iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

My first blog post for MongoDB: Vector search with embeddings using EF Core against MongoDB. Super easy to get started, everything running free and locally for no hassle trying stuff out! #EFCore #MongoDB #dotnet dev.to/mongodb/mong...

dev.to

MongoDB Vector Search With EF Core

This post was written by Arthur Vickers, Staff Engineer at MongoDB The 8.3.3 and 9.0.3 releases of...

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Today I really got into the zone, coding for hours. It was beautiful. #coding

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

My little gnome really came through!

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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 · 14/07/2025

DBNull is so right it's wrong.

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

Current A.I. is like that really helpful friend...that you just can't trust. They will always answer your question whatever it is, and usually they give accurate information. But you can never really trust them, because when they don't know, they just make stuff up. 😆

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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

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

I'm proud to announce that today I start a new job at MongoDB as a staff engineer in the Database Experience team. Really excited to be working with a lot of great folks to make using MongoDB in your applications even better than it already is! #lifeatmongodb

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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

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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 · 28/02/2025

Thank you so much for the kind words. 💙

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Reposted by Arthur Vickers

Jeremy David Engels @jeremydavidengels.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Good morning friends! Sending you all a big hug on this Friday morning. Today I will be trying to remember that even small acts of kindness and love matter—and to do a few.

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Reposted by Arthur Vickers

Nellie Cubed @nelnelnellie.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Ann Patchett (author and bookstore owner at @parnassusbooks.bsky.social) recommends BEOWULF (translated by Seamus Heaney) as the book that will allow us to sleep at night and put the world into perspective. (This is from her “If You Haven’t Read It, It’s New to You” segment.) 📚💙

The author and bookstore owner stands in front of a shelf of book holding a copy of the book BEOWULF translated by Seamus Heaney.

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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

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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...)

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

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

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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.)

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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

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Reposted by Arthur Vickers

Heath Stewart @heaths.dev · 19/02/2025

I'm excited to announce the first beta of our official #AzureSDK for #rustlang crates! This initial release includes Key Vault Secrets and Keys, Event Hubs including AMQP support, our core crates, and Identity. Cosmos is following soon. We have more planned including some usability improvements.

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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

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Reposted by Arthur Vickers

Giorgi Dalakishvili @giorgi.dev · 19/02/2025

The MySQL query plan visualizer is going to be 🔥

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Reposted by Arthur Vickers

Kate North @curatorkate.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

The incredibly detailed late 19th century pulpit at Peterborough Cathedral 🤩 (Wider view in comment below)…

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

…being said, I would take a garbage collector any day. Not to reduce bugs, but to simplify the design through fewer ownership complications. And ownership always gets complicated in a real project. 2/2

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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

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

solved (people still can't see a doctor). And it's because the incentive was only correlated to the goal, not the goal itself, and humans (and nature) are really good at manipulating such correlations. Phew. If you read all that #waffle you probably have too much time on your hands! 🤣 4/4

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

…times. So reducing the number of appointments with long wait times should mean people see a doctor when they need to. Except that, instead, doctors can just not make those appointments. This means the success metric is met (appointments have short wait times), but the underlying problem isn't… 3/4

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

…tail without being healthier, then the correlation is broken, and the peacock gets more mates without being healthier. This is nature doing the same thing as humans do intentionally all the time. For example, people not being able to see a doctor is correlated with long appointment waiting… 2/4

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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

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

I'm actually getting reasonably good at doing it from scratch!

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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 · 11/02/2025

Now listening to Live at Reading to get the blood flowing! #Nirvana #musicsky open.spotify.com/album/01Z1nu...

open.spotify.com

Live at Reading

Nirvana · Album · 2009 · 24 songs

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Just listened to "Nirvana MTV Unplugged". My favorite #Nirvana record, and that's saying a lot! Looking back, the song choice was inspired. The Meat Puppets rock. And my dad used to listen to Lead Belly, so that cover has always been special for me. #musicsky open.spotify.com/album/1To7kv...

open.spotify.com

MTV Unplugged In New York

Nirvana · Album · 1994 · 14 songs

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Thanks for your kind words. We had some good times on the standup! 👍

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Arthur Vickers @ajcvickers.bsky.social · 10/02/2025

I really, really dislike this comparison. Not a fun read.

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