iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026

Very disappointing to see an anti-loitering tone/"Mosquito" tone in use in the wild; at the Cutaway in Barangaroo, Sydney. This kind of indiscriminate acoustic weapon should have no place in an entertainment district like Barangaroo, no matter what time of day it […] [Original post on tech.lgbt]

A sine wave signal on a spectral analyser at a frequency of 18-20 KHz.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026

Yes, friends, they really did. That blob on the homepage is an ENTIRE FUCKING WEBGL CANVAS my GPU is now ALMOST MAXED OUT just loading this homepage oh my god what were they thinking??? were they??? the future has arrived....

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 15/09/2026

IN TODAY's episode of slop; a dear friend sent me this website: www.cognichip.ai now, you may notice they have this cool looking 3D fractal blob thing (pictured below). that's a video right?? wait... why is there aliasing around the edge??? did they.... they wouldn't.... (cont)

$Screenshot of a website with a fractal blub. It has pixelised aliasing around the edge.$

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 10/09/2026

flashback to when the Starbucks lady thought my name was "lel" 😭

Starbucks Iced Latte with the name "Mel"

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2026

"Don't be a Galah!" back to taking some photos :3 location: Macquarie University, Sydney shot on: Canon EOS 80D, Canon EF 100mm macro lens

Image of a Galah, Australian bird, standing in a grassy field

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 21/08/2026

i'm sad to report that after feeding the Meta AI scraper SIX GIGABYTES of Markov chain rubbish, it seems to have given up scraping my domain :pensive_bread: (thank you to the author of Nepenthes for the wonderful tool though!)

IPv6 traffic graph on Linode showing a falling off in traffic

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 05/08/2026

[drugs, surprisingly] incredible things happening on the FOSSi Matrix I definitely love Matrix's total seeming inability to monitor spam even by keywords 😭

A spam post from a Matrix user claiming to sell various narcotics and weaponry.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 27/07/2026

we just got the BIGGEST upgrade at my lab, I managed to convince them to buy an AmScope ME580 metalurgical microscope with up to 500x magnification 🤯 this thing is soooo cool, I'm literally overjoyed 🥹

An (I believe) single NPN transistor c. 1970

Wiring on the metal layers of an RFIC with several inductors

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 23/07/2026

when your supervisor drops out midway through:

A snippet from an article in PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0266102

Author Contributions
Conceptualization: Robert Rosenbaum.
Formal analysis: Robert Rosenbaum.
Funding acquisition: Robert Rosenbaum.
Investigation: Robert Rosenbaum.
Methodology: Robert Rosenbaum.
Software: Robert Rosenbaum.
Visualization: Robert Rosenbaum.
Writing - original draft: Robert Rosenbaum.
Writing - review & editing: Robert Rosenbaum.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 24/06/2026

very excited to reveal!! Mel's first tattoo :blobcat: done by the lovely Abbie France of Spider and Fly in Sydney. ahhhh it's so exciting! I've wanted to get a tattoo for _years_ but I never knew what to get. then I saw a similar idea to this on Pinterest and I […] [Original post on tech.lgbt]

A colourful tattoo. It's a broken lightbulb with an Edison screw. Inside the lightbulb are purple flowers with yellow interiors.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 24/06/2026

Chromebook: Archified :neocat_cool_fingerguns: this thing is such an unbelievable piece of shit lmao. I tried running Fedora KDE on it but it was too damn slow 😭 Xfce seems to behave well though :3

Neofetch results of a Chromebook with the hostname "craptop". It's running Arch Linux under XFCE.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 23/06/2026

evil screw vs Dremel update: Dremel won

Setup: me holding the Dremel to show it. Laptop is on the workbench. Rest of the electronics are "protected" with some CDs (cdeez nuts lmao)

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 15/06/2026

yo what the fuck 😭 the IBM _literal 404 error page_ tries to redirect you to their "AI work"...

IBM
404: You are in the middle of nowhere (arrow)
The Al-generated landscapes you see here don’t exist,
and neither does the page you were looking for. You can
learn more about our AI work, or head home if you'd like.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 03/06/2026

chat this medication is a scam...... i'm not a girl yet wtf......

A sheet of Estradiol valerate 2 mg tablets, with one removed in the top right corner.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 28/05/2026

this is one of my favourite images I've taken, and totally by accident. you can actually _see_ the polished silicon that the die is made of here! I think it's really educational :3 I don't have the original markings for this die as you can see I've totally […] [Original post on tech.lgbt]

Closer up image of chip under the microscope. Scale bar is correct.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 28/05/2026

back on the microscope today!! this one is an Altera MAX 7000 EPM7096 CPLD according to the on chip markings. first image is taken using a DLSR mounted on a vertical track, and the rest are under an Olympus optical microscope :3 **note:** scale bar is incorrect […] [Original post on tech.lgbt]

Altera MAX 7000 EPM7096 CPLD (grainy) (scale bar incorrect)

(M) 1991 ALTERA. 21036. EPM7096A. An array of 3 x 6 initials, presumably designers.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 09/05/2026

lmfao how have I managed this 😭 I accidentally made the SRAMs on my chip in the shape of the letter "F"

Die shot of a CAD tool (OpenROAD) showing a chip die with SRAMs in the shape of the letter 'F'

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 28/04/2026

My lovely colleague's chip came back, and he etched his dog onto the top metal 1 layer 🥹 it's so adorable!! this is on the 28 nm process I believe.

An image of a chip on a low quality monitor. The chip is purple. An outline of a cartoon dog is visible. The dog is smiling.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 24/04/2026

this is among one of the worst gender selectors i've ever seen... tf am i supposed to put in the box. pronouns? they/them? something else? guh

Dialogue box.

Gender
Enter your gender:
> what the fuck do i type here

Google should refer to you as:
- Female
- Male
- Other

(Example: Send them a message.)

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 13/04/2026

man what the FUCK is ACM cooking up I love that they've gone open access but what the hell is this slop 💀💀 you get this with ACM premium edition apparently

Webpage screenshot of https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3731599.3787544. An ACM AI-generated podcast describing a conference paper. Part of "ACM Premium Edition"

AI generated podcast transcript from ACM. Genuinely, if you're blind and shit, don't even bother reading this it's just slop.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026

some analysis from a colleague regarding the chip! it is very likely this: www.analog.com/media/en/technical-d… the Dallas (now Analog) DS21T07 SCSI terminator. and features, according to my colleague: - on the left […] [Original post on tech.lgbt]

DS21T16 block diagram featuring: power down circuitry, bandgap reference, an op amp, and a chain of resistors connected to a VREF

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026

last but not least, please enjoy my shitty capture of the die through the microscope lol. the lab was being reworked, and so the PC to capture with this trinocular microscope was missing. I took a photo through the eyepiece :blobcatthumbsup:

Terrible quality optical image of the chip with the DS21A07 product marking.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026

here's another interesting structure (sorry the capture is so blurry, the chip was moving around under the SEM viewfinder for some reason!!) I'm not sure what these little circles are but I'd love to know.

50 micrometre scan of a chip. circular structures are visible connected to a pattern of metallic bars.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026

this is an interesting structure, I'm not sure what it is, I've never seen anything like it :O

80 micrometre scan of a chip. a square pattern with a T-bar in the middle.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026

here's a closer look at the markings of the chip at a higher zoom level! with the status bar as well

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026

alrighty, here it is! my best capture under the SEM of the chip I extracted yesterday :) it identifies itself as a DS21A07, with a maskworks date of 1992, and initials "DP" and "MT". the contrast is super messed up, sorry, the mapping mode of the SEM has […] [Original post on tech.lgbt]

Black and white image of a silicon chip under a scanning electron microscope

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 10/04/2026

probably the worst die attach in history LMAO but it *should* work! I managed to score an SEM booking today, so hopefully we can go image it. it does look like I chopped the chip in half by accident, but the good news is from a quick look, the markings have survived

Silicon die attached, rotated by accident, to an SEM slide

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 09/04/2026

anyway! all in a days (re)work, we have many more chips and boards to desolder :blobcat3c: i have thus far been unable to desolder the bigger ICs (e.g. the Amlogic IC on the board on the right), if anyone has some advice pls let me know :blobcatsadreach: i'm very new to this!

Small electronics lab with: a vice, a lamp, speakers, microscope, Dremel, oscilloscope, rework station.

A green PCB, with a large Amlogic IC in the middle.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 09/04/2026

i finally managed to extract my first die from a package!!! so excitingggg :blobcat: hopefully i will be able to image it at the lab tomorrow, or next week! unfortunately, i forgor what it is, and the package is now totally busted due to my horrific extraction […] [Original post on tech.lgbt]

An opened epoxy package, and a small semiconductor die, on a blue mat.

Microscopic image of a semiconductor die on a blue mat. Very pixelated.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 06/04/2026

I've figured out how to export screenplays from Fade In and put them into Hugo, for the web!! it's looking pretty cool I think, maybe it could do with some extra styling :3

Black background with white text.

Screenplay: Basilisk

06 Apr, 2026 • 2649 words
Synopsis

A depressed postdoctoral student, Dylan Berryman, is stuck in a dead-end research lab. Soon, however, his past research catches up with him… in the worst way possible.

An attempt a short-film adaptation of the famous BLIT short story.
“Basilisk”

by M.L. Young

INT. MODERN APARTMENT, BEDROOM - MORNING

DYLAN BERRYMAN, a late-twenties computer science postdoc, black hair, short, is asleep in his bed.

Reveal a SMARTPHONE, which soon vibrates loudly.

Dylan awakens, looking extremely groggy.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 05/04/2026

I implore you to browse the website as well: www.srim.org like it or not, this is peak web design

SRIM website. White background. "NEW!!" banner. Yellow text.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 05/04/2026

this software is cracking me tf up kino alert kino alert

Screenshot of the software "The Stopping and Range of Ions in Matter (SRIM)". Very old and goofy aesthetic.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 27/03/2026

and so, it begins 😳 we've got 4K of RAM!! organised into 2 banks of 2048 bytes, each with a 32bit word bus. really hoping I can get this SoC done in time for waferspace 2!! :blobcat:

a Klayout view of a GDS file containing 8 SRAM instances in the bottom left corner, and a pad frame.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 21/03/2026

i've got to figure out how to use this some day

Screenshot of FastTracker II, specifically ft2-clone

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 18/03/2026

LMFAOOOOOOO this is literally 1984 😭 😭

Email from YouTube:

Hi [redacted]

It looks like [YTP] Dennis Prager joins Hamas didn’t follow Community Guidelines. To help keep our community safe, we removed it from YouTube.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 09/03/2026

what is your favourite IHP SG13G2 metal layer!!! :blobcatthinking: mine is metal1 :3 it looks really alien

Screenshot of TinyTapeout's 3D viewer, showing the IHP SG13G2 Metal1 metal layer. It's yellow and squiggly.

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Mel :blobcatgiggle: @mlyoung.tech.lgbt.ap.brid.gy · 18/02/2026

this is what the sample I was scanning looks like! it's just a tiny bare die. hopefully i can scan many many more in future, and i will post this if i'm able!!

Bare die mounted on a SEM specimen mount, which is made of metal

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