iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 01/10/2026

What is the best option right now for a "serverless homelab"? I want a machine I can ssh into, with persistent storage, and that can run cron jobs, but I don't want to have to install OS updates or manage a firewall. Seems like this must be a thing in the Year of Our Agent Lord 2026.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 30/09/2026

Control Resonant is frenetic and fun, visually imaginative, but it seems much harder than its predecessor. I've never seen the reload screen so many times in the opening levels of a game.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 28/09/2026

Oh nice, I think I did see that article but then forgot about it because it was opening "soon". Crazy how many hurdles it took to open a bakery!

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 27/09/2026

Ooh this is in my neighborhood, I had no idea!

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 23/09/2026

Experimentally vibe coding an app to plan out feeding schedules for my cats. So far it is scolding me.

Screenshot of an app showing a feeding schedule for two cats named Rocinante and Persephone. It shows a "daily calories" estimate with warnings for each cat that they are below target, plus some "checks" warning that wet food is left out too long.

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Sam Stokes @samstokes.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

You know that poem about "the widening gyre" / "things fall apart" that is so evocative of … all this? #til W.B. Yeats, who wrote it, was an enthusiastic (albeit temporary) supporter of fascist movements and disapproved of democracy. Gonna have to think about that next time I quote it.

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Persephone @perci.metapixl.com.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

So Rude! Sister didn't like me saying she isn't Fluffy.

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Persephone @perci.metapixl.com.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

My human left this out for me. I am going on a ADVENTURE. I think it will be like going to a Vet but fun instead of bad and pokey. My sister can't come because she is not Fluffy enough.

A brown and white Siamese cat with black face, ears and feet is nestled into an open blue suitcase, looking up at the camera.

A brown and white Siamese cat with black face, ears and feet is nestled into an open blue suitcase, looking out at the camera. Behind her sits a brown tabby cat, watching her.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 11/09/2026

This was my second attempt at this project, and although I'm happy with the first one too, it's really satisfying to be able to directly compare how much my skills have improved. Leveled up my hand planing, sawing accuracy, detoured into building a shooting board, and learned how to shoot end grain.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 11/09/2026

I lucked out and the base piece ended up naturally chatoyant - look how the light plays over it as it moves!

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 11/09/2026

Finished a dovetail tray, made in walnut with #HandTools. Really happy with how this one came out. #Woodworking

A brown wooden tray sitting on a white marble surface. The tray has dovetail joinery with a visible contrast between the long grain of the tails and the end grain of the pins. The wood shows dark grain patterns and a sheen where the light reflects from it.

The same tray at an angle, showing the interior grain and sides more clearly.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 07/09/2026

I could just unfollow everyone who ever posts about a controversial topic, but that would obviously be self defeating.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 07/09/2026

"Muted words" seems to completely hide matching posts, so you don't even know they happened. I want the *option* to read and engage, just it to be opt in, so I can moderate myself and stop if I find myself doomscrolling.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 07/09/2026

I went on a media diet when I left Twitter, and stepping onto Bluesky reminds me how exhausting The Discourse can get - dunk of the week etc. Does anyone have tips for healthy Bluesky consumption? Is there an analog of Mastodon's ability to set keyword blocklists that hide posts behind a drawer?

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Anil Dash @anildash.com · 06/09/2026

Yeah, a thing I am trying to educate folks on within the industry is that tbe early Internet technologies (the tech itself, not companies or apps) were not advertised at *all*, and in fact big companies fought them and were overtly skeptical? And they succeeded anyway. It’s the opposite of AI.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 30/08/2026

Keyboard driven is essential for me. What even is a mouse

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 30/08/2026

It's a great experience. As a tiling WM diehard I really like the scrolling WM paradigm, and I like how buttery smooth it feels. I was switching from i3/X so had to make the Wayland transition too, a few rough edges but pleasantly surprised by how much just worked.

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Reposted by Sam Stokes

Jonathan Edward Durham @thisone0verhere.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Listen, if you’re not happy single, you won’t be happy in a relationship either, happiness comes from picking a new hobby and then buying all the things to start that hobby then finding the perfect little storage container for those things and then putting that storage container in the spare room

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 22/08/2026

Ooh is it a 787? I like flying on those. Supposedly they have a higher cabin pressure than older planes which is supposed to make a more comfortable flight. I don't know if I can actually notice that but at least the placebo effect feels good!

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 22/08/2026

Your comment just made me realise that having failed to cut the dado square to the deck edge I could instead plane the edge square to the dado 🤔

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 22/08/2026

Alas, this project is building my first shooting board 😅 How would you use a shooting board for this cut, out of interest? Maybe not clear from the photo, the wedge shaped piece is sitting in a dado, it's the dado wall that ended up drifting from my line.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 20/08/2026

My cats occasionally attack my hands while I'm doing yoga or stretches. I'm not sure if it's because stretching is what they do before play, or just because they are upset because human not usually floor

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 19/08/2026

Paraphrasing, what software engineering organisations deliver isn't software, any more than what plumbers deliver is pipes.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 19/08/2026

This is a pretty good articulation of why "now code is free" isn't ringing true. "Organisations don’t run on code. They run on trust." "everyone has assumed writing software is the same as software engineering" martinfowler.com/rachels-ramb...

martinfowler.com

Citizens Build, Agents Execute, Experts Govern

Why building an app over the weekend isn't the same as building enterprise software

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 19/08/2026

It's 0.5° out of square 😭 Sawing straight is hard. #HandTools #Woodworking

A wedge-shaped walnut fence sits on a flat walnut deck. A hand holds a combination square against the side of the deck, showing the fence is at a slight angle from the square's straight edge.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 18/08/2026

It does justice to the process of how to communicate with no common language, frame of reference, number system, or even assuming they have the same senses you do. The process of building layers on layers from the most primitive starting points really feels earned.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 18/08/2026

I've started playing The Message From Deep Space and it's very satisfying. Distills first-contact science fiction (as in Arrival, Bobiverse, Project Hail Mary) into a puzzle game with a retro vibe and office banter to make it less dry. store.steampowered.com/app/4080030/...

store.steampowered.com

The Message from Deep Space on Steam

Mission: Translate an interstellar message, using the universal languages of math & science.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 17/08/2026

For me it's been a response to "AI makes code free", which is now an article of faith in mgmt but controversial for engineers. I think the disagreement is about the scope of "coding". Mgmt would like it to mean "producing software that solves business problems is now free", but that isn't true.

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Sam Stokes @five-eights.com · 17/08/2026

I've been guilty of saying "coding was never the hard part", and thanks for calling out this harm. For me it's been an imprecise attempt to *distinguish* the skilled part from the "manual labour". E.g. nobody thinks *typing* the code was the skilled part.

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