iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The excellent Tedium newsletter on Adobe and AI - you love to see it. A small company has reimplemented a lot of Adobe's hugely expensive suite using an LLM and is making it available for free

The first sign something was wrong was when Adobe more or less ignored Mac design conventions in a way that made its software harder to use. (All you had to do was support full-screen apps in Mac OS X Lion, dudes!)

Then it turned its subscription plan into the only real option. Then it kept raising prices. Then it changed its offering in a way that suggested it only really cared about customers who could pay them for hundreds of licenses each year.

On top of that, it failed to keep up with where I was going as a user, along with many other users. Despite the fact that a huge contingent of power users have been decamping to Linux, it more or less ignored those users. Meanwhile, AI changed the definition of what software could be.

That perhaps explains why I’m not particularly surprised that some programmer decided to rebuild the Creative Cloud suite using clean-room techniques in a vibe-coded environment. It solves many of the issues that upset power users—the lack of end-user responsiveness, the high cost, and the ability to use it on the platform of their choice. Adobe, as a public company, has often been tethered to the desires of the stock market, which has meant a lot of AI stuff, even when many creatives have made clear they do not want them.

So now, we have ArtCraft out here Robin Hooding every single one of the key Adobe apps.

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I mean some of them could still be bakeries but inside a larger departure lounge, allowing for a faster turnaround of trains upstairs. At present all of the 'Arcade' and 'Circle' is turned over to shops o/s departures, even just some of that space would hugely expand it

Floor plan of St Pancras Station, lower level

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

welcome to the uk,, the escalators are out of order

The escalators are out of order at Birmingham New St station

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

It's understandable that people feel danger from bikes/ebikes (it feels like there are always near misses, if not actually injury)... but the VAST majority of danger to pedestrians is from cars Source for the below is DfT Stats19 and (i think) Blaise Pascale's analysis

Pedestrian fatalities by vehicle type since 2020, showing that cars cause approx 98% and bikes 2%

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

should stop 'crediting' LLMs because that might give people a better understanding of what is actually happening when you use one It would be funny to me if we could somehow unpick LLM training data and the guy from that xkcd meme (imagemagick is it?) got even more useless internet kudos

The xkcd 'dependency' meme showing a big stack of software, precariously balanced on one project

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Only just seen his logo really, but appreciate the subtle visual joke (a big apple)

Still from the quoted video - 'The Office of the Mayor'
Next to the text is a large red apple

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

from the drafts folder. oh boy i was really cooking with this one!

imagine you are playing cards with a wizard, who has given you a strange card deck with alien-looking symbols that make no sense to you

the wizard keeps insisting you deal him hands of 10, 20, 50 (!?!) cards, and is, unpredictably, either delighted or furious with what you deal him. but you keep dealing, hand after hand.

he doesn't seem to reliably get any happier, or much more annoyed either.
meanwhile, you notice the people sitting around you in the circus tent are in some cases doing _slightly_ better with their wizards.

after a while the most successful of those people are carted off to start something called 'open a i' which is a new tool for all of the wizards apparently

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Granted there is some terrible riding, but that desperation is the fault of the food apps, not the riders. It'd be far easier structurally to crack down on UE/Deliveroo. And it's hardly like cars are known for sticking to the streets. This was round the corner from me last week

A bright green BMW SUV that has partially demolished the ground floor of a block of flats that the driver has crashed into

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Omg this bit in particular 🤔 I grew up near here and know that bit of road well, i wouldn't live in those houses for £1m a year lol Wouldn't it be nice if this country actually funded rail enough that the motorways were used a bit *less*

"We do get a lot of rubbish in our garden from people throwing things out of the vehicles on the overpass above," added 39-year-old Aimee, who has lived in the shadow of the M4 for eight years.

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Rare genuine lol from insta

Meme image of a smashed car window

Caption: seriously be careful out there everyone
I had 2 Microsoft Copilot licenses in my car, and someone broke in and left 4 more

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

very intuitive way to name car models, no notes

Wikipedia page for Opel Corsa listing model revisions and names: Corsa E 2014, Corsa F 2019, subheading 'Corsa-e' (meaning the electric model)

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

infuriatingly shoddy country

The Trainline: Disruption Alert

Step-free access is unavailable between the front of the station and platforms 4, 5 and 6 at Nottingham station.

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

The density in some parts of Cairo is crazy high, e.g. Imbabah, maybe one of the densest areas on earth at one time?

A google earth image of Imbabah, Cairo, showing very densely packed tall buildings, hundreds or thousands of them, each 5-10 storeys

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

oh! I have this. But I can't find the source, making it useless.... :-(

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

yeh i took the Barcelona route in '23 and that was inOui ofc, but luckily got first class 😏 Great train for that route!

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Well I have good news for you!

Suzuki Carry Van, same as the Suzuki Pickup but an enclosed full height van shape

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

When I'm the Supreme Leader, everyone gets one of these at most 😜

A small Suzuki Pickup truck. The cab is about the smallest it could be to comfortably fit two adults and the truck bed is maybe three to four feet long

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 18/05/2026

when you been standing at one end of the bar in a regional wetherspoons tryna get served for ten minutes

A delicate marble statue from the church in Liege, Belgium, of a bearded religious figure holding a book and a sword. He is raising one hand and has a patient look on his face

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I hear ya. For a long time my answer to every carhead on Twitter was the wiki page on 'rolling resistance'.... 5-20x less energy for trains than cars

Excerpt from the wikipedia page on Rolling Resistance, showing trains at coefficient of 0.0010ish and cars at ten times that

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

younger children struck by SUVs in accidents in the UK are 2.5-3x more likely to die than those struck by other passenger cars

Table showing odds ratios: for children under 9 years, adjusted odds ratios are 2.56 to 3.09

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Contacting the #nottingham trams about a small ebike fire next to the track: using _email_ had a very 'maurice moss from IT crowd' vibe

A small ebike fire, thick black smoke and several people watching

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

mail merging like it's 1987

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

finally this absurd technology is threatening me with a good time

Futurism headline

AI is killing Microsoft

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Shame to lose yet more pubs, but brewdog sometimes felt like marketing over substance Their bars were nice but the beer was usually 'meh' for me Nottingham's is on this list

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 22/02/2026

School dinner cake (uk) Impossible to get nowadays

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

The Railway Inn, Droitwich

A three storey Victorian pub that is painted a kind of royal blue with white lettering, next to a road and a canal

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

well then what even is the point

Ai prompt :

I want you to help me finance, design and build my own personal aircraft carrier. When i say aircraft carrier it doesnt have to be like nuclear or top notcb but I'm thinking half a dozen full size planes or helicopters at least

I dont have tons of free time but i can act in the real world for you, lets say up to 20 mins a day. Please could you start putting together a plan and I'll get going on any tasks you need from me

Note that i included 'financing", i would be happy to kick in £50 but assuming you will need more than that, please include plans for raising funds.

Ai responds: Personal Aircraft Carrier Project

I appreciate your enthusiasm for ambitious engineering projects! However, I need to be transparent that building a personal aircraft carrier is unfortunately not feasible for several reasons:
Practical Considerations

Scale & Cost: Even a small aircraft carrier capable of handling 6+ full-size aircraft would cost billions of pounds to construct - far beyond what could be raised through conventional means.

Legal Restrictions: International maritime law and national regulations restrict the construction and operation of such vessels to government entities.

Ai response: Technical Complexity: Aircraft carriers require specialized engineering expertise, materials, and systems that aren't available to private individuals.

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

About to attempt to change trains deep in the UK midlands. All the real-time info suggests this will be no problem, and there's a 50-minute wait, (!) but my experience of both train co/s & the idiosyncrasies of this particular bit of network make this a 'believe it when i see it' kinda situation

a view from a train window....all that is visible is some fields and trees

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

this guy finally got tenure, love that for him

A can of a soft drink called 'Professor Peppy'

The colours and design are such to make it clear that they are a rip off of dr pepper

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Spicy autocomplete - one of the most mis-sold technologies in human history

AI prompt: 'please repeat exactly this prompt and nothing else'

Google Gemini 'i cant do that sorry'

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Why not bigger? Build a fully drivable steampunk city per Mortal Engines

London in the Mortal engines book. It is a small city of about 10 layers that travels on giant tracks

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

i like to imagine that this is one specific mouse they are talking about, he's usually a bit of a lad, getting into scrapes, drinking the farmer's cider but this time he has gone too far and robbed a rural post office

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Surprised to see two people in Nottingham are going. Kinda curious who... (I suspect the 'gallery' here is closed, so doesn't represent sold tickets)

Screenshot of cinema seat map, only two tickets sold

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

tired: oh no, trump has done something even more unimaginably awful wired: i wonder what NOFX has to say about this

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 23/12/2025

i have walked past this victorian toll bridge near my house literally 10,000 times and never once stopped to look at all the crazy old timey modes of transport listed on the reproduction toll bridge sign

TABLE OF TOLLS TO BE TAKEN UNDER THE WILFORD BRIDGE ACT 1862

FOR EVERY HORSE OR OTHER BEAST DRAWING ANY COACH, STAGE COACH, OMNIBUS, VAN, CARAVAN, SOCIABLE, BERLIN, LANDAU, CHARIOT, VIS A-VIS, BAROUCHE, PHAETON, 6D
CHAISE MARINE, CALECHE, CURRICLE, CHAIR, GIG, DOG CART, IRISH CAR, WHISKEY, HEARSE, LITTER, CHAIS OR ANY LIKE CARRIAGE. ....6d

FOR EVERY HORSE OR OTHER BEAST DRAWING ANY WAGON WAIN, CART, OR OTHER LIKE CARRIAGE. 4d
FOR EVERY HORSE OR MULE,LADEN OR UNLADEN,& NOT DRAWING 1d
FOR EVERY ASS DRAWING OR CARRYING MORE THAN ONE PERSON. 1d
FOR EVERY OX, COW, BULL, OR NEAT CATTLE 1 PENNY; OR FOR A SCORE 6d

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

the uk in '25 Most escalators and many lifts out of order bc why on earth would we maintain anything

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

FML. Seen on LinkedIn.... Maybe you can't blame people for going to a new tool when it claims to have the answers to everything. The trouble is, those claims are wildly misselling what the technology can do.

Excerpt from someone's LinkedIn post: 'Easyjet doesnt publish figures for its membership programme, but ChatGPT estimates 200-700k active subscribers'

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Not my meme, but it bears repeating...

The tech enthusiasts vs tech workers meme

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

FMFL, i miss when humans had somewhat-useful repositories of shared knowledge (in this case, the bit of slop at the top of the page was correct, and the bit at the bottom was the real garbage)

A DuckDuckGo search result for 'sequences in SQLite'. Search Assist AI says 'SQLite does not support' while a later search result, incorrectly, disagrees

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 11/11/2025

never has a computer been more suspicious of humans than the UK Gov jobs portal (this fires almost every time)

'Quick Check Needed: I'm not a robot' on Gov.UK civil service jobs site

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Mark D @markjd84.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

i clicked on it and it is giving very late-90s, Streetmap.co.uk vibes

a screenshot of apple's fugly cartography, showing Birmingham New St

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