iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I'm a fan of early mornings:

Picture of a lighthouse, with trees, and a stone cairn, silhouetted against a deep blue sky, with a band of orange dawn on the horizon.

Picture of the dawn horizon, over the ocean, with a sliver of crescent moon.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

I enjoyed a nice fall day/ night at Kejimkujik. Hard to believe I've been coming there for over 35 years!

Picture of a small stream with some fall foliage on a sunny day.

Turnip carved with a face in it, glowing from a lamp inside, sitting on a railing, at dusk.

Picture of night sky, with stars, with trees, and a river.

Picture of night sky, with stars, trees, and a river, with some stars reflected in the river.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

I totally did not see that Nobel Prize coming. On the other hand (pun intended), it's very well deserved! As a practitioner of asymmetric catalysis, very cool!

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I encountered this this morning. Must be a new AI "feature". Oh well, "I beat the bot". Time to bookmark it I guess.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

My morning ritual of playing nyt puzzles. Strangely, I don't have them book-marked, so I always type WO into my browser, and click on the first link. This morning: WTF AI Overview? I don't think anyone who is looking up "Wordle" wants to see the answer as the first hit.

A google search for wordle, showing a link to Wordle, and an "AI overview" with the answer clearly shown (I have blanked it out) as the first line.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

A nice outing today. I did date myself a bit though, I said something about "Bebop and Rocksteady" when I saw that particular pig's expression, and nobody got the reference (teenage mutant ninja turtle's villain's henchmen, likely aired in the late 1980s, if you're curious).

Person smiling in a red plaid jacket, with a llama in the background.

Picture of pig with bristles, showing teeth and grinning.

Several cows and 1 goat eating hay, with some orange trees in the background.

Row of apple trees with some fall colours in the background.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I was the stereotypical kid who loved to burn things he probably should not have. Anyway, that imbued me with a healthy respect of fire. I'd be sort of anxious to have somebody in my lab who had 0 experience with flames/ knowing how flammable materials behave.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I used SeO2 once or twice. It never worked for what I wanted (I was asking a lot), but I remember how beautiful the crystals of it looked. The Grieco elimination on the other-hand is one of the all time greats in my books. Worked like a charm on my first try, on a complex and fragile substrate.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Something seemed compromised in my amine cabinet, but I could not find an obvious suspect, so I spent my afternoon taping up almost every bottle, except the most commonly used ones. Yellow bins are temporary, I don't normally stack things that way.

A photo of a chemical storage cupboard under a fumehood, with a collection of bottles in blue storage containers.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Yes, agree on that last point, if you held a proverbial gun to my head and said I could only have one single instance of my life's data, and I had to choose between "the cloud" as it exists right now, and 1 unique portable hard drive, I'd pick "the cloud".

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

notwithstanding my main concern, that access could be completely cut off, with an internet failure, or employer lockout (it's happened once already), or even my credentials being compromised. (2/2)

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Yes, in the past, I had files on my device, and shared between my devices in the cloud.... and 10 or even 5 years ago it worked seamlessly, with no version issues. But now more issues arise. My internet connection at work is slow enough that working only in the cloud is laggy (1/n)

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I still collect physical media, but I think I am in the rarity. And I would not have space for copies of everything I have watched. Anyway, in the AI apocalypse, as long as I have a DVD player, I'll have my box-sets of Star Trek to entertain me.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

(and I lost no data, due to having backups, just the drives failed in ways that were unrecoverable, and I would have been in trouble without backups), whereas I have an issue with my MFA or connectivity multiple times a week. (2/2).

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Yes, that's fair. But I'm much more likely to be denied access to my files due to MFA shenanigans, become victim to slow internet, or have a version conflict between 2 files, than I am to have a hard drive fail. I've had I think 2 hard drives completely fail with data loss in my life (1/n)

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Now fortunately I'm picky about a 3-2-1 back-up system, so I lost nothing, but the whole process consumed a bunch of time. (2/2)

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Yes, I always keep both. What happened yesterday was OneDrive stopped recognizing my offline files as the equivalent, and insisted on re-downloading all of them (something that would have consumed my remaining free space). In stopping the process, somehow all my offline files were corrupted. (1/n)

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Can somebody explain to me why it's a good idea to keep all of your files only in the cloud, and not on the device you own? That's increasingly the default option, yet I see a bunch of negatives, and very few positives.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

While Captain Ransom might approve of today's pangram, I'm annoyed it did not accept QUINONE.

NYT Spelling Bee rejecting the word QUINONE

Man in red Starfleet uniform, who Trek Viewers will recognize as Captain Ransome, the disgraced captain of the Title ship of a memorable 2-part cliffhanger set of Voyager episodes.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I started going grey in my early teens, and it has led to some very confusing interactions over the years, where people have added 20+ years to their age expectations of me.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

www.realtor.ca/real-estate/... Who wants to join forces with me, and have a nice little compound to live in? Off the beaten track, on the water, close enough to everything you need!

realtor.ca

Check out this listing

339 Mill Village East Road, Mill Village, Nova Scotia B0J2H0

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

LOL, with our beer prices I would be bankrupt. But in all seriousness, the extent of inflation since I have been an undergrad is shocking. Even in the 11 years since I started my career, the changes have been huge.

Case of Labatt Blue Pilsner (24x341 mL), Price $59.49

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Many years ago, I briefly shut down ACS access for all Harvard IP addresses, because I was downloading all the papers from a particular author so quickly that the ACS website judged I had a bot-like speed.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

A small problem in today's world, but it's a bummer when you could once readily get a particular starting material, and now you cannot.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

One of the unexpected benefits of high-frequency hearing loss: not being bothered by mosquito sounds any more. I lived next to a bog growing up, and had high ceilings, and the sound, often from a single mosquito would drive me nuts. Still, I'd love to have my childhood hearing abilities back.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

While it was objectively very easy Tuesday one, getting a non-Monday crossword in under 10 minutes is very rare for me.

Solved a NYT Tuesday Crossword in 8:39. You have a 2-day streak.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

A year of doing Monday Crosswords!

NYT crossword congratulating me for solving a monday crossword in 7:48. A box says 52 Mondays in a Row. (Well, a year - a week if you're being strict)

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I knew that weird piece of trivia. But I have what I think is a fake memory involving crime and TOS: I had it in my head for a long time that one of the actors in Gamesters of Triskelion committed some unsavoury crime, but it seems I might just have made that memory up, as there is no internet trail

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I'm not much of a traveller, but over the years I've made it to all provinces except MB. No territories yet though!

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Nothing like Spelling bee to make me second guess my spelling skills.

NYT spelling bee rejecting the word PIPETTED

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Second can should be can't? 😅

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

This might be my lowest score yet. Funny, because I'd actually like to visit Valparaíso, I just seem to have no idea where it is. In my defence, Chile is a long country, so a small area away can cover a lot of distance! www.maptap.gg September 3 98🎯 95🏅 95🏅 78🌞 99🎯 Final score: 914

maptap.gg

🎯MapTap Daily Geography Game

Play MapTap - the daily geography game! Find 5 world locations on a 3D globe with historical stories. Free browser-based daily game for geography lovers.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

I raised the point on LinkedIn that maybe we should "pay a bunch of money to recruit US politicians to come and do politics in Canada, pay them more than MPs, and cut the funding for the MPs that are already here". Of course any politician would say that's a profoundly dumb idea, yet.......

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

My thoughts went to accidental combination of a Hg/Na amalgam + a methyl radical source too. It's amazing how almost almost all the speculation online seems to be in bad faith, absent almost any evidence what might have happened.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Also not sure why this one photo was uploaded as a 17 kB file in my first post! Reminding me of my potato-phone days from 2006.

Photo of sailboats with rigging lit up, at higher resolution.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Also bonus moon sighting on the way home, and a photo of the train tracks. Sadly there have been a lot of issues on both the passenger trains to and from Nova Scotia today. I was hoping to see the train arrive, but it's stuck at the other side of the province due to a freight derailment in between.

Picture of the moon between some power lines, with a tree on the left.

Picture of a single set of rail tracks going off into the sunset, with trees on either side.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I enjoyed watching the Venetian Night in Halifax. The boats go up and down the Northwest Arm, to mark the end of summer sailing season. Still plenty warm. I'm not at all a boat person, so excuse my descriptions in the captions.

several sail boats at dusk, with lights going up the rigging.

Several boats, with multi-colour lights along the edges/ rigging.

Several sail boats, with no sails up, with lights along the rigging.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

My best effort to capture the eclipse from my balcony, holding my phone up to a binocular eyepiece.

Photo of the moon, red, with a sliver more illuminated.

Similar photo, red moon, a bit more zoomed in.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Photo from earlier. Before the chomp. Not sure if clouds will cooperate.

Photo of the moon peeking out but surrounded by clouds.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

TIL my little old crown of thorns plant, of which I have many cuttings around, makes lots of phorbol esters. Phorbol was (and maybe is) a hot topic in total synthesis. I've had crown of thorns for many many years, and not known this.

Picture of crown of thorns with pink blooms.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

In my case it took about 10 minutes for the e-mail verification to come through. Just a heads up for anyone reading that it's not always instant.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Another camping trip in the books for this increasingly less-nervous driver!

Photo of me, wearing blue rain coat with orange pack cover. Round glasses, smiling, in the drizzle, wearing Boston Red Sox cap.

Picture of still pond, with trees in the background, lit in golden hour. Various aquatic plants are in foreground. This is a little channel in Peskowesk lake at Kejimkujik.

Picture of lake at sunset, with the big dipper in the sky.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Immortalized by Google Street View. To the best of my knowledge, the only instance of me on it! www.google.com/maps/@42.331...

google.com

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

LOL, was at a wedding last night with a bunch of old students turned friends. So of course I had a dream where I was a student again, taking an exam in math, which I knew nothing about. "School Dreams" are pernicious. I suspect I will always have them.

Picture of a body of water at night, with a boat house on the left, with the big dipper in the sky.

Picture of water, at night, with a bunch of yachts floating in the water.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Andrei Sator is going to be pissed.

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Alex Speed @awhspeed.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Do you know the home Epley manouvre? A little safer than backward falls for klutzy people like me.

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