iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alas, the number of games for which I have made a spreadsheet has increased by one.

I feel like I should get some kind of sequence bonus for booking my covid vaccination in the waiting room for my flu one

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The periodicity in here showing that Bluesky has the greatest positive sentiment when the Americans are asleep is hardly surprising but it's interesting it's so stark.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

One of the oddities about my occasional commute is that sometimes my train is canceled so I get in/back earlier. (Because work pays for my ticket and requires I get the cheaper/slower one, but if it's cancelled then the ticket is valid on the faster service).

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The ESA insist that their spacecraft is not lost and does not need to ask for directions.

The plan of JUICE - the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer - 's flight to Jupiter, which does an Earth-Moon flyby, a Venus flyby, and two Earth flybys before actually going to Jupiter. Repeated gravitational slingshots and precise aiming, but it _looks_ silly.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

This is still a castle account though it's questionable if I know what a castle is (various city fortifications, Canterbury).

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Apparently this is a castle account (Leeds Castle, Kent)

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I.... what? Why on earth does YouGov think the British public has some kind of idea as to the alternate path of nine and a half centuries of history and an ability to evaluate the consequences? Do they ask profoundly nonsensical questions on a regular basis?

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Speaking as somebody who gets East and West mixed up all the time I have a certain amount of sympathy here, but I would also have got it checked!

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I feel, Google, you are unnecessarily insulting your servers here.

HTML Error 400 page; "The server cannot process the request because it is malformed. It should not be retried. That's all we know". Google mean that the request is malformed, not the server, but that's not entirely clear from the phrasing.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Look, they _specifically_ told me I required additional pylons.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Apropos of nothing in particular, if I owned a sandwich shop I would put a piece of paper at the bottom of all of my large orders saying "thank you for your attention to this platter".

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I was writing some code to look at how energy saving/race pace works in Formula E but as I see Bluesky has gone Anglophobic _again_ it's hard to feel like I'm welcome enough to bother sharing.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I've recently been having a problem with my phone charging ahead of me and ending up in exposed positions in danger of being surrounded. Fortunately I've now figured out how to turn off salient mode.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

It's not _immediately_ obvious to me that I'd be able to prove I'm not, in fact, in a game of Terra Invicta.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Here's the thing about the Sherman: they built 49,000 of them, to fight on Pacific islands, African deserts, and in Russian winters. You do NOT want to be picky about where the spare parts came from or quite how you handle the transmission. Much easier to win tank battles with operational tanks.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

It turns out that playing Terra Invicta immediately after a solar eclipse feels kind of odd.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

The ESA's commentators are absolutely freaking out during totality in an incredibly cute and presumably somewhat avian manner. Glad I tuned in....

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

My experience of the eclipse is somewhat confused by the fact that I forgot to take my sunglasses off after driving to the shops for about ten minutes so now I kind of still think I'm wearing them despite this not actually being the case.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

In a pinch, an apple tree works well as a pinhole camera for eclipse viewing

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Batteries I have: 8x AAA, 8x AA, 3x PP3 Batteries I actually need: CR2032.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

...are the twins that are trending the two separate God of War instances, Bluesky?

Trending

1.
Red Sox Trade
2.
Twins
3.
God of War
4.
Jeanine Pirro
5.
God of War

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

...it would be nice if Bluesky would stop eating the six remaining posts I have to make on the folk festival thread which have so far been written twice and will have to be written a third time.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

The Cambridge Folk Festival thread returns! One post per band or artist I saw but this first post is me complaining they've redone the layout and obviously I hate it while acknowledging there are obvious good points (but I think they've not given Stage 1 enough capacity)

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Even to people like me who are entirely aware that shire horses exist and are huge they're still somewhat alarming when you see one given the usual expectation that a horse is going to be Arabian-sized.

020

Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

After @stabbyabby.bsky.social: Roses are red So is a bus In the state of California You can't farm an octopus

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

What they don't tell you in the videos about how overpowered throwing builds are in BG3 is that you will at some point inevitably lose the one returning weapon that exists before Act 3 and have to retrace your steps for half an hour until you find where it ended up after not actually returning.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Ah, a woman who did Chemistry at Somerville, Oxford has been appointed education secretary. I'm sure there's no sort of ill omen involved there.... (unlike Margaret Thatcher, Lucy Powell transferred to KCL after her first year, but still....)

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Ugh. This is not a good enough game to warrant extra time.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Norway need a better stroke that rowing was hideously out of sync.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

If Norway win this match, do you think he'll be promoted to Duking Haaland?

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

I suppose if I post chess positions where I did a cool thing I should post this one. Black wins by ...Qxg2+ !! after which either Rgxg2 Re1# or Rdxg2 Nf2#...which I did not find in the 16 seconds I had left on my clock.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I didn't think this World Cup was going very well for UEFA originally, but I might have to change my mind as a result of the last 16 clean-sweep (the only UEFA side that lost did so against another UEFA side)

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Hmm, "this World Cup is suddenly going wrong" may be spreading south from CONCACAF to CONMEBOL.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I do find it kind of funny that most of the Bluesky complaining about the third Belgian goal is "why was the keeper so far upfield" which was like the one bit of competent US play in this entire sequence.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Watching Spain - Portugal has been quite instructive, though, as it shows that I wasn't just annoyed by England - Ghana because it was England; inept attacking play winds me up when I'm a neutral too.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Because Spain are playing in white with red trim/numbers and Portugal are playing in red with white numbers, this match does kind of feel like some kind of generic "couldn't get the licence" video game.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Presumably, if Erling Haaland was of Frankish rather than Viking descent, he would be Counting Haaland.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I think UEFA should withdraw from the World Cup in protest at FIFA's handling of the Balogan affair, ideally before anyone has to watch the second half of Spain-Portugal.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

I love the opening England goal so much, it's so deeply stupid.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Excellent save by Rashford, particularly given he's not a goalkeeper! (Lee Dixon has forgotten which ford is which).

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Football pundits usually talk about "the final third" but I don't think it fits for this match because Panama's defence is good in like the final fifth and lousy in the rest of what you would normally call the final third.

000

Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

I do appreciate how the United States has laid on rain for these England games, that's very hospitable of them.

020

Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

I'm aware that we're kind of past the point where language is supposed to mean stuff, but Amazon could you just not?

"Discover what day two of Prime Day has for you"

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

The practical issue is that England keep assuming they have about 2-3 seconds longer in space than they actually do, and as a result keep taking touches they don't have time for. Actually shooting in less-than-ideal circumstances is better than not shooting at all.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

I feel like this first half could have been an email

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

So we have an amber warning of extreme heat for the today and the next two days...and then not one for Friday, which according to current forecasts from the people who issue the warnings is supposed to be the hottest day? Excellent work there....

Weather forecast for the next few days, showing predicted max temps of 34 today, 31 tomorrow, 35 on Thursday and 38 on Friday, with today, tomorrow and Thursday having amber triangles reflecting an extreme heat warning.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Well, the globe is about 4.5 bn years old, but I suppose more radiometric dating labs won't hurt? Wait, what?

020

Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

We're naming local council wards again I see.

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Ilanin @ilanin.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

Everything's bigger in Texas, including the amount of space Rashford ended up in there....

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