iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 8h

A workmate from San Francisco was promoting her new book in London Tuesday: journalist Jeanne Carstensen witnessed a refugee boat disaster as enigmatic as it was shocking. And director Itab Azzam promoted her related film: • goodreads.com/en/book/show/214152171-a-greek-tragedy • youtu.be/cvG3aJCfcdY

Jeanne Carstensen was a colleague of mine in the first few years of the San Francisco Chronicle's life on the web. She's shown here at the Frontline Club at Paddington, which champions independent journalism, particularly conflict reporting.

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 11h

Watchin' #anime in '85. With a single exception, everyone pictured was just a username in a forum until the chap who lived here hosted us IRL. The internet's often a grimy newsagents smelling of damp now but I've had a few days like these since – and they're always magical 🌐

Lovely red Dymoke went to my high school and showed me what a computer forum actually was. I'm at right, sat in front of @silentdibs.bsky.social. From here I developed an evidence-based optimism about the internet until late 2000 when Dubya got elected and it seemed like everyone had got the emailed memo. But loads of us 80's forum dwellers became pioneering webmasters and just kept nurturing our maturing online communities because those were our tribes, which we'd found and founded online.

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 18h

isthisai.com knows – for a price – but it does seem likely

Of @underrated.simpsons, TikTok says they "couldn't find this account."

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 18h

actually looking up from my phone:

plasma ball, lava lamp, nabaztag and catbus

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

That's very similar to what the Tryst Expedition called Ranx. I know Who took footage from ITC, but it looks slightly different. Other episode? Unused take? 🤷

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Five sites and swearing at an aidiot and The Savoy hotel & theatre are where Count Peter of Savoy used to have his palace. His neice was queen of England and had given him a bit of London. Ye olde Savoy was an Alpine region. Its queen Margherita had a pizza made for, and named after her in Naples.

A Margherita Pizza features tomato, mozzarella, and basil, two of which I didn't used to be able to pronounce. "It happened to resemble the colours of the Italian flag and according to legend, Queen Margherita loved it so much that chef Raffaele Esposito named the pizza in her honour. Another story suggests that the classic pizza was named after the Margherita flower, or the Paris daisy and the ingredients were arranged to resemble its petals." – https://48h.com.au/margherita-pizza

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Gonna nerd out: the BBC got 18 chip cameras in '87 to modernise OB – those less-sensitive early sensors somehow feel a bit different to outside broadcast video like in 'Robot' – whose tube cameras sent light onto phosphor paste under glass. But chips in cameras – and in the music – were The Future!

I'm not 100% sure but this is probably a still from the popularly-used EMI 2001 video camera, which used 3 tubes to monochromatically record colour through tinted prisms and a fourth to record the black and white image that those chroma signals were laid on top of. Handling the luminance and chrominance separately (for quality) is an advancement that S-VHS and Hi8 had over standard VHS. The first season of Doctor In The House from July 1969 has the earliest use of EMI 2001s I think I've ever seen – it's magical because it's so long ago yet feels as fresh as the day it was shot. Citation: https://becg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/LWT-Technology.pdf

I'll be pretty embarrasssed if this is in fact a still from a tube camera and not a chip camera. Here's a document mentioning the outside broadcast CCD cams that the BBC got, the year before Remembrance of the Daleks was broadcast: https://www.bbceng.info/additions/2017/Engineering%20Progress%20And%20Achievements%20-%201987.pdf • A Charge-Coupled Device (CCD) is a light-sensitive silicon chip where electrons flow into the top corner and then are passed on along to each video pixel in the sensor. Each picture element is coupled to its neighbour in a kind of bucket brigade so the complete video signal of each frame eventually flows out the bottom corner, onwards to the camera cable and VTR.

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Ham and cheese toastie and a pumpkin latte season is upon us 🎃

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Have these photoshops from 2001, when I was celebrating the Crablogger, my favourite kind of blogger #Thunderbirds

CRABLOGGER! ATOMIC REACTOR AND SUPERON™ LIQUID FUEL SYSTEM • 60 BARRELS OF PURE WOOD PULP EVERY 30 MINUTES! • This knits together a few different shots from when the Crablogger rolled past

CLUB CRABLOGGER • 7 FLOORS OF HEAVY INDUSTRY AND LIGHT SHOWS • DJs: FACILE BOTTY / TEQUILA MOCK / BACH ROLL / MC THETA-G • £5 AT THE DOOR / £2 IN ADVANCE / £30 TIME TRAVELLERS

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

ready to get ready for the latest Two Watch Who

Zygon: "They've been stranded on Earth for 20 years, so Zygon commander Kritakh, and his second, Torlakh, have had plenty of time to re-create their world. The trouble is that Kritakh, aka engineer Mike Kirkwood, has lost his sense of purpose. Can Torlakh, aka mass murderer Bob Calhoun, get him back on track? Enter sexy psychiatrist Lauren Anderson (previously seen in Cyberon), first to be tempted by her innermost desires and then to face her greatest challenge. Can a violent heart really be tamed by love and what is the ultimate price to be paid?" Guess I'm gonna find out.

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I remember having a cold and going off pineapple soda, on the darkened weeknights I saw Planet of Evil. That seemed to have done the trick. There are other desolate explorations to the edge of space in Who but this one caught my imagination to where the quieter moments seem placed to spook me. 💕

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

That 1980 TV timeline you didn't ask for 21 March [US] – J.R. Ewing is shot, in #Dallas 30 August [UK] – intense starscape titles for #DoctorWho 28 September [US] – chill starscape titles for #Cosmos 21 November – J.R. Ewing's maimer is revealed in #Dallas

People magazine cover: "Who shot J.R.?" on display at South Fork Ranch, together with the prop gun. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_shot_J.R.%3F

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Slight Mandela effect, reading that in its September 1980 TV premiere, 'Cosmos' was titled 'Cosmos: A Personal Voyage'. I was there but apparently forgot. VHS cases, book & soundtrack omitted the subtitle, and it's edited out of later releases. Here's title, subtitle and the first episode's title.

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

'The Worst Journey in the World' is a memoir by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, illustrated with photographs and coloured drawings. Wiki says it's a "frank treatment of the difficulties of Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica and the causes of its disastrous outcome." Book: en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Wor...

Mark Gatiss performing as Apsley Cherry-Garrard in his 2007 adaptation of Garrard's memoir, 'The Worst Journey in the World'.

‘An April After Glow’ – Antarctica in a Herbert Ponting autochrome, taken seven years after the 1904 invention of that colour photography process.

'Hole in an Iceberg' by Herbert Ponting, from an early phase of the Terra Nova Antarctic expedition, 5 January 1911. The five explorers who went onward into the final phase never returned from Antarctica.

'Grotto in an Iceberg' by Herbert Ponting, 5 January 1911. He wrote on New Year's Day, "Bright sunny weather, an ice-free sea and a fair wind were all that we could desire, and we bowled merrily along with all our canvas pulling and bellying to the breeze. Great swelling billows of cumulus – glorious contrasts of light and shadow – floated in the heavens, or detached themselves into woolly clusters. Such weather made the very drawing of the breath of life a joy. It filled one with a sensation of delight to throw back the arms, expand the chest and, opening wide the lungs, inhale great stimulating draughts of the sweet exhilarating air. It made one thrill and tingle with very gladness to be alive, and to have health and strength and feel the marvel of it all."

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Under a cloudless blue sky, a New England autumn is unforgettably fresh and intense. Paying forward a gift from my sister. Happy equinox! 🍁

Autumn leaves in crystal clear compact disc jewel case. A gift from my sister when I left New England.

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Gimme a cel paint space opera! There are some epic titles in this seventies and eighties period – Gatchaman, Nausicaä, A-ko, Kamui, Yamato, Akira – but these nine are the ones that I properly connected with. #my9animes

Speed Racer, Megazone 23, Macross, Southern Cross, Mospeada, Captain Harlock, Zeta Gundam, Lupin The Third and the Castle of Cagliostro. And lastly Dairugger XV, which I knew as Voltron.

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The puzzle book I've been dipping in and out of but after teacakes and brawls I'm revisiting Neuromancer, then on to the YANA book - and podcast 📚

Benton and Hawthorne Investigate, Neuromancer, Doctor Who Puzzle Book and You Are Not Alone

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"That's good – to show the crash is really dangerous."

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

My mind must have blanked it out, I *can't* have missed this!

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

It *is* a tough call. More spaceships but worse jokes.

The Tomorrow People on the cover of Look-In. I met the two on the right last year!

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Just in case it wasn't secret enough, me Cambridge mucker @tdrury.bsky.social used to do a Shada Tour

Froods on Tim Drury's Shada Tour. Was good to dee you in Derby, Tim!

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Lapsarian... there's as fresh antediluvian word for me! The latticework entrance you see in one of my low angle shots is so different now – see the pin in this Google Earth clip. I took the opening shots from over the road- erm, across the highway.

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Crabtree Valley Mall... I'm surprised the place still exists, I blew it up!

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

20th century eras of Batman comics seemed as diverse as Doctors Who before Miller's neurodiverse dark spike, that the tone seems not to have come down from. Neal Adams gave little me a chilling, earthy Night Gallery, after 60s Batman had been as interplanetary (and OTT) as Flash Gordon. #BatmanDay

As much as I absolutely swim in Bill Dozier's Fetish Revue, I thought this 2014 Batgirl looked like a pretty cool crimefighter. Highlights as alt text: the suit has a thickness, and zips; the cape unsnaps; the utility belt is rugged and so are the boots. This redesign is credited to Stewart/Tarr

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

The Lion bowling, perhaps to batsman Fuller Pilch as John Wisden notes it for his Cricketers' Almanack 🏏

The Bowler – GF Wells seems to think Alfred Mynn is the definite article in this lithograph from 1845. Mynn was also known as The Lion of Kent.

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I've given my own motorcars pet names but never thought too much about how the Doctor's yellow roadster might be a character of her own. Paul Magrs did though, and in reading his book Stephanie Cole became the voice of Bessie.

Bessie Come Home by Paul Magrs, read by Stephanie Cole

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beeblePumpkin 🎃 @beeblepete.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

When shooting and chain-sawing Daleks all over this #DoctorWho #DOOM mod, I could almost hear the cockney accent of this nameless guy that turns up throughout. After decades – the last of which I went looking – he's been named, and how wrong I was!

A Spanish comedian in a British sci-fi hack for an American game.

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