iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 03/10/2026

O. M. F. G. That was amazing. When that thing with the thing did the thing? Wow. @nebula.tv @thewheatgerm.bsky.social @jetlagthegame.bsky.social

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 24/09/2026

That's exactly why they sell this stuff too. o_O

WD-40® Specialist Penetrant.

(nudge nudge, wink wink)

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 23/09/2026

Tinkering with #Minecraft mod ideas… here's a proof-of-concept for "chalk", a colour-absorbent block, just for fun. This is at 10x speed. It might be too much calc and data for actual large-scale use though.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 02/07/2026

Apparently, the Twin Prime Conjecture is not only false but _trivially_ false. Google's AI once again so confidently incompetent, and utterly oblivious. I don't seem to get this kind of crap from other AIs nowadays. Claude seems to have some humility, but Gemini's hubris is off the charts.

Screenshot of Google's AI Overview. First it claims: "An integer n can only make both n-1 and n+1 prime in two specific cases: when n = 4 (giving primes 3 and 5) and when n = 6 (giving primes 5 and 7). For all integers where n > 6, it is impossible for both n-1 and n+1 to be prime." Below this, under the heading "The Twin Prime Rule," it defines twin primes as prime pairs differing by two, with n sitting between them — a definition that implies twin primes exist beyond n=6, contradicting the first claim.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 25/06/2026

Hmm. Never noticed this before. Custom colour palettes for Terminal․app profiles in macOS are spelled with "Colour" rather than "Color". Must be a subversive developer at Apple.

A dump of colour settings in macOS's Terminal.app configuration, showing a mix of settings called "____Color" and others called "____Colour"

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 25/06/2026

Still playing with this idea of teaching stuff to Minecraft villagers.

Minecraft screen with an enchanted book on the ground in front of a librarian villager. Console message says "The villager refuses to study copyrighted material!"

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 23/06/2026

Thought of a clever little Minecraft hack this morning to make it possible to disappear beacon beams using tinted glass (while still keeping the effects) solely on the server; no client-side mods needed. Honestly I was surprised it worked. github.com/tomgidden/mi...

A screenshot of Minecraft, showing a beacon made of iron blocks capped with tinted glass. No beam appears, but the beacon is still active and valid.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 27/05/2026

I just realised who Elijah Wood now looks like: Rachel Dratch in the unaired pilot of 30 Rock.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 10/10/2025

Quality creator merch makes me happy. Coffee makes me happier. #hermitcraft

Two beautiful new Hermitcraft mugs; one of which is being filled by a Krups Dolce Gusto coffee pod machine. Yeah, poorly-recycleable plastic pods, so sue me.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 27/09/2025

I'm firmly on the bandwagon of macOS Tahoe corner-haters, but it makes even less sense in Preview.app. I'm proofing the print-ready PDF for @dingbats.net and while the real cards will have trimmed corners, I don't want them arbitrarily trimmed by Apple. Make radius configurable! >:(

Redacted image of a Dingbats game card shown in macOS Tahoe's Preview.app, where the app has trimmed off the corners for questionable aesthetic reasons, while earlier versions of macOS Preview.app would show the whole page unaltered.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 25/09/2025

Suggestion for a ThePiHut product: a keycap set of black, olive-brown and red-orange, a pot of beige plastic dye, and a MicroSD card that boots straight into BeebEm. Take my money.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 18/07/2025

@thepihut.bsky.social 3 minutes between order and dispatch on a summer Friday afternoon. You're making everyone else look bad.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 02/06/2025

the Epoch-o-clock 2000™

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 02/06/2025

Reminds me of my Epoch-o-clock 2000™, built with a first-gen Zero and some spare 7-segment LEDs...

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 01/06/2025

Inspired by @retrobytes.bsky.social's video on Palm Pilots to dig out my old Palm games and bludgeon them into an emulator: gidden.net/ggpalm

Screenshot of "Gid's Games" app for PalmOS, circa 2001, showing three games, Flipper, Sol and Logic Board.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 02/05/2025

Well, thanks BBC. There goes breakfast. *boik*

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 28/04/2025

Keeping this for later.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 09/04/2025

And now I'm having PalmOS development flashbacks. Six month unpaid sabbatical to develop a mechanism for app plugins to unify the brand. Total revenue: $50. :(

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 09/04/2025

Oddly, I've known this story for about 25 years… for some reason I've been "Master Mind" adjacent since 1996 when I wrote a web game version, and got an intern to go to Hamleys to buy it for reference.

A screenshot of "The Logic Board™", a 1996 web version of "Master Mind", as part of "Gid's Games" on the "Blueberry.co.uk" website. Yes, kids, that's what web games looked like in 1996.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 01/04/2025

I wore this t-shirt to a follow-up appointment once, after a physio gave me exercises I said would knacker my lower back. I'm not sure they connected the dots.

A white t-shirt emblazoned with the words "I TOLD YOU SO." in a neat Trajan font.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 25/03/2025

Betteridge's law: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘No.’”

Euronews headline: "Could a metro system link the whole of Europe by 2040?"

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 08/03/2025

If you ask @thewheatgerm.bsky.social, Woman is just a normal kinda critter. A fine critter to be sure, but a critter nonetheless.

Ben Doyle declaring that Woman is just a normal kinda critter, on Nebula's "Abolish Everything"

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 05/03/2025

"10.30am ET" (whatever that means), or "3.30pm GMT" in old money.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 01/03/2025

Ah, up nice and early on a Saturday morning. Fancy some waffles, so get out the waffle-maker and wash of 4 years of dust/grease. Waffles made. Migraine aura. Within a minute I can't see a bloody thing. Well, GFY, Saturday. Stupid bloody mornings. Don't like 'em. Don't trust 'em.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 27/02/2025

That's a Chubbyemu episode right there.

"A Tech CEO Lived With Two Wolves Inside Him For Years. This Is What Happened To His Streaming Platform"

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 25/02/2025

A mild form of cancellation, or now-teenaged kid is just running out of room. I don’t want to charity shop the #Hermitcraft Hermits; they wouldn’t be properly appreciated. So, into storage with the Christmas decorations. Bag 1/5. *sigh*

Vacuum packing bag containing Hermitcraft plushies.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 15/02/2025

I made a dumb joke earlier this week on Star Trek Shitposting on Facebook that went largely unnoticed, but I thought maybe someone would chuckle mildly. Checked FB today: one solitary Like, but from the son of Spock and ex-husband of Jadzia! I shall treasure and dine out on that Like for years.

One single solitary Like… from Adam Nimoy

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 31/01/2025

I just realised this is what Iskall's lawyer's thinking right now…

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 27/01/2025

My venerable iPad case has finally perished but attempts to transplant stickers has failed. Not wanting to litter the new case with former employer's stickers, I'm bereft of suitable flair. Then I remembered these old things, stowed away in a safe place. (Still need stickers for the front, though)

Three "We The People" stickers by Shepard Fairey, stuck on the back of an iPad case. Eight years on and still a thing.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 04/01/2025

Still on the same fractal hobby project I've been pottering with since ~2007. Just bought an nVidia RTX 4060, as it was finally discounted into my price range. Seems fast enough. Also, my first use of PyCuda, rather than CUDA C++, OpenCL or GLSL.

$A Markus-Lyapunov fractal rendered in 3D. Original 8192x8192, 8192 steps/ray, 600 iterations, ~10 seconds.$

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 25/12/2024

From my sister, the best Christmas card I ever received.

A homemade Christmas card with a photo of Adolf Hitler on a sledge with the words "Happy Fucking Christmas" in blackletter script underneath.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 25/12/2024

You might appreciate our Daily @dingbats.net puzzle from a few Christmasses ago…

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 11/12/2024

Reminds me of my GidLabs Epoch-o-clock™ when it’s in human-readable mode. (`ntp.home` is the GPS-connected Pi 5 on the right)

A clear acrylic tube filled with red seven segment displays showing the current number of seconds since January 1, 1970; all in front of a really messy little enclosure of Raspberry Pis and a Jetson Xavier NX

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 09/12/2024

I'm never eating cottage pie again.

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 19/06/2023

I feel even more inspired today.

750ml black water bottle, with the slogan "HELLO WATER: WATER IS THE SOURCE OF LIFE"

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 15/06/2023

Inspirational new 2L water bottle from AliExpress

Two-litre plastic sports water bottle printed with the slogan “MOTION: SPRINKLE YOUR SWEAT.”

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 14/06/2023

Sick of being asked "how long until the summer holidays?" (MicroPython code to receive an HTTP URL on MQTT, retrieve raw 1bpp data and pass to the display; Backend NodeJS script uses Puppeteer to render some simple HTML, dithers it to 1bpp raw and serves by HTTP) #epaper #maker #esp32

A 7.5" ePaper display in a frame, showing "days until" for various family appointments and events

Back of the picture frame, with a Waveshare ePaper driver board based on an ESP32 module

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 07/05/2023

Still testing Daily Dingbats on my personal account. I could really do with an invite so I can set up @daily.dingbats.net... Yesterday’s answer was… “ROYAL MAIL”. #puzzle #games #dingbats

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 06/05/2023

Still testing Daily Dingbats on my personal account. I could really do with an invite so I can set up @daily.dingbats.net... Yesterday’s answer was… “ROCK AND ROLL”. #puzzle #games #dingbats

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 05/05/2023

Still testing Daily Dingbats on my personal account. I could really do with an invite so I can set up @daily.dingbats.net... Yesterday’s answer was… “FORCE THE ISSUE”. #puzzle #games #dingbats

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Tom Gidden @gid.cx · 04/05/2023

Testing Daily Dingbats... can I upload an image?

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