iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

This bold ad on the inside back cover of the August Atlantic magazine caught my eye. The two strong sentences rang bells in my head, but it only made sense after I went to the TearThePaperCeiling.Org. As a high school dropout without a bachelor's degree […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A man's face breaks through a paper wall and looks right at you. Bold black type above says "HIRE SKILLS-FIRST" and "DON'T THROW AWAY TALENT". Down below it says "TearThePaperCeiling.ORG" and "STARs Skilled Through Alternative Routes".

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 01/09/2026

#TextureTuesday Tafoni at Salt Point State Park in Northern California

honeycomb-like erosion in sandstone bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/08/2026

The brass rod was cut into 18mm long sections at the bandsaw, each with a bolt in the center, then the ends were dressed on a belt sander. These are now cross-bolts for a duct-clamping system for my goofy, insanely complex 3D printed dust collection system in my woodshop.

A small, shallow cardboard box containing 9 tiny cross-bolts. Each one has a brass rod, 18mm long and 5mm diameter with a 3mm by 20mm black socket-head-cap-screw going transversely through its center.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/08/2026

It can be frustrating and dangerous to machine a bunch of tiny parts, so a good approach is to make them as one large part and then cut them apart. These little guys needed to be center-drilled, then drilled to size, then tapped, then deburred. Those are 3mm cap screws in a 5mm diameter brass rod.

A short length of brass rod laying on a bandsaw table. The rod is pierced by nine small machine screws. Oops, there are nine but only eight are visible.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 17/08/2026

<sarcasm>If you allow #Petaluma to erect buildings six stories tall--and outlaw cars--your gonna end up with something horrible like this:

Image of a car-free street in downtown Stockholm Sweden under partly cloudy skies. The street is lined on both sides with 4-to-6 story tall commercial and mixed-use buildings and the entire street is packed with pedestrians. A textbook-perfect urban shopping district.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 11/08/2026

A tenant moved out a few months ago and left behind a massive bunch of books. They are all beautiful, color, coffee table picture books bound in hard covers. There's more than 60 of them and I want to get rid of the whole lot. He was a retired industrial […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A stack of hardcover, coffee table style books over three feet tall. Titles include art, architecture, applied design, and commercial graphics.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 10/08/2026

Sign on the door of the Bunny Cafe in San Francisco.

Glass door to a small cafe in North Beach, San Francisco. Several notices are posted. At the top is a large placard with a red stripe and a yellow triangle and a bold black exclamation make. The text proclaims: WARNING This property is protected by a highly trained RABBIT. Not responsible for injury or possible death.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 04/08/2026

My 11-year-old granddaughter finally got to see my picture on the Wall of Fellows at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View CA. I was inducted in 2017 and am honored to be up there in the company of the likes of Tim Berners-Lee (invented the World Wide […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

An incredibly cute, smiling young girl in a white skirt and black top stands in front of a wall covered with photographs. Each photograph is held in a silver plaque commemorating the person's contribution to the tech world. That's my granddaughter and she's pointing to the picture of me.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 21/07/2026

The California Coopers rendezvoused with the Danish Coopers in Maine to spend a week touristing on the Central Coast. Delightful time was had by all.

Harbor view of Rockport Maine on a beautiful clear summer day. Wooded hills enclosing a bay filled with small boats at their their moorings. Dinghies line the docks. Green grass in the foreground.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 21/07/2026

@msbellows I thought Burke's bio of Lee Miller was superior to Penrose's.

Cover picture of the book "Lee Miller, A Life" by Carolyn Burke. B&W self-portrait of Miller with piercing gaze and wild hair.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 28/06/2026

snapshot of a whiteboard at Cooper sometime in 2013. Persona advice.

Black marker writing on a porcelain whiteboard: Day 2 "We don't need to know your persona is an architect unless we NEED to know they are an architect"

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 28/06/2026

In the back room of the large animal veterinarian is where you can find bloat whistles.

A grey industrial metal rack with boxes of stuff. A big white cardboard carton has written on it in large letters "Bloat Whistles."

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 16/06/2026

I just finished reading "The Utopia of Rules", an exceptionally perceptive book by the late David Graeber. Among other things it answers the question of why we don't have rocket-powered flying cars.

The cover of the book "The Utopia of Rules" by David Graeber. It depicts a classic bureaucratic form in pink with places for information such as your name and social security number.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 09/06/2026

Two days later and the same Torch Cactus is really blooming! This plant only blooms once a year and the blooms only last for a day or two. They also tend to open up at night. We just have these cacti as decorative elements in our yard, but I'm told that the […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A columnar green spiky cactus topped with white trumpet shaped blooms with yellow centers. There are more than a dozen flowers visible.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 07/06/2026

June is here and the Torch Cactus is blooming for all it’s worth.

Column shaped green spiky cactus topped with white and yellow flowers.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 01/06/2026

The price of an old book on the used market is first class meta data.

Screenshot of a used book advert on Abebooks. The book is the 1972 re-publication of Thorstein Veblen's classic economics treatise from 1899: The Theory of the Leisure Class, with a new 20-page forward by economist John Kenneth Galbraith. The ad shows the book's cover, title, and price. It's a hardcover first-edition signed by co-author John Kenneth Galbraith. The asking price is two thousand, four hundred and ninety-five US Dollars. Makes you wonder what a first-edition copy of the 1899 edition would go for...

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 27/05/2026

Denmark, a civilized country, not only has free healthcare, free childcare, generous maternity leave, free education, and lots of public transit, has freeways for bicycles. This is my son and his son in Aarhus.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 20/05/2026

My wife showed me a picture of a knick-knack shelf that she liked. It was made of steel. I decided to make my own version of it but to do it in wood. And to make its components the same size as the steel one. So the verticals are 5/16" square hard maple and […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

the whole wooden cabinet. It's four open shelves stacked one above the other, held together by 8 skinny little square sticks running vertically.

Detail of the lower left corner showing three extra short verticals connecting the two lowest shelves together.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 18/05/2026

The book I am currently reading: The Secrets of the Temple, How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country, by William Greider (1987). Basically, about how Paul Volcker and Ronald Reagan wrecked the economy.

The cover of the book, sniped with "New York Times Bestseller, May be the most important political book of the decade"--the Nation

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 18/05/2026

In case you were wondering what gas costs in LA…

An ugly filling station sign in orange and green. Regular is $6.20, premium is $6.50, and diesel is $7.70!

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 14/05/2026

I was in a coffee shop in suburban Burbank California last week. I went into a local, independent coffee shop and was gobsmacked to find a vending machine for books! The books were all paperback lowbrow fantasy fiction but THEY WERE BOOKS! NEW BOOKS! PRINTED ON PAPER! This is a wonderful thing.

A large vending machine, stylishly painted a muted blue, titled "Bespelled Books", with a glass front showing off 14 books ready for dispensing via a slot labeled "Your adventure begins here." There are butterflies and mushrooms painted on the machine. It's next to a similar machine dispensing canned water and tea.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 29/04/2026

Here's a screenshot of Google maps showing a small portion of downtown Shanghai. You can clearly see that the digital overlay of roads does not line up with the image of the actual roads. I think China dithers the GPS signal as a defensive maneuver to protect […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A satellite image of a small portion of downtown Shanghai. The image shows the roads and rivers, but the digital overlay of the roads does not align correctly with the actual geographic features.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 13/04/2026

Is that Jeff Epstein he's raising from the dead?

Faux religious iconography: trump in priest's robe healing with his touch an ailing man, surrounded by patriotic images of military weapons, adoring citizens, and USA flag, and the Statue of Liberty.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 05/04/2026

About 50 years ago I had the extreme pleasure of hearing Buckminster Fuller give a lecture at my school. He said many amazing things, but one analogy he used has stuck with me all these years. He asked us to imagine that the Earth was a ball of cold steel one […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

The now famous picture of the whole earth taken from the Artemis spacecraft.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 03/04/2026

For those playing along at home: After a coat of paint, lots of swearing, and about ten thousand tyraps, here it is in situ: A lighting and services rack for my wood turning lathe. It supports a 240v circuit, 3 120v circuits, 2 compressed air leads, one vacuum […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A yellow Powermatic 3520B wood turning lathe is on the unusually clean concrete floor and above it is a rack made of welded steel that supports a light fixture and numerous cords and hoses. In the background are stacks of hardwood planks and a couple of dark windows

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 02/04/2026

It took me a couple of days but I made one of these.

A weird open framework of welded steel that has no apparent purpose.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 31/03/2026

@LillyHerself Thanks for asking! It's sculpture. The artist was the late Jeffrey Carlick, a caring and wonderful person and my brother-in-law. He was a talented ceramic artist known for his giant, thrown raku pots. He also created a whole series of Guitars of […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A red and white six-string hollow-body electric guitar made entirely of fired clay. From a few feet away it is impossible to tell that it is not a real guitar. On the white stripe under the tuning pegs where the real guitar would say "Rickenbacher" it says instead "Carlick" the artist's last name. The guitar is mounted behind clear acrylic in a mitered wooden box. There's a brass plaque that says
Ceramic Guitar
Ceramic Raku, 2003
Jeff Carlick (1958--2009)
This sculpture represents legendary Beatle lead guitarist George Harrison's Rickenbacker. It was presented on 22 July 2009 by the artist's family in recognition of Jeff's love for the Little Fox Theatre.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 31/03/2026

I just posted this sign in my workshop. It's the one I carried last Saturday in the No Kings demonstration.

A protest sign on a stick inside a room with a guitar, a clock, and an American flag in the background. The sign says "TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS" in bold capitals on a ground of a waving pride flag.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 27/03/2026

@msbellows Here's what I'm doing for me and a few friends. These are printed on 24x36 then cut up for smaller, two-sided signs.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/03/2026

After a two-year hiatus to remodel the coop, The Blessed Sisters of the Happy Breakfast have returned to Monkey Ranch. Just a dozen used hybrids to start the new flock but come June we'll have some just-hatched heritage breed chicks.

A white-painted wooden chicken coop in a grassy field. The door is open and brown chickens are beginning to descend the gangway to the ground. The coop has two small windows and has big wagon wheels underneath it.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 21/03/2026

This picture was taken during a work day at my first software company, Structured Systems Group, in Oakland CA. It's a lovely summer day and we had adjourned from the spare room of my partner's house (which was our first office) in Oakland to the backyard to […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

Three people reclining on the ground in an urban back yard. There's a strip of concrete and green grass, a BBQ grill, chairs, and trash cans. I'm in the middle in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt with tennis shoes and mismatched socks (and hair!). Richard is smoking a cigarette and reading a chain-printed green-bar printout. Peter has on a yellow short-sleeved collared shirt with pencils in the pocket. Peter and I are also studying a green-bar printout.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 20/03/2026

It fuckin breaks my heart to see this. We got our hands on the URL "cooper.com" about a million years ago. I was so proud. My email address was alan@cooper.com. How cool is that? Then we sold our little consulting company to a big organization. We just escaped […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

Screen shot from an URL reseller. White on blue offering the URL "COOPER.COM" for one and a half million dollars, OBO.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 05/03/2026

Underground Comix Artist and Pioneer Robert Crumb with Zap #2 in Berkeley CA in 1968. photo cribbed from "Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life" by Dan Nadel

A grinning young man with longish, tousled dark hair, proudly holding up a Zap Comix book in his right hand and pointing to it with his left. He wears a blue work shirt and an olive cordoroy jacket. He's standing on a busy street

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 24/02/2026

Well, not a single book suggestion from the Fediverse, not that I waited long. So I fiddled around with that internet thing and found three likely titles. Ordered all three in hardcover (used) from BetterWorldBooks for under 21 USD and now I can learn about the […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A screen shot of my purchase from BetterWorldBooks. Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country by William Greider. Limitless: The Federal Reserve Takes On a New Age of Crisis by Jeanna Smialek. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed. Used hardcovers in good condition. Total USD 20.52 with free shipping.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 18/02/2026

A close friend, a now retired venture capitalist, has been nagging me to read Andrew Ross Sorkin's new book "1929" about the stock market crash and the depression that followed it. I'm now about halfway through the book and it's quite good. One fact that […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

Cover of the book "1929". Bold white letters on bright red background. Text: "#1 New York Times Bestseller, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Author of "Too Big To Fail", 1929, Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History--And How it Shattered a Nation. In the background, a steeply falling line graph.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 26/01/2026

Four days ago I found a beautiful Great Horned Owl hiding in the tall grass during broad daylight. Strange. He hopped away when I ventured close, but he didn't fly. The next day went back but he was gone. Today I went by and he was there but he was dead. Not a […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

A Great Horned Owl in the grass. His body is hidden but his face is clear. A proud visage, with a big hooked beak and big yellow eyes staring right at you.

The same Great Horned Owl laying dead in the grass. His eyes are turning blue and his spark is gone.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 23/01/2026

Clicking the BOOST button to UNboost a boost made me think of this famous cartoon:

The famous Gary Larson Far Side cartoon showing a guy sitting in a passenger seat on a commercial jet. His hand is straying towards a a two-position switch, up is labled "Wings Stay On" and down is labeled "Wings Fall Off".

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 23/01/2026

NGL, Any proper wood shop is *supposed* to be ankle deep in wood shavings.

A wood working shop with a big yellow wood turning lathe in the center. various grinders and chisels and assorted tools surround it. The floor is covered ankle deep with mounds of yellow-brown wood shavings.

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MrAlanCooper @mralancooper.hachyderm.io.ap.brid.gy · 06/12/2025

Pretty chuffed with this bowl. It's the first turning I've made in four years. I was rusty so I approached it slowly and I did NOT poke my eye out. This is locally felled, air-dried California Bay Laurel (what the locals call Pepperwood). People generally use […] [Original post on hachyderm.io]

Side view of a wooden bowl about 12 inches across and 6 or 7 inches deep. The grain the wood is pronounced with swatches of darker heartwood. It's sitting on painters pyramids in my scuzzy old paint room because I just oiled it.

This view looks down into the bowl showing off the beautiful figure.

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