Building Groundstation
Notes on why I'm building this site, what I want it to be, and what the visual system is trying to say.
I’m a backend software engineer pivoting toward the geospatial side of the industry — remote sensing, cloud-native geospatial, foundation models for Earth observation, the modern geo data stack. Groundstation is the site where I’m going to write about that pivot and publish the projects I build along the way.
Why a site, and not just a LinkedIn
The short answer is that I want a place that isn’t owned by someone else and that lets me show the work the way it deserves to be shown. A case study with real figures, a colophon of tools and datasets, and a writing section for the thinking that doesn’t fit into a commit message — none of that renders on LinkedIn.
The longer answer is that a personal site is, in this industry, a small demonstration. It says I can ship something end-to-end, I care about how information is presented, and I have enough taste to make decisions about both. That’s a claim a portfolio makes better than a résumé can.
The spectrum
The visual system is organized around the electromagnetic spectrum. It isn’t decoration — remote sensing is literally the practice of making pictures out of bands across EM, from the ultraviolet through the visible and into SWIR and thermal and microwave. Each case study here inherits one band as its accent color. A SAR case study runs on magenta; a vegetation case study runs on green; a thermal case study would run on amber.
The result is a rainbow across the set of cases, not within any single one — restraint at the page level, concept at the site level. The site’s own hero carries a thin spectrum gradient bar as a signature, but that’s the only place the rainbow surfaces at once.
What’s coming
Two case studies in draft right now, both listed with draft: false as
stubs — Archipelago (SAR flood mapping) and Canopy Pulse (NDVI
change over the Hudson Valley). The real writeups land when the projects
are built.
More writing as it earns itself. A proper three.js globe on the home page in the next build pass. Real case-study colophons — the kind that list every COG format, STAC catalog, projection, library, and model checkpoint — as the projects come online.
If you’re a hiring manager at a geospatial company reading this, thanks for being here. The page you want next is probably the work index, or the about page if you want a résumé instead.