iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Just discovered that this little fella (or lady) that I've been feeding from my hand for the last few weeks almost certainly has trichomonosis — and it's probably gone starve as it doesn't seem able to swallow any more. So gutted. 😭 #birds #UKbirding

A European robin sat on a garden chair, with puffed up feathers and a gaping beak.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I mean, I know Britain has always had a steady supply of #F1 drivers, but seeing this — even if it's just in a practice session — is pretty amazing.

The free practice 2 times from Monza, showing 5 Brits in the top 8: Russell, Norris, Hamilton, Lindblad and Bearman.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Have to say, this wasn't the best of omens while waiting in the departure lounge at Schiphol yesterday.

A successful, 3-guess play of Wordle, with the first guess being PLANE and the final guess being CRASH.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

"It'll never get this good again," I said confidently about my starting position of 4th in the @chainbear.bsky.social league. Turns out I was wrong. 😳 *faints*

The Chain Bear Fantasy GP league today, showing me in second place.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Kudos to the photographer who picked exactly the right spot to get action shots like this. Beautiful. 😍 racer.com/2026/05/31/e...

Elfyn Evans rounds a sharp corner on 3 wheels in his Toyota GR Yaris Rally1 in the 2026 Rally Japan, the camera taking the photo at ground level on the outside of the corner.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Nice even split between Russell and Antonelli on @fantasygp.com. I'll be using Canada to judge whether I should dump the former for the latter... but if prices change too much after the GP, I might have missed my chance! 😬

A bar chart shows that 4195 fantasy teams include Andrea Kimi Antonelli while 4193 teams include George Russell

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

New addiction incoming, via @mynameismartin.co.uk Dialed Daily — Apr 17 46.11/50 🟨🟨🟨🟩🟨 dialed.gg?d=1&s=46.11

A score of 46.11 for my ability to remember and recreate 5 different colours, with individual scores of 9.05, 9.08, 9.25, 9.91, and 8.82 out of 10.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

It'll never get this good again, so here's a screenshot of me holding 4th (FOURTH) place in the @chainbear.bsky.social @fantasygp.com league, which has 70 teams in total. Bonkers.

Table of the top positions in Chain Bear's Fantasy GP league, showing my "LiCo Virgin" team in 4th place, with the "Cautionary Snail" team in first.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Post a pic you took, no context, to bring some zen to the feed

A view from a North Wales hillside, looking towards Anglesey at sunset.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

Had dinner at Itsu in the Brunswick Centre in #London tonight. Double WIN! Gyoza AND striking #modernist social housing in one sitting. Honestly love the place. Wish I'd had time to pop along to the #Barbican Centre too, but alas the belly came first.

A view of the main shopping concourse at the Brunswick Centre consisting mainly of food outlets, with the terraced social housing seen above the retail units.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Well, here's the random team that will almost certainly do better than my real one.

A random Fantasy GP team consisting of Piastri, Bearman and Antonelli, plus Williams, Haas and Racing Bulls. $11m left in the bank.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Frustrating irony: catching up on my W3C-backed edX course on #accessibility, the phone app fails to present video in a video player and just auto-plays the audio with no controls, captions or transcript. I'm in a coffee shop without earphones and I can't control or hear it clearly. 😢

Topic 3.2.2 in the W3Cx course "Introduction to Web Accessibility", as seen in the Android edX app. The page shows a static image that the surrounding text says is a video. No player controls are present.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Enjoying the FirstName LastName mistakes in my emails from @fantasygp.com this morning. No offence, chaps. :D

The start of an email from the Fantasy GP team, saying "Hello FirstName LastName LastName, it's time for some NEW CARS!!! Yep, the off-season is about to come alive - we have our first cars for the 2026 season being revealed TODAY."

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

This form really should've been simple. It's ONE field. Yet it appears to ask for my first OR last name. Really? Or does it want my name in "<first> / <last>" format i.e. with a slash between the parts? Or has it wrongly used a slash instead of an ampersand? God knows. One for #FixTheForms, perhaps?

A form to complete registration for an event on Meetup. It has a single, mandatory field whose label is "First / Last Name" and with hint text that reads simply "Your answer".

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Too much snow for a #parkrun? I would've happily done it, but sadly Blyth Links parkrun had to be called off at the last minute this morning. I still ran the course, but I understand their need to keep people safe. ♥️

Sunrise at Blyth Links near the Blyth Battery, with fresh snow lying on the ground.

Snow and the odd runner on the dunes path at Blyth Links, with a very heavy grey sky above.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

I'm not much of a videogame player, but there are a handful I've played that elevated themselves into the videogame-as-art category—for me, at least: • Another World (1991) • Outlaws (1997) • GTA Vice City (2002) • Ōkami (2006) • Monument Valley (2014) • Bury Me, My Love (2017)

Box art for Ōkami, depicting the wolf god Amaterasu rendered in sumi-e style brush strokes.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 02/12/2025

Bird species #53 in my Merlin Bird ID app's Lifer List, the Common Pochard. Spotted this morning at Killingworth Lake, UK. Lovely chestnut head and red eye (though too far from my camera to tell in the photo). Two more species and Daughter the Second gives me another packet of reward crisps. 😄

A male Common Pochard swimming on the water of Killingworth Lake in the UK.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

Most amazing bird at Big Waters this afternoon, however, was this beauty. Same size as a mallard, but iridescent all over and with a black bill. Suspect it's a Black East Indian Duck i.e. a domestic duck now in the wild for whatever reason. Was beautiful. www.omlet.co.uk/breeds/ducks...

What appears to be a Black East Indian Duck swimming on the lake at Big Waters, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

Finally reached 50 different bird species on my Lifer List on the Merlin bird spotting app. #50 was a Whooper Swan. 🦢 Got the app on 23rd May on a recommendation from Vicki at the Soap Mine (excellent soap, btw).

A Whooper Swan, sitting on the water at Big Waters Nature Reserve, just outside Newcastle upon Tyne.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 01/10/2025

Wow. This is an impressive choice of text colour and background combination in an email welcoming me to Notora's community. 🤦 #a11y

A welcome email from Notora, with light grey text on a light coloured, gradient background. Much of the text is almost impossible to read, even with good vision.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

Oh dear. Looks like there's no such as society in the United States. 👀 Meanwhile, China is poor ecologically and the Majority World had poor infrastructure resilience. Has this been tuned to make Europeans feel superior or something? 😂 Wonder whether the game varies in other parts of the world...

A photograph of Daybreak's regional reference cards, which show starting conditions for 3 different types of resilience: social, ecological and infrastructure. Only Europe has resilience in all 3, while the USA is lacking social resilience.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 19/09/2025

Grabbed the copy of #Daybreak at Newcastle Library to read its rules at lunch. Initially slightly aghast that it has 40 (FORTY) pages, but boy... it is beautifully laid out. 😍 Yes, there's still a lot of text in later pages, but the design is making me happy to read it. 👌

The contents page of the rule book, showing that the Reference section is on page 40.

A sample page, titled "Play cards in 3 ways" is laid out with plenty of whitespace and illustrative cards alongside minimal, clearly written textual guidance.

A sample page describing how to stack cards for powerful combinations. The right hand leaf is simply a lovely illustration of a weather balloon, making the booklet beautiful as well as functional.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Spotted an unusually large #duck at Killingworth Lake today and was fascinated by its size. Can't ID it, but Google's making me think it's a domestic (pet) duck that's been dumped and now I'm concerned for it adapting to life in the wild (if so). 🤔 Can you help ID it? Reposts welcome too. ♥️

Photo of two ducks on some grass. At the left is a regular male mallard while on the right is the unidentified duck, predominantly brown, slightly green head, and a with blue-green tint to its beak. And it's almost twice the size of the mallard.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

Man, I'm excited to get going with this. Just a few job applications to get sorted first...

A screenshot of the default page you get when creating a new project using the GOV.UK prototype kit. The main heading states "Service name goes here".

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Gulp. Lower rainfall, colder temperatures, wilder storms, and changed coastlines for the UK, then. Well, changed coastlines around the world and the UK's not the worst off. This tool is really interesting to see the effects: coastal.climatecentral.org/map/8/-0.201...

A map showing flooded areas in the UK around Humberside and The Wash as a result of the potential 0.5m rise in sea levels from a collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC).

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Slightly random hat-tip today to whoever designed the album art for These Streets by Paolo Nutini. Simple, but satisfying. Same as the music.

Album art for These Streets, seen on Spotify, showing Paolo in 4 different poses in monochrome, each on a different, solid-coloured background from the red/orange part of the spectrum.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Is this one a different species though? This looks like it has more bars of yellow and black. 🤷 #NorthEastBeeHunt

A photo of a bee reversing out of a foxglove flower

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

I know next to nothing about bees, but a spot of googling suggests this is a white-tailed bumblebee? On the #NorthEastBeeHunt for @nenature.bsky.social

Photo of a bee in mid-air next to a delphinium, I think.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 23/11/2023

Sharing a photo of Durham riverside from a couple of weeks back just because. I mean, nice pictures of nice places are nice, right?

A photograph of Prebends Bridge in Durham (UK), with the River Wear's still waters in the foreground, autumn leaves on the trees lining the river, and clear blue skies above.

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Mal Ross 🌈 @malross.bsky.social · 09/10/2023

Nice little pair of wildlife spots on a walk down to Humford Mill yesterday: a caterpillar of the pale tussock moth and a host of shaggy inkcap mushrooms. Turns out I could've foraged the latter www.wildfooduk.com/mushroom-gui...

A cluster of shaggy inkcap mushrooms growing in grass

The bright yellow caterpillar of a pale tussock moth crawling across a muddy road

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