iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

Just joined 2.6% of players and completed Baldur's Gate III in Honour mode! #bg3

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

In April, I sowed some woodland wildflower seeds in a dark corner of the garden. They have been doing really well, and are now starting to bloom. Ten pounds well spent! #garden

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

If we do need some magic, then I have that covered... #bg3

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Here's the party doing all the heavy lifting in my Baldur's Gate honour run. Magic? What's that? Pfft; we just sneak up and hit things really hard! And if that don't work, we blow them up! #bg3

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 29/06/2025

Just starting Act 3 of Baldur's Gate III in honour mode with Piper: a deep gnome rogue4/monk6. Working really well. Str: 10 Dex: 23 Con: 14 Int: 17 Wis: 16 Cha: 12 AC: 21 Deception, persuasion, and intimidation all +9, so I don't fight unless I want to! #bg3

BG3 character sheet for a deep gnome rogue/monk

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 28/03/2025

Sunrise over the fens, from last weekend. #Fenlands #Norfolk

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

We haven't been getting out enough, so yesterday we went to Cleethorpes. Lovely snowdrops in the Wolds, and then very cold on the seafront! Steels Corner House was the perfect cure for that. Then a drive by Franklin College and the Healing schools. Great mood booster! 💙

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

We have peacocks in the neighborhood. And now in the house too! #Lego #Peacocks

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

First time on a racing sim and already better than me! (Okay, that's a very low bar, but still...)

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I guess I'm not putting my laundry away until later... #cats

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I also found a picture of my #Amiga 500, with GVP 52MB SCSI HD and 2MB fast RAM. There is also an AT-Once board in it, so I could boot into DOS and use WordPerfect! 🤣 🤣 (The ergonomics here suck, but it was the best I could do while renting a room as a neuroscience intern.)

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I found photographs that my mother took when I was a kid of my #Amiga screen with generated #Mandelbrot images. (We didn't have a printer, and certainly not a color one!) The quality isn't great, but it _is_ great to have a record of these! #Fractals

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I know I'm weird, but I love the coloring of the fur around Toast's eyes. #dogs

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I'm reading "The #Rust Programming Language". Ownership is interesting; it looks a lot like the guidelines I wrote for using smart pointers in C++. The Rust design is cleaner and more robust, but the fundamental approach is very similar. We had a lot of success with C++ used like this. But that… 1/2

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

The finished, slightly wonky, cake. (Putting the frosting on is not my strong point! 🤣) #Baking

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Watching the peacocks in the neighborhood got me thinking about mating displays as correlated incentives. The goal is for the healthiest peacock to breed most. The hen is incentivized in this by the peacock's tail, because it was/is correlated with health. So, if the peacock can improve its… 1/4

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Adder in Thetford Forest last year.

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Rounds out of the oven. Mostly seem to have come out okay. #Baking

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

Making my wife an American yellow cake for Valentine's Day. Baking from scratch is the only way I have found to get a good yellow cake over here. And anyone who suggests a Victoria sponge cake instead can use that dry thing to mop up their spilled tea! 🤣🤣🤣 #Baking

British ingredients for an American yellow cake.

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Still my favorite edition of Monopoly. But Mac can make it challenging! 🤣🐱💙 #Monopoly #MLP #cats

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Re-reading parts of NoSQL Distilled today. Still one of the best overviews of the fundamental problems associated with database scale out. Clearly written, short, and simple explanations. Despite the name, it cuts through the original NoSQL hype to the concepts underneath. #booksky #databases

NoSQL Distilled by Martin Fowler and Pramod J. Sadalage

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

I love that #RustRover by #JetBrains automatically detected that I had #Rust installed on #WSL and used it.

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

This is my most treasured book. My dad got it for me when I was very young, and I read it so many times. #lovedbooks #wabi-sabi #Kipling #booksky

All the Mowgli Stories by Rudyard Kipling

Illustration from All the Mowgli Stories by Rudyard Kipling

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

From a *very* old resume... 🤣 (The astute with too much time on their hands may notice I included gopher here, but I earlier admitted that I could never figure out how to use it properly!)

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

This image popped up while I was searching for something else. Remembering the good times. #EFCore

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

I think I was 10 or 11 when I found out what happens if you put too much torque through a #Lego axel. The result was kind of cool though, so I kept it.

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Orion was really bright last night. Even with light from the house, I captured it just by pointing and clicking my phone at the sky.

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

It's been a while now, so I guess I will formally say: I'm not on the Entity Framework team anymore. I thought I would work on EF Core until I retired, and beyond. Very sadly, that turned out not to be possible. I'm going to really miss the team and the community. But on to new and exciting things!

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Thanks for the user-friendly error message, Windows! 🤣

The semaphore timeout period has expired.

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

So, I was trying to remember why I bought a book on #wabi-sabi 25 years ago. (I picked it up again yesterday and I'm still not sure I get it, but I get it more than I did!) Then I remembered, it was in the bibliography for Extreme Programming Explained. What a great book! #booksky #coding

Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck

Extreme Programming Explained Bibliography

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

"The Physiology of Behavior" by Neil R. Carlson was my favorite neuroscience textbook. It's easy to read, but goes into enough depth (~700 pages) to be interesting. I re-read the 12th edition a few years ago. Still excellent. Unfortunately, tough to find a hard copy legally. 😠 #booksky #neuroscience

"The Physiology of Behavior" by Neil R. Carlson, 4th edition.

"The Physiology of Behavior" by Neil R. Carlson, 12th edition.

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Added logging because I didn't like not seeing anything when my server starts, completely expecting everything to be fine...and log reveals that every request is being processed twice! 🤣🤦#golang

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

"Things wabi-sabi are expressions of time frozen. They record the sun, wind, rain, heat, and cold in a language of discoloration, rust, tarnish, stain, warping, shrinking, shriveling, and cracking." #wabisabi

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 02/02/2025

…live here, then you will know how often the road across the Ouse Washes at Welney is closed in the winter because the washes are storing excess flood water. Not mention that the washes have saved valuable wetlands.

The Ouse Washes in Flood; Paul Tibbs/Ian Burt Photography