iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026

Going to #MatrixConf ? You might like my attempt at no-encryption-knowledge-required explanation of how we keep your messages safe from prying eyes! @matrix

Andy Balaam: How Encryption works in Matrix. Photo of me goofily smiling and scratching my head. The Matrix Conference, Malmo 2026.

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/09/2026

Last night I spent just under 3 hours doing 100% human hacking on a little retro game. Video coming your way on Friday. No edits, no inhuman coding, no banter, no real reason to watch. But if you want to, go for it!

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026

I made a 4-hour video of me creating my Vim config. Inexplicably, I have not received millions of dollars in donations. You can correct that here liberapay.com/smolpxl

Screenshot of liberay's interface saying "smolpxl receives £0.85 per week from 1 patron"

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/09/2026

Continuing my strategy of a) fixing the Internet's punctuation, and b) becoming a committer on lots of repos to make myself look clever

A github commit (id f4f4fa3 on the futures-rs repo) authored by me with description 'Use "its" without an apostrophe for the possessive'

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/08/2026

20 years ago, normal people avoided technology and techies would jump on the newest gadgets as soon as they could. Now, normal people buy smart toasters & coffee mugs while every techie I know is on the verge of retreating to the forest

A screenshot of a post by @rysiek@mstdn.social containing the exact same text as this post, which is itself quote-posting a post containing the same text, which is itself screenshotting a post containing the same text, which is screenshotting a post containing the same text, which is screenshotting a post containing the same text.

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/06/2026

Sometimes gamedev is just planting a lot of flowers

A pixellated character in a field, with lots of identical flowers all around. A friendly elf is nearby.

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/05/2026

git-what, a thing that summarizes your git branches, has moved to codeberg! codeberg.org/andybalaam/git-what

A screenshot of a command line exchange:

$ git what
-- Branches --
* master

no-ant-conpile
925838 Experiment with compiling without Ant

no-ant-test
98a2442 Remove unnecessary comment
bce2b02 Avoid Ant for running tests

water -anination
3662858 WIP - attempts to fix water animation

-- Changes on master --
M rabbit-escape-engine/test/rabbitescape/engine/CallTracker. java
?? _rabbit-escape-engine/test/rabbitescape/engine/Fireballs. java

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/05/2026

Graft has moved to codeberg! It's a toy programming language for drawing cool pictures. You can try it out by tooting at @graft ! codeberg.org/andybalaam/graft

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/05/2026

Hey, so I use Audacity a lot, and on my old machine I use the compressor effect with these settings. On a newer machine I have a new dialog that looks like the second screenshot. In the old version, just hitting Apply would make the volume right, even if […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

The old compressor effect dialog in Audacity, showing Threshold: -12dB, Noise Floor: -40dB, Ratio: 0:1, Attack Time: 0.2 secs, Release Time: 1.0 secs, and both "Make-up gain for 0dB after compressing" and "Compress based on Peaks" are checked.

New Audacity compressor effect dialog. Threshold: -32.6 dB, Make-up gain: 13.2 dB, Knee width: 14.0 dB, Ratio: 100.0, Lookahead: 1.0 ms, Attack: 0.2 ms, Release: 1.0ms

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/04/2026

Remind me why we use proprietary software again?

Two browser windows side by side. On the left, GitHub's error page showing an angry unicorn. On the right, github's status page showing "All Systems Operational".

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/02/2026

Some offensive user names have been appearing in public Matrix rooms recently so I submitted a little change to Element Web to make names hidden by default when someone is banned: github.com/element-hq/element-web/p…

An informational line from Element Web saying "andyblocal banned ...: Not nice" with the name of the banned user blurred out.

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/02/2026

I refactored some tricky code over the last couple of weeks to make it (slightly) less confusing. I was proud of that. github.com/element-hq/element-web/p…

A code diff showing that we added a new field to an existing class that is called DeviceListenerOtherDevices. (This new class contains some of the tangled logic that all used to be mixed up in the original class.)

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/02/2026

Enjoying the Winter Olympics but feel there are not enough gonks? We've got you covered. gonk-olympics.artificialworlds.net/… Play for free: no ads, no AI, no profiling. It's just a little game right there in your browser, for fun.

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/10/2025

Important message from my talk! Exclude Insecure Devices is coming! After April 2026 (or maybe even sooner), if your Matrix device is unverified, you will not be able to talk to someone who is using Element! Or any other client complying with MSC4153 #Matrix

Me giving a talk with this on the screen:

Exclude Insecure Devices is coming!

If your device is unverified, you will not be able to talk to someone who is using Element

or any other client complying with MSC4153

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2025

The other day we were walking around the grounds of Blenheim Palace, and my eldest began explaining to my youngest, from first principles, why a Monad is just a Monoid in the category of Endofunctors. Almost expired with parenting joy. We only got about […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Blenheim Palace and grounds looking beautiful from the air. It's a bit misty, and there are lovely lakes and green grass.

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2025

I just solved Postcard from Lemmingland[1] and I feel good about myself. 1] [lemmings.fandom.com/wiki/Postcard_f…

Several lemmings walk out of the entrance, heading for a brick wall. This level is the same as one of the easy ones, but this time it's much harder: you only have 1 bridger, 1 basher, 1 miner and 1 digger.

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/02/2025

I'm still playing and enjoying Box Stacker, after leading the family team that wrote it two years ago. Normally by the time a game is finished, I am sick of it and don't want to play again, but Box Stacker remains really fun. You have to build little […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

A Box Stacker level where a cube is falling onto some broken tetris blocks.

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/02/2025

Are 8 levels of indentation too much? We do like our Rust code to be specific...

Some pixellated code that makes a triangle shape going off the right because we have 8 levels of indentation.

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Andy Balaam @andybalaam.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/01/2025

My Lemmings-like game, Rabbit Escape[1] has an old-school forum[2] where you can share levels you created! There's a video[3] explaining how to make levels, which should also help understand how to play the levels on the forum. 1] [ […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

People chatting about a level on the Rabbit Escape levels forum: Andy posted a level called Cup of tea, and suggested it might be good for the super-easy level set. tttppp says "lgtm!"

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