted to look snazzy! #GDAL #FOSS4G #OSGeo

Me, with a pensive look to the camera, in a GDAL t-shirt, on the train. The shirt is full of nerdy geodesy and geodesics references. It features a cartoon style globe in the center, with the Americas side showing, a satellite seemingly doing satellite imaging or radar altimetry. And several planets to show how GDAL is used also in planetary sciences.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 14/09/2025

Less than 48 hours after Kirk was shot in broad daylight on the campus of Utah Valley University, asked by Ainsley Earhardt “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?” Trump replied: “I tell you something that is going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less.”

Headlines from Google search showing reporting on Trump's interview on Fox and Friends. Guardian reporting "Trump declines to call for unity after Charlie Kirk killing in stunning move." White House website releasing "President Trump Honors Charlie Kirk, Calls for Unity Through Success in Powerful Interview." The Wasington Post says "Trump vows to punish critics after slaying of Charlie Kirk."

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 09/09/2025

I love finding neighborhood wildlife doing their business at night. Alfie is particularly good at smelling them and alerting me. But he is very calm and just inquisitive, so I get to see the hedgehogs like this, hesitantly frozen but mostly relaxed.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 28/06/2025

On our way home from a short holiday to France.

A shot from the ceiling of the car showing Alfie sleeping splayed across the back seat.

Alfie exploring beach sand with Mont St Michelle in the far distance on the horizon. Clouds hanging low, but no rain.

Anna and Alfie walking along a country road, sunset in the background.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 24/06/2025

Most blocked account on BlueSky now, per Clearsky is JD Vance with 146,953 blocks, and it's an order of magnitude more than his current follows, which sits at 13k.

Screen shot of the site Clearsky showing top five most blocked accounts. In first place is jd-vance-1.bsky.social with 146,953 blocks. Next highest is 81,549 blocks.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 25/05/2025

The moss is very happy for the rain, it's been a surprisingly dry spring. Alfie and I are accepting it.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 16/04/2025

Spring pond, taken on my morning walk with my dog.

Looking top down on the surface of the pond. Several lily pads have made it to the surface, but many more are visible, still curled, just under the surface.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 13/04/2025

Had a lovely time at #OceanBusiness last week with #QPS. Lots of great feedback from users, some opportunities to share about upcoming features, and some demos for potential users! And I got to make a silly little demo with a #Badger2040W shop.pimoroni.com/products/bad...

Me posing next to the AUV Boaty McBoatface, with a silly grin.

A Lego minifigure I got from another booth, posed on a cup in front of the QPS booth.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 07/04/2025

I do not mind that block 😆 The original post was something about LLMs and policing the definition of rubber duck debugging. I couldn't tell if it was a purity test for calling any interaction with an LLM a "conversation," or if it was trying to enforce the purity of the "technique" of debugging.

Shows my reply to a now blocked post. My reply was "I see you're going for linguistic purism."

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 04/04/2025

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Soviet styled poster saying: "Trump vs Penguins, COLD WAR II, Cold War II escalates as Trum places sanction on a penguing colony 1,000 miles from anything remotely human." Witha very stern Trump facing a group of three ambivalent penguins.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 29/03/2025

Are you thinking of attending FOSS4G Europe in July? 2025.europe.foss4g.org I'll be there talking about how QPS uses the Boost.Geometry library to handle hydrographic data! I'd love to see you there. #FOSS4G #FOSS4GEurope

Adapting Legacy Code with Boost.Geometry: A Hydrographic Perspective

QPS maintains a substantial legacy codebase of approximately 5.5 million lines of code, developed over the past 35 years to collect, process, analyze, and deliver hydrographic spatial data. Updating this codebase to incorporate new libraries often requires significant refactoring to accommodate new data types.

Recently, we successfully transitioned from an in-house solution to Boost.Geometry for spatial indexing. This transition required far less refactoring than anticipated, primarily due to Boost.Geometry's ability to adapt to our existing geometry types.

Boost.Geometry's geometry types are concrete implementations of "concepts," which facilitate the adaptation of user-defined geometry types to seamlessly integrate with its algorithms and spatial indexing features.

In this presentation, I will:

* Provide an overview of the unique spatial data we handle in hydrography.
* Share our success story of transitioning to Boost.Geometry.
* Discuss how Boost.Geometry enabled us to generalize our spatial indexing.
* Demonstrate, through a brief code example, how to use concepts to adapt existing types for use with Boost.Geometry.

Join me to learn how Boost.Geometry can streamline your transition to modern spatial indexing solutions while minimizing codebase disruption.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 29/03/2025

Had a nice family walk into downtown Utrecht, then bussed home.

Wife and doggo walking towards the camera, but down a tree lined path adjacent to a road.

A tight brick walled walking alley, with blue skies overhead and a magnolia in blossom, leaning into the alley over the brick walls. Wife and dog walking away from the camera, down the alley.

Dog laying on the floor of the bus in front of the doors, looking back into the camera.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 29/03/2025

Got my pinhole camera shot of the #partialeclipse!

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 20/02/2025

Wag the DOG(E)? (I'm partial to the "doggy" pronunciation)

Movie poster for "Wag the Dog" with an 'e' appended to the title so it says "Wag the DOGE"

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 04/02/2025

open.substack.com/pub/heatherc...

Letter from an American
February 3, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson
Today at 8:05

I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change.

But they are not doing that.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 01/02/2025

You ever been to Newfoundland?

Zoomed in map of Newfoundland, Canada, showing place names Spread Eagle, Dildo, and South Dildo.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 15/09/2023

I've been getting frisky (and some have even said criminal) with a packet of tortillas. And this got me pondering the similarities between a quesadilla and a Dutch tosti. Which led to the rhetorical chicken-or-egg question of: Is a quesadilla a Mexican tosti, or is a tosti a Dutch quesadilla?

Split image. Top half is a tortilla with butter and hagelslag. Bottom half is the tortilla rolled up, with a bite taken off the end showing a cross section of the rolled tortilla and hagelslag.

A hand holding a worsten broodje burrito, which is just a worsten broodje wrapped in a tortilla.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 02/09/2023

My wife and I got a tintype done at a music festival...

Tintype photo of me and my wife. She standing, hands folded on my shoulder. I'm sitting, with my hair down to my shoulders.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 30/08/2023

Alfie did not know what to do with this exhausted 7 month old that was taking up the WHOLE back seat. But they had a really good pup hangout.

Adorable 7 month old hound taking up 3/4 of the back seat of the car, with Alfie (also hound) sitting in the remaining corner of the seat, looking slightly unsure what to do.

From a laying position on the back seat of the car, the 7 month old hound is nibbling at the neck of Alfie sitting on his hind legs in the back seat.

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Weston Renoud @theducky.com · 25/08/2023

“What’s that?!” Alfie is a natural birder. He will flush out ducks from the canals behind the house and will then joyously chase them as they fly away. Today we just looked at the birds and ducks from a small dock on a nearby pond.

Alfie laying at the edge of a dock, looking into the camera, but presumably out over the water.

Alfie is in the same position as before, but his head is down and his focus is clearly past the camera, over the water.

An adolescent great crested grebe on the water with reeds and Lily pads behind.

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