iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

especially with the shorter cranks i'm using, that slowest gear feels extremely clown-car-ish.

i went around the parking lot for like 5 minutes and then it started raining. the front downshifting is VIOLENT, and the most extreme gear (small in front, biggest in the back) is ridiculously soft/slow, but that's exactly what i wanted. i really want to test it uphill now.

a photo from behind of me pushing my bicycle down a walkway surrounded by lush green plants. i'm wearing a helmet, elbow pads, shoulder pads, and a shirt with shoulder pads and a large back padded plate. i have blue socks with pink flamingos on them. my bicycle has cables tangled up around its ridiculously tall stem extender, and three different rear red lights and reflectors.

me riding my bicycle in a small parking area between buildings. here i'm additionally wearing a flomask (which is a white elastomeric half-mask respirator with a large white replaceable filter in front), and thick black-leather biker gloves, and wrist braces. i'm curving around toward the camera.

161

3x9 11-50t x 44-32-12 with 809% ratio range, because fuck you, that's why

a side view photo from the drive side of my bicycle's rear wheel with the huge-range cassette with 9 sprockets, and the derailleur's tensioner fully vertical as the chain sits on the largest sprocket. the low end of the derailleur tensioner is super low, like maybe three inches from the floor. the chain's angle from the top to the bottom line looks about 40ish degrees.

000

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 01/06/2025

status: 90% done. just need to wait for the bleed kit and brand-recommended silicone lube for the pistons, and then i can cut down the hydraulic lines and do a full bleed and brake tuneup. also i ordered an extra large spoke guard a.k.a. "dork disc" because apparently wanting to live is dorky.

a close-up photo of my bicycle's stem with a 210 millimeter extender that is bright blue unlike the rest of the darker-blue bike; it looks extreme and out of place, and it's wrapped very messily with a tangle of black hydraulic brake fluid lines that look really dangerous.

a close-up photo of my bicycle's front brake caliper. it's black with two pistons per side with blue accents and carved channels like a heatsink. the brake disc in it has many round holes.

another closeup of the front brakes but showing the whole disk from the side.

a top-down photo of my bicycle's rear wheel hub, with the cassette and rear derailleur on the right, and the rear brake on the left. the hub is black and reads "Shimano FH-M475 VIA". the cassette has the chain on the largest sprocket, which is huge, like 21cm in diameter (it has 50 teeth). the brake caliper reads "V4" and it has green brake pads installed.

100

valparaíso (chile) has these on the pacific coast. they're from the bible so ugh ick ew but they're definitely a vibe

a photo of a dark-gray rock overhanging toward the sea in a cloudy day. the rock has a quote in spanish from the bible handwritten in off-white paint, with the book/chapter/verse reference written smaller in a corner:

"Y mi alma se alejó de la paz, me olvidé del bien.", from the book of lamentations, chapter 3, verse 17

it roughly translates to "and my soul distanced itself from peace, i forgot about goodness"

000

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 31/05/2025

the brakes i got have sticky pistons. they're brand fucking new. maybe it's because they have air in the system and i need to bleed them but it turns out they're incredibly hard to bleed and you need a whole-ass sold-separately kit for that. and it makes a mess of DOT fluid, by design. ??????????

a cropped screenshot from the video instructions to bleed these brakes. there's a black brake lever attached to a black flat handlebar. above the lever, there's a reservoir about 4 cm wide, 2 cm wide, 1 cm tall. a hand is pushing a lid on that reservoir from above and causing brake fluid to spill all over the sides of the reservoir. another hand holds a cloth underneath to receive the spilling fluid. the lever has a branding label printed: "tech 4". it has purple adjustment knobs for reach and "BPC".

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 30/05/2025

also like seriously a human will never ever ever be this cute

130

Quote with 4 anime you'd give a 10/10

the poster for the Japanese animated movie "Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do you remember love?" (超時空要塞マクロス愛・おぼえていますか) showing the protagonists Minmay Lynn (リンミンメイ) and Hikaru Ichijyo (一条輝) embracing as if in love and floating in zero gravity. Minmay is wearing a flowy pink dress with blue flowy shoulders, and she has long blue hair. Hikaru wears a retro-futuristic exaggerated blue military aviation uniform with yellow stripes; he has black hair. in the background, there's a dark moon above with a red nebula background with stars, and space-styled military airplanes and battleships below. the movie's name is written at the bottom right in big silvery and red letters.

text on the poster reads in Japanese:

それは目と目が会った時

今、はじめてのヴァーシンショック！
つのる想いに、国を押けて
あなたをめがけラブソング
マクロスピード
ミンメイ最大戦速！！

which has bits of the lyrics from the movie's songs and uh some random promotional text to get you excited, i guess. the rest is too small to be legible, probably tiny credits at the bottom.

the poster for the animated Japanese movie "Princess Mononoke" (もののけ姫). a young woman, with short brown hair in a thin bandana, has a fierce look. she holds a dagger maybe made of carved bone, with a white fur cape held by a black string with four smaller spikes similar to the dagger. she has red paint, which may be blood, on her face in the shape of a toothy animal maw. she's also holding what looks like a red devil mask with white fur. behind her, there's an enormous wolf with white fur and an angry expression; just its head is the size of the woman.

the poster for "Akira" in Japanese, with the protagonist, a cool red motorcyclist wearing a cool red leather jacket and red pants, seen from above walking to his cool futuristic red motorcycle, on a white cracked floor.

the poster for "Grave of the fireflies" in Japanese, showing a young boy in tattered clothes carrying a very small girl on his back, both covered by a very broken paper umbrella, with the ominous shadow of a world war 2 bomber airplane in the black cloudy sky behind them.

010

not much yet, just 3 small cuts so far. pretty sure it's gonna get worse tho

a close-up photo of my left index finger with a tiny mostly-healed cut, and the skin between my right thumb and index with a healing pinch wound that looks like a mutant mole

000

part 1 done: wheel mounted with the new cassette, disk, tire, tube, tape and skewer. this one's 27.5" instead of the original 29" so i'll have to adjust pretty much everything and also the brake rotor is on 5 screws but i should get spares tomorrow to mount it properly. rear caliper's out.

my bicycle on a repair stand in my living room behind a black couch. there's a plastic mat under it. the rear wheel looks shiny and new and it has cogs way too big for the derailleur that's mounted. another wheel, visibly older and dusty, rests behind it against the back of the couch. both tires are 2.25 inches wide, both slightly thick mountain-bike tires with deep threads. the bicycle has a rear rack, a chain cover that looks hacked, a thick cushioned saddle, and a weird bright blue stem riser. the front wheel looks the same as the old wheel that's not mounted. the rear mudguard is far from the rear wheel, showing how much smaller the new wheel is compared to the old ones.

120

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 22/05/2025

close call fuck bicycles

a close-up photo of the index finger on a black protective glove for workshops, with a superficial traversal cut on the side of the tip of the index finger. there's a bicycle wheel behind it.

a close-up photo of my hand holding a small M6 10 millimeter black screw like the ones used to hold bicycle disk brake rotors to a wheel hub. the head of the screw is drilled through and has a horizontal slit carved out, like the head got stripped and it had to be ground down almost completely to unscrew it.

430

sometimes they get along

my wife on the living room couch eating a bowl of pasta next to a large ikea-style shark plushie that is light pink instead of blue, extending a side fin toward her as if making a friendly gesture. there's an upside-down blåhaj on her other side next to the wall. my wife has long black hair and eyeglasses and a sweater and a red blanket on her legs.

010

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 19/05/2025

there's a modest decline in overall activity fwiw, but ultimately what matters is how this evolves for one's particular bubble and feeds of course from bskycharts.edavis.dev/edavis.dev/b...

a chart showing time series for a year of bluesky activity in operations per second vs time. it shows various spikes of massive activity with about 400 follows per second around early September 2024, 350 in October 2024, almost 600 in November 2024, 250 in early January 2025, 240 in April 2024. likes have a similar pattern. other than those major peaks, there's a general decline to about 50 operations per second of most types, except likes which have a similar trend but offset higher, currently down to about 250.

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 19/05/2025

tiene panleucopenia porque es un pan

mi gato sentado en su torre en forma de pan de sánduche, de perfil mirando a la izquierda fijamente pero medio dormido. es marrón oscuro con rayas negras y tiene el pecho blanco. está sobre una cobija turquesa.

000

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 19/05/2025

today my brain was busted (sunday scaries and stressing over the sick cat) so i thought i'd chill a bit on the nintendo and guess what

100

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 16/05/2025

i've been stuck like this for like three hours but he's very sick so i don't want to disturb him

a top-down photo of my cat lying belly up between my legs on a white fluffy blanket that covers me lying down on the couch. some of the fur on his belly is shaved so you can see some of his spotted pink skin. his head is tilted hard to the right in a very cute way. he has white belly fur and back legs and front paws like he's wearing white gloves and boots, and he's otherwise dark brown with black stripes.

020

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 16/05/2025

at least he's sorta eating again

020

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 14/05/2025

ugh i hate this, i need to be so much more chaotic also more good i guess, but a lot of that is a matter of interpreting the questions. and i guess i can be very slightly machiavellian at work, but like, that's still good imo.

a chart that simultaneously looks like an alignment chart from Dungeons and Dragons, and also like a political compass chart; it says I'm 51% good, 43% lawful, making me lawful good.

the chart has Lawful on the left, Chaotic on the right, Good above, Evil below, with a tic-tac-toe-like center grid with the 9 spaces for the combinations of those extremes and "neutral" in each axis. each region has a different color, and each region is subdivided into a smaller seven-by-seven rectangular grid, like the quadrants of a political compass chart.

a dot indicates my position: I'm in the upper-left lawful-good region, one seventh left from the neutral line towards lawful, two sevenths up from the neutral line towards good.

100

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 14/05/2025

yesterday was nice out. i worked from the office for the first time in like 6 months.

a close-up selfie of me walking on the street on a sunny day. i'm wearing a leather beret facing back, a FloMask, and a backpack over my gray t-shirt. there's a broght green tree behind me under a clear blue sky with a contrail. you can see the corner of a european-looking residential building behind me.

the FloMask is an elastomeric respirator strapped to my face with head straps that looks simple and has a flat-ish N95-style replaceable filter on the front that looks kind of like a regular N95 mask)

a photo of a flat grassy park with some trees and cement walkways. it's a sunny day with a clear blue sky, and the grass and trees are bright green, with some white flowers growing in the grass. the photo is from an elevated position, about at the height of a street lamp post, like a second story. there are some residential buildings behind the park. there are about 8 trees that look young, thin, and about 3 meters tall. there's a lamp post in the center. it looks clean and well-maintained.

0111

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 09/05/2025

mi foto favorita del cromovegetal. la tomé desde un cubículo del piso 2 de la biblioteca, de los que prestábamos a grupos. no tiene efectos ni nada; el papel que recubre las ventanas de la biblioteca (supongo que para filtrar UV y proteger los libros) estaba deformado por el sol. creo que es de 2010

la foto se ve como un cuadro impresionista. se ve el cromovegetal, el puente de la biblioteca en frente, y los edificios ELE y MEU detrás de los cipreses. la imagen está deformada por burbujas así que se ve como hecha de pinceladas circulares.

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 09/05/2025

en 2016 no estaba en su mejor momento pero estaba. esto es del último día que subí, el día antes de bajar al aeropuerto para irnos demasiado.

una selfie de Mariana y yo con el cromovegetal y la biblioteca de la universidad simón bolívar detrás. los árboles ya se veían despelucados.

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 09/05/2025

sin comunismo / con comunismo

el jardín cromovegetal de la universidad simón bolívar como en 2010, cuidado y bello

el jardín cromovegetal de la universidad simón bolívar en 2025, reducido a un peladero muerto cualquiera, irreconocible, los árboles muertos, ni matas ni nada

141

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 03/05/2025

i added these pedal crank adapters so now they're effectively at 140mm crank length. not great tho, they rub the back of my shoes a bit. also the worst thing you can possibly do is put this type of chain cover over a 3x front chainset. it's extremely hard to align it with no derailleur or crank rub.

a close-up photo of my bicycle's pedals and the other front bits of the drivetrain. there's a large black plastic chain cover installed with pieces cut out from the center hole to avoid rubbing the cranks, and there's a bit cut out at the bottom where the lower part of the chain passes if it's on the biggest chainring. the crank has a silver aluminum adapter attached as described, with two mounting holes for pedals, one in use with silver flat pedals.

000

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 03/05/2025

QUOTE REPOST with a masked selfie (alt text included) if you are still masking to protect yourself, your friends, your family, and those most impacted by systemic abandon 😷 Principled solidarity is most important when it’s unpopular or isolating.

051

Manuel Gómez @mgomez.ch · 03/05/2025

goddamnit this is the bicycle's fault

similar photo but my head is turned a bit to my left and i'm pouting

i'm enjoying my new camera

my cat curled up on his side on a blue blanket. he's brown with black stripes. he's looking at the camera with his unfocused face down and sideways. his back and upper hind legs are focused.

the same photo but his face is upright and focused now.

030

we have too many game controllers so i made a thing to hold them and always be charging. we have this little table on wheels that's by the living room couch so i just stuck some charging bases and fold-up mini shelf thingies and added some usb cables with magnetic adapters. it works great.

a photo of what's described in the post. three playstation 5 controllers are on chargers, and a nintendo switch pro controller and two GuliKit PC controllers are held on plastic holders with black rubber bands securing them and have USB cables charging them. there's also a wireless logitech querty keyboard held vertically on plastic brackets. it's all on a dark square-ish wooden board of about 60cm, and it's the side of a little rolling living room table/caddy. there's a horizontal board suspended about 20cm above with more stuff attached.

040

i fucking hate bicycles

a closeup photo of the rear of my bicycle. you can see there's no crankset installed and the chain is loosely held by the front derailleur cage and by the rear derailleur; the rear derailleur's chain tension piece with the jockey wheels is held to the chainstay with a zip tie. some of the chain rests on the floor.

000