# .plan-26-04: Travelling and tracking TESSERA activity *2026-01-25 — note* Just short weeknotes this week as I've been travelling back to Belfast for various matters and haven't had much computer time. One exciting development in the week was that [Shane Weisz](https://shaneweisz.com) continued the conversation with the [IUCN Red list team](https://www.shaneweisz.com/blog/presenting-ai-for-the-red-list-to-iucn) about his developing dashboard, which went extremely well. There's so much excitement on both sides about how all this is going\! ## TESSERA developments I also spent a chunk of time wrestling with understanding [Zarr](https://zarr-specs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/v3/core/index.html) so I can port [TESSERA](https://anil.recoil.org/notes/geotessera-python) to use this instead of Numpy arrays. There's been [a long and helpful thread](https://eeg.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/527258-Tessera/topic/zarr.20file.20format/with/571006960) on our Zulip about this with a lot of people chiming in. [Michael Dales](https://mynameismwd.org) has also been a [source of coordinate inspiration](https://digitalflapjack.com/weeknotes/2025-12-15) from his experiences, so I'll put proper thoughts together on this soon. On the OxCaml front, [Mark Elvers](https://www.tunbury.org/) has knocked up some [OCaml Zarr](https://github.com/mtelvers/ocaml-zarr) so I'll be porting those to OxCaml soon and taking the TESSERA support in OCaml for a spin. ### TESSERA activity around the web There was quite a lot of TESSERA things going on alongside this. First a preprint [Earth Embeddings as Products: Taxonomy, Ecosystem, and Standardized Access](https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.13134) that's a nice summary of how to use geoembeddings like TESSERA: > Geospatial Foundation Models (GFMs) provide powerful representations, but > high compute costs hinder their widespread use. Pre-computed embedding data > products offer a practical "frozen" alternative, yet they currently exist in > a fragmented ecosystem of incompatible formats and resolutions. This lack of > standardization creates an engineering bottleneck that prevents meaningful > model comparison and reproducibility. We formalize this landscape through a > three-layer taxonomy: Data, Tools, and Value. We survey existing products to > identify interoperability barriers. To bridge this gap, we extend TorchGeo > with a unified API that standardizes the loading and querying of diverse > embedding products. By treating embeddings as first-class geospatial > datasets, we decouple downstream analysis from model-specific engineering, > providing a roadmap for more transparent and accessible Earth observation > workflows. Then [Sadiq Jaffer](https://toao.com) and [Frank Feng](https://www.cst.cam.ac.uk/people/zf281) did a great podcast on [Satellite Image Deep learning](https://www.satellite-image-deep-learning.com/p/tessera-a-temporal-foundation-model) where they go through the journey of how we trained the model. I can't believe it's barely been a year\! TESSERA support also got merged into [Torchgeo](https://github.com/torchgeo/torchgeo/pull/3243) for those looking to work on customising the model itself. Most users don't have to use this as they can just use our pregenerated embeddings. ## A fond farewell to dra27 from the Lab After almost a [decade](https://anil.recoil.org/papers/2017-oud-platform) of working with [David Allsopp](https://www.dra27.uk) in both the University and later [Tarides](https://anil.recoil.org/notes/founded-tarides), he finally "graduated" and went off to [join Jane Street](https://www.dra27.uk/blog/platform/2026/01/19/plotting-a-new-course.html) where...we will continue to work together on OxCaml and OCaml. Good luck to David as he no doubt enjoys the ridiculously nice Jane Street office, where I would overdose on the fresh fruit juice machine and be on a perpetual sugar high\! Some fun links: - It was nice to see others getting excited about my [OCaml ATProto client support](https://bsky.app/profile/oppi.li/post/3mcjcygf3r227) - And also [WebFinger seems more important](https://bsky.app/profile/apenwarr.ca/post/3mci727zgxk2s) so I implemented that too. Synopsis: Tracking TESSERA activity including a new preprint and podcast, wrestling with Zarr, and saying farewell to David Allsopp. Words: 515 Discussion: - Bluesky: - Twitter: ## Related - [GeoTessera Python library released for geospatial embeddings](https://anil.recoil.org/notes/geotessera-python) (note, 2025-08-31) - [Founded Tarides and looking to hire OCaml hackers](https://anil.recoil.org/notes/founded-tarides) (note, 2018-03-02) - [The State of the OCaml Platform: Sep 2017](https://anil.recoil.org/papers/2017-oud-platform) (paper, 2017-09-01) --- Canonical: https://anil.recoil.org/notes/2026w4 Type: note License: CC BY 4.0 Tags: belfast, tessera, oxcaml