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Richard A Carter

@richardacarter@zirk.us

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Academic in Digital Culture, University of York, UK. Exploring digital art, literature, and storytelling; ecology, materiality, and the more-than-human. Glider pilot.

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22 Posts

Joined November 18, 2022

Website:

https://richardacarter.com/

BlueSky:

https://bsky.app/profile/richardacarter.bsky.social

Itch.io:

https://racarter.itch.io/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/richardacarter2

Posts

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Aug 02, 2026

While sorting out other kinds of data, I re-exported my ESA CCI Landcover set at the fullest resolution I can muster. It's only 558mb @ 129600 x 64800 pixels, but I admit it's still rather stunning to look through - the world as an illustration, made up of 22 landcover types. #maps #data #maping #gis #silentSunday

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Apr 13, 2026

Venus, before the rain clouds roll in.

#photography #venus #clouds

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Apr 12, 2026

Now rigged and ready for initial flight testing. The package is heavier than I would like, at 900g, but hoping the "Beta" version being currently built will be a significant improvement on this.

There is nothing especially exotic here, hardware wise, it's all in the software. I'm curently developing the latter such that each flight is something of a 'performance' - one that can be logged into by people on the ground, who thus form part of a wider sensing and observing network.

#computing

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Apr 11, 2026

This evening's clouds

#photography #clouds #sky #silentSunday

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Apr 10, 2026

Pictured here, dangling from the end of my arm, is a technology that is 114 years old, a Picavet suspension mount, specifically designed to stabilise cameras carried aloft on kites. This version will carry the poetry camera soon enough - the plan is to get the entire rig flight ready this weekend.

#photography #flight #kite

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Apr 08, 2026

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini.

(Jean de Bosschère, "Weird Islands" 1921)

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Apr 01, 2026

Kite selfie from yesterday

#york #flight #kite #photography

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Mar 31, 2026

A true bird's (kite's!) eye view over the edge of York Campus East

#york #photography #flight

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Mar 28, 2026

Getting some actual aerial imagery from the kite has given a useful block of testing data. Very small, general purpose models are, evidently, not as robust as even those that are marginally larger, but it's useful enough. Remember it is working on an image of max. 480 x 480px to keep processing fast on the RPi.

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Mar 27, 2026

Blue skies thinking - Conditions were finally right to properly try out the basic "Kite Drone" setup. While not carrying the actual 'scientific' payload, it was really satisfying to pull this off anyway, to get some meaningful imagery, and all with a 50 minute flight time exceeding most consumer drones - no batteries needed!

#kite #photography #silentSunday #wind #sky

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Mar 24, 2026

Satisfying shot of the newly delivered (smaller) Cody kite today

#photography #kite #cloud #flight

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Mar 20, 2026

Think I'm about done now (I think...!) It's a bit more FS2002 in apperance than FS98, but it's good enough to act as a generic visual engine for the rest of the simulation components to be built upon.

#threeJS #gameDev #indieDev #flightSim #simulation

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Mar 17, 2026

One bit of fun today - I was at last able to use this gloriously dystopian 1984 Soviet short animation "There Will Come Soft Rains" (based on the 1950 Ray Bradbury story) as part of my teaching on smart homes earlier. The fictional apocalypse date is set for August 2026! Watch for yourself here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oxP3TyuQx0&feature=youtu.be

#animation #technology #retro

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Mar 15, 2026

From this to this... The simple flight simulation project is, at last, resembling what I recall zooming around in MSFS2002~ was like - but this time in-browser!

#gameDev #indieDev #flightSim

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Mar 14, 2026

Bad weather beaten! Exciting sortie that was meant to be 3 minutes @ 1,500ft turning into a 25 minute 3,000ft climb followed by an "expedited" descent back to Earth to avoid the showers. So good to be back aloft again since January.

#gliding #aviation #soaring #weather #silentSunday

Richard A Carter @richardacarter@zirk.us · Mar 12, 2026

RE: @richardacarter@zirk.us

You can now vote for "Lines of Flight" in the Opening Up category of the New Media Writing Prize! (There are other cool entries too, of course, but I'm thoroughly biased here). https://newmediawritingprize.co.uk/opening-up-2025/

#art #design #dataviz #digitalHumanities