iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It occurred to me that I haven't heard anything about acid rain in decades. Sounds like, much like CFCs and the ozone layer, it's a mostly-solved problem. web.archive.org/web/20260924... Now, about the climate crisis...

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Highest-rated #pico8 carts: www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?cat=7#s...: Highest-rated #picotron carts: www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?cat=8#s...:

010

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I wish "reputation managers" had taken off. Are they not a good idea, or were they torpedoed by the bad-faith interactions of self-interested parties? www.nngroup.com/articles/rep...

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"Editing a template is more enticing and has a gentler learning curve than facing the horror of a blank page. In avatar-based systems like Second Life, for example, most users modify standard-issue avatars rather than create their own." www.nngroup.com/articles/par...

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Lately I've been thinking that many of the people who post most frequently on the Internet are precisely the ones you should NOT listen to. This bolsters that: www.nngroup.com/articles/par...

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

@moralanxiety.bsky.social I thought of you: "Photographs alone can't convey the atmosphere or the scale. When you actually go, you see the way mist rises from the valleys." Rephrased as: "Look at the world. Draw it." youtu.be/d7rIO6791vQ...

100

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

OMG, Blender's command palette is freaking amazing. I don't know why people tolerate software that doesn't provide good support for mouse-free usage.

010

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

You know what the best sound is? A snorting dog. Snorting dogs are happy dogs.

010

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I keep seeing the creative people I follow apologize because their work is being delayed by personal matters. Like, the incidence of personal matters is increasing for everyone, across the board. Which is not surprising. Exploitation of the middle class by the 1% is increasing across the board.

101

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

#SuperMarioWorld #GameGenie Yeah, there's some fun to be had with SubUpdateSprPos github.com/IsoFrieze/SM...

Super Mario World. Mario is standing beneath a ledge as 4 Red Koopas walk off the ledge and float in midair over his head.

001

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

#SuperMarioWorld: "SubUpdateSprPos" is the subroutine that moves sprites (mostly enemies) around. Seems like it (and the routines it calls) would be REALLY high-leverage for hacks. github.com/IsoFrieze/SM... #ROMHacking

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Why nature isn't dominated by one or two species: www.nature.com/nature-index...

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

In which a couple people freak out that a project is (openly) coded with AI assistance, but are completely drowned out by the people who just care about the results: www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/...

001

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I don't think I understood how many dungeon walls were bomb-able in NES Legend of Zelda. Like, there are more bomb-able ones than not.

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

"Skynet, the computer which controlled the machines, sent two terminators back through time. Their mission: to destroy the leader of the human Resistance..." --Terminator 2: Judgement Day Yeah, that totally sounds like something an AI would do, doesn't it?

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

I'm not the first to discover the screen with the "No Yoshis" sign in #SuperMarioWorld that wasn't used in the original game. But I did just make a #GameGenie code that loads that screen when you visit Yoshi's House! 033D-A7F0 Confirmed on original hardware! #Emulation #RetroGames #RetroGaming

An outdoor scene in Super Mario World. Mario has dismounted Yoshi in front of a cartoonishly-drawn sign with a "no Yoshis" symbol.

172

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Z for 2: This 2-player shared-screen #ROMHack for #NES Legend of Zelda is bonkers. I'd expect it to slow the game down like crazy, but it doesn't seem to. www.timeextension.com/news/2026/08... #Emulation #RetroGames #RetroGaming

210

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Have I really not posted about my cylindrical kirigami here yet? Simple cut rectangles become stair-step patterns when you roll the cardstock into a cylinder. (Tabs and slots eliminate the need for tape or glue.) And the white cardstock looks amazing in black light!

A cardstock cylinder with a stair-step pattern spiralling around it stands next to a pair of folded cardstock icosahedrons. One of the icosahedrons has triangles cut out of the center of each face, giving it a wireframe-like look.

Three cardstock cylinders with different stair-step patterns spiralling around them. They are sitting atop a black light, which makes the cut out stairs glow brighter than the cylinders themselves.

000

Reposted by Jay McGavren

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

I found 12x24-inch cutting mats, meaning I can finally use @heatsynclabs.bsky.social 's USCutter LaserPoint II (aka Sir-Cuts-a-Lot) to cut posterboard! Started with the usual icosahedron (much scaled-up), but this is just the beginning! #VinylCutter #Cricut #Silhouette #MakerSpace

A posterboard icosahedron net sits unfolded on a table top. Written in Sharpie on the net is "Heatsync Labs", "Mesa AZ", "Sir-Cuts-a-Lot".

A banana sits atop the net, for scale. The net is approximately 3 bananas wide.

A, icosahedron, made from folded posterboard, sits unfolded on a table top. Written in Sharpie on the solid is "Heatsync Labs", "Mesa AZ".

A banana leans on it, for scale. The icosahedron is as wide as the banana is long.

123

Reposted by Jay McGavren

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Simple prototype, manually composed. And look how much space I still have to work with! Next step is hopefully to write a program to do it so I can get MOAR BLOCKS. Wonder what level of detail the cardstock will support? #VinylCutter #Cricut #SilhouetteCameo #Inkscape

Cardstock that was cut and scored on a Silhouette Portrait 3 vinyl cutter and folded into a 3D scene. The result looks like boxes resting in a divot cut into another box.

A set of paths in the Silhouette Studio program, ready to be cut. It's a series of nested rectangles. The vertical sides of each rectangle are solid lines (for cuts), while the top, bottom, and middle of each rectangle are dashed lines (for folding).

021

Reposted by Jay McGavren

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

I'll be one of the vendors. Excited for this! Already had several late nights at the makerspace in preparation.

VIRTUE VENDING @ HEATSYNC
ART FAIR
Florence Project
CHARITY RAFFLE
LIVE ACOUSTIC MUSIC
4/11 * 1-6PM

Several stacks of laser-cut wood ornaments. In the background is a sheet of acrylic with the outlines of more cut-out ornaments.

001

Reposted by Jay McGavren

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

#Inkscape lets you "clone" an object throughout your design. When you update the original, the clones update too. Made an updated icosahedron net with a group of objects for the "tab" and another for the "slot". Then I cloned those into all the appropriate positions on the net. Made tweaks easier!

Editing an icosahedron net in Inkscape. To the left, outside the page, are a dashed line for a folded edge, a triangle "face" made out of three cloned edges, a "slot" at the bottom of a short, wide trapezoid, and a "tab" with hooks sized to fit into that slot.

Within the page is the icosahedron net, composed out of clones of the objects on the left.

The "Layers and Objects" panel on the right has groups named "tabs", "lone edges", "face-edge-groups", and "slots". The "tabs" group is expanded to show objects named "use1", "use25", etc. Lock icons on each object indicate that they are clones.

A folded icosahedron sits atop the sheet of cardstock its net was cut out of. Scrawled across its face (prior to folding) are the words "AstroBrights 8.5 x 11" and "This might be the one!"

002

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I've been taking a brief break from vinyl cutter kirigami, though I'm excited to get back to it. Gonna repost some of my existing work to the top of my feed, though. For reasons. 😉

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I'm calling it: After 3 decades of design-by-committee, GUIs are a hopeless mess. We need to burn them all down and start over. I recommend CLIs: - LLMs can easily work with them - They're not being used for advertising (yet)

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Finally installing TikTok. See you in hell.

100

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

For Zelda: A Link to the Past, it looks like the cool kids all work with the Japanese ROM. (I bet the shorter text slows down speedruns less.) github.com/spannerisms/... archipelago.gg/tutorial/A%2...

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

"it is in the interests of almost every actor in the space – boards, executives, employees, vendors, consultants – to obfuscate and misrepresent the success rate of AI projects." hermit-tech.com/blog/ai-mani...

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

So, how are we defining the term "AI psychosis" THIS week?

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Claude is yelling at subagents for something *I* did. ⏺ That leaves the two gist pushes — were those you as well? ...I keep briefing Phase-2 subagents that a previous one ignored the "never push" instruction. If the pushes were yours, that briefing is unnecessary noise and I'll drop it.

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

New Sun Glitters album "Out of Phase" sounds really really promising! distrokid.com/hyperfollow/...

000

Reposted by Jay McGavren

Aureus (Moral Anxiety Studio) @moralanxiety.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Past, level 1: Spots like these were taken over by the regular folk once the armies have dwindled. While they may last for the foreseeable future, there haven’t been any new fortresses like this getting raised in recent generations. #screenshotsaturday #indiedev

1315

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

LOVE the irony. "This time it was the UK government's AI Security Institute who accidentally attacked other companies while running an evaluation with models with the safety filters turned off." simonwillison.net/2026/Aug/5/i...

010

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I had Claude create me a massive Rube Goldberg machine of scripts to try and make use of RetroArch's cheat code and movie recording features on MacOS. Result was totally unusable due to RetroArch bugs. In the end, I wind up using just regular Mesen plus Mac's built-in screen recording.

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Testing how well-behaved (or not) video is on Bluesky

110

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

❯ @~/Documents/3esl.txt contains a dictionary of English words. Give me all 8-letter English words that can be spelled in the NES Game Genie alphabet (APZLGITYEOXUKSVN) gist.github.com/jaymcgavren/... among those 178 words: ELONGATE GENITALS SEXUALLY and SPANKING 👍

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Viable viruses designed from scratch not by a "large language model", but a "large genome model". The medicinal applications are potentially world-changing. And it could ALSO be an existential threat to our species. www.bbc.com/news/article...

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

OWASP on AI vulnerabilities. Valuable and informationally rich as with all OWASP publications, but this time it's also fascinating stuff you haven't read about before. genai.owasp.org/resource/owa...

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

No one with any clout is using Zoom notes to get any real work done. How do I know? It's popping up a "Content pasted successfully" alert in FRONT of the very spot I'm trying to work. If anyone with influence were using this, they would have screamed so loud it was fixed immediately.

100

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I REALLY don't want to find myself running Fable when I think I'm running Opus. I added these to my .zshrc: alias fable='claude --model fable' alias opus='claude --model opus' alias sonnet='claude --model sonnet' They DON'T set a default for new sessions. Used and enjoyed for a couple weeks now!

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

With the help of Claude and romdev, I'm discovering more #NES #GameGenie codes! This time using aldonunez's Zelda 1 disassembly. AEINAUIL: Magic Book causes the sword beam to leave behind flames, just like the magic wand (Add the optional code AEINILIL and you won't even need the Magic Book!)

The Legend of Zelda for NES. Link is firing sword beams across the screen. What's unusual is that flames are visible at the point of the beams' impact.

The timeless screenshot of the old man handing Link the sword. Except this time, he says "It's dangerous to take this! Go alone."

122

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

It used to be that when I hit my session limit in #ClaudeCode, it would continue trying to run my /loop command anyway. It just would error out. The important part is that when my limit reset, the /loop would resume automatically. Now it seems to just terminate until I type "continue" or similar. 😞

100

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Oops! I claimed my $100 in free credits for my #ClaudeCode Pro plan. I meant to save them for Fable use. But I just spent half of them on Opus last night. When I claimed the credits, the "Usage credits" setting at claude.ai/new#settings... got turned on. Just turned it off to try and save the rest.

000

Reposted by Jay McGavren

binp @binp.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

we are scarily close to general artificial intelligence

a screenshot of a facebook post of a photo of an rv with "THEY EAT BABIES IN DENVER!!!" scrawled on the back.

meta ai suggests:
- Baby-eating restaurants in Denver
- Denver's population
- Denver's unique food scene
- Restaurants that serve babies

654623945

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

A big part of what makes NES Zanac so cool is how abstract and alien it is. It's not over-explained; it's barely explained at all. You're just shoved into this hypersonic dogfight and your imagination makes sense of it as you go. It was ahead of its time.

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

⏺ I fat-fingered the decimal address Claude has FINGERS?!

000

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

"I use it when I wanna live forever!" -Genesis/SNES Game Genie commercial www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Fv...

010

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

On airplane wifi, discovering new #NES #SuperMarioBros #GameGenie codes via #ClaudeCode and github.com/monteslu/rom... ! Just one for starters, but hopefully this will be a long thread! AEYAGYZE: right-hand warp pipe in 1-2 leads to World 8

111

Jay McGavren @jaymcgavren.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

More brand-new Game Genie codes for NES Zanac, courtesy of Claude Code: AAPVZAEG — sound test at boot AAIGOGPA — start in secret area 0 IETGOLPA — demo shows late game GELEXTPA — start with supergun LSTUTZLZ — Enemy Eraser makes all enemies drop special weapon pickups

112

Reposted by Jay McGavren

Aureus (Moral Anxiety Studio) @moralanxiety.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

The landscapes are in a clash worthy of rutting stags. Their scent is an unsuitably pleasant mixture: earthy and smoky from the charred wood, but sweet and gentle because of the meadow flowers. #screenshotsaturday #indiedev

1283