iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 14/08/2026

Seb*, the orange guy, is inhumanly patient with Linda, his little adopted sister, who likes to cuddle up against him every chance she gets. * short for Sebastian

Seb, a year-old orange cat, is curled up on a plush shelf suction-cupped to a window. Linda, a three-month-old kitten, is curled up around his head, so that only his mouth and nose are visible.

Seb and Linda are on a heating pad and cushion atop the floor. Seb is stretched out, while Linda is curled up against his side.

When she’s not curling up against her brother, Linda likes to work on her otter impression, stretched out on her back in the crook of a love seat, with her paws just under her chin.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 23/06/2026

I absolutely agree with you, but am simultaneously reminded of a classic.

A Far Side cartoon in while multiple cavemen are feasting on a slain animal. One caveman is holding a sprig of parsley near his mouth, which another says, “Zak! Don't eat parsley! …Just for looks!”

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 11/06/2026

A zillion times this. We got a bonded pair, after decades of single cats, and they’re like a different species to me. Two gooberlings endlessly entertaining each other and everyone around them.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 02/02/2026

This is like watching someone take a flying kick to the chest that sends them *deep* into the ropes, and then getting hard-elbowed in the face on the rebound. www.newyorker.com/culture/q-an...

Pinotti: No. No. No. Isaac, no. All I'm saying is that I worked with him twelve hours, fifteen hours, a day, and then everybody went their own way. Our age difference is wide. I could be his father.

Chotiner: I read that Roman Polanski is a father figure to him. So that role might already be filled. There are a lot of people who feel affection for Brett.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 29/01/2026

I thought of this scene every single time I heard the insufferable chuckle with which he expressed admiration for his own feeble wit.

A painted impression of Desslok, leader of the Gamilans, from Star Blazers. He is sitting on his throne, having just activated a mechanism that opened a hole in the floor under one of his subordinates, and saying, “I can’t stand a man who laughs at his own jokes.”

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 14/01/2026

I am pleased and/or sorry to inform you that resting on human shoulders is not limited to Torties. They are, in fact, perfectly normal. Or at least as normal as cats get.

Dan, leaning forward and grinning, while Sebastian, a half-year-old orange kitten, perches on his shoulder and gazes skeptically into the camera.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 01/01/2026

I adopted these two goblins in August, and… same. I’m pretty sure it was the best thing I did all year.

Two sibling kittens, Viola and Sebastian, lying at the top of their cat tower. Sebastian is resting partly against Viola, one of his front legs propped on her side. She’s regarding him dubiously, but tolerating it for the moment.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 08/08/2025

Our new arrivals, Viola and Sebastian.

Two newly-acquired sibling kittens, Viola and Sebastian, perched atop their carpeted white, pink, and violet tower astride the bathroom sink. Viola is mostly white, but has black fur around her ears and eyes that makes her look like she’s wearing a ballroom mask, while Sebastian is a classic yellow-orange. Both have their heads resting at the same angle on the tower’s raised rim, gazing contemplatively to the viewer’s left.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 01/01/2025

Medicating a pet used to be a mix of trickery and wrestling: wrap the pill in something yummy and hope it works; force it in once they get wise. Then I discovered pill poppers: open the pet’s mouth, slip the popper in, drop the pill towards the back of the throat, and… done. Better for everyone.

Pill popper: a small, slim, device that looks like a syringe, but serves to dispense solid pills into pets’ mouths. It has a soft-silicone tip that holds the pill, while a rod with short travel runs its length. Push the rod at the human end, and the pill is ejected from the pet end.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 08/11/2024

Lastly, Cab, our little purr machine who likes to drape his arms over things.

Cab, a mostly white cat with brown markings, lying atop the back of a love seat, with his arms dangling down either side.

Early-morning cab, his eyes still not entirely open, stretched out on a blue blanket with his two front paws resting on my forearm.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 08/11/2024

And here are some of our past ones: Gertie, Nereus (Erey), and Jake.

The head of Gertie, a long-haired elegant mutt, with half her head in shadow and half in morning sun.

Nereus, a long-haired happy-go-lucky rascal dog with knowing eyes, grinning at the camera while sitting in the back seat of a car.

Jake, a golden-haired Field Lab, sitting cheerfully on soil in the woods lightly strewn with fall leaves, “wearing” dark-brown boots of pure mud.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 08/11/2024

Here are our current dogs, Oberon and Luna.

Oberon, a large dog with a brindle coat, sitting on a sofa with one arm on the armrest and grinning like a goober, as though posing for a dating-site picture.

Luna, a gray-and-white dog largely Old English Sheepdog, lying outside in a large clump of a plant known as “miner lettuce.”

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 26/10/2024

Apologies if they’re old news to you, but: I discovered “pill poppers”, little syringe-like tools for administering pet pills, earlier this year, and they’ve proven complete and total game changers for me.

A pill popper, a small syringe-like device that lets you drop a pill far back in a pet’s mouth, making the animal reflexively swallow rather than spitting the medication out.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 02/10/2024

“Can they DO that?”

The Far Side: two cowboys, holding rifles, are hunched behind wooden barrels that are part of a circle of wagons. Flaming arrows have hit the wagons and the ground in front of them. One is saying to the other, “Hey! They’re lighting their arrows! Can they DO that?”

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 16/09/2024

Have you ever seen the Geometry Wars games? They do a loving job of recreating all the glorious artifacts of color-vector graphics on high-resolution raster display: glowing auras, end-point hot-spots, etc.

Screenshot from the game Geometry Wars, highlighting its simulation of vector graphics by deliberate recreation of that technology’s artifacts: glowing auras around the lines, and brighter hot spots at their ends.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 11/08/2024

Better yet, get one of these, attach it to his, ah, switch, tighten it using a screwdriver, and finally cover the evidence of his permatorture with a visually-pleasing controller. (Confession, I have several of these, and they’re actually very good.) residential.lutron.com/us/en/stand-...

The mounting plate of a Lutron Aurora smarthome switch being attached to a regular light switch.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 06/08/2024

What Lumen said. The tools typically look like this, with a pair of flat-bottomed wire loops. You slip the flat parts under opposing corners of the keycap, and pull straight up, sliding the cap off of the switch’s stem.

A tool for pulling keycaps off of a mechanical keyboard, consisting of a handle and a pair of flat-bottomed wire loops.

A keycap-removal tool in use, with the flat segments of the wire loop hooked under the corners of a keycap.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 01/08/2024

The Guardian further demonstrates how the fuck you do it.

Guardian headline: “Trump repeats lies and attacks Kamala Harris’s racial identity at panel of Black journalists”

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 16/07/2024

“Check out the work I did on the retina!” “You… put the wiring on the wrong side.” “I know. It looks cooler that way.” “That blocks the connections!” “Nah, I just added a hole they go through, and made everyone oblivious to it.” “Jesus.” “He’s working on higher-level pattern processing.”

Pinna-Gregory: four perfectly concentric circles of alternating black and white squares, tilted 17 degrees relative to the tangent, that most people perceive as a sort of Celtic knot.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 17/03/2024

The Hiigara from Homeworld.

The Hiigara, the player's base ship from the game Homeworld. It is a large vertical slab with a rounded front edge. It is depicted in front of a large cloud of interstellar gas, lit from behind by the bright glare of a near star.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 07/03/2024

Meanwhile, in Spain, they just use Unix. (“Unidad Extinctor”, extinguishing unit.)

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 18/11/2023

Oh, thank God. It’s an enormous relief to know that I’m not the only person crazy enough to visit priceless archaeological treasures and then spend half his time photographing the local reptilian residents.

Iguana perched on a rock in partial shade.

Iguana in full sun with the opening of an Uxmal building in the background.

A striped, crested iguana stretched along the shade cast by a stone wall.

An iguana perched atop a rock in stippled shadow.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 11/11/2023

“Those brownies on the counter were, like, for me, right? So… yummy.”

A sitting dog caught at the moment he was blinking, looking drowsy and/or stoned as a result.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 09/11/2023

Meet Jake, whom we were going to care of for three weeks — eight years ago. Foster failures are the best.

A 13-year-old field lab, perched on his cushion on a love seat, looking soulfully into the camera.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 24/09/2023

Sometimes Cab decides that the seat’s back is too narrow for full-body loafing, and that True Slack can only be achieved by bracketing it with his front legs.

A white cat with brown patches of fur, perched atop a seat back, with his hind legs under him in a “loafing” position, but his head and chest resting on the back itself, while his front legs dangle in front of and behind said seat back. He looks vaguely pensive.

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Dan Martinez @hivehand.cc · 26/07/2023

Mmmm… hey cat. How’s it going?

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