iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/10/2026

Airport fish at Schiphol. It is somebody’s job to tend these guys. Cleaning algae and feeding them is work I would not have guessed in such a place. They’re really calming to watch.

Large aquarium with pretty big tropical fish in the middle of a hallway at Schiphol airport.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

I'll be joining CEO Christin Glorioso on-stage at the Brain Optimization Summit on Sunday, Oct 11 to talk about real-world implementation of cognitive sharpness protocols. I'm a client of NeuroAge Therapeutics, Christin's company, and have incorporated a […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Speaker card for my session at the Brain Optimization Summit, showing my picture and some information about the conference.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 25/08/2026

This C hacker has had this plate for a long time.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/07/2026

Here's Queen Maxima of The Netherlands, joining the Pride gathering in Amsterdam's Vondelpark and supporting the local (and global!) LGBTQ+ community. It's a shame that Donald Trump is to MAGA-whipped to do this.

Queen Maxima in a crowd of celebrants, smiling and posing for the camera.

Queen Maxima in front of the main stage backdrop announcing World Pride Day, Amsterdam 2026.

Queen Maxima in a crowd holding signs in support of the LGBTQ+ community. The queen has a sign that says "Liefde kent geen grenzen" -- in English, "Love knows no borders."

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/06/2026

SFO. At least one truck responding. Looks off the runway, but not far.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/06/2026

Unreasonably excited about my new book.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/06/2026

I am surprised that California issued this plate.

Toyota Tundra pickup truck with a license plate that reads “ARYAN77.”

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/05/2026

Wildfire red flag warning in effect for the entire California Central Valley. May 16. 2026 Fire season is officially open, May 16.

Map of the state of California showing the entire Central Valley in pink, indicating very high risk of wildfire.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/05/2026

I rode my bike with some friends to a cafe where these folks were playing Hawaiian music. Saturday okay so far.

A group of older musicians playing instruments on a shady patio.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/05/2026

If you require my email address, it’s not “for free.”

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/03/2026

Here’s a video of it working with the front open. 2/3

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/03/2026

Hey guys, I built this clock. I had a friend help me with the woodworking for the case. I used an Arduino board as the compute platform and designed and 3D-printed the display components using several LED strips. I wrote all the code. It shows hours and […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Me standing in front of the clock I designed. It’s mounted on the wall and is about 29 inches by 36 inches. There are the rows in the display: time, metric time and sound level.

The clock opens up. In this picture we see the electronic components inside it.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/01/2026

These trees have me completely faked out.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/12/2025

Autumn colors in California at sunrise this morning. The liquidambar tree in the right foreground wears two years of leaves, all year long. The older ones turn red, but don’t drop; the green ones keep the tree fed with photosynthesis. I’m kind of crazy about it.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 06/11/2025

This yard sign worked better than my Harris Walz Obviously yard sign.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/10/2025

While I was walking around, taking my pictures, delighted by this remarkable piece of engineering, a Union Pacific train rolled up and crossed it! 5/

Locomotive of a freight train rolling out onto the span.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/10/2025

When you're building a bridge across a river, you want to take advantage of it to move things besides trains. This one also has a large pipe to move water between Missouri and Kansas. 4/

A large pipe on the near side of the bridge, going from just above the ground up to the bridge superstructure. From there, the pipe runs across the length of the bridge.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/10/2025

The truss structure that the roadbed gets lifted into has all kinds of access built in for people to move around, service it, keep it in good operating condition.

Trusses and girders in the superstructure include staircases, railings, platforms for workers to take care of all the moving and non-moving parts.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/10/2025

If you look closely, you can see that there's a system of heavy concrete counterweights connected to steel cables that run over pulleys and down to the top girder along the roadbed. This is a mechanical system for lifting the rail bed out of the way, so that […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

The concrete counterweights, hung from steel cables over pulleys. The cables run up to a higher superstructure that runs them out over the roadbed, then down to the girder above the roadbed.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/10/2025

I was walking along the Missouri River this morning near downtown Kansas City and came across this magnificent railroad bridge. You can see that the roadbed runs level across the span, above the water. On the near (left-hand) side of the span, there's a curious superstructure. 1/

A steel truss railroad bridge across the Missouri River. The left (near) half of the bridge has a superstructure with pulleys to lift the roadbed to allow tall boats on the river to sail underneath the bridge.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/10/2025

“Supported devices” is kind of carbon-14 dating for user interfaces.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/10/2025

Oakland was amazing. Huge crowd, very mellow, songs, conversation. #NoKings

Me, standing in a crowd at the Oakland No Kings protest, holding a sign that says "No Kings -- That clown has no crown!"

Me, standing in a crowd at the No Kings protest, holding a sign that says "PRO: Science, justice, Constitution, America! ANTI: Corruption, secret police, fa, Trump!"

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2025

An eyeglass manufacturer has decided to get into the subvert-the-surveillance-state business. You need the IR-opaque lenses to be pretty big. They have to obscure your cheekbones to rob the algorithm of enough data to matter, I bet.

Advertisement on a wall for glasses that stop cameras from recognizing your face.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 11/10/2025

Okay I know I said no more entries, but come on.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2025

I love the look of anticipation and optimism in the face of this wire, gazing at electrons across the mysterious barrier (swiped the pic from the Nobel web site's announcement of this prize):

Strange drawing of a wire with tiny hands, holding a light bulb, looking left at its own tail, where some electrons appear to be entering the wire next to a graphic of an atom surrounded by electrons of its own. The tail of the wire also has hands, which are raised in a kind of "I dunno" way.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2025

Swiped this picture from a LinkedIn post by UC Berkeley chancellor Rich Lyons. Cal football has a new helmet sticker.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2025

Thank you all for participating in the Elon Musk Remorse Contest. No new entries are being accepted; we have a winner.

Parked cybertruck with the word TOYOTA spelled out in large letters across the back panel.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2025

Local magnitude 4.3 earthquake in Berkeley last night. Here's a screenshot from the plot generated by my Raspberry Shake seismometer in the basement.

Data plot from a seismometer showing three regions. Top line plot shows 24 hours of signal data with a dramatic spike, off the bottom and top of the chart, measured in Hertz. Middle region zooms in on that spike but shows micrometers of motion per second. Bottom plot zooms in on that region and shows a color plot of frequency in Hertz.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2025

Blue heron fishing for breakfast off the swim dock.

A blue heron, standing still in the edge of a dock, reflected in the still water.

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Mike Olson @mikeolson.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2025

Pretty good earnings call for Larry -- $ORCL shares up about 35% on strong cloud revenue forecast.

Screenshot of the Yahoo! Finance ticker for Oracle stock, showing an increase from about $240 per share to $335 per share after close of business on September 9.

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