Amy Tabb
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atabb.bsky.social
Amy Tabb
@atabb.bsky.social
2.3K followers 650 following 170 posts
Research scientist, computer vision and robotics for agriculture. she/her. Largely not checking this account or posting about work at the moment.
https://amytabb.com/
Close-ish to Washington, D.C., USA.
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atabb.bsky.social
Welcome to our world Riona! We lost Inca the Rottweiler at 8 years old about a month ago. It didn't feel right, to be at home with no dog, and I missed inca terribly. We found Riona the Rottweiler at an SPCA and she is a gem.

Nikon z6ii, f/1.8, 1/400s, ISO4000, 50mm, handheld.
A Rottweiler female dog lies on a floor mattress, and looks off camera. She has a crinkly ball at her feet. She has a gray muzzle and looks friendly.
March 24, 2025 at 12:19 AM
atabb.bsky.social
There's 550 Scarlatti sonatas, and I have had 1 book of sixty sonatas for ages. Got two others today, yeah!

Am I trying to distract myself from the current state of the USA? yes

Is it working? also yes
An edition of Scarlatti, sixty sonatas in 2 volumes, volume 1. Dover edition, volume 1, Scarlatti, Ninety Sonatas in 3 volumes, edited and annotated by Eiji Hashimoto. "Urtext edition"
March 16, 2025 at 12:34 AM
atabb.bsky.social
Feeling frustrated about the aid situation to Ukraine, I donated to Come Back Alive recently and they have some neat artwork when doing so.

savelife.in.ua/en/
A post-card like image, author Anastasia Gaydaenko, of a woman sitting in a chair. The woman has on a wedding dress and veil, as well as a military jacket and boots, and a flak jacket and firearm next to the chair. She is stitching up a wound on her leg.
March 12, 2025 at 11:58 PM
atabb.bsky.social
Carolina Wren, top, and female Downy Woodpecker, bottom.
These two birds don't usually share space ... but this feeder is so desirable, that the birds have gotten more and more tolerant of each other close by over time. At home.

Nikon z6ii, f/8. 1/500s, ISO1600, 410mm, tripod & gimbal.
A feeder shaped like a sunflower has suet and peanuts in the center. A small woodpecker hangs off the bottom, and a small wren looks down from the top.
March 11, 2025 at 12:39 AM
atabb.bsky.social
Female N. Cardinal at home.

Nikon z6ii, f/8. 1/640s, ISO2000, 380mm, tripod & gimbal.
A medium-sized bird perched on a piece of dead wood, tan and brown background.
March 10, 2025 at 12:09 AM
atabb.bsky.social
Another photo of the new calf -- she's about 3 weeks old, and can empty a gallon bottle in minutes.

Nikon z6ii, f/3.2, 1/320s, ISO 1250, 50mm, handheld.
A dairy calf drinking from a bottle. She is enthusiastic and her eyes are big and wide.
March 9, 2025 at 12:43 AM
atabb.bsky.social
Mom's new heifer calf: she escaped from her enclosure this evening -- the kids, Mom, and I tried to corral her and she is FAST. She did multiple laps, finally got tired, & I was able to approach & fashion a halter out of a lead.

Nikon z6ii, f/3.2, 1/320s, ISO 1250, 50mm, handheld.
A young Ayrshire calf attempts to nurse on a man's shirt. She has big, buggy eyes.
March 8, 2025 at 2:16 AM
atabb.bsky.social
Two pets with similar poses: Inca the Rottie on the ground, M. the guinea pig on the towel. Inca met guinea pigs late in life and she has been very good around them so far. However, we had a squirrel get in the house (long story), she wanted to eat the squirrel, and helped with its capture.
A Rottweiler dog lies on the floor with a quizzical expression on her face, what is going on here? A small rodent is in a similar pose, on a towel on the couch. Both the dog and rodent have mostly black fur.
February 22, 2025 at 12:19 AM
atabb.bsky.social
I hear you, female N. Cardinal, I hear you. During a snowstorm at home.

Nikon z6ii, f/5.6, 1/640s, ISO 125, 500mm, tripod & gimbal.
A medium-sized bird perched on a piece of wood has its beak open, triangular tongue visible.
February 19, 2025 at 1:42 AM
atabb.bsky.social
Inca sleeps in a sunbeam.

Nikon z6ii, f/1.8, 1/320s, ISO 200, 50mm, handheld.
A Rottweiler dog lies with her jaw on one front leg, she's in a sunbeam and sleeping on a floor mattress.
February 16, 2025 at 3:04 AM
atabb.bsky.social
Happy weekend, folks! M. the guinea pig has been adopted from an animal shelter to make a pair with R. the guinea pig. M. is a female and so gentle. R. is a curmudgeon and bitey 😅

Nikon z6ii, f/1.8, 1/320s, ISO 2500, 50mm, handheld.
A large solid-colored guinea pig with protruding eyes rests on a towel.
January 18, 2025 at 1:39 AM
atabb.bsky.social
White-throated sparrow at home: borb stage and then with neck extended. I flipped back and forth between these two photos for a long time, laughing.

Nikon z6ii, f/5.6, 1/160s, ISO 1200, 500mm, tripod & gimbal.
A small bird in profile among dead stems and a pot. Almost spherical. Same bird, but its neck is extended as it notices me.
January 12, 2025 at 12:22 AM
atabb.bsky.social
I don't have general things that are different from these -- the post is super, super good, and it covers the essentials that are common for many people. I laughed at the "simplest experiment first" section, because well, I've done those sorts of things (and regretted it).
Run the simplest experiment first. This is the mistake I make the most often. ML experiments are so easy to mess up you absolutely need to verify at each step that the minimal experiment is working. The minimal experiment is the absolute bare minimum needed to check that either your code works or your idea makes sense. Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s a coherent definition of minimal, it seems to mostly be an aesthetic thing. I’d call it the thing that has the least moving pieces. Since nothing is better than concrete details, let me just list all the ways I’ve done this wrong: I had an RL problem where we had to solve some task where the dynamics were defined by N trajectories. Instead of checking whether I could solve one interesting trajectory perfectly, I kept running the algorithm over all N trajectories. I had a problem that could be run in single or multi-agent mode. Instead of trying to verify correctness of the codebase by running the single-agent version, I jumped right to the multi-agent version. I had a multi-agent problem where I could run it with 100s of agents or just a few. I jumped right to 100s. I’ve done this one three times.
December 17, 2024 at 1:31 PM
atabb.bsky.social
A high-key image -- a Tufted Titmouse at home, with a peanut chip and ready to take off and go eat it. (tuft down)

Nikon z6ii, f/5.6, 1/1600s, 1SO 800, 500mm, handheld.
A small bird against a bright sky. clinging onto a feeder shaped like a flower. The bird has a chunk of peanut in its beak.
December 17, 2024 at 12:25 PM
atabb.bsky.social
Male red-bellied woodpecker, in a dogwood tree, at home.

Nikon z6ii, f/5.6, 1/800s, 1SO 640, 500mm, handheld.
A large woodpecker in a deciduous tree with no foliage in the winter.
December 14, 2024 at 12:25 PM
atabb.bsky.social
A guinea pig photo taken by one of the kids. I told the kid about getting the eye in focus, and they did a great job photographing "the wee little beastie." We got a cat bed recently and the beastie loves it.
A tri-color guinea pig with cowlicks all over snuggles down in a fleecy bed. There are pieces of grass everywhere.
December 11, 2024 at 1:22 AM
atabb.bsky.social
Large hawk getting comfortable to do some preening, on the back fence at home; try 2 for bird photos on bsky.

Nikon z6ii, 1/500s, ISO 1600, 700mm, handheld but braced against a wall.
A large hawk in profile, trying to get comfortable to do some preening. Wings are out, eyes down, it seems unstable.
December 7, 2024 at 11:23 PM
atabb.bsky.social
Dog assistance during reviewing. Paper in my left hand, pen and pet dog with my right.
A rottweiler dog has nose in the air and a person's hand is petting her on the side of the head. Inside.
December 4, 2024 at 6:38 PM
atabb.bsky.social
This is the kind of stuff I would like to block -- yick. I feel like we're on twitter again, sigh.
Looking for a sugar baby to spoil with both money and gift
December 2, 2024 at 7:35 PM
atabb.bsky.social
I started following @dasharez0ne.bsky.social -- an account I didn't know about until seeing a post from @neu-rips.bsky.social -- and the memes are so funny. I'm having a hard time deciding on which T-shirt I am going to get, these are the current top 4.
Skeleton sitting, text is "all computers must do as I say", left flame from skeleton's hand says "stop guessing what I want", right flame says, "do not remind me later." Skull in the center. Text says, "I will never drill down, take this offline, ping you, unpack this, have bandwidth ... Do not ask me to circle back!" Skeleton sitting at a computer monitor, old CRT style. Text is, "I will never Paste with formatting. Do not format my paste!" Grim reaper graphic. Text is "Legalize hibernation. no chores, no email, no work 1 month, no debt collectors, sleep 18 or 24 hours etc."
December 1, 2024 at 3:13 PM
atabb.bsky.social
HRH (His Royal Hogness) the guinea pig at home.
He has eaten a pile of grass that is larger than he is today.
Will he do so tomorrow? also yes.

Nikon z6ii, f/1.8, 1/200s, ISO 2000, 50mm, handheld.
A tricolor guinea pig on a blanket with a pile of grass in front of him. A hand is petting him from the rear. He is pausing a moment before digging into the grass pile again.
December 1, 2024 at 2:18 AM
atabb.bsky.social
I've been walking on a treadmill during most of my work hours for 6 months now ... I have some newish health issues where sitting triggers back pain. Walking is good, horizontal is good, standing, ehhh not great. Anyone else walking these days?
An adjustable-height desk, up higher, with a treadmill on the floor. Three monitors, desktop clutter.
November 29, 2024 at 8:51 PM
atabb.bsky.social
I used the following of some people similar and different from me, as well as my own following set (why isn't this as default, a list??). Micah Corah, Frank Dellaert, Dmytro Mishkin, Jeremy Howard.

Then, in SkyFeed I have the list input set at every 24 hours, not quite sure what this means ..->
screenshot of SkyFeed, input List set to 24 hours, sort by Creation Date is in ascending order.
November 26, 2024 at 11:59 PM
atabb.bsky.social
I created my first feed, for arXiv papers. Thanks to @drandrewthaler.bsky.social 's blog post, which helped me get it done quickly and has this perfect opening paragraph->

www.southernfriedscience.com/a-quick-and-...
So, you’ve made it! The remnants of science twitter have at last begun to coalesce around a new microblogging platformed owned by questionable individuals with inadequate content moderation that groans under the weight of a massive surge in new users. Welcome to Bluesky.
November 23, 2024 at 12:28 AM
atabb.bsky.social
Hi new followers! -- it is helpful to me if you have a bio of some kind and an avatar that is not the default image. The image does not have to be of you. By the way, I love your pets. Here's our guinea pig.
A grayscale image of a guinea pig on a towel, he has cowlicks all over and a quizzical expression.
November 20, 2024 at 1:57 PM