Shoals

Good Fortune

Posted on January 26, 2024

Last week I was visiting Ben, a friend of mine, and - as middle-aged men are wont to do - we got onto the subject of collections. While my own accumulative tendencies are focused on backpacks and skis, it emerged that Ben is a collector of vintage posters and magazines.... [Read More]

Thank your heroes

In memoriam: Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne

Posted on January 8, 2024

I got the news this morning that Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne has died, and it’s hard to grasp. [Read More]

A good season

Posted on November 10, 2023

The snow is flying this morning in Vermont - early, it seems - and therefore it’s as good a time as any to reflect on last winter in the Northeastern mountains. [Read More]

Just Another Dark Age

Illuminating the things that grow in our gaps of perspective

Posted on October 28, 2023

In the Summer of 1934, author Patrick Leigh-Fermor entered the Transylvanian city of Kolozsvár, accompanied by his aristocratic lover and chauffered by their enthusiastic wingman. Even distracted as he was by such great company, he took note of his surroundings: [Read More]

The Latest From Lower Saxony

Posted on September 27, 2023

I had given up. My previously-documented enthusiasm for SQLite had run dry, and I had already hammered out another solution. Then Charlie stepped in and saved the day with a window function. [Read More]

Human stories in geologic time

Perception and reality

In which I fall into a well-documented trap of my [our] own devising.

Posted on September 21, 2023

I was at an amazing conference last week. The combination of a great setting, a warm and welcoming crowd - and a novel format that had us outdoors as much as we were in - led to a feeling of progress and connection that I don’t often get at events... [Read More]

The B-Sides of Remote Sensing

Some of the edgier things to which humans have attached cameras in the hope of gaining contextual knowledge of their surroundings

Posted on September 10, 2023

In the course of a lifetime in the almost-accidental study of Earth observation, I’ve found that - over centuries of innovation - humans have tried a million strategies to build the Tower of Babel; not to compete with god, exactly, but to see ourselves more clearly. Inevitably, I’ve acquired a... [Read More]