Charlie Loyd
@vruba.bsky.social
A pixel/geography/other person in Oakland. With @rahawahaile.bsky.social. Marginally more active at @[email protected] on mastodon. He/him.
Stand-up paddleboards and boats, Marina Del Rey, 2025-01-16 (CID 103001010C12B000). L: standard, R: Potato.
December 25, 2025 at 4:58 AM
Stand-up paddleboards and boats, Marina Del Rey, 2025-01-16 (CID 103001010C12B000). L: standard, R: Potato.
Boats at a breakwater, Manila. A subtler one, maybe – zoom in? 2025-11-13, latitude 14.5818, longitude 120.9576, CID 10400100770EF000. Commercial off-the-shelf pansharpening on the left, Potato on the right.
December 24, 2025 at 11:46 PM
Boats at a breakwater, Manila. A subtler one, maybe – zoom in? 2025-11-13, latitude 14.5818, longitude 120.9576, CID 10400100770EF000. Commercial off-the-shelf pansharpening on the left, Potato on the right.
Secret Potato lore (it’s in the docs, but not the interesting part of the docs): I hand-rated more than 1,400 satellite images on several quality axes to filter the training data. I put a lot of city miles on QGIS. This was a terrible idea, but I chose to be guided by the sunk-cost fallacy.
December 24, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Secret Potato lore (it’s in the docs, but not the interesting part of the docs): I hand-rated more than 1,400 satellite images on several quality axes to filter the training data. I put a lot of city miles on QGIS. This was a terrible idea, but I chose to be guided by the sunk-cost fallacy.
Sure, by the Pan band.
December 24, 2025 at 12:01 AM
Sure, by the Pan band.
Look at the yellow bases of the lamp posts, the edge between road median and paved surface, and the details in the rails. Look at the vegetation: which looks more like real plants? But the one that gets me is the roof color. Google’s own user-submitted data shows who’s got it right.
December 23, 2025 at 11:47 PM
Look at the yellow bases of the lamp posts, the edge between road median and paved surface, and the details in the rails. Look at the vegetation: which looks more like real plants? But the one that gets me is the roof color. Google’s own user-submitted data shows who’s got it right.
Here’s a highway by a switch yard at the edge of the Port of Durban, South Africa. (I prefer mundane test images over landmarks.) CID 10400100770EF000; 2022-04-2. Latitude -29.8937, longitude 31.0134. Google Earth on the left, Potato on the right.
December 23, 2025 at 11:45 PM
Here’s a highway by a switch yard at the edge of the Port of Durban, South Africa. (I prefer mundane test images over landmarks.) CID 10400100770EF000; 2022-04-2. Latitude -29.8937, longitude 31.0134. Google Earth on the left, Potato on the right.
It’s got a lot of moving parts and I wanted to make it intelligible to several audiences, so the documentation gets pretty into things. I hope it makes good holiday reading.
December 23, 2025 at 7:40 PM
It’s got a lot of moving parts and I wanted to make it intelligible to several audiences, so the documentation gets pretty into things. I hope it makes good holiday reading.
Every time I notice how this dashboard software labels its axes I emit a pulse of psychic distress strong enough to rustle papers, nudge the empty seltzer can on my desk, make the more nervous of the crows on the power line out the window take off, etc.
September 9, 2025 at 10:49 PM
Every time I notice how this dashboard software labels its axes I emit a pulse of psychic distress strong enough to rustle papers, nudge the empty seltzer can on my desk, make the more nervous of the crows on the power line out the window take off, etc.
I’m sick of all the damn helium littering. These days every back alley and vacant lot is strewn with the refuse of irresponsible balloon animal artists and feckless blimpeurs.
August 24, 2025 at 12:56 AM
I’m sick of all the damn helium littering. These days every back alley and vacant lot is strewn with the refuse of irresponsible balloon animal artists and feckless blimpeurs.
I’d missed this one in the satellite data for the LA fires. There’s a helicopter dropping water in the upper left, and one refilling bottom center. Big flames. We’re looking due east over Elderberry Forebay, above Castaic Lake, on 2025-01-23 at 11:19:09 (local). Maxar Open Data Program, CC BY-NC.
February 17, 2025 at 6:14 PM
I’d missed this one in the satellite data for the LA fires. There’s a helicopter dropping water in the upper left, and one refilling bottom center. Big flames. We’re looking due east over Elderberry Forebay, above Castaic Lake, on 2025-01-23 at 11:19:09 (local). Maxar Open Data Program, CC BY-NC.
Phos-Chek at the edge of the burn scar north of Temescal Peak, in Topanga State Park. The image is about 2.6 km (1.6 mi) wide. Source imagery: Maxar Open Data Program.
January 13, 2025 at 11:58 PM
Phos-Chek at the edge of the burn scar north of Temescal Peak, in Topanga State Park. The image is about 2.6 km (1.6 mi) wide. Source imagery: Maxar Open Data Program.
Fine, but why do you ask?
January 10, 2025 at 7:49 PM
Fine, but why do you ask?
“To govern is to annoy.”
January 10, 2025 at 5:11 AM
“To govern is to annoy.”
Madagascar is emphatically not California: the problems and the social dynamics are very different. And yet many of them are rooted in the same attitudes. Just from the page I landed on when I checked the PDF’s address:
January 10, 2025 at 5:09 AM
Madagascar is emphatically not California: the problems and the social dynamics are very different. And yet many of them are rooted in the same attitudes. Just from the page I landed on when I checked the PDF’s address:
Cattle grazing on Mkhabathini Table Mountain (🇿🇦). (Source imagery from the Maxar Open Data Program, CC BY-NC.)
January 7, 2025 at 7:39 PM
Cattle grazing on Mkhabathini Table Mountain (🇿🇦). (Source imagery from the Maxar Open Data Program, CC BY-NC.)
How different can two reasonable pansharpening algorithms be? Pretty different in pathological cases like planes in flight. Left is from Maxar, right is from Potato (the thing I’ve been tinkering with). Same underlying data, from the Maxar Open Data Program, CC BY-NC.
January 6, 2025 at 6:58 PM
How different can two reasonable pansharpening algorithms be? Pretty different in pathological cases like planes in flight. Left is from Maxar, right is from Potato (the thing I’ve been tinkering with). Same underlying data, from the Maxar Open Data Program, CC BY-NC.
Sketching out the carbon math for the pansharpening model I’ve been building and I have to say – I continue to think of O(n²) QKV algorithms as a ploy by Big GPU to sell more GPUs.
January 4, 2025 at 11:31 PM
Sketching out the carbon math for the pansharpening model I’ve been building and I have to say – I continue to think of O(n²) QKV algorithms as a ploy by Big GPU to sell more GPUs.
This is the notebook where, since Jimmy Carter entered hospice care in mid-February 2023, I have been crafting a post about his death that will make absolutely everyone mad.
December 30, 2024 at 2:19 AM
This is the notebook where, since Jimmy Carter entered hospice care in mid-February 2023, I have been crafting a post about his death that will make absolutely everyone mad.
When I see this kind of news I think about how with polio in particular there was one big day, but with HIV/AIDS we’re getting thousands of little days. They add up, though.
December 28, 2024 at 1:30 AM
When I see this kind of news I think about how with polio in particular there was one big day, but with HIV/AIDS we’re getting thousands of little days. They add up, though.
Boats at low tide under the Suramadu Bridge, Surabaya (🇮🇩). (Source imagery from the Maxar Open Data Program, CC BY-NC.)
December 21, 2024 at 6:45 PM
Boats at low tide under the Suramadu Bridge, Surabaya (🇮🇩). (Source imagery from the Maxar Open Data Program, CC BY-NC.)
What I say: “I’m going to work on pansharpening today!”
What I do: Flip between two very similar images in QGIS for twenty minutes, panning and zooming, then sigh heavily, glare at the wall, and delete two lines of python.
What I do: Flip between two very similar images in QGIS for twenty minutes, panning and zooming, then sigh heavily, glare at the wall, and delete two lines of python.
December 21, 2024 at 5:49 PM
What I say: “I’m going to work on pansharpening today!”
What I do: Flip between two very similar images in QGIS for twenty minutes, panning and zooming, then sigh heavily, glare at the wall, and delete two lines of python.
What I do: Flip between two very similar images in QGIS for twenty minutes, panning and zooming, then sigh heavily, glare at the wall, and delete two lines of python.
You ever have a friend who did M⟂⅃EᖉHO ΛE⟂EIVEИ⟂Ꙅ in high school and made it their whole personality?
December 11, 2024 at 6:57 PM
You ever have a friend who did M⟂⅃EᖉHO ΛE⟂EIVEИ⟂Ꙅ in high school and made it their whole personality?
