Weston Renoud
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theducky.com
Weston Renoud
@theducky.com
260 followers 290 following 210 posts
he/him/they/them
📈 born at 345 ppm CO2
⛴ hydrographer
💻 software engineer (C++/Python)
🗺 planoterrestrialist, and I'm serious about it
🦮 dad - auntie to my friends' kids
🐘 https://mapstodon.space/@wrenoud
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theducky.com
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
July 31, 2026 at 9:15 AM
theducky.com
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...
Screenshot
July 13, 2026 at 6:10 PM
theducky.com
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
June 30, 2026 at 2:24 PM
theducky.com
Sawyer Island circa Oct 2008. NOAA Ship Fairweather installed a tide gauge on the island while surveying Endicott.
May 9, 2026 at 12:06 AM
theducky.com
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."
March 22, 2026 at 10:37 PM
theducky.com
I mean... these things do happen...
Screenshot of Rotten Tomatoes Boondock Saints page showing 26% critics and 91% audience scores.
February 8, 2026 at 12:26 AM
theducky.com
"When I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court] and I say, 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that." ~Ruth Bader Ginsburg
January 11, 2026 at 9:27 PM
theducky.com
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.
January 11, 2026 at 9:03 PM
theducky.com
#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.
December 7, 2025 at 4:29 PM
theducky.com
Truly iconic ❤️
December 6, 2025 at 9:22 AM
theducky.com
Lightscapes #UtrechtSciencePark
Picture taken from inside, water stains, a red smiley sticker, and lighting reflections visible on the glass. The scene is of an unused courtyard between a campus library and 5-floor parking garage covered in green ivy, giving the feel of a hidden urban canyon. Sunlight saturating the clouds overhead and splashing on the greenery.
November 18, 2025 at 10:39 AM
theducky.com
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.
October 15, 2025 at 11:52 AM
theducky.com
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."
September 14, 2025 at 11:50 AM
theducky.com
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.
A perspective shot, taken from ground level over bricks. A hedgehog in full profile facing left in the middle foreground, lit from behind by street lamp. Cars parked on the left, trees and hedge on the right.
September 9, 2025 at 8:09 AM
theducky.com
Isolated graffiti on a brick wall. A bunny character with outstretched hands, palms facing each other but slightly up turned, with a quisical head tilt.
September 5, 2025 at 7:49 AM
theducky.com
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.
June 28, 2025 at 3:28 PM
theducky.com
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. Screen shot of the profile for JD Vance on Bluesky, showing 13k followers
June 24, 2025 at 7:56 PM
theducky.com
The moss is very happy for the rain, it's been a surprisingly dry spring. Alfie and I are accepting it.
May 25, 2025 at 8:11 AM
theducky.com
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.
April 16, 2025 at 8:37 PM
theducky.com
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, making a silly face and showing off my digital badge, conference badge, and beer branded with our company logo. 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. A crown dockside soaking up the sun.
April 13, 2025 at 4:08 PM
theducky.com
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."
April 7, 2025 at 4:55 PM
theducky.com
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.
April 4, 2025 at 1:20 PM
theducky.com
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.
March 29, 2025 at 12:57 PM
theducky.com
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.
March 29, 2025 at 12:33 PM
theducky.com
Got my pinhole camera shot of the #partialeclipse!
March 29, 2025 at 11:50 AM