How to build AI Agents

This follows on my AI "lessons-learned,  lessons-shared" mainly on my Ongoing Crash Course here, that links all items on my various socials.

Maryam Maradi (LinkedIn) shared two how-to's I pay-forward here. I posted the texts on the links below the two excellent posters also in-text (click to enlarge). My (liked) comment on her second post was:

This is so excellent! I'm a geologist & GIS-er of 40-odd yrs., w interest in geophysics in general & seismic in particular. I have never seen such a comprehensive review and sign of hope for disaster response... Thanks!

How to Build Al Agents from Scratch

How to Build Earth Disaster AI Agents

The second one in particular has links to help you get started.

LLM Foundations

Book this is the summary of can, be found here.

A Roman Holiday

This follows on a map story here.

Not William Wilder's 1953 Gregory Peck & Audrey Hepburn flick (Wikipedia)! When drawing up a map of Apostolic Palestine for local Catholics, I ran across Ancient World Mapping Center (AWMC) at UNC-Chapel Hill. While their web app (ArcGIS Online) is a cool one-stop-shop for their rich data set - for ex. I cannot do point clustering (Comet Assistant) with my standard Argis Pro desktop license -  I loaded, picked apart an re-sorted some of their data for some interesting insights. 

AI to recreate a lost picture

Here is another use of Google Gemini AI. A LinkedIn discussion here described fog/cloud banks in Cen. & Nor. Cal. against nearby ridges.  I commented on same viz. Yucaipa Valley & Ridge in So. Cal. Here is my comment:

How interesting! I lived in Bakersfield the winter of 97-98 (... when gas was 99c./gal. at the pump next to LAX!) with that fog ['Tule Fog' filling the Central Valley wintertimes]. Then in Redlands a decade later, in "the Valley of the thousand Smokes" as the Serrano Indians originally called the current Yucaipa Valley, I witnessed not a fog as much as low cloud cover. So the same view if you stood on the Grapevine looking N or the Yucaipa Ridge looking S - in fact it's called Rim of the World, coz said cloud cover made u feel look like ur overlooking the edge of world. Not unlike in The Gods must be Crazy 1982 film,  Xi the Bushman throws an empty Coke bottle into the fog rimming Table Top Mtn above Cape Town... It's not "different folks, different strokes", it's "different spots, same outlook" 😂

... Samurais in early 1600s Spain!

This follows on from a map story here. A follow-on is here.

I thought that So. Cal. Spanish missions were early (mid-18th c.)... well here's an earlier story of intrepid early diplomats & missionaries - not seasoned sailors as Longest tall ships routes here - after long-distance missionaries of the Apostolic Levant here. Perplexity opens here as:

More map art, Part II

This follows on a map story here. The next one is here. 

The original "More map art" is  here: a world map in Natural Earth projection with Mean Annual Climate Temperatures and Natural Earth countries.

Equal Earth vs. Spilhaus projection, masking onshore areas

The original post starts as "a few years ago I used Charlie Frye's online lesson Explore future climate projections to learn how to use NetCDF and map temperature regimes - it's shown below in Patterson & Savaric's Equal Earth Projection..."

2050 Scenario? Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)

This follows on a map story here.  The next one is here.

After revisiting a number of topics for just over a year here, let's address an item of some urgency: stalling the Gulf Stream may end Western Europe's historic privilege; to be a warm enclave between two 'normal' bands at its latitudes. It's not an Ice Age but think how much colder New York and Montreal are than London or Paris. 

It may be hard to wrap our minds around cooling at a time where climate warming hits the headlines - and rightfully so -  and before climate deniers jump on this, please consult the scientific consensus behind all this under two Microsoft Copilot headings at the bottom: AMOC update, a political declaration of Nordic countries affected and estimated timeline of its collapse.

Update: AMOC collapse effect presented at the National Emergency Briefing last week in London here HT YouTube @JustHaveaThink

Longest haul flights, longest rivers, longest tall ships routes & bonus map

This follows on a map story here. The next one is here.

A series of maps are posted here; they're in desktop and map or poster but not web format as explained here & here; sit back folks, relax & enjoy the map story time...

I repost a cool map on long haul flights: I grew up taking earlier ones over 50 yrs. ago; one of the carriers I used, Qantas just announced here jets that can fly Sydney to New York or London direct! Next is a new map of the longest rivers from a website priding itself of its visualisations: I used previous techniques and cannot decide which works best; perhaps you the reader can help?

Update: added a long section on longest sailing routes by 18-19 c. tall ships (think Cutty Sark here).

Update 2: this post here follows on this series of offline maps

Exhuming my thesis, part III

Update 1: follow-on post here on the series revisiting maps or posting off-web.

Update 2: added an intriguing speculation on the adjacent Sudbury Nickel Irruptive

Following on Parts I & II here & here, here is an article on the breakup of Nuna Province in current N China: it gives new impetus to plate tectonics around 1.5GA - see Part II for another example -  such dynamic processes were proposed in my thesis paper over 40 yrs. ago here, where I applied recent plate dynamics to the Proterozoic of Southern Province of N Ontario Canada of similar age and make-up of Nuna Province. I looked at it from a structural geologic perspective, using intrusives cross-cutting relationships as date markers. The new paper actually dated similar intrusives in present day N China.

More maps, in 3D now

Update 2: found a textbook example of  "carving upstream" in this gorgeous video of the Uinta Mountains of Wyoming

Update 1: more offshore canyons crowning Antarctica found with new digital terrain data and give us a beautiful map @ bottom

This follows on the previous map story here. The next one is here. 

My web footprint

Let me highlight the importance of the recent topic of AI my Community Interest Company delved into and I used in various forms shared in the last post here. Open this blog's  desktop version here, look at the stats at its right... and you'll see why the curve below spikes at far right here!

click to enlarge, original here

Ongoing crash course on AI

Update 1: a collection of AI "art" on Flickr 

Update 2: a French look into the future of AI

- new: AI-driven Comic & Symbolic Intelligence 

Update 3: added a note on "AI's little helpers"

Update 4: a manifesto of sorts closes this brief

Ongoing: updates under "AIding Tool"

New twist: look for AI-assisted story-telling below

New tool: Perplexity summaries

New human-centeredness: with a little help from AI

New how-tos: building AI agents + disaster response

Have I mentionned that AI will need skilled writers more than skilled coders? Forbes wrote here about a US efforts in that regard. The one thing AI won't replace,  acc. to the starred "AI-ding Tool" example below is curiosity:  it mirrors Steve Jobs' "stay hungry, stay foolish" at Stanford 2005 Commencement Address here.

Another map request

Update 2: added a new map post here in my ongoing series of revisiting here

Update 1: added at bottom a new map adding to an existing Antarctic project

Pyrénées

When visiting the nearby village of Pontacq (Flickr & village site), the glorious sunshine showed the Pic do Midi de Bigorre (Wikipedia) so clearly we could see the observatory atop! It's the left peak in the central massif below.

Reposting stories from original website

As I prepare to end this blog, let's follow on recent updates: 

Aug. '24: A return to my roots
Oct. '24: "Where in the world...", updated
Oct. '24: Global sea level rise revisited
Oct. '24: Northwest Passage Reloaded
Nov. '24: Cumbria classic revisited...
Dec. '24: Exhuming my thesis area... & Jan. '25: update
Jan. '25: London Thames Barrier... & Feb. '25: update
Feb. '25: Beechey Island update
Feb. '25: East Anglia Peatlands revisited

A conversation with AI (long read)

Update: a short read on Medium tells "the story behind the story" of American & French Revolutions.

Shakira YouTube channel posted this video #LMYNLWorldTourCDMX: 

How a confusion between CDMX (Ciudad Mexico) and MCDX (1410 in Roman numerals) lead to a far-ranging AI chat thru culture, geography, career and climate activism. MSFT Copilot (here) transcript (Italics: me, regular: Copilot):

East Anglia Peatlands revisited

Update1: see clipped oroginal and working vector datasets posted as detailed at bottom.

Update 2: added DIY map-mapping workshops & notes to help citzen science

Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context

Update 4: worrying revisit of peatlands degradation with increased drought & extreme weather here: increased heat degraded carbon absorption, and that is mirrored in tropical forests turning into carbon emitters seen here

***

This follows on previous Peatlands blog posting here, last of the Community Engagement Series.

As news abounds about Arctic Permafrost & Peatlands degrading faster than thought (Copilot), this may be a good time to bring back some Natural England and Environment Agency data under Open Government License (OGL, National Archives). The upshot is that returning peatlands to their original state is the biggest climate change mitigator in the UK detailed here & here: briefly, peatlands either degraded thru neglect or converted to farm land, not only shrinks & stops being floodwater catchment, but it converts carbon sinks through sphagnum moss into carbon emitters thru windborne dried peat. In other words, re-watering peatlands dwarf efforts from other mitigation of climate change (see sources at bottom).

Beechey Island update

Update: see aerial shots from 1968 posted on Facebook Group "Remembering the Franklin Expedition" here

 A previous blogpost here almost 7 years ago showed how to use a niche product to create detailed elevation model of Beechey Island. Posted on Google Earth here (download & open it in Google Earth, see 'GE' below), it allowed to add a Parks Canada photo of the Franklin Expedition landing site: it was the first one uncovered by University of Alberta's Owen Beatty in 1984, the year before I spent a summer in the Arctic 'nearby' the other side of King William Isl. on the west shore mid-Boothia Peninsula... We were in fact told to report any unusual findings!

London Thames Barrier update

Update 1: here is the transcript of Hansen's latest "in plain English" (alt. here)

Update 2: here is the Climate Cultures article this map was used in, thanks Lola Perrin.

Update 3: here at the end is the relevance of this sort of effort in a broader context

Two weeks ago I recreated Sea Level Rise (SLR) and Risk of Flooding (RoF) maps for the lower Thames River near the Thames Barrier (blog) for a WhatsApp Group considering the future of its ageing infrastructure w.r.t. recent climate extremes. This week came a global and urgent update affecting Sea Level Rise, by James Hansen who sounded the alarm ~ 35 yrs ago (go to 1981 & 1988 in Medium): a paper incl. supplementary materials "Global Warming Has Accelerated" (Columbia) c/w companion webinar (Columbia).

A brief web history of mine

Update: re: my last paragraph, I restored my personal portfolio as a re-post of my original www.zolnai.ca here and my professional portfolio as a free-tier for developers here.

As I wind down my blog posts and I quit socials, perhaps this may be a good time to reflect on my Web journey that started almost 40 years ago (a recap of my IT journey is here)...

But wait... Tim Berners-Lee didn't invent it til just over 35 years ago (Wikipedia)! That's because I had a site dubbed HTTP in 1986, see inset below:  "world wide web" hadn't been coined yet, but I knew as a student at late 70's University of Calgary of Ted Nelson's failed Project Xanadu (Wikipedia), to try and link all forms of knowledge via hypertext; it failed partly due to Nelson's eccentricity,  partly because there was no global network to carry it. 

London Thames Barrier revisited

Update 2: see renewed Sea-level Rise extents according to new information here 

Update 1: see addition at bottom... thanks to our indefatigable London climate activists!

Further to my original blog post 3½ yrs. ago here, I was asked to share maps of the area surrounding the Thames Barrier (Wikipedia): A WhatsApp group considered the necessity for a second barrier under Climate Change that increases both flooding and sea level seasonal elevations. 

Exhuming my thesis, part II

Update 2: further confirmation of ancient plate tectonics in Part III here

Update: an article here confirms plate tectonics 1.1-1.3 B yrs. ago, where plate movements helped concentrate the iron ore.

By the way, "exhuming my thesis" was an inside joke: the geology and tectonics both in my area in N Ontario and the inspiration paper in Alaska talked about "exhumed terranes"; continental blocks that were buried and metamorphosed, displaced and then exhumed back to the surface to their current location.

New Years Eve 2000 racing by Greenwich Meridian

Update: note a dash of AI mixed in at the bottom for fun

Our TV rung in 2025 live in Paris in my time zone, and six hours later in NYC dropping its ball in Times Square; nothing matches however this cracking event in London to usher in the New Millennium: barges were aligned in the middle of the River Thames, spaced exactly 1 s. apart as the earth rotated past midnight GMT in London, from the Meridian at the Millennium Dome to the east, to Vauxhall Bridge to the west.