iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Justin and Clark had similar responses.

Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Making more holiday art for our house, in this case pumpkins. These will mount to the walls on the outside. There are 5 large and 5 small ones.

The wood cut into shorter lengths and stacked into piles. Large pumpkins to the left, small pumpkins to the right.

This is a glue up for one of the small pumpkins. That’s three 1x6s glued together to make a large square. The stack of wood on the right is the other pumpkins waiting to be glued.

This is a large pumpkin traced onto the wood, ready to be cut out.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Nicely done. I found this super useful, as I’m now I have yet another thing to worry about. ;-) Still, it’s better to worry than be ignorant.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Such a fun peak into the machinations behind insurance company finance, and how it is rapidly changing. Yes AI is involved, and no, you’re probably not going to like the implications. Best to know anyway. This could be the same kind of surprise as credit default swaps, and just as damaging.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

This is the coolest looking thing I’ve seen in a while. Never even knew this existed before.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

We take Halloween seriously. You don’t have to. We’re nondenominational when it comes to holidays. This one happens to be ours.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Finally starting up on the best season of the year.

The sign at night. Even has its own light.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I’ve been doing research for a non-fiction book, and pretty much everything I read tells me humans are amazingly poor at doing almost anything large in scale, and that our most useful skill is working with others. A group of 1000 humans will be rife with stupid ideas, but a handful can do anything.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

With the right tool almost anything is possible.

Clamping three lengths of 1x10s together to make a big flat piece of wood. When I’m done with it this will be a big pumpkin attached to our house.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

We’re celebrating our 28th anniversary today, and yes, this is the best kind of luxury. The best part isn’t the food, though that is great, it’s the concern. Having someone care for you that much is such a boost. Id share it with everyone if I could.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Our solution is to place all flowers and plants in a place the cats cannot reach. So far our kitchen stove seems to be the only place in the house. The little murder beasts get into everything else.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

After reading this thread, I’m guessing you’re going to love The Republic of Memory

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

This is a fantastic idea. I’ve been polluting my oatmeal with butter, brown sugar, raisins, soy milk, and whatever fresh fruit is in the house. Adding chutney would be like eliminating the middleman.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Teri and I have been watching a cat for a neighbor. She is just the cutest little thing. This morning she jumped on my lap after I feed her, and stayed there purring for a good 20 minutes. I suspect she would have stayed all day if I let her. I present you with Fiona, a perfectly cromulent cat.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

My wife discovered that a smoked turkey thigh is a great substitute for ham hock. It’s now our go to for spilt pea soup. That’s if you do meat, but not pork. Now all we need is soup weather again.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Grillin. Someone is ready for their closeup.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

So much fun. I did a bit of research on Ceres for a novella I wrote. Draft planets are super interesting.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Does anybody else wash their car anymore? We seem to be the only ones on our block. Is washing your car in the driveway still a middle class right of passage, or has it faded away like pagers and pay phones?

Self portrait of me in front of our freshly cleaned 20 year old Prius.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I’ve woken to dream songs that stay in my head for days, and to ones that upon reflection have nonsense dream lyrics. They are sadly infrequent for me. I had one a few weeks back and about half way through the day realized the guitar part was from another song.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Have you considered a career in giving names to pharmaceuticals? ;-)

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I’m smelling an enemies to lovers trope. You just have to invent a meet cute (or is it an anti meet cute?) and the whole story falls from there.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

This is semi-geeky, but one of those areas that is without question going to have a huge impact on your life. A lot of people are trying to make solid state cooling (think A/C without refrigerants) effective, affordable, and at scale. This is a preview of coming attractions. rmi.org/resources/cl...

rmi.org

Clean Energy 101: Solid-State Cooling

Why revolutionary technologies are key to solving the cooling challenge.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Everyone should have at least one favorite Dolly song. This is mine. I suspect it is autobiographical. The performance is from the first Trio album, a supergroup consisting of Dolly, Emmylou Harris, and Linda Rhonstadt. The harmonies are unbelievable. youtu.be/tbZHguOCi3Q?...

youtu.be

Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris & Linda Ronstadt - Wildflowers

YouTube video by ronhagenees

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Eyes are the most difficult thing to get right. Our brains are super sensitive to their shape as this is one of the ways that people convey emotional information. Any slight variation and you get a different emotion. Your doing great. That part is hard to master, like learning to plot a novel.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Frankly punishment in general is such a poor approach to any situation, and so ineffective that I am surprised by how well it is still embraced. Punching someone into doing what you want is not a successful strategy, especially when there are so many strategies that do work. Ask any teacher

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

The punitive approach to foreign policy is overrated. I can’t think of a single instance where one country bombed another country into submission that didn’t also include a full scale invasion. It’s high time we realized that this is a bullying tactic which only leads to shame and animosity.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

How delightful. Happy anniversary. Wishing you many more.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Thanks for posting this. I hope your story gets picked.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Yay! I think I might have something that could fit.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Natasha Pulley knows how to tell a great tale. My only regret is it ended too soon. I want more time with January and Gale. Such is the tragedy of really good books.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

suddenly changed out of the blue, and it was both surprising and yet there all along. You expect these kind of turns in a mystery, but this book is not a mystery. I’m not going to tell you what it is, you need to read it for yourself. But you can be sure I’ll be seeking out her other works.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

It was like the best kind of low key magic act in the middle of a novel. I set the book down, and said out loud, “Damn that Pulley woman can write.” Which caused my wife to come in from the other room and ask if I was okay. Three other times reading this book I got surprised like that. Something

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

entered the chat. Mind you, I am sensitive to these things because I’ve had to puzzle them out, but it was done so well, so sneaky, that the average reader might not realize the deft way the author switched things up. And the best part, all the elements were there, I just didn’t pick up on them.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Whodunnits start with a crime, thrillers need a big baddy, horrors require some kind of existential threat, and romances need a happy ever after. So I’m reading along, sure this book is one kind of genre, and then get to chapter 9 and realize IT IS AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT BOOK! Another genre has

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Some of my friends know that I’m a writer. I’m not anywhere as good as Ms Pulley, but I got some game. One of the things you’re sensitive to novels when you write them are these little markers that signify genre. They’re little scenes that need to happen in the novel for it to sound right.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

climate dystopia vibe going at the beginning. Then the story shifts to Mars and you get the whole immigrant angle. Even then the writing stands out. The author might be covering old ground but she does it well. The writing is rich. It feels artisanal, it’s crafted. And then you get to chapter 9.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I first heard about The Mars House from Jo Walton’s reading list at Reactor. She said just read it, so I did. I absolutely adored this book. I wish I’d know about it in 2024 when it came out. Let me tell you why it’s so amazing. It starts like a lot of SF books out now. It’s got that murky

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Well that totally sucks. I’ve seen something like this before. I think it came down to some browsers will add their own color profile to your uploads, overwriting your own. fwiw it almost looks like a CMYK conversion, the way the blues drop out and take with them critical detail.

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Eric Tolladay @e-tolladay.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

This sounds super promising. Open source and open hardware are such a good idea for critical mobility devices.

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