iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Fellow European here: Yes! Also: (American?) English: "chicks." British English: "birds." 🤷‍♂️

Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

My Williams, Brown & Earle was not very sharp, and bloomed. And #Petzval is normally sharp in the centre. So I checked: either I, or the previous owner had the rear lens group placed incorrectly. Wrong order and wrong orientation. So, if you ever reassemble one, this is correct:

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Love that first one. It appeals in a way that is hard to define. Maybe the tones and the DoF. Great shot!

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Reposted by Bram Stolk

Commodore Stuff @commodorestuff.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Choose your fighter.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Well, that is a weird reaction. My point is: Paul Erdős is a giant in the field, none more prolific. To solve a problem that he couldn’t is an astounding feat. The era where we can be dismissive about AI has passed. Maybe the bad outweighs the benefit, but the lack of benefit is simply not true.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Well, if nothing else... humanity now knows that Paul Erdős (of all people) conjectured wrong on the unit distance problem. To quote prof Keith Devlin: "If a grad student had done that, they would now be a celebrity."

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

"Computer Programmer at work." Possibly a profession that, in history, will only have lasted 1 human life-time. It's possible that in 2030, only computers program computers professionally, if Claude's progression is anything to go by. Gone, the way of the switchboard operators and typesetters.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The first results from the eBay junk lens, adapted to GFX50R. The photographs. youtu.be/enHTU3tzyUg

youtu.be

Junk or Museum Piece - episode 3.

YouTube video by Bram Stolk

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

If it is any consolation: The Singularity happens (happened?) this year. Everyone’s affected. You can be a Fields medal winning mathematician, and Claude will still beat you to that math problem.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Oh wow. Great news. I would expect this at a soccer match, but awesome that football fans are like 🤜 🤛🏻

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

That's hardcore maintenance! At the very least you will level up, even if you don't succeed. I guess diaphragms and shutters are often placed at the optical centre of the lens. Thus a lot of glass both in front and behind it. Good luck!

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Reposted by Bram Stolk

Jeff Tiedrich @jefftiedrich.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

today's post gets off to a super-quick start with an awesome video, and then we settle in to parse all of Sunday's dumbfuckery. thank you for your attention to this matter. link is here: bit.ly/4ylhBqg

This what-in-the-fucking-world image is taken from some AL slop that presidential flunky Dan Scavino posted to Elon’s Nazi Bar and Child Porn Emporium — and we’re going to get to it, I promise. But first—

Everything totally fucking sucks right now, so let’s just put our Hero of the Day right up top. It’s the guy who ruined Dear Leader’s day by screaming ‘YOU’RE A FUCKING PEDOPHILE’ at him.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

My 2nd roll through the Texas Leica. Processing in rawtherapee: "Why can't I find the 6x9 aspect ratio option? There are plenty of 6x9 cameras, but the option is not there!" 20 seconds later: "Ooohhhh!"

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The perks of running a 2017 xeon motherboard: Obsolete DDR4-ECC means that you can fill all 8 RAM slots using eBay, without going bankrupt. Yesterday, I had to reduce the build for vllm-project/vllm-xpu-kernels to 5 cores. Today I can use 10 of 20. First time I've seen a 33GB clang process.

memory-hungry compilation of grouped_gemm_xe2.cpp

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

2 to the power 64 is a really, really, really big number. Some scientists estimate the number of grains of sand on earth at: 7.5 * 10^18 2^64 is more than twice that. 😳 >>> a = 7.5 * 10**18 >>> b = 2 ** 64 >>> b / a 2.4595658764946067 int64_t num_grains totally works. Ha! Ha!

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Wait if F00F different from FDIV bug? I actually remember a courier coming to my door in Amsterdam, he handing me a new CPU, I handing him my Pentium 90MHz. I was amazed by the efficiency of the warranty exchange. Very little downtime.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

It takes more than a century at 5GHz, and multiple ops per clock. But a cosmic-radiation bit-flip would extend that to eons / never.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

This is the correct answer, I later realized. Because can you run for the required one or two centuries without a single cosmic-ray-bitflip that sets the counter to a lower value? Maybe in a computer case made of lead, inside a mountain, with a new UPS every 5 yrs.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

For all we know, 0x7A3F91C4E8B26D05 is the self-destruct value for your CPU. 😂

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

There is a corollary to this: You have an overworked 48-core server running for a decade, full blast, workloads up the wazoo… The vast majority of 64b values HAVE NEVER BEEN IN ANY OF ITS REGISTERS OF ANY OF ITS CORES. It blew my mind when I first realized this.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Calling all C/C++ #coders for their rude awakening. On a... 🚀2026 5GHz superscalar Intel CPU🚀... counting from 0 to (uint64_t)(-1) in a register, takes... [A] Less than a second [B] Less than an hour [C] Less than a year [D] OTHER

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Reposted by Bram Stolk

leon @leyawn.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

ceo of burger king: our burgers have gone rogue again and infected people with e coli

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Shooting someone on Fifth Ave and getting away with it? Well… Putler tops that: Moscow burns, the rain is black, the air toxic, the economy dead, the shops empty, the cars stranded, the navy sunk, the banks bust. AND HE STILL GETS 107% OF THE VOTES! Man, ruSSia must really love him.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Yes! Ha... I need to watch that!

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

That should have been done the very same day that Fox News declared itself ‘Entertainment’ and not ‘News.’

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Simple solution: bring two locks. Thieves don’t have the patience for that.

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Reposted by Bram Stolk

Save America Movement @saveamericamvmt.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This administration would be so funny if it wasn’t so historically embarrassing and destructive. America deserves serious leaders.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

My eyes are getting worse every year, so I feel fortunate that my SLR comes with a pop-up magnifying glass, and a hood to shield the large glass. Your new camera looks great, btw!

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Noordzeekanaal, although that one is man-made. (Worse, it was mostly dug by hand in miserable conditions for workers, many dying of cholera.)

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Well… the rate is right there in the ad! The lender is the seller, at 0% interest with 58% down-payment.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I did some more sleuthing... what I thought was a "museum piece" is actually a fake lens. youtu.be/VPO-z-1IpSI

youtu.be

Junk or Museum Piece - episode 2.

YouTube video by Bram Stolk

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

So… Who is holding the cards now? ✋🏻🂡🂱🃁🃑🤚🏻 No business suit needed to call the bluff of the diaper don, and stick it to ruSSia. The end of Twittler and Putler will be so cathartic. Let it be swift.

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Reposted by Bram Stolk

mxpivn3nko.bsky.social @mxpivn3nko.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Let’s make it happen sooner rather than later. No kings. No dictators. America needs leadership grounded in integrity, accountability, self-control, and respect for our democracy. If someone cannot demonstrate discipline and sound judgment in their own conduct.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

On the other hand: nothing is as fault tolerant as LLM inference. Flip a random bit in your 64GB VRAM and I suspect you are almost guaranteed the same token generation? But it would be nice to have a future with actual algorithms, and not massive neural networks. I hope the pendulum swings back.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

PDP 1 had twice that! 18 bit integers. So I guess int9_t would be a short int, if C had been invented for PDP 1 instead of PDP 11. 🤪

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Reposted by Bram Stolk

Paul Byrne @theplanetaryguy.com · 09/09/2026

Astrophotographer Adam (AJ) Smadi caught this image a few hours ago from Washington state. A thin crescent Moon, sunlight illuminating the rugged lunar surface. And 2,400 times farther away—and on the other side of the Sun—mighty Jupiter, and its moons Io (left) and Ganymede (right).

A crescent Moon seen during the day, arcing from upper left to lower right of the frame. At lower centre is the full disk of Jupiter; the small dots to its upper left and lower right and Io and Ganymede, respectively.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

@vangreens.bsky.social can you use your influence to steer Safeway? Oakridge Safeway re-opened after 6 years, with ZERO bicycle parking. After paying at the register, customers step right into a 2000-car parkade, 0% incentive for pedestrians/cyclists to visit. Urbanism set back 30 yrs. WHY? 🤦‍♂️

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Delightful and masterful! Sadly: $ fc-list | grep -i frutiger $

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The lens-cone on the table is now empty, of course. The lens I removed from it, is what took this photo. I had a thick, custom cut, steel plate made to mate the lens to the Abracam version 1.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Surprisingly, not enough, a lot less than 40x40cm, even when focus is at 3m. It would cover 10x10 inches? Totally impractical though, for anything but an aeroplane, due to its weight. I had to mount it at fixed focus. To change focus, I need to reconfigure my camera with a deeper/shallower back.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

From inside the camera, looking out. Through the Aerojet Delft 25AG 18 inch lens.

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

EGA! That takes me back. Did you implement that 4bit planar mode where each bit of the 16 colours had their own framebuffer? SoA for pixels, so to speak?

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Bram Stolk @bramstolk.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

youtu.be/iGAp5zDcc94 This was rated "D" for junk. But was it? Let me tell you the tale of Boston Camera Co. #VintageLens #Photography.

youtu.be

eBay lens: Junk or Museum Piece?

YouTube video by Bram Stolk

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