iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 7h

Four vaccines today: Flu, Covid, HPV, Hep-B. HPV was unexpectedly painful! The others were just normal vaccines.

Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

my kid drew a volcano instead of characters from knuffle bunny and is in trouble for not being on task, but part or most of me is not disappointed

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I have put the duck in the aptly named old water (滷水). There, I did it, now we can have dinner tonight. So much work.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Artists, show how you paint/draw stars!🌟✨

A green pea galaxy, illustrated by making brush textures from real Hubble data. A green, glowing cloud of gas surrounds an incredibly active region of starburst full of very hot blue stars. Their intense radiation blows the gas cloud outward like a wind.

The fast-spinning, hot blue star named Altair. Its axis is tilted to the side and the surface of the star is a squished sphere due to the speed at which it spins. The textures on the surface are just an artistic guess at what it could look like, featuring some bright eruptive areas, and some darker spots like sunspots, and a very speculative equatorial banding that's slanted like, say, some tire treads. We don't know what stars or even planets that rotate this fast look like.

A landscape view of the star Trappist-1. The landscape is the barren and hard surface of one of the many planets orbiting the star. An ice halo is visible in the sky, suggesting the planet is cold, and has an atmosphere of some kind. The star itself is a red dwarf, so the sun dogs in the halo which would normally include a full spectrum of color are markedly redder than an Earth sun dog would be. A line of small white specks in the sky look like stars, but are actually the other planets orbiting Trappist-1. This view is from Trappist-1h, or the 7th and outermost planet of the system.

An illustration of a dusty torus around a protostar which is accreting the dust and gas from the torus. The dust torus inclined so that we are able to see the star from the underside. The light is red due to all the dust and the relatively low temperature of the forming star. Two bright white jets erupt from the poles of the star, which is a very common (or universal?) feature of accretion.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

doing an extra slow circle in front of my house before putting the bike away because it started raining and it just felt good

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

made a giant version of my jwst jupiter and now it's nap time

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

much to my dismay the dishwasher completed its cleaning cycle and did not stop smelling like the stinky cheese container I put in it (the stinky cheese merely touched the container, it was not still present)

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

just learned that when banana slugs mate they form a little galaxy shape

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I have been working on NGC 2392 (Lion Nebula) bit by bit over the past couple of weeks. Pretty happy with it! As always, high quality image and perhaps overly verbose information is available at my Flickr gallery: flic.kr/p/2swHfCQ

A heavenly view of one of our friendly neighborhood planetary nebulas, the Lion Nebula. It's circular in appearance with cometary knots streaming outward from the center, making up the "hair" of the lion's mane. The lion's face is a brightly outlined inner shell that kinda looks like a spaghetti nest with a bright star nestled in the center. Numerous background galaxies are sprinkled around the image, along with a handful of stars. The lion has a blueish mane and a pinkish face with a deep, dark cyan center. The background galaxies are subtly colored with yellows, oranges, and reds. The few stars are more or less white.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

today i wish grandpa would shut the fuck up and stop telling my kid to cut his hair

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

nooooooo one of my follows just posted the burrito. i have seen it. 😭

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

so it's been a while since I've actually zoomed in and analyzed one of these stsci press release images, but I was curious today mainly because I don't know how my low-level processing is holding up, and to my amusement I think noise was *added* to this lion nebula image

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

*scrolls* *sees multiple posts warning about hole-fear burrito* *halts*

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

tonight I find myself wishing I could enjoy lower level processing

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

sky's busted, do something else

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

astronomy cringe: "lion nebula" does not resolve to ngc 2392 but "[slur/offensive word for Inuit people] nebula" still does, or at least whatever service MAST is using does.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I have dug up and replace one (1) pop-up sprinkler. I am now tired.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Made a nice new version of NGC 5972. Hubble and Legacy Survey data. HST Proposal 12525 (@ngc3314.bsky.social) flic.kr/p/2suiAkm

A disturbed galaxy with an incredible green and red glowing gas feature shaped like a figure eight in its center. The glowing feature is at least half as long as the galaxy itself, meaning it's very, very large. Faint swooshes of galaxy can also be seen at the periphery. The galaxy does not look like a spiral or any other normal galaxy shape. The shape of the figure eight feature looks like it was possibly a disk at one point, but is now twisted and contorted by its past gravitational interactions. Few other objects such as faint Milky Way stars and faint background galaxies also dot the image in a few places.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

got in the mail today. it came with a sticker. pretty cool

an award certificate, reading:
Smithsonian excellence in digital awards

Digital impact award
This certificate is proudly presented to
Judy Schmidt
In honor of your work in the digital space that has had a demonstratable, meaningful impact on its audience, users, or stakeholders and improved user experiences, increased engagement, or delivered value to target audiences through both quantitative and qualitative metrics

signature in the corner from Rebecca Boutwell Kobberod, chief digital and innovation officer
April 21, 2026

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

“Maybe I’ll get to sleep on time tonight,“ she thought, before hearing the deep thumping sound of Chinook helicopters flying overhead on a firefighting mission… “I definitely won’t spend 45 minutes thinking about that.“ so it goes

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

dang, I went to @merriam-webster.com to find out when the word "megafire" was first used but it's not even in there

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

I might have too many spiders in the bathroom. Was flossing and one crawled onto my fingers, apparently off the flosser, while I was flossing. The hard part is trying to find a spot to drop them that's not already occupied. They've got all the corners pretty well covered.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

the impossible has happened. apod has a new website. science.nasa.gov/apod/

science.nasa.gov

APOD - NASA Science

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

who doses their cats with gabapentin tiny tabs and which online pharmacy do you get them from? my local vet charges almost $2 a pill and it seems a bit much

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

i'm just so tired of trying to find something and all i get is ai slop

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

omg I'm trying to judge these astrophotography images and the collected data are great but like... the color balance? begging people to look at their channels in isolation. if one looks mega bright and the others are diminutively dark, you probably have a problem

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

shoutout to nobody for never giving me a bluesky invite code

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

a friend in santa cruz pointed out reddit going crazy over some clouds and I can't help sharing haha www.reddit.com/r/CLOUDS/com... a video www.reddit.com/r/santacruz/... some wider views www.reddit.com/r/CLOUDS/com...

reddit.com

From the CLOUDS community on Reddit: Never seen these before!

Explore this post and more from the CLOUDS community

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

M. C. Gigerland, a resort where you can sleep in weirdly suggestive pods but also get to explore a lot of geometric illusions and puzzles

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

if you ever have a shredded foam mess to clean up, yes you could vacuum it, but tonight i discovered the polyester fluff inside a random old yellow pillow will soak it all up like a dang sponge. then you can get 100% of the foam into the sack like you intended all along…

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

sure, "automatic buttonhole" sounds like a great idea so far I'm like 0 for 10 functional buttonholes 😂

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

been doing some local mapping lately and noticed on google maps this artificial lake thingy is marked as a road. all I'm saying is a human who lives here would never do this. probably even a human who doesn't live here would not make this mistake

top down aerial view of a suburban neighborhood with squared cul de sacs and an artificial blue water feature behind the backsides of the houses. the roads are marked by white lines, and somehow one of them connects to the water feature, mistaking it for a street in several places.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

human shoulders are clearly shaped better for back sleeping. why have i spent my entire life wanting to side sleep so badly? why is sleeping so hard? it should be easy. oh you’re tired are you? well let’s just roll around every fifteen minutes for two hours then. a sound plan. super

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

so there's the secondary mirror, the primary mirror, and then ???? where the cameras go

Hubble lego model with panels taken off. two inset images show close-ups of the interior.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

a banana has gone missing. the peel is in the compost bin. everyone swears they didn't eat it.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

tonight my child said he wished it was raining hell from the sky. this was rather concerning to me so I asked why? oh, hail. he wanted it to hail. phew

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

today, my child is reckoning with the fact that he opened the can of beans. if you don't want beans for dinner, don't pull the top off the beans.

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

my ice cream flavor idea: calico. dark chocolate, salted caramel, and vanilla ice creams dumped together (but not mixed)

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

don't worry, the universe has seen fit to punish me for all the shitty reply-guy posts i've made lately. i heated up some very gone fried rice in the microwave and am still recovering from the smell (none was eaten)

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

drove through san francisco today and every single billboard was about ai. ok there was one apple advert. doesn’t that seem silly? some were even ai for ai. it’s ai the whole way down

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

the stupidest of my problems right now: people know I like pastries, and multiple people have brought me multiple pastries independently. I can't eat them all before the leave peak freshness. it's unfair

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I'm never going to be a dog person... I watch a dog for some cousins about a week per year. Dog is currently sitting right next to me just licking and licking his paws and I smell him. It's just normal dog smell, but... I just can't. I washed him yesterday. So stinky... faugh! fine, I'll go to bed

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

got the neighbor's printer working in like 5 minutes. damn, maybe I do have a super power

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Judy Schmidt @geckzilla.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

This scaffolding is *extremely* safe. I hope they get paid overtime for working past midnight.

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