Al Hotimski

Geospatial Data Scientist at The Conservation Fund. MS in Remote Sensing & Geospatial Sciences.

ahotimski00.github.io — portfolio site

Personal portfolio site for Al Hotimski, geospatial data scientist at The Conservation Fund. Live at https://ahotimski00.github.io.

Tech

Jekyll + Minimal Mistakes theme, served by GitHub Pages from the main branch. Source pages are markdown under _pages/; navigation is data-driven from _data/navigation.yml. Local builds via bundle exec jekyll serve.

Repo structure

.
├── _config.yml           # Jekyll config (theme, plugins, defaults)
├── _data/
│   └── navigation.yml    # Top-nav order: About | Projects | Tools | Resume
├── _includes/            # Partial templates (head, footer)
├── _pages/
│   ├── about.md          # /about/  - bio, education, experience, skills
│   ├── projects.md       # /projects/ - three deep case studies (Land Ownership, ACEP, FHSZ)
│   ├── tools.md          # /tools/  - smaller open-source pieces (cogsieve so far)
│   └── resume.md         # /resume/ - resume content + PDF download (PDF currently TODO)
├── assets/
│   ├── img/              # All site images (project carousels, screenshots)
│   └── al_hotimski_resume.pdf  # TODO - not yet uploaded
├── index.md              # / - homepage (3 What-I-Do cards, 3 project teasers, skills table)
└── .gitignore            # Includes _site/ - never commit Jekyll build output

Sister repos

  • resume-coach (private): holds working resume artifacts and the career-goals strategy. When updating the public Resume page here, check that the base resume there is in sync.
  • cogsieve (public, at github.com/ahotimski00/cogsieve): featured on the Tools page. Its live Streamlit demo at https://cogsieve-vir5swvkd2a5fypnpyqlnn.streamlit.app/ is the headline interactive surface for the portfolio.

Page conventions

  • Project sections use anchor IDs ({#land-ownership}, {#farm-parcel}, {#fire-hazard}) so the TOC sidebar links work.
  • Image carousels use the inline <div class="carousel-wrapper">... structure with the shared JS at the bottom of projects.md (lightbox + arrow navigation). Don’t duplicate that script across pages.
  • Tables prefer markdown over HTML for readability.
  • Don’t write multi-paragraph docstring-style sections. One section per concrete thing.
  • The Resume page should never reproduce the full PDF content - it should be a compact summary with a “Download PDF” button.

Outstanding TODOs in the source

Grep for <!-- TODO to find them. As of last edit:

  • Upload the resume PDF and uncomment the download link in _pages/resume.md.
  • Confirm/correct the tooling list on the Land Ownership project (rapidfuzz, shapely, etc.).
  • The home page Skills row and About page once listed NLTK/NLP, but no project actually uses NLP. Replace with “fuzzy matching, record linkage, entity resolution” or add an actual NLP project. (Source-code TODO comment flags this in projects.md.)
  • Add a deeper RF-model section to the FHSZ project: feature importance, hyperparameter tuning, class-weighted training rationale.
  • When the ACEP source is approved for public release, add the GitHub link.

Recent design decisions (newest first)

  • Tools page added as a new top-nav tab between Projects and Resume. Hosts smaller open-source pieces (cogsieve and future). Keeps the Projects page as the long-form case-study surface and the Tools page as the runnable-code surface.
  • Em/en dashes are banned project-wide. Use hyphens. There’s a memory rule about this globally; respect it here too.
  • No AI-sounding language. A skeptical-reviewer audit flagged “Passionate,” triplet rhythm, “actionable insights,” “not just X but Y,” and the like. Cut on sight, rewrite specific to projects.
  • The 93% QA-reduction metric is scoped per-state-per-month on the recurring monthly Regrid refresh that drives the parcel-change pipeline. Don’t drop the scope.
  • ACEP project is internal-source. The Projects page leads with a one-line note explaining why no GitHub link.
  • Engineering-practices block on Tools page was rewritten as a longer “Approach” section that walks through decisions made while building cogsieve. Reads as thinking during the build, not a checklist of best practices.

Voice

  • First person where natural (“I built”, “I designed”). Not third person, not passive (“was developed”).
  • Lead with the concrete thing, then the why.
  • Numbers earn trust when they have units the reader can multiply (per-state, per-month, per-snapshot, per-parcel).
  • If a sentence could appear on any portfolio in any sector, rewrite it to be specific to Al’s actual work.

Useful one-liners

# Local preview
bundle exec jekyll serve

# Find any em or en dashes that slipped in
grep -rn $'—\|–' _pages/ index.md _config.yml

# Find open source-code TODOs
grep -rn 'TODO' _pages/ index.md