iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

as if the red card shenanigans weren't bad enough, now the NYT says Trump is playing???????

Headline of the New York Times as seen in Google News: Trump asked FIFA to Review U.S. Player's Suspension. Now He's Eligible to Play.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Exclusive picture of Nick Sirianni at today’s game

A wet owl in the rain. Sirianni looks like this bird in his very damp hat.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Haven’t updated here in a bit but the lettuce is doing pretty well! Here’s the system as of today. Six consecutive weeks of lettuce for the first time! Only had six weeks with a gap before.

Six kratky hydroponics buckets on a steel shelf under bright LEDs in a concrete basement. The top shelf is much older and fuller than the bottom one.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

Finally, I really like the color of the nutrient mix but I haven’t posted it before. One of the ingredients in the masterblend has a blue-green dye. Very nice to mix.

A bucket of teal liquid being stirred with a white spoon. It’s fairly transparent, despite being slightly tinted, so you can see all the way to the bottom.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

Next, here’s my mini experiment. These plants are the same age, but one spent an additional week in the nutrients. It really shows. I think I only need to let them germinate for about a week going forward.

Two buckets of lettuce plants. The ones on the right are something like 300% the size of the ones on the left, despite them being the same age.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

First off, here’s the first head harvested with the new 8-15-36 nutrients. Much better leaf quality and the taste is better too: it’s missing the bitter taste I had with the marijuana-focused nutrients.

A harvested head of lettuce on a chopping board next to a shiny knife. I’m pulling back the top leaves to reveal the healthy green inner leaves.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

alright, it’s harvest day. Let’s get some lettuce.

A rack with six lettuce plants in various stages of growth. The biggest is straining to reach the lights about 6 inches above it. The smallest is barely past seedling stage.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 12/11/2025

I got a Bambu printer to replace my 10-year-old Lulzbot Mini. Big improvement! Here's something funny, though: it sings when it starts and finishes a print. I wondered how that was set, and it turns out that the tune is embedded in the g-code!

A screenshot of g-code for a Bambu 3d printer. The code block is surrounded by comments that say "printer finish sound". It starts with an M17 and M400 command, followed by many lines of M1006 commands that the printer uses to make noise. Each M1006 command has a bunch of parameters that seem to control the pitch and duration of the note.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

aaaaand we ate half a loaf immediately 😆

Two loaves of bread on a cooling rack. One is cut in half and set on top of the other to show the puffy, medium density crumb.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

I made bread! It’s ugly because it’s my first loaves ever but I learned a lot and I’m excited to taste it!

Two loaves of white bread cooling on a rack. They have a weird shape and way too much flour on top, but they’re just about perfectly brown.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

Accidentally did a little experiment. These four blocks were started the same day, but one bucket started in the full-strength nutrients and the other stayed in just water until today. Can you tell which?

Four seedling-stage lettuce plants in white buckets. The upper right plant is the largest, followed by the lower right, the lower left, then the upper left. The plants in the right bucket have a couple true leaves each, while the ones in the left bucket barely have one true leaf each.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

I also finally removed the last of the old system, so now we’re totally on 2 gallon buckets instead of fivers. So nice to be done with over-exposed leaves.

A steel shelf with two levels containing 2-gallon buckets of lettuce in various stages of growth. Each shelf has a light and each bucket has space for two plants grown in the Kratky method.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 26/10/2025

This is the best looking lettuce I’ve ever grown. The adjustments to nutrients and light I made starting with these two plants seem to really have paid off. They are way greener, and are not straining as much to reach the light.

Two Romain lettuce plants in a hydroponic bucket bucket. The leaves are broad and have a healthy color, with no light spots or tip burn.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

"Torrential Rain, Sky Appears to Show"

ABC news headline, reading "White House East Wing demolished, new images appear to show" below literal photo of White House East Wing rubble.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

does the latest distroless cc-debian12 image actually start with four zeros? Feels off. 🤔

Screenshot of a Renovate automatic image update. It's updating gcr.io/distroless/cc-debian12 to use the digest 0000f9d. Four leading zeros is pretty unlikely.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

Inspired by @chriskrycho.com, I’m trying to make caramel for the first time today! Really just grateful I didn’t end up with a terrible black smear in the bottom of my pot, no matter how it actually tastes. 😆

A bowl of freshly made caramel sauce sitting on a kitchen counter. It is just starting to cool, so it’s quite sloshy still

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

I've been feeling pretty down seeing what's going on, so seeing this map of protests brought me so much joy. www.nokings.org

a map of the united states overlaid with the locations of planned protests on October 18. There are hundreds and hundreds of dots all over the country, so thick that you can't count them individually.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

Restarted my hydroponics after having everything turned off over the winter, and it’s a joy to see tiny lettuce getting bigger every day again.

A lettuce plant, barely past the seedling stage and with only two leaves. It’s planted in a rockwool cube inside a net cup.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 20/12/2024

this took like 40 minutes to cut with a laser. I got impatient but then I was like “oh yeah I’m cutting metal with light. It’d take a lot longer to do this with a flashlight. 😆”

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

this kind of nonsense is why I think I’m gonna let my Duolingo subscription lapse. Super aggressive with this and with upselling AI nonsense, even as a paying customer. Could do without the machismo as well. Plus I don’t think @stefanoborrelli.bsky.social even started this!

iOS time-sensitive notification from Duolingo: only three hours left to clash! Stefano might think you’re too scared to even take your turn, just saying…

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 07/11/2024

Number go up! I'm glad to not be doing this by hand anymore. Planning to keep my account open but private—I want to squat the handle out of spite and as a pointer to others that there are better places available (although if they don't know that by now, then…)

tweetdelete's live task progress screen. It shows the progress of deleting all my tweets. So far, it has check 19,870 and deleted 49. The job is estimated to be complete about 20 minutes after the screenshot was taken.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 25/10/2024

THE FUTURE, FOLKS! IT HAS ARRIVED!

USB charging ports in the back of an airplane seat

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 17/09/2024

I didn’t think I was gonna get one of these. Kinda cool!

BlueSky first 10m users banner showing my user number, 53,701, in the first 1%

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 14/09/2024

if you see this, post an image you saved because it made you laugh

A raccoon looking scared with the text “things are constantly happening and I would like for it to stop (please)”

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 01/09/2024

I’ve got a pretty good setup going with hydroponics these days. Every two weeks I get three new heads of lettuce from these buckets. Pretty great stuff. Almost to the point where they’re cheaper per head than having bought them, and certainly came out ahead on carbon emissions long ago.

Lettuce in a five gallon bucket. Planted yesterday. Barely more than sprouts

Lettuce in a five gallon bucket planted two weeks ago. The leaves are about six inches long and haven’t gone up much yet

Lettuce that’s been in a five gallon bucket for four weeks. These are now recognizable as lettuce, but are not big enough to harvest yet.

Lettuce that have been in a five gallon bucket for six weeks. These are about ready to harvest, but are still slightly undergrown.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 13/02/2024

my very goodness, these plants have grown so much in the last week. I think they’re almost ready to harvest!

Six lettuce plants in a hydroponic growing setup. Five are a really good size and one is much smaller.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 11/02/2024

I’m back. As tribute, here’s some of my latest project: Kratky hydroponic lettuce. This was last Monday’s picture. They’re nearly big enough to harvest now!

Six lettuce plants growing in a plastic bin under a grow light. One is much smaller than the others.

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Brian Hicks @brianhicks.bsky.social · 11/05/2023

turned out pretty well though! Thanks photons!

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