iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

It’s Friday, time to pish to main. Follow me for more productivity tips.

A picture of a terminal showing the text
“git config --global alias.pish push”

Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2026

Nearly missed my train but I couldn’t leave this bee in the pond. Not sure sugar water was what they wanted or needed but they didn’t hesitate to get involved while drying off on a rock.

A bedraggled looking bee drying off on some rocks after being lifted out of a mini-pond, drinking some sugar water out of a tea spoon.

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2026

It’s a drizzly weekend ahead, but if you’re vaguely in the vicinity of Whitminster (UK) and want to get outside and support a dogs and cats rehoming centre, Teckels Animal Sanctuary have an fair on Saturday and Sunday 11:00-16:00 […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A pink and blue poster for Teckels Animal Sancturies’ summer fair this weekend:

ENTRY £4 (Kids go free)
SATURDAY 29th &
SUNDAY 30th AUGUST 2026
11AM - 4PM
FROMEBRIDGE MILL,
FROMEBRIDGE LANE,
WHITMINSTER, GL2 7PB
PLENTY OF FREE PARKING AVAILABLE ON-SITE
Variety of stalls, delicious refreshments, games for children, exciting raffles and much more!

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 01/08/2026

In more positive news, catnip spider toy is the best £3 I have spent in recent times. #caturday

A grey and white elderly cat lying on her side on some floor boards, looking utterly transfixed by a slightly frightening grey spider toy which she is pawing at with her right front paw.

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 29/07/2026

Nice evening for a bike ride (admittedly to pick up some meds for Willow the cat). Could do with some rain. #BikeTooter

A photograph of a yellow, arid field with a stony road in the foreground. You can just about see Lydney in Wales over the river Severn in the distance. There are a few small clouds in the sky.

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 03/07/2026

Pigeon continues to do pigeon equivalent of “chop wood, carry water” in spite of everything. Inspiring stuff.

A slightly blurry photo of a pigeon in flight who has just launched themselves off the roof of a blue car. They have a small twig in their beak. In the background is a dense leafy hedge, where they are building, or possibly repairing/improving their nest.

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 10/05/2026

#BikeTooter folks, anyone know much about recumbents? My dad (RIP), obtained this Ice Trice (TNT?) many moons ago but never got round to fixing it up sadly. I know nothing about recumbents, but it looks like it needs a LOT of work/replacement parts. Anyone have […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A black and grey recumbent tricycle, which has definitely seen better days!

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 09/05/2026

Finally spent my birthday book tokens at a new bookshop in Stroud. I must have unintentionally walked in and done a search for “The.*of.*”. #WernerHerzog #UrsulaLeGuin #Stroud #Regex

A photo of 2 books - The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin, and The Future of Truth by Werner Herzog. The Herzog one features and image of a distant penguin, presumably a reference to the mysterious penguin “going it alone” in Herzog’s excellent film “Encounters at the End of the World”. Above them is a bookmark for the shop “Borderless Books”.

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 27/12/2025

Willow is celebrating #Caturday by… generating some kind of forcefield?! Some strange lighting going on here. #CatsOfMastodon

Photo of a grey and white cat lying on a blanket on a bed, with a “lens flare” unintended effect of the light that makes it look a little like the cat has generated some kind of glowing force field. Inexplicably, in front of the cat is a laptop with some stickers on and a copy of the 1997 film “Face/Off” on DVD.

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 10/11/2025

Any #RSpatial / #tmap folks know how to do linebreaks in legend titles in 'View' mode in {tmap} v4 and care to help a fella out? I'm probably missing something obvious but equivalent methods I used to use in v3 aren't working for me... (reprex in alt text)

$library(tmap) library(htmltools) tmap_mode("view") # Single line legend, \n has no effect tm_shape(World) + tm_polygons( fill = "pop_est", fill.legend = tm_legend( title = "Long title for\npopulation estimate" ) ) # Single line legend title showing HTML tags tm_shape(World) + tm_polygons( fill = "pop_est", fill.legend = tm_legend( title = paste0( "Long title for", br("population estimate") ) ) )$

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 24/10/2025

Possibly weirded out my long-suffering colleagues with this idiosyncratic observation last week, and feel like it belongs in a meme. #RStats #Python #RIPDavidLynch

David Lynch (RIP) meme variation where in a conversation with fellow filmmaker Jason Barlow, David Lynch said, "Python feels like soldering; R feels like painting." When Barlow asks him to "Elaborate on that," Lynch smiles and says, "No."

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2025

There are many ways to mark the start of Autumn, but “when the cat starts using her little cat igloo again” is my new favourite. #CatsOfMastodon

Poorly lit* photo in which you can just about see a sleeping grey and white cat’s face through the hole in a “cat igloo” type cat bed.

*Poorly lit as I didn’t want to bother her!

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/08/2025

Debugging SSIS jobs which failed after a bank holiday weekend is… not my favourite way to start the working week? (meme is only partially relevant as I am _not_ good at it) #SSIS #SQLServer #Aaaargh

Scene from season 1 of True Detective:
Rust Cohle: Life's barely long enough to get good at one thing.
Martin Hart: If that long.
Rust Cohle: Yeah, so be careful what you get good at.

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 23/08/2025

When you brush the cat’s belly you have to sing the belly brushing song; it’s mandatory. #CatsOfMastodon

A grey and white elderly cat rolling around on the floor with their eyes closed, enjoying being brushed.

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 08/08/2025

Happy #InternationalCatDay to all who celebrate. Willow has recommended me some reading. #CatsOfMastodon

A grey elder cat with white paws looking studiously at a copy of Zazie Todd’s book “Purr: The Science of Making Your Cat Happy”.

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 31/07/2025

I am really liking introducing pointblank into more workflows - I find when using sf objects though, I need to drop the geometry prior to the test, otherwise an `Assigned data `geom` must be compatible with existing data` error is thrown. Doubtless revealing my […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

la_human_pop <- sf::read_sf(
"some-polygons",
layer = "layer"
) |>
left_join(
latest_pop_data, # from nomis API
by = "join_field"
) |>
# Check join has worked /
# API has returned pop estimate for each LA
pointblank::col_vals_not_null(
human_population,
preconditions = function(x) st_drop_geometry(x)
)

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 24/07/2025

Dealing with an intimidating to-do list today, but at least I have an excellent soundtrack. RIP Ozzy. #BlackSabbath

A small Fostex speaker with Black Sabbath’s first 5 albums on CD stacked on top. #RIPOzzy

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 12/06/2025

My partner and I adopted 17 year old Willow the cat at the weekend, and it’s so nice to see her starting to feel a little more at home. #CatsOfMastodon

A grey and white elderly cat lying on a rug and looking relatively content - apart from being in need of a bit of a brush from spending a couple of days hiding under a sofabed for the most part!

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Chris Newton @cd-newton.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 02/06/2025

Hmm so this seems to work for my purposes at least:

$library(stringr) a_string <- "Héllð\u000f" a_string |> str_extract_all("\\P{Cc}", simplify = TRUE) |> str_flatten()$

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