iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 04/10/2026

Sunshine without the heat is my kind of weather.

A series of metallic structures stretching across a river, the sun catching on their silvery hulls in a way that makes me think of insects. They squat on concrete plinths which descend below the waters, and you can see hints of yellow cranes within the closest two structures, the nearer of which is connected to the land by a bridge with diagonal supports down the length of the side closest to the camera. Behind is a blue sky. This is the Thames Barrier.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 06/09/2026

There's a story here that we've forgotten.

A rough drawing using pen and watercolour marker on white paper. A man sits with his back against a tree, propped up by a yellow sack as he looks up into the sky, dark at his feet but becoming lighter with hints of yellow sunlight towards the top. The tree is mostly bare brown branches with some traces of green moss. There's a thick green shape reaching up from the ground on the other side of the tree to the man, and which is twined around the trunk. Beneath the ground, brown and black give way to a small cavern where a dragon sleeps on its pile of gold.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 04/09/2026

QRP with a gif of the last show/movie you watched 🎥

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 02/09/2026

Post something random or you'll have an awful September (and you never know when that might spill all over others).

A photo of the statue of Prince Hal in Stratford upon Avon, where it is one of four statues flanking the Gower Monument. It is a depiction in bronze of a fit, lithe young man, dressed in a tight shirt and tight trouse and snug boots, standing on a small bronze plinth on a slightly larger stone plinth. Hal is facing away from us looking towards some well-trimmed hedges and trees. He holds his crown above his head, about to lower it to his brow; he's feeling pretty good about himself. His left leg is straight, his right foot moved slightly behind him heel raised, which twists his body sinuously and highlights his arse. This statue is less about Prince Hal trying on his crown and more his awareness that he is the sexiest thing in the land and everyone wants him with the likely exception of Falstaff. They let children look at this statue, which is right and proper because everyone should know just how hot the man who'd become Henry V was in his youth. Gower knew just what he was doing here, which was capturing a horny and beautiful, if largely fictitious, man.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 26/08/2026

Last night in bed I thought about painting birds, so today I painted birds.

A colourful painting of a bird sitting on a brown branch against a bright blue sky. The bird is somewhere between a corvid and a vulture that got mixed up with something tropical, painted in short strokes on the body to look a bit like more downy feathers, the white of the paper showing through a lot; the wings are longer strokes with less white. The sky also shows a lot of white, with broad scribbly blue strokes. The bird is black with little yellow feet clutching the branch, a dark yellow eye and a bright red elongated beak with a disturbingly pink mouth inside. But it has the hangdog expression of a vulture. Everything is quite naively painted using watercolour markers (so you get the simplistic brush lines of a marker, but some of the transparency of water-based paint, including different darknesses of brown on the branch and black on the bird's neck), as if by a person who doesn't really know much about painting, which is in fact the case because the person if me.

A black bird with red and yellow marking where the wings join the body. It is flying to the right, its wings up and at full extension, about to beat down. In front of it the sky is only white, while behind there are streaks of blue, smooth beneath it but more scrubbly around the wings presumably because of turbulence created as it beats them. Behind it, its tail feathers dissolve into little dots, first of black and then gradually of different colours as the dots get larger and resolve into squares at the left edge of the picture.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 11/08/2026

This is a great thread, but tangentially this picture (by Robinet Testard, says Wikipedia) makes me think a little of The Irritating Gentleman (of meme fame) by Berthold Woltze but more of the man spying in Adriaen Brouwer's Tavern Scene, whom around 2011 the team at Artfinder dubbed "Ceiling Chap".

Detail of Tavern Scene by Adriaen Brouwer. It depicts a 17th century tavern; in this part of the painting, a man with his flies undone has put his hand up the skirts of a woman sitting beside him. She is resisting him, and he's cringing in pain. Above them both, a bit like Ceiling Cat, a man's head pokes through a window to ogle the scene.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 11/08/2026

Volunteering to teach a course that just involves telling stories to each other instead...

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 09/08/2026

Wondering if the National Maritime Museum shop is trying to evoke an @aptshadow.bsky.social tale with its astronaut octopus, or perhaps astrocephalopod.

A display in a museum shop with an orange soft toy octopus with limbs that have a paler underside punctuated by coloured circles that evoke suckers. The limbs are wrapped round the display with the head at the top wearing, incongruously, what is perhaps part of a diving suit that would be in keeping with the museum, but actually looks like a spacesuit helmet. Although the helmet has a large faceplate, you can only see the very top of the octopus's eyes, looking soulfully at you.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 16/07/2026

Sometimes it's really easy to spot something that's slipped past the phishing filter.

A screenshot from an email client of a subject line that is intended to be read as "Reminder: You have a new message!" but has spaces in places you don't expect, leaving it as "Y o u h a v e a n e w m e s sa ge !"

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 13/07/2026

These are not stage times.

A screenshot of a webpage section with the heading "Stage Times", containing two times: doors at 7pm, curfew at 11pm, and a note that "stage times are subject to change and published where available". It is unclear whether door and curfew times are subject to change (in theory door times can change) or whether they might be unavailable in some circumstances, such as close to a scheduled Apocalypse.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 23/06/2026

Apparently it's time for the adverts shoved into Deliveroo to turn into borderline scams, which presumably means that sector is running incredibly distressed inventory and is nowhere meeting investor expectations. What happens after that?

An ad with a headline "£20.50 cash back!", but if you read the fine print it turns out you have to pay £18 per month to join some undescribed "third party partner programme" called Complete Savings that could be raising funds to burn down forests, or kidnap cute dogs, or just scam you out of your savings. And then you get the cashback *next* time you order from Deliveroo. It's marked bottom right as "sponsored", with a disclaimer that the £20.50 value is nothing to do with how much I spent with Deliveroo, and presumably someone at Deliveroo hopes that this is enough to avoid any blowback if the entire "partner programme" turns out to be illegal.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 25/04/2026

Found forgotten in my notebook from Eastercon and now have no idea what to do with it, so... happy Saturday I guess. Skeletal fingers pushing on my collar bone Reminding me of the ghosts that live out there in the forest They have no mouths or bodies any more Just fingers, and breath on my cheek

A very rough sketch by fountain pen of a slightly built person from shoulders up. They have a strong jawline and long hair and are looking at you with slightly unfocussed eyes although that may be because the ink lines are too thick for the size of sketch.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 13/04/2026

If you work for a company that values source code (eg as training data) and use a web scraper to get it, you need to go sit in a hole until you're sorry. This is from a website that just presents information about a few git repos. They don't change enough to justify the access volume.

A graph with a time axis, showing approximately the last six months. Until some point after the "January 2026" label, there are little spikes. After, it's more like a craggy cliff face ascending into the clouds, several times higher than the earlier little spikes.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 11/03/2026

First experiment. Light and shadow are grungy, but I haven't built a proper frame / stage so there wasn't an easy way to control the lighting, which is famously-controllable sunlight. Her arm looks like a flute. She may actually be an alien.

A drawn / shadow cast scene of a man prostrate in front of his queen. He is on the left, kneeling with his face pressed to the floor, his arms pointing straight up with palms towards his queen. She sits on a solid chair, pointing beyond him (as if banishing him) with a skinny arm. What appears to be hair flows back from her head as if blown by wind. Her face could be aristocratic, slightly aliens, or possibly the faceplate of a helmet. She's wearing pointy boots that probably hurt her feet, unless her feet are as skinny as her arm in which case she's fine. The figures and chair are silhouettes and appear as translucent browns, her lighter and more translucent and him darker and more solid. Beneath them is a scrubby brown floor, on either side are red curtains, and at the top of the image is a blue drape making the framing feel a little like a proscenium. There is a lot of light coming in from the top right, washing out the drapes and curtains, and causing the different colours and translucency of the figures.

The same as the previous image, but the man is now reaching his arms towards the queen, as if beseeching her not to banish him. The light is more event, so both figures are brown and the drapes are not washed out.

Full description:

A drawn / shadow cast scene of a man prostrate in front of his queen. He is on the left, kneeling with his face pressed to the floor, his arms pointing forward towards his queen. She sits on a solid chair, pointing beyond him (as if banishing him) with a skinny arm. What appears to be hair flows back from her head as if blown by wind. Her face could be aristocratic, slightly aliens, or possibly the faceplate of a helmet. She's wearing pointy boots that probably hurt her feet, unless her feet are as skinny as her arm in which case she's fine. The figures and chair are silhouettes, and appear as translucent brown. Beneath them is a scrubby brown floor, on either side are red curtains, and at the top of the image is a blue drape making the framing feel a little like a proscenium.

A high angle shot showing the scene screen suspended vertically between two wine bottles, resting on a large white art pad. This is all on a wooden table, with scissors, tape, and string visible towards the top of the photo. Strong light from the top right causes everything to cast dark shadows, particularly the scene itself whose shadow is medium grey, stretching down and to the right. It is impossible to make out the figures in the shadow, but they are just visible in the screen itself.

The figures being constructed: both figures have been cut out of white card and sit on a green cutting pad with white grid lines. There are pencil marks visible near some edges, because my cutting isn't particularly accurate. The thin arm of the queen is visibly raised off the plane of the rest of the figure, casting a small shadow beneath it. Similarly, the arm of the prone figure sits on top of the rest of the figure and casts a small shadow.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 16/02/2026

I had the tube / cylinder Head bag, but in turquoise and ... maybe grey like the colours on this different Head bag (mine had the detachable bit in turquoise, like the red end in the QP): www.ebay.co.uk/itm/16692195...

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 26/01/2026

I'm on the Google Calendar login page. (And once I've logged in I'm going to create an event setting aside time to set up my own damn CalDav server, I don't care how stupid that is.)

An attention-getting UI element for a Google chat widget. To the right is the chat launcher, a "conversation" icon in white on a blue circular background. To its left is a white rounded rectangle with a grey border and black text on white acting as a speech bubble: "Hi there 👋 What brings you to Google Workspace today?" There is a white-on-grey 'x' button to the top left of the speech bubble, presumably to close the speech bubble but not remove the chat launcher.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 14/01/2026

I'm at a Japanese fusion* restaurant that has understandably shaded towards a minimalist style (see picture 1), but unaccountably has just one round table when all the others are square. * Fusion so far encompassing Canarian and Mexican influences, but let's see where this goes

A place sitting, photographed from above. A napkin folded and placed with the long end horizontal in the photo sits at the bottom, a stone cup containing water top left, and a pair of chopsticks on a stone rest is in the center with the rest to the left, the chopsticks again horizontal in the photo. They are laid out simply but pleasingly. Everything is white except the chopsticks which are brown. They all sit on a lighter brown wood table, with a visible grain running top to bottom of the image. There are shadows below and to the right of each object, most evident for the water cup.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 05/01/2026

No for fuck's sake what even if going on here?

"Gender" selector on a website with options "Male", "Female", "Intersex", "Prefer Not To Say".

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 03/01/2026

New year, new utterly fucked up email preferences (that I noticed right now, I assume it's been around for ages).

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 30/12/2025

WTAF, Windows? (You can minimise the inner window, too.)

A Window in Windows that contains a Window. This is a screenshot of the top right "control" portion of a Windows 11 window, with minimise, maximise and close buttons in pale grey on dark grey. Immediately below it is another set of window controls, in the earlier colour sccheme of white with dark grey borders on the icons, with the buttons being very pale blue with a slightly less dark grey border. This is Windows inception: a Windows 10/11 window containing a window emulating an earlier version of Windows.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 28/11/2025

San Francisco has a new independent bookstore (disclaimer: run by friends) in Union Square bestbookstore.com

Photo of a bookstore window, taken on an angle like I'm pretending to be cool or something. The store name is in blue, yellow and pink neon style lights: theBestBookstore. Beneath it are display shelves of books, hard to make out because of the reflection in the window of the shops opposite.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 28/11/2025

If you see this, I IMPLORE you to post a picture from whatever device you are using without explanation.

It's a lot of bones. On the right are three skulls, sans jawbone, on a pale background. The ground gets slightly darker to the left where there's just a big pile of bones. Skulls and thigh bones, piled on each other. Someone made this their place. Someone had fun.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 14/11/2025

And creates opportunities for low key hilarious details in Wikipedia entries: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute... has a helpful photo of a suit of armour that you wouldn't be allowed to wear. In case you were confused.

A photo of a suit of armour, captioned "A suit of armour, not allowed in Parliament". The armour is silver coloured, I'm not an armour specialist but it looks like solid chunks of metal so I'm guessing that's plate armour? It's full body, everything covered in metal. It stands jauntily on a short square black plinth against a white background. Something about the photo makes it look like a tiny model, but Wikipedia says this is 169cm tall (possibly including the plinth) and was made in Milan so less likely to have been worn in the UK much anyway.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 06/11/2025

This is the world that we created: the dull screen of death on a railway station vending machine

A digital screen showing the message 'support.google.com is blocked' with a note that "your organisation doesn't allow you to view this site". The text is black on white, with an information icon (the letter 'i' in a circle) above.

Reflected in the screen are some ceiling lights in white and yellow, making it clear this is in at least a communal if not a public space.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 04/11/2025

Oh joy, having to figure out which of the two Apple accounts I ended up with when trying to change my email address that time to log in to in order to opt out of something dumb that I don't want done to my podcast. Also this, which is probably because Apple forgot about the British English l10n:

A configuration setting in Apple Podcast Connect, for a feature called "Timed Links" which is in beta. It doesn't matter what timed links are, which is described in the screenshot (but cut off because that's not the bit that's annoying); what matters is that the checkbox which controls this feature isn't labelled something useful like "Enable Timed Links for this podcast", but "PCC.Show.Availability.MediaLinks.CheckboxMessage".

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 18/10/2025

I don't believe anyone would mean that in 2025 and get it wrong, particularly as the domain I actually used was of a remailer.

An email confirmation box asking if I meant the same email but at hotmail.com, a domain I haven't thought of in more than a decade. It has a cherry yellow theme visible as a stripe down the left edge and in the colour of the 'yes' button while 'no' and the rest of the text is black on white

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 06/10/2025

Particularly weak that they say the problem is "specifically" ... either one thing or another. Couldn't say which. Just one of them. That they're totally different and one of them is undefined is irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. Not a flag of convenience to wrap our selves in, shivering.

specifically promoting hateful content or being disruptive to other users. We take these guidelines seriously to ensure a safe and respectulf environment for all our users.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 26/09/2025

Three little Dinos had roast beef

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with three Dinos in the sand. The angle is low so we can't see the mouths of the front two, a Stegosaurus looking Dino and a Triceratops like one (we don't like to pry). Behind them is a brachiosaur of some description, whose elevated head we can see over the stegosaur but not its mouth which is obscured. Behind all of them, part of the desk toy, is a mountain which contains sand tools. Behind that, out of focus, are normal desk things: a laptop and a headset. The Dinos are coloured yellow at the top through orange and the green on their bellies.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 24/09/2025

No I absolutely will not, but thanks for reminding me I'm still on your stupid mailing list.

A screenshot from a WashPo promotional email, in black text on a white background, for their automated lying machine. The headline is "Built on facts. Powered by conversation." Then there's a single paragraph:

Ask The Post AI is fueled by trusted reporting and your curiosity. Where will your next question take you?

And finally the call to action button, which is white on blue: "Start your conversation"

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 23/09/2025

Today the Dinos were absent but the octopus was playing around on its own in the sand. And I forgot to take a photo of it. Instead here's a photo of two pigs that live near me.

Two pigs seen through the dark bars of the wire fencing surrounding their paddock. The one close to the camera basks in the sun, it's brown skin glowing. The other is farther away, dark in the shade of trees and is snuffling around for things on the ground.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 22/09/2025

Watch out watch out. There's a sand dragon snake worm thing about.

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with a red and mauve segmented creature in the sandpit, kind of like a small spiny sandworm. It is partly beneath the sand, and has left strange meandering tracks in the sand behind it. Behind it, part of the desk toy, is a mountain which contains sand tools. Behind that, out of focus, are normal desk things: a laptop and a headset. Off to the left, peeking over the edge of the desk toy, a single Dino stands pondering the creature and its sand tracks. It is coloured yellow at the top through orange and the green on its belly.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 18/09/2025

And their dog Octopus... (Because four photos in a skeet is enough for anyone)

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with three Dinos approaching on the desk. Behind, part of the desk toy, is a mountain which contains sand tools and a flying Dino. Behind that, out of focus, are normal desk things: a laptop and a headset. The Dinos are coloured yellow at the top through orange and the green on their bellies. In front is an octopus, mauve on its top fading to cyan on the tips of its tentacles. It is looking at you.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 18/09/2025

Dino went to rake, Went to rake a sand pit, One Dino, two Dinos, three Dinos, four Dinos And their dog Octopus, Went to rake a sand pit.

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with a Dino approaching on the desk. Behind, part of the desk toy, is a mountain which contains sand tools. Behind that, out of focus, are normal desk things: a laptop and a headset. The Dino is coloured yellow at the top through orange and the green on its belly.

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with two Dinos approaching on the desk. Behind, part of the desk toy, is a mountain which contains sand tools. Behind that, out of focus, are normal desk things: a laptop and a headset. The Dinos are coloured yellow at the top through orange and the green on their bellies.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 02/09/2025

Dinos in the sand. They are listening to Belinda Carlisle.

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with two Dinos either side of a furrough raked in the sand. Behind, part of the desk toy, is a mountain which contains sand tools. Behind that, out of focus, are normal desk things: a laptop and a headset. The Dinos are coloured yellow at the top through orange and the green on their bellies. Both Dinos look towards you, inquisitive and playful.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 28/08/2025

If you go down to the sands today...

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with four Dinos, three standing on the sand and one flying Dino dangling off a mountain which is at the back of the desk toy behind the sand. Behind that are normal desk things: a laptop and a headset. The Dinos are coloured yellow at the top through orange and the green on their bellies. There isn't much room.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 27/08/2025

Dinos on the march. Well, one of them. The other may be on the crawl, or having a brief rest before going on the flap. Which is not a euphemism, it's a flying dinosaur.

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with two Dinos and some Dino tracks in the sand. The Dino on the right is tall and looks like it made the tracks, facing right and away from the camera. The Dino on the left is a flying type, currently crouched on the sand and looking more towards the camera. Behind, part of the desk toy, is a mountain which contains sand tools. Behind that, out of focus, are normal desk things: a laptop and cables. The Dinos are coloured yellow at the top through orange and the green on their bellies.

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James Aylett @james.tartarus.org · 26/08/2025

Today the Dinos are running late.

A desk toy sand garden sitting on a white desk, with ripples in the sand but absolutely no Dinos. Behind, part of the desk toy, is a mountain which contains sand tools. Behind that, out of focus, are normal desk things: a laptop and some cables, the edge of a monitor stand at the back on the right.

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