iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

Always impressed when a literary agent / AI bot wants to chat me up about a book I wrote 21 years ago. Hey, why don’t we talk up the advantages of PowerPC Macs while we’re at it?

Email from literary agent asking about the book “QuickTime for Java”, grabbing buzzwords and phrases from the book’s metadata in a facile attempt to make me think anyone has read it, oblivious to the fact that the book came out 21 years ago and the underlying tech is long since obsolete.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

The Ford app just added AI. This is the greatest thing ever.

Ford app AI feature with user-entered text "Write a 150-word story about Sailor Moon and Hatsune Miku kissing."

Under the gentle glow of a moonlit Tokyo skyline, Usagi Tsukino stood atop a quiet rooftop terrace, the night breeze catching her golden twin tails. Beside her, Hatsune Miku adjusted her glowing teal ribbons, a soft electronic melody humming faintly from the synth display at her wrist. The vibrant city buzzed far below, but above the streets, the air was peaceful and still.
Turning toward each other, Usagi smiled warmly, her bright eyes reflecting the starlight. Miku stepped closer, her digital glow softly illuminating the space between them. Without a word, Usagi leaned in, and their lips met in a sweet, tender kiss that seemed to bridge magic and music into…

one perfect harmony. As they pulled back, blushing beneath the moonlight, Miku shared a soft, cheerful smile.
Now that the magic and music are in harmony, is there anything I can help you with regarding your Mustang Mach-E
today?

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/08/2026

If you understand a word of this you are 100% my people.

Meme text: “STOP DOING B-FRAMES
• FRAMES WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE OUT OF ORDER • YEARS OF LATENCY yet NO REAL-WORLD COMPRESSION
GAINS FOUND for putting frames OUT OF ORDER • Wanted to go slower anyway for a laugh? We had a tool
for that: It was called "-preset:v placebo" • "Yes please give me timestamps that jump back
and forth so I have to fix it during playback"
- Statements dreamed up by the utterly Deranged LOOK at what MPEG have been demanding your Respect for all this time, with all the computers we built for them
(This is REAL GOPs, done by REAL MPEG Engineers):
They have played us for absolute fools.”

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/08/2026

Seriously considering dropping a slide from “13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim” into my Keynote presentation for work on Monday. I swear this is actually on-topic.

Character selection screen from 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim shows the character Yuki Takamiya selected, with a summary of the events of her previous chapter, and a UI explaining that continuing her story is locked behind the condition “Complete Natsuno Minami’s A Closed World event”.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/07/2026

Update: I got a picture of him playing Splatoon Raiders with the Nhuad one-handed controller.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/07/2026

I forgot to take a picture, but we got the disabled kid playing Splatoon Raiders today with the one-handed controller and it’s… sort of working? If he can just get the hang of camera control we’ll be there. I don’t want to get my hopes up, but before the stroke he’d spend all day playing Splatoon.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/07/2026

I just got this AI-generated ad for language lessons over on FB and it’s my new favorite thing. Subtext is for cowards.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/06/2026

I hooked up an old external drive and happened across these folders. Dang, was I obsessive about holding on to old Xcode versions and SDKs there for a while, wasn’t I?

Folder of iOS SDKs, ranging from 2009 to 2019.

Folder of MacOS betas and SDKs, ranging from 2012 to 2020.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/02/2026

Random screen grabs from 20 years ago when I was working on writing my own Java-to-QuickTime layer after Apple dropped QuickTime for Java. I knew next to nothing about the Apple APIs, so it’s amazing I got anything to work. But this is inadvertently what got me ready for the iPhone SDK.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/01/2026

I wait 15 years for this to come out in English, and when it finally does, I have so little time for it that it takes me a year and half just to get to The Twist. Oh well, on to teh melodrama then!

Steam achievement interface for the game "Kimi ga Nozomu Eien Enhanced Edition." It shows 1 out of 38 achievements earned, with a progress bar indicating 3%. The specific achievement displayed is "An End to Happy Days," indicating that the player has reached the end of Chapter 1.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/12/2025

I don’t know what the fuck this thing is (it was here when we moved in), but I’m pretty sure it’s been operating as a rogue DHCP server for the last two months and making my life miserable.

Some fucking Google thing after I pulled it off the wall. Like, do you remember in the first episode of Battlestar Galactica, when Head Six points out to Baltar that there’s an unaccounted-for piece of Cylon tech mounted in the ceiling right over the bridge? Yeah, basically that shit.

Backside of fucking Google shit. Shows the name of the setup network and setup code along with a QR code. Hey, you want to hack it, clever boy? Think you’re so smart because I’m just posting that unobscured on the socials? Knock yourself out, because I ain’t plugging this shit in ever again. Good luck ever getting another electron in here, genius.

Hole in the wall with a USB-C and ethernet cable dangling out and something labeled “Nekmit”.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/12/2025

When I was writing the Learning Core Audio book back in the day, AI wouldn’t have helped me because there was no Core Audio sample code out in the wild outside of two or three things from Apple in WWDC sessions or the docs. I wrote much of the […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Post from Vichy Twitter from some asshole named “alz”: “Books are obsolete. Books are just small containers for knowledge. LLMs are much bigger, more flexible containers for knowledge. Anything than can be done by a book can be done better by an LLM”. The ratio is 428 to 300.

Cover of “Learning Core Audio” by Chris Adamson and Kevin Avila. The cover image shows a young woman with strawberry blond hair and a pink hairband listening through over-ear headphones and staring straight at the reader. The side of the image cuts off her face halfway across.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/12/2025

My kid was one frame away from bowling a 300 in Nintendo Switch Sports last night.

Bowling results in Nintendo Switch Sports, showing a player named Keagan with 277 points, based on strikes in the first nine frames.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/11/2025

I spent a little over an hour this morning filing my claim for Anthropic ripping off the books I've authored or co-authored for their AI training. www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.co…

A table of book titles and their corresponding ISBN and copyright registration numbers, among other fields.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/11/2025

I pulled Duke out of an old box because I needed a squeeze toy for my hand, though now I mostly use this Cocoaconf ball for my arthritis.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/11/2025

Not sure if this is ironic or just incongruous.

A squeeze toy of Duke, the Java mascot, sitting atop a Mac Studio.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/11/2025

Has anyone considered teaching Nate Silver a new skill? Y’know, get the guy an O’Reilly or Prags book on Python or something? Maybe swap out his face and voice for an anime girl avatar and start VTubing? Something more viable than whatever he thinks he’s doing currently.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/11/2025

Wife and I threw a couple hundred bucks at local food banks to help get them through the Republicans’ SNAP tantrum. Yay, employer match.

An email on Apple, Inc. letterhead saying "Thank you for your donation!"

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2025

One nice thing about iPadOS 26 and Liquid Glass is that the folders on my home screen don’t black out background Mitsuki-chan’s eyes anymore.

Icons on an iPad home screen, with a drawing of Mitsuki from Rumbling Hearts as the background image. Two folders align with her eyes, but thanks to the Liquid Glass appearance, her eye color shines through them.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2025

What percentage of people do you suppose use spreadsheets like Excel, Sheets, or Numbers and have no idea how to enter a formula or that they even exist?

A cell editor in Numbers, showing that its contents are a standard deviation of cells B 2 through B 12.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/08/2025

I just rolled credits on Fire Emblem Three Houses for the third time, this time as Bylass + Dimitri.

Fire Emblem Three Houses end game notes on Byleth (female) and Dimitri.

Fire Emblem Three Houses end game notes on Felix and Ingrid.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/08/2025

Sometimes when I’m brainstorming a piece of writing, I’ll put together a playlist to fit the mood, or maybe have songs that indicate a certain key moment or event. Maybe the last song is the end credits. Anyways, maybe I’ll have time to write this someday. For now, I jot down ideas when I can.

Apple Music playlist titled "Undertow Extra: Sunny Slope Lodge!"

It Must Be Love by Madness
Why Can't We Be Friends by War
Goodbye Stranger by Supertramp
The Things We Do For Love by 10cc
Telephone Line by Electric Light Orchestra
Life Upon the Wicked Stage by Eliane Stritch & Dorothy Stanley
You Better You Bet by The Who
So Very Hard to Go by Tower Of Power
Girls With Guns by Tommy Shaw
It Must Be Love by Labi Siffre

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/08/2025

First time charging the #MachE at a Tesla Supercharger, one of the 325 kW models. OMFG, was this fast. It was going up like 1% every 30 seconds.

View from driver’s seat, showing a 63% charge on the dash and the v4 Supercharger through the windshield.

Charging session stats from the FordPass app, showing 33% added in 17 minutes.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/08/2025

Finally! I finally got a one-timer in #EA_NHL. I mean, kind of rubbing it in when I was already up 3-1 with under 10 seconds to go, but it’s the thought that counts. #PWHL

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/07/2025

Was talking with my wife tonight and found ourselves wondering “when did movie marquees disappear?” I mean like the big ones that would be on the side of a building or out in the parking lot facing the road. We’re certain we haven’t seen one here since moving to Grand Rapids in 2008.

A worker on a ladder adjusts movie titles on an 11-screen “Showcase Cinemas” marquee at night. Among the listed movies are “Stand by Me”, “Ruthless People”, and “The Fly”.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/07/2025

I need you people to understand what you’ve done. In my 1-on-1 with my manager this week, he asked me to explain Umamusume. I WORK AT APPLE, PEOPLE. YOUR WEIRD ANIME GIRL HORSE FETISH HAS GONE TOO FAR.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/07/2025

This might be the clearest public Wi-Fi TOC I’ve ever seen? It feels like it’s written for humans instead of lawyers.

A digital screen displays a welcome message for Freddy's Guest Wi-Fi. It informs users about the service’s lack of encryption, the importance of personal security measures, and guidelines for acceptable use. The message emphasizes not interfering with others' access or engaging in illegal activity.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/06/2025

Well yeah, it figures that my #AppleMusic number one all-time streamed song is what I have my HomePod wake up alarm set to.

Apple Music all-time playlist showing “The Zodiac Age” from Final Fantasy XII by Hitoshi Sakimoto as my most-streamed song.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/06/2025

This is the most range I’ve ever seen on the Guess-o-meter. Yay, summer. #MustangMachE

An electric vehicle dashboard display showing a charge status of 100% and a driving range of 309 miles for a Mustang Mach-E vehicle.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/06/2025

So, let’s see if I understand this right. This software update exists solely to prevent *future* software updates from locking me out of my car. Is that right? I mean, y’all could try not sending out future software updates like that, but you do you, I guess.

What's In This Update?
Priority Update - Vehicle Door
Side Doors Operation
This update prevents a potential future issue from any subsequent software update that may result in side doors being unable to unlock when commanded from the exterior of the vehicle. This update would prevent the separate, future over-the-air update from creating a new concern with the inability to unlock the side doors (side doors would still unlock from the interior of the vehicle via interior door release handles).

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/04/2025

Annnnndd… that’s the end of anime figures coming in to the US. Thanks, Grandpa Crazypants!

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/04/2025

Anybody else starting to contemplate the possibility that the Switch 2 just won’t launch in the USA, at least not by the announced June 5 release date, thanks to Grandpa Crazypants and his ever-changing moods?

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2025

Ambassador Spock modeling the proper “fuck you, make me” response to intimidation tactics. Our current-day institutions could learn a lot from him.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/04/2025

Why yes, I did just buy a new iPad before all the prices go crazy. Can you blame me?

An iPad Pro box is displayed on a desk, partially stacked on a box for a magic keyboard. In the background, there are a few office supplies and headphones atop a Mac Studio.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/03/2025

Sigh. Looks like running Steam for Windows on Whisky is dead.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/03/2025

At some point, the phishers will stop talking like Starfire from the Teen Titans cartoon (or Petra from Fire Emblem Three Houses), and then these scams will have one less reliable tell. That day is not today.

Contact info for “Order Confirmed!!!” from the phishing attempt, which goes to an iCloud account for Dark Sith 69 Brad BR.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/03/2025

Yep, all the tech books I ever wrote got hoovered up for Meta's AI from the pirated books dataset. Fuck Zuck. www.theatlantic.com/technology/arch… (👋 to erstwhile coauthors @bdudney, @RedQueenCoder, and […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Search term for LibGen, "Chris Adamson", with first two results: "Xcode Treasures" and "QuickTime for Java: A Developer's Notebook"

More search results in LibGen for my books: Swing Hacks, iPhone SDK Development, iOS 10 SDK Development, and Learning Core Audio.

Still more search results in LibGen for my books: iOS SDK Development, iPhone SDK Development, and iOS 9 SDK Development.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/02/2025

Random thing I happened to be reminded of tonight… the #CocoaConf “Reverse Q&A” session. This was an idea I stole from Harmonix (the “Rock Band” people), who used to do something similar at PAX East. The idea is to invert the tedious “smarty pants panel […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Small conference panel room with Jonathan Penn, another Jonathan whose last name I’ve forgotten, and Daniel Steinberg seated while I’m standing up with a microphone and speaking to the audience.

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/02/2025

Finally, finally won a game of #Balatro. That crazy multiplier at the end of the chain really helped, obviously.

Balatro “you win” screen, showing statistics for the run.

Balatro shop screen, with the “constellation joker” already purchased and in the rightmost joker slot. Its tooltip reads “this joker gains 0.1 mult every time a planet card is used (currently time 2.5 mult).”

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/02/2025

So, Dead or Alive 6 was on sale for 85% off on Steam, and despite it being Windows-only, I figured it was worth a shot to see if Whisky could run it, and if my Mac Studio would be up to it. Yep, works great. At least as far as I can tell. I’m never going to […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/01/2025

This is a dumb, dumb goal: off the goalie’s blocker, off the glass, then down the goalie’s back and into the net. But it’s the only goal I got for the Victoire in this game of #nhl25, so I’ll take it. @hnom

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Chris Adamson @invalidname.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/01/2025

L2 charger installed, literally minutes before Grandpa Racist and his anti-EV crowd takes over. #MachE

An electric vehicle is charging in a garage, with a wall-mounted Ford charging station nearby. Snow is visible on the vehicle's hood and around the charging port. Various storage boxes and cleaning supplies are visible in the background.

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