iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 20/09/2026

I'm moving next week and I'll miss this view :(

3 hot air balloons above a city skyline. One building is under construction.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 14/07/2026

This is supposed to say "Venti Blended Island Colada Energy Drink."

An empty starbucks cup held by a barista with the printed sticker saying "Vt Bl Islco E Drk." It is overly abbreviated from "Venti Blended Island Colada Energy Drink."

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 01/07/2026

A day of messing with Octane in Blender.

$A 2cm faceted diamond sphere with slightly rounded edges. It's illuminated by a beam of white light that it scatters and diffracts into rainbow caustics on the floor. The background sunset is out of focus.$

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 25/05/2026

I can't wait till LISA. This is so cool

satellites are free-flying, the spacing is easily adjusted before launch, with upper bounds being imposed by the sizes of the teiescopes required at each end of the interferometer (which are constrained by the size of the launch vehicle's payload fairing) and the stability of the constellation orbit (larger constellations are more sensitive to the gravitational effects of other planets, limiting the mission lifetime). Another length-dependent factor which must be compensated for is the "point- ahead angle" between the incoming and outgoing laser beams; the telescope must receive its incoming beam from where its partner was a few seconds ago, but send its outgoing beam to where its partner will be a few seconds from now.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 09/04/2026

Artemis 2 is the coolest thing NASA has done in my lifetime.

Starstruck. A stunning snapshot in time. The Artemis II crew captured this breathtaking photo of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way’s elegant spiral structure is dominated by just two arms wrapping off the ends of a central bar of stars. Spanning more than 100,000 light-years, Earth is located along one of the galaxy’s spiral arms, about halfway from the center. Credit: NASA

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 06/04/2026

@NASA release the raws I know you got em

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 24/03/2026

@bad-example.com I want to experiment with constellation but I don't think I fully understand what a backlink is or the syntax of the `source` param. In this example, it's returning 16 likes on a post right? What is the `:subject.uri` for?

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 25/02/2026

Doing art so that I will not be doing anything else.

Unfinished mandala art with markers on my desk

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 14/11/2025

Starbucks workers are striking for a contract and here is Dytrex using a clever and very effective strategy to deter customers from crossing the picket line. #sbwu #NoContractNoCoffee #Starbucks

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 05/09/2025

This article seems pretty sloppy. Pseudorandom number generators on modern computers are way more random than humans. That ability can be trivially extended to shuffling a deck. Human shufflers are the ones that are constrained.

Of course, these algorithms are constrained in other ways-random generators simply aren't good enough to do what people can do with an actual deck. But even the most skillful human dealer cannot provide a perfect hand every time.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 05/08/2025

Read: "NASA staff and funding have been cut, and Trump-appointed interim administrator #2 decides not to prioritize worthy technology." Nuclear power on the moon sounds good to me, so does nuclear propulsion. We can have both, AND good social programs. Trump contaminates everything he touches.

The nuclear initiative means that NASA will continue to have a hand in nuclear development even after the Pentagon's recent cancellation of a joint program on nuclear-powered rocket engines.

" Well, the budget did not prioritize nuclear propulsion, that wasn't because nuclear propulsion isn't seen as a non-worthy technology," the NASA official said.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 21/07/2025

This is why I can't engage with people who see AI as a black and white moral thing. This is an incredible achievement after just a few years of research. There's no telling how exactly AI will affect the world, and it boggles my mind that many people claim to know it must be all bad.

" we can confirm that Google deepmind has reached the much desired milestone, earning 35 out of a possible 42 points - a gold medal score. Their solutions were astonishing in many respects. IMO graders found them to be clear, precise, and most of them easy to follow." - IMO President Prof. Dr. Gregor Dolinar

This achievement is a significant advance over last year's breakthrough of results. At imo 2024, AlphaGeometry and AlphaProof required experts to first translate problems from natural language into domain specific languages, such as Lean, and vice versa for the proofs. It also took 2 to 3 days of computation. This year, our advanced Gemini model operated end-to-end in natural language, producing rigorous mathematical proofs directly from the official problem descriptions - all within the 4.5 hour competition time limit.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 16/07/2025

Plurality-wins voting and the electoral college have made everyone crazy. America is a broken democracy and it won't be fixed until voting is more involved than choosing between one of two morons every 4 years.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 01/06/2025

I also have a ragdoll named Luna (not a lesbian)

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 27/05/2025

This uses the Ford-Fulkerson max flow algorithm, and it can run on any bipartite graph, not just a grid. Including on an aztec diamond. There's a lot of research on how to count tilings, but not so much on how to randomly sample them. Ford-Fulkerson with randomized depth-first search works great.

Domino tiling on an Aztec diamond. Source: https://math.mit.edu/~borodin/aztec.html

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 27/05/2025

I implemented an algorithm to randomly tile a grid with dominos. Here it is on a torus where they can wrap around the edges like Pacman.

A 32x32 grid of randomly placed colorful dominos.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 30/04/2025

My neighbor waits by his window to watch me come home after shopping or whatever, then stands in his yard staring at me the whole time I'm unloading groceries. In his backyard he has this gnome flipping us off and saying "go away". We have literally never interacted with him and he hates us.

My neighbor's gnome pointed at our balcony holding a sign saying "GO AWAY" and flipping its middle finger. The neighbor is also a convicted pedophile

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 23/04/2025

This is 1 frame every 20 minutes. I'm proud to say I never bumped the tripod! The lens is older and my camera would only do manual exposure, so I had to babysit it as the lighting changed.

My DSLR on a tripod on the corner of the kitchen table.

A closeup of the leaves when I decided to stop taking pictures

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 24/03/2025

If you're the owner of tobyhendy.com you should change your handle to that domain in Settings > Account > Handle www.techradar.com/computing/so...

Instructions for how to change your bluesky handle to your own domain using a DNS TXT record.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 13/03/2025

I love your photography. I took a walk a few days ago and tried to mimic your vibes. St. Louis City, MO

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 20/02/2025

Your outie knows not to use $ in markdown code blocks.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 12/01/2025

It's fema?? I'm so confused

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 05/01/2025

I'm fine with that, but then why aren't plant cells "just symbiotic mitochondria and chloroplasts and a host cell"? Why does one get its own domain of life and the other is just 2 different kingdoms working together?

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 29/12/2024

Wikipedia is a good place to start. I've just learned this stuff from random sources over time, but it's not controversial science. Eukaryotes are fricken weird. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbiog... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 19/12/2024

This is a great idea. You just can't get the same level of details from ground based observatories and telescopes.

NGC 2566 imaged by Observatorio El Sauce, Chile.
Image Processing: Mike Selby and Mark Hanson

NGC 2566 imaged by astrophotographer Dan Crowson

360 minutes total exposure – 6 hours

Imaged December 4th and 8th, 2016 and January 6th, 2017 from Dark Sky New Mexico at Rancho Hidalgo (Animas, New Mexico) with a SBIG STF-8300M on an Astro-Tech AT12RCT at f/8 2432mm.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 23/10/2024

It's beautiful in St Louis.

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 09/10/2024

I recently discovered the NPVIC. States sign on and their electoral votes would go to the popular vote winner, regardless of who won that state. It has 209 EVs and needs 270 to come into effect. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationa...

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Alex Sweeney @alexjs.dev · 17/08/2024

Here's my cat in a donut

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