iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

I'm drinking coffee out of one of Gail's mugs right now. Highly recommended. This one even matches my decor!

Photo of a coffee mug with a design showing brightly-coloured books on a shelf. Behind it, on the far side of the room, is a wall of brightly-coloured books on shelves.

Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 08/11/2025

Apparently I've misremembered, and mine is a different one from the same series. (Either that, or I have two, which I definitely wouldn't rule out... I certainly do have more music boxes about the place.) Also from The Magic Flute: Der Vogelfänger.

A small music box on a bookshelf. There's an intricate silhouette illustration on it: a person in a feathered costume, with a butterfly net over their shoulder, is watched by a wide variety of birds perched in and around a pair of trees. There are other ornaments on the shelf, including a miniature house and a wooden mouse, and it's densely packed with paperback fiction.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Leave a leaf, take a leaf... QRP with a leaf, if you like! Here's a leaf full of leaves. #LeafPosting

A cut-out maple leaf shape in a small square black metal fence panel. Behind it, out of focus, is an orange building and some bright green and red leaves, backlit by the sun. The combination makes it seem as if you're looking at an autumn leaf, green blotched with orange and red, bright in the sunshine.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

"Spread Love". Someone has clearly tried to remove this, but love has been stronger than bigotry.

An A4 poster glued to a grey item of street furniture. It says "Spread Love" in big letters at the top, then there's a reproduction of Banksy's "Flower Thrower" mural (a masked man poised to throw a bunch of flowers rather than a bomb), and then at the bottom it says "Misinformed bigots are tearing apart our town with needless hatred. Faversham, choose love". Someone has tried to tear it down, but has only managed to shred one corner a little.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Oh, nice! This one? (This is the version I had in my early-80s childhood; I have very fond memories of it, and was extremely pleased to finally track one down on eBay!)

A Ravensburger "Original Memory" game, in a blue box with pictures of eight of the game tiles laid out at jaunty angles. There's a little cottage with a blue roof, a man with a big white beard and an even bigger fish, a stripy blue arrow pointing to the right, a goat in a yellow hat and green coat smoking a pipe and leaning on a wall, a couple of white-spotted red toadstools amongst autumn leaves, a tile divided into nine coloured squares, a magpie on a branch, and a penguin amongst tropical flowers.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

The word muting feature includes tags. You can specify whether to mute the word in tags alone, or in both. No wildcards, but it should still help. In the iOS app, you'll find it under Settings > Moderation > Muted words and tags; I imagine it's somewhere similar in other apps and on the website.

A screenshot of the "Add muted words and tags" interface in the iOS Bluesky app. The guidance text reads: "Posts can be muted based on their text, their tags, or both. We recommend avoiding common words that appear in many posts, since it can result in no posts being shown." There is a text field labelled "Enter a word or tag", a choice of four durations (24 hours, 7 days, 30 days or Forever), a choice to mute the word in both text and tags or in tags only, and an option to exclude users you follow.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

Relieved to find mine still safely in place on the shelves!

A paperback copy of The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, with illustrations by Jules Feiffer. It's a Collins Lions edition from the early '80s. The title is in red block capitals on a white background, and the cover illustration below it shows Milo and Tock meeting the Mathemagician in the numbers mine.

Tightly packed paperback fiction on dimly lit wooden shelves. A copy of The Phantom Tollbooth, with a red spine and mostly white front cover, has been pulled out a little. Alongside it on the shelf, it's fairly easy to make out Hellspark by Janet Kagan, two Emil books by Erich Kastner, Scarf Jack by P.J. Kavanagh, The Ordinary Princess by M.M. Kaye, Leaving Home by Garrison Keillor, and three books by Victor Kelleher: Del-Del, To the Dark Tower and The Hunting of Shadroth. There's also a copy of The Flying Classroom by Erich Kastner sitting on top of the other books.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Can I interest you in an alarmingly large Grinch?

A very large inflatable Grinch, dressed up like Father Christmas, stands in front of a butcher's shop in an English town. When I say "very large", I mean it: to the tip of its hat, it's a good two storeys high.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 17/11/2024

If you see this, please repost with a favourite photo of the sky that you’ve taken recently.

A pre-sunset sky, with a golden glow that could have come straight out of a Turner painting. Beneath the sky are a church spire and some Victorian school buildings, half in flint and half in red brick.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

Quote with your emotional support isopod.

A shiny articulated copper woodlouse, with black beads for eyes, resting comfortably on my forearm. It's a perfect fit: about as long as the distance from the crook of my elbow to my wrist, and just the right width for its legs to straddle my arm. It's a very fine beast indeed.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 30/10/2024

If you see this, post a photo taken in the mountains. I didn't think I'd have any on this phone, but here's the summit of Mount Diablo in California! And a view from just below the summit, in case anyone is now thinking the whole mountain has been roofed over.

$The base of a concrete column, set in bedrock. A small sign on the column reads "Summit of Mount Diablo The mound of fractured bedrock at your feet is the actual summit of Mount Diablo. The floor of the building was constructed around this point to allow you to stand on top of one of California's most prominent peaks."$ A spectacular view from a mountaintop. A layer of dark cloud at the top of the photo and a dark treeline at the bottom frame a view of mountains and the plains beyond. The mountains are in shadow from the clouds overhead; the plains are brightly sunlit. It feels appropriate that we are standing in shadow on a mountain called Diablo, looking out at a sunnier land.

A spectacular view from a mountaintop. A layer of dark cloud at the top of the photo and a dark treeline at the bottom frame a view of mountains and the plains beyond. The mountains are in shadow from the clouds overhead; the plains are brightly sunlit. It feels appropriate that we are standing in shadow on a mountain called Diablo, looking out at a sunnier land.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 26/10/2024

If you see this, quote post something green from a photo you took. (I couldn't narrow it down to one!)

A green crocodile painted on a chalk cave wall. The crocodile has its mouth open and looks quite cheerful, but it doesn't seem to have any feet! - its legs end quite abruptly. This is one of the paintings in Margate Caves in Kent, England.

A green notice requests "Please do not put fish in this pond. Thank you". This seems like a strange thing to have to say. It's surrounded by some more natural greenery, mostly bramble leaves.

There's also a smaller notice, which is white with a red border, but it has very small print, and I have no idea what it says.

A bright green car is parked in front of a slightly darker green shipping container, with the word EVERGREEN on its side. It looks almost like a caption for the car, because it's lined up perfectly along the top of its roof. The photo was taken in a boatyard, and in the background are an assortment of boats awaiting or undergoing maintenance. None of them are green.

A view along a narrow woodland path flanked by tall trees in full summer leaf. Some of the trunks are wrapped in dark green ivy. Sunlight is filtering through the canopy, making this a very green photo.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 18/10/2024

Happy autumn! After a week of clouds and rain, a perfect blue sky and gloriously backlit leaves.

Looking up at a clear blue sky through colourful autumn leaves, backlit by late afternoon sunshine. On the left is a magnolia, leaves still green. On the right is a cherry, showing a mixture of bright red, orange and yellow leaves.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 10/10/2024

Intense enough now that I can see the pink with my naked eye, although it looks much better through the phone camera. In Kent! About as far south as you can get in the UK!

The Northern Lights: pink and green in the sky above some buildings.

The same night sky view, but the pink has got more intense and streakier.

The same view again, with the pink REALLY intense now.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 10/10/2024

I've got cloud cover down here in Kent, but my phone camera is picking up pink behind the clouds, which is interesting. Nothing doing with the naked eye (and I had to look at the actual photos to see it - the screen didn't show it while I was taking the pictures).

A cloudy night sky, with pink showing through some of the gaps in the cloud.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 07/10/2024

I can't walk past this boatyard crane without taking a photo of the nameplate. The typeface! The colour! The name itself! It's all just so pleasing.

The manufacturer's nameplate on the back of a vintage-looking boatyard crane. It's yellow with black writing, and it says RUSTON BUCYRUS. Each word is on its own line, and the tail of the S in RUSTON overlaps the top of the B in BUCYRUS.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 04/10/2024

Margate Caves, complete with crocodile.

Manmade chalk caves, with paintings on the walls. There's a crocodile with a cheery grin on the left-hand wall, and straight ahead is the THANET HUNT, though all we can see from here is the caption and some trees; the huntsmen can't be seen from this angle.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 03/10/2024

I wonder how long it took these snails to get to where they are, and why they made the journey.

A hexagonal metal lattice separating a parking structure from the pavement. It's the green of verdigris, but it looks as if it might actually have been painted that colour. There are some rusty patches showing through. Three garden snails are perching on three different hexagons; it's hard to imagine why.

A slightly closer look at the same metal lattice, and two of the three snails.

A much closer look at one of the snails on the metal lattice. The shell is beautifully striped, and seems very out of place in this starkly artificial context. Not everything green is growing, and there's nothing there for a snail to eat.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 03/10/2024

See also... (this one *is* available!)

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 29/09/2024

If you see this, post a vampire.

It's an antique mirror... containing NO REFLECTION. The vampire is coming from inside the house!

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 15/09/2024

The only one I have is Charmed Life. Here's Fiddle!

A page of Japanese text, the start of chapter 15 of Charmed Life, by Diana Wynne Jones. There's a black-and-white drawing of a cat with a body shape reminiscent of a violin; its whiskers look like musical notes, and its tail has sticking-out bits rather like a violin's tuning pegs. This is Fiddle, Cat Chant's old violin, turned into a cat by his sister Gwendolen.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 15/09/2024

At last, I met an elephant hawk moth caterpillar! Gloriously huge, and entirely unconcerned by my presence.

An elephant hawk moth caterpillar crossing a white-flecked grey pavement. It's a substantial grey caterpillar, arguably looking a little like an elephant's trunk. It has a couple of quite large eye spots, it's divided into six or seven segments by lighter-coloured stripes, and its skin appears almost scaled, as if it were composed of pixels or tiny mosaic tiles. It's a very exotic creature to find crossing a very ordinary pavement!

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 29/08/2024

Yes, I'm not making the fullest possible use of this part of my living room!

The top three shelves of some extended (now eight-shelf) Billy bookcases, and a blank stretch of wall above them, running to the ceiling. The edge of a mezzanine floor, with full-height internal windows above it, is visible above the shelves to the right.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 29/08/2024

I went to Sandwich on Monday. This was on one of the information boards scattered about the place. I've heard of eel-rents, but *forty thousand herrings*, in a time before refrigeration?? I wonder just how habitable the house was when the herrings were in situ.

A section of an information board, with text in English and French. One section is circled. It reads "Nearby is the 'Long House', known for centuries as 'The Herring House', as this was where the town collected together its annual tribute of 40,000 herrings to the Archbishop's Priory and local manors. The house was built on the 13th century and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited houses in the town."

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 29/08/2024

I found this rock just lying on the road (where for "road", read "unmaintained farm track") when I was out for a walk near home (Kent, SE England) last year. I'm not sure it really comes across in the photos, but it's quite intensely purple.

A partially translucent purple rock sitting on a black tabletop. It's quite an angular rock, and fairly small, a couple of inches across.

The same rock, seen from a different angle. It looks a bit shiny on this side, although that's mostly a trick of the light.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 25/08/2024

OK, let's look inside... AAAAAAAAA!

A sketch of the interior of the church shown in the last post. Unexpectedly, and very unusually, it appears to be full of... human bones. We are looking at a beautiful vaulted passageway, but really, who's looking at the architecture, because IT IS FULL OF BONES. A very large pile of... leg bones? And skulls, the occasional skull peeking out from amongst the rest. There's also a much smaller pile of just skulls in front of the main pile, which, to be fair, looks very ordered and tidy.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 25/08/2024

Please enjoy this nice sketch of an English church, from a book of 18th-century pictures of Kentish places. When you're ready, let's turn the page and look inside the church.

A black and white sketch of a church. I don't know my ecclesiastical architecture, sorry, so all I can tell you is that it has a square tower (with clock), a slightly unusual cluster of... chapels, maybe? at the other end, and a churchyard with a scattering of graves. The picture is captioned "Hythe", which is a town on the south coast of Kent.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 23/08/2024

One day! But, speaking of manga. 😁 Just the one bookcase (double-stacked, and overflowing), on the very tiny landing.

A full-height bookcase well filled with manga volumes. Only the front row of books on each shelf is visible, and there are books stacked on top of them all, filling the gap between books and the shelf above. They're alphabetical by series. The most prominent series include Full Metal Alchemist, Hikaru no Go, Hunter x Hunter, Inuyasha, Monster, The Promised Neverland and Ranma 1/2.

There's also a very narrow, tall shelf unit next to the bookcase, holding a selection of interesting things to look at: an empty Moomins biscuit box, an antique Bovril jar, a plush toy cat (Jiji from Kiki's Delivery Service), a ceramic elephant and so on.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 23/08/2024

I just wear a different one on my jumper every day. At this point, it takes me about three years to rotate through them all. 😅 They live in tiny boxes in this apothecary cabinet!

A metre-high apothecary cabinet with eight rows of three small drawers each, and a single large drawer at the bottom. The drawers are labelled. The top two rows are close enough to the camera to read: A to Art, Art Deco to Beetles, Birds, Blossom to C, Cats 1 to D, and Daffodils to Dolphins.

An open drawer in an apothecary cabinet. It contains five little lidded cardboard boxes, only one of which is fully visible: it's labelled "Origami". A second box is mostly hidden under a card listing the drawer's contents: N in General, O in General, Octopuses, Origami, and Owls (1): Fabric. There's a cross-reference card as well: all that's showing is "NEWTS: see". The edges of two more boxes can be seen under and behind the Origami box, and you can infer the presence of the fifth.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 08/08/2024

I gather it's #InternationalCaterpillarDay. Here's a fox moth caterpillar that chose to celebrate it with me out on the marshes this morning, along with two stripy friends from earlier in the week: cinnabar moth and buff-tip moth.

A substantial, furry, dark brown fox moth caterpillar with thin bright orange stripes. It's undulating as it crosses the border between a manmade track and the adjacent grass. It looks very strokable, like a cat's tail.

A stripy little orange and black cinnabar moth caterpillar on yellow ragwort flowers. It's showing off its flexibility by bending almost at right angles in order to keep its grip on a flower stalk while it nibbles on a petal.

A very brightly coloured buff-tip caterpillar crossing a dark grey path. It's got a grid of almost fluorescent yellow markings on a dark background, with white tufts of hair sticking out. It's giving off very strong DO NOT TOUCH vibes.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 02/08/2024

Ah, fantastic! I've not seen any six-spot burnets, but I found some huge thistley things by the sea in Margate the other week. Not actually spiky. Possibly cardoons.

Two clumps of tall thistle-like plants with huge purple flowers, brightly lit by the sun against a clear blue sky. They're growing at the top of a cliff, and there's a strip of sea visible behind them. In between the clumps is a tangle of other greenery, with bright red rosehips scattered through it.

A closeup of a huge blue-purple thistle-type flowerhead. It's a ball of radiating streaks of colour, like a pompom or a firework. A white-tailed bumblebee is exploring it, and is absolutely dwarfed by it.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 31/07/2024

It's cinnabar moth caterpillar season!

A stripy little black and orange caterpillar on a ragwort stalk. I assume we're looking at the head end, because it seems to have eyes. If so, then its attention is on the stem it's clinging to. The other end of the caterpillar is resting on some flower buds just below.

Another stripy little caterpillar on ragwort. This one is side-on, and it's nibbling on a flower bud.

A stripy little orange and black caterpillar on a ragwort stem. I'm not completely sure which way up it is, but if we're looking at the head end, then it's twisted around to glare at the camera. Sorry, friend! I didn't mean to interrupt!

There are also a couple of ants above the caterpillar on the stem. I think they're heading further up.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 30/07/2024

Ooh, I know this one - they get about as big as spiders do! i.postimg.cc/Bbq98RtJ/10-...

Three panels from a Tintin book, The Shooting Star. In panel 1, Tintin says "Let's have a look" as he climbs the stairs towards the eyepiece of a very large telescope, while his dog Snowy waits at the top. In panel 2, Tintin recoils in shock from the telescope, exclaiming "OH!", while Snowy looks at him quizzically. In panel 3, we see what Tintin has just seen through the telescope - a burning yellow sun with a VERY LARGE SPIDER silhouetted against it.

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Not a news network! @alg24.bsky.social · 15/02/2024

OK, so I concede that this is not actually Sealand, it's a close cousin (Red Sands sea fort, also in the Thames Estuary), but... you can't tell me this wouldn't be an appropriate place for a science fiction convention.