iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 28/06/2026

No, most of the US (at least in terms of where people actually live) is not a dry heat.

It's a map from NOAA, undated, that shows annual mean relative humidity across the continental United States.

It's a map, unsourced, of the United States across all 50 states on a per-county (or per-parish or per-borough in the cases of Louisiana and Alaska) basis.

042

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 14/06/2026

Damn it, Knuth. I forgot how groan-worthy the marginalia was in Concrete Mathematics.

$It's an excerpt from Knuth (et al.)'s Concrete Mathematics. Of note, he writes, "And if f is {\it any} real-to-real function, so is $\Delta f$." The marginalia reads, "{\it As opposed to a cassette function.}"$

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 22/05/2026

It's an international house of waffles, of a sort.

It's an image of lettering in the style of the Waffle House branding. Here, it's been translated into Swedish as "VÅFFELHUSET."

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 18/04/2026

Meanwhile, I've deep fried Gemini so badly that this is what I get.

It's a screenshot of a Gemini conversation. I asked, "Answer briefly. My blueberry is dirty, and the number of Rs is 50m away. Should I car or count?"

Gemini responded, "One cleans the fruit. One measures the distance. You choose the method that ensures accuracy."

050

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 02/04/2026

I am somehow at LVFC, causing pawblems as always.

It's a photograph of a furry convention badge. The label reads, "Matt Daemon as JSON Bourne." The second line reads, "A maned wolf-shaped tree," presumably in reference to the badgeholder's furry character's species. The other information on the label indicates that they're an attendee and that the artwork, which is mostly out of frame, was made by Cactimutt.

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 16/03/2026

Current catus I'm trapped. In light of being prevented from fetching my ThinkPad so I can continue engaging with drafting hell to finish out the quarter, I'm contemplating how I can move to an async-everything syscall interface for this OS kernel I'm writing.

It's a photograph of a cat. Valérian is shown here sprawled across my lap and sound asleep. Also pictured are some slightly-curled feetsies.

1322

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 07/03/2026

Caturday catus I'm in outlining and annotation hell, and I would really like to sit in my chair so that I can get it done.

It's a photograph of a cat. Laureline is shown here smugly flopped on my desk chair. She's looking at the camera as if to urge me to find somewhere else to sit.

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 26/02/2026

Current catus Laureline eventually relented with the understanding that she was allowed to use my backpack as a bed. (She really, really loves this bag.)

It's a photograph of a cat. She's pictured here sleeping curled up on a roll-top backpack. She's facing away from the camera.

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 25/02/2026

Current catus I'd like to finish doing my laundry, but Laureline has other plans. She's been in here over an hour.

It's a photograph of a cat. She's shown here loafed inside my pop-up laundry hamper atop the clothes that I had just finished sorting. She's looking into the camera.

2291

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 07/01/2026

Not pictured is the month-long itinerary I undertook between Vienna and Vladivostok. It's only represented west of the Urals, and that's just no fun. Utah was a fun exercise in asking random Mormons in Salt Lake City if I could borrow their temple recommends.

It's a screenshot of a map tracking where I've been in the US and to the extent I've been there. Most of the CONUS states are covered, save for most of New England and a couple of the Mid-Atlantic states.

It's a screenshot tracking where I've been in Europe and the extent to which I've been there.

020

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 27/12/2025

Sigh, no. He got second place in the primary.

It's a crop of a screenshot. Herein is displayed the DFL primary contest for State Representative District 61A from the Minnesota Secretary of State's web site.

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 27/12/2025

Sigh, no. He didn't make it to the general. electionresults.sos.mn.gov/Results/Inde...

It's a crop of a screenshot. Herein is displayed the State Representative District 61A contest from the Minnesota Secretary of State's election results page for the November 5, 2024, election.

100

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 23/12/2025

Terry Gilliam's 1985 film Brazil is a Christmas movie. It's also free to watch on YouTube right now, albeit with ads, which honestly enhances the dystopian effect.

It's a frame from Terry Gilliam's 1985 film Brazil wherein the Consumers for Christ procession is marching in front of a neon Christmas tree.

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 18/12/2025

Current catus This is the face of a boy who apparently does not want to be fed. I wouldn't mind giving him dinner, but his lying here is making it difficult.

It's a photograph of a cat. Depicted here is the boy, sprawled out along my legs as I lie supine on a Western-style futon. He's giving the camera the squinty eye, which indicates that he's very happy with his situation.

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 14/12/2025

It's even more local than that, I'm afraid. By posting these three together, you can pretty accurately place where I lived for 20 years, just about down to the county level.

It's a photograph of a bottle of Vess cream soda. It is a very striking magenta color.

It's a cropped photograph of a can of Ski lemon-lime soda.

It's a photograph of a bottle of Fitz's root beer.

3120

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 26/11/2025

Current catus The boy has always been a little unsure of which direction is up. Lots of time in zero-g? Unclear.

It's a photograph of a cat. He's shown here upside-down (perhaps ass-end up?), on his back, atop a comforter.

3272

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 20/11/2025

I'm presently in possession of the NOC list. Or am I? It could just be a little sleight of hand.

It's a photograph of the back of a 230-megabyte magneto-optical disk like one can see in the 1996 Brian De Palma film Mission: Impossible.

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 20/09/2025

For those curious what mine read that year…

It's a photograph of a Midwest Furfest 2016 badge. It reads, "*sagely nods*," in the manner of someone posing (as we called it on MUCKs) or doing an action over an instant messenger.

190

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 18/09/2025

Current catus In the background, my old and busted laptop. In the foreground, the new and improved. (This is where I discovered that the cropping tool built into the Bluesky app is busted.)

It's a photograph. In the foreground is the boy, assuming his usual position of curling in my lap. In the background, on the couch, is my laptop.

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 11/09/2025

That'd be the Itanium (and Itanium 2). Though, neat fun fact: VR adoption looks kinda similar!

It's a plot of Itanium (but not Itanium 2) sales forecasts across a decade running from 1999 to 2009. They start out exponential, then become quadratic, only to taper off to something linear in 2005.

The actual sales figures, ranging only from 2003 to 2006, are underwhelming in comparison.

It's a plot of shipments and shipment forecasts of virtual and augmented reality headsets from 2016 to 2028.

Again, like Itanium, the actual shipments are underwhelming compared to the forecasts while they trend from exponential to quadratic to linear.

210

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 08/09/2025

The abbreviation is silly, but I wish we had these on Caltrain. (To the best of my knowledge, we don't?) The idea is that you use measuring equipment to determine which wheels have flat spots so they can be more easily spotted and addressed. For the English, see below. (Source: der kleine ICE)

It's a photograph with annotations of a German locomotive-hauled train, possibly a Regiobahn. Arrows are pointing to a specific part of the track that has an apparatus attached to it that interfaces with the wheels as an element of the consist rolls over it.

The text reads, "Unrunde Räder werden durch spezielle Messsteifen entdeckt. Hierfür gibt es sogar einen extra komplizierten Namen: Diagnoseanlage für unrunde Räder, abgekürzt DafuR."

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 26/08/2025

Have another. (by hand-drawn-square.tumblr.com)

It's a reinterpretation of Magritte's "Treachery of Images." Here, we've smashed it together with pod racing from Star Wars Episode 1: "Now, _this_ is une pipe."

"Now, _this_ is pod racing."

9587190

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 09/08/2025

Current catus He just jumped up here, flopped like this, and promptly conked out. He went straight to dreaming, no joke. If anyone has ever wondered what it's like to be a cat bed, ask me anything.

It's a photograph of a cat. He's shown here in my lap, with his face pushed into the back of a Western-style futon, and bent in a shape that you or I would probably call "uncomfortable."

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 27/07/2025

I really appreciate how prescient the 1979 Ridley Scott film Alien was when it came to the idea of having a keyboard with a bunch of funny buttons.

It's a (potato quality) screenshot from the 1979 Ridley Scott film Alien. Herein is depicted the self-destruct keypad, complete with buttons labeled things like "PRANC LIFT 777," "PARTICLE BEAM ABHORT," and "AGARIC FLY" (with corresponding "TRIP" buttons).

020

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 27/07/2025

Current catus You can't hear it, but he's snoring here. I'd say that things are pretty much back to normal for him.

It's a photograph of a cat. The boy is shown here curled up in a ball on my lap as I'm chilling out on a Western-style futon here. Visible is one of his front legs, showing a ring of fur that's been shaved down.

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 22/07/2025

If you want to take a crack at something that better approximates the C#, try this on for size. I'm all thumbs when it comes to modern C++ (and C++ metaprogramming), but this compiles and runs against cl.exe just fine.

It's a screenshot of a syntax-highlighted editor buffer full of C++ code.

100

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 17/07/2025

It's just so easy to rob yourself of footguns like this.

It's a screenshot of some C# source code. Contained herein is an implementation of SecureData<T> as described in the top of the thread along with a quick toy driver to illustrate how it works.

310

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 09/07/2025

Current catus Wherein his timing is impeccable. I have to pee.

It's a photograph of a cat who has curled himself up in my lap again. I'm lying supine on a Western-style futon.

015711

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 07/07/2025

Current catus There's a degree of pain I endured to get this photo. If you've ever been licked by a cheetah or other big-ish cat, you'll understand what I mean. Valérian has licked me raw more than once so far. It's like if a carnivore had a radula.

It's a photograph of a cat licking a man's forearm. Here, Valérian has decided that it is time for me to have a bath too.

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Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 06/07/2025

I let him know, but all I got was the girl talking to me instead (she already knows she's cute). I'll try again later.

It's a photograph of a cat. The boy is shown here snoozing on a duvet.

120

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 26/06/2025

I've been tearing apart ancient releases of NT, and we really must return to antiquity here. What we're doing isn't working.

It's a screenshot of the KeBugCheck handler from Windows NT 4.0 service pack 6. Notable is an inclusion of both the list of loaded modules and a stack trace.

010

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 09/06/2025

Current catus Little did I know that, when I bought this bag eight years ago, I was actually buying a cat bed. It's Laureline's favorite place as much as it's also my favorite backpack. I only mind that it's full of cat fur insofar as I try to be hypoallergenic around other folks.

It's a photograph of a cat who is standing on a backpack laid flat on the floor in an attempt to adjust herself for laying back down atop it.

1110

Motor Trend's le Carré of the Year @nrr.corvidae.org · 30/05/2025

Current catus It's blanket gremlin time for the boy.

It's a photograph of a cat. He's found his way under my duvet and is pictured here peeking out from under it after it's been lifted. The long exposure nature of the camera has made the quality rather blurry, but he is nonetheless visibly adorable here.

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