iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Doesn't look like anyone's replied, so in case you're still in doubt, Kelham Island, Sheffield.

pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If by actively using you mean promoting a brand, there's not a lot of that, true. It's more like Twitter early on I guess. As someone else said, Instagram seems more popular with bands and labels.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Of course I've got one of those calendars 🙂

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

My friend @littlegingerkid.bsky.social refers to this one as Six Lads Up To No Good, and she has a point 🙂

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I think Chorlton was supposed to be more East Lancs than Yorkshire. Blackburn, Accrington, that sort of thing. Or maybe I've mixed him up with people I know from round there🙂

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Reposted by @pomfob.bsky.social

jenny tightpants @jtp.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

"i have created the machine that thinks." you fucked up a perfectly good graphics card is what you did. look at it. it's got anxiety

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Sorry about that. There are a couple of gaps that need filling to delay your emptiness for a few days.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Clearly not. I'll have a quiet word 🙂

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A well earned break from this daftness!

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

For one last time, ahoy ahoy shipmates. It's the last day of the year of the Republic CCXXXIV, la Fête des Recompenses. Since that translates as honours, the honour of our final celebration should go to beer. To quote Homer, the cause of and solution to all our problems. I'll drink to that. Cheers!

A photo, taken by me, Pom. It's of a pint of beer in a curved pint glass. Looks like I've taken the first sip out of it and found it pleasing. It's red brown in colour, so probably a best bitter. The pint stands on a beermat on top of a copper coloured table in a snug of a pub. It looks warm inside, cold and dark outside. The pub was the Three Pigeons in Halifax, West Yorkshire, one of the best there is. A fine way to sign off this daft quest.

As someone once said,

Beer is not dark, beer is not light,
It just tastes good,
Especially tonight.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Ah yes, I heard of them the other day. Enjoy the band, the venue and if possible, a pie.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Ey up there me ducks. It's la Fête de l'Opinion in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. We can translate l'Opinion to either opinions or more emphatically as convictions. I'm convinced that the Brudenell Social Club is the best live music venue I've been to, so we're going to celebrate it today.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

May I wish you all a happy Fête du Travail in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. Travail translates as labour, and since most of my labour in the past couple of years has been on The Poms' allotment, that's what we're going to celebrate. Allotments that is, not the fact I can be found digging on it.

A photo of Mrs Pom on our allotment. Her face is hidden by a large, floppy blue hat. She's wearing heavy duty gardening trousers and a nice t shirt bearing the name of the band Benefits. All black apart from the hat, because we're goths on the quiet.
It was taken over the summer, so everything is dusty and straw coloured. Various allotment accoutrements around the place like a wheelbarrow, a garden fork and a low windbreak made out of branches, bamboo canes and rusty tin cans. You can see a big net cage in the background for keeping the birds off your crops and a big plastic cube for storing water. That's not ours, it's the much more organised people across the way.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Would you believe it? Today is la Fête du Genie in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. Since Genie is talent, let's celebrate all the musical talent that has played and recorded behind the unassuming shutter of Nottingham's finest DIY venue, JT Soar. The off site festival will be a cracker too.

A photo of a street corner with a plain brick wall of a building. There's an air conditioning unit part way up the wall. A man in a blue shirt and white baseball cap stands at the right of the photo, next to a metal roll shutter.
At the top left is a rectangular cream sign with green lettering from the building's former use. It says

J. T. SOAR LTD.
WHOLESALE FRUIT &
POTATO MERCHANTS
NOTTM 502607/506681

The shutter points to the building's current use as a recording studio and venue, advertising JT SOAR FEST 3. It's on 31 October and 1 November at the Old Cold Store, featuring Bis, Delivery, The Klittens, Hey Colossus and many more.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Hello.The Calendar solved having 12 months of 30 days each by adding 5 Complementary Days at the end of the year, 6 in a leap year. Today is la Fête de la Vertu in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. That's virtue, and by virtue of the internet, whatever you think about it, we're here to celebrate it.

A cartoon with the heading HOE DOES THE INTERNET WORK? It's almost laughably simplistic, but it's also idealistic, ignoring all the dirty money and suchlike.
Against a background of a blue sky and little fluffy clouds, from left to right is a smiling young white man with short dark hair in an orange t shirt sitting typing on a keyboard at a desktop monitor. Two wires connect the desktop to a globe representing the whole wide world. A wire leading out of the world connects to two rectangular servers, which in turn connect to an oversized open envelope with a card bearing the @ symbol on it. Finally at the bottom right is an open laptop with a web page on the screen. All you can make out is https:// Let's keep it secure.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Update. I've ordered one of those 😸

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Oh, I think I'm having one of those 💕

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

That's quite barking mad. At least the French Revolutionaries were trying to change the world!

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Yeah, we're not going there 🫨 But the calendar will make sense, sort of, tomorrow.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

You'll have to wait & see...or look up how the French Republican Calendar works 😉

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Just cut the UK's water, electricity and gas from the rebel scum and they'll be crawling back by teatime.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Detective instinct 👍 I was going to do spreadsheets last week, so that's when the photo was taken. Last minute change but I kept the picture. Also, don't want to give the game away and reveal what's at the top 🙂

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Give him a chance, he'll get there.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Isn't this the sort of thing the writer and all round good egg Roy Wilkinson does? Don't think Roy's on here 🙁

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Well I'll be the son of a gun, we've made it to the last day of the month of fruitfulness. It's décadi 30 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. A celebration is due that we can all enjoy, but tough, we're doing Microsoft Excel spreadsheets because I use them all the time & I like them.

What we have here is a rather blurry photo of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Well, it's actually a photo of my laptop with Excel open on the desktop. Dark grey characters on a pale grey background, gridlines you can't make out because they're so pale, what's not to love? In a reality warping twist, this is the spreadsheet I use to keep a track of the songs Richard posts in reply to the celebrations. We can see he's missed one, but unless Richard reads the alt text, he'll never know.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Hiya! It's nonidi 29 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. Today may be the most controversial choice of the revised calendar celebrations. The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, Auntie Beeb. For any crap it throws up, there's Peel Sessions, Doctor Who & David Bloody Attenborough.

A photo of the classic BBC1 intertitle or identity screen. In between programming, you'd see this and hear the voice of the continuity announcer telling you what was coming up on BBC television. This one would have been from the 1980s and maybe the early 1990s. It's BBC1 in big, blocky white letters at the bottom middle of the screen. Above BBC1 is a globe of the Earth rotates, dark blue for the seas, a sandy gold colour for land. Behind it all is a very stretched out version of the globe in the same colours. Simple and effective. Nation shall speak peace unto nation.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

A cheery wave to all you stranded youngsters out there on octidi 28 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. I'm on something of a lap of honour here, celebrating my favourite things. Anyone who's met me knows I bloody love bread. It's bizarre that it was missed out in the original calendar.

A photo of a loaf of bread on a plain white background. Pure, golden brown, the staff of life. All that jazz. Bread. Yum. I could eat that now, one sitting, no bother.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Joy to the world on septidi 27 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. What are we going to celebrate today then? Well, as I've been keeping the good stuff to last, I suppose we'd better have the most elegant and best format for capturing and replaying music. The record, so simple, perfect.

A photo of a twelve inch dye blackened vinyl disc spinning on a white turntable. The arm is near the beginning of the record. The arm is also black. The clear plastic lid of the turntable is up, reflecting the record on the dark red painted wall behind it. Since it's spinning, you can't make out the label of the record. It's Music For Magnesium_173 by Ian William Craig. I'd never heard of him till about a month ago. I really like this, a cross between minimal neo classical and glitchy techno. Apparently it's a soundtrack to a computer game, which is surely a freaky experience going off the music.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Cake? Excellent. Glad I got a ticket 🙂

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

They weren't born in the 90s though. They've probably learned it from their dads.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Ahoy there mateys. It's sextidi 26 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. We're coming to the end of this daft odyssey through the French Revolutionary Calendar, celebrating what's come along since the Revolution. Here's civilisation's greatest achievement. Soft toilet paper! You know it is.

A photo of a white toilet roll held on a white woman's hand against the background of a tiled white wall. Taken from the website of the Pom's bogroll of choice, serioustissues.com. They sell ecologically friendly cleaning products, and the toilet paper is soft, strong and very, very long.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Nice you didn't go for the easy option there🙂

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I've not, and I guess I should. Would you recommend?

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Would you believe it? Today is quintidi 25 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV, all along the way. As we reach the end of the French Republican year, I'm getting self indulgent. My favourite TV programme is Doctor Who, so we're going to celebrate its enduring popularity after 63 years.

A still from the greatest of all television programmes, Doctor Who. In fact, it'll be the last shot of the show so far. It's the actor Billy Piper who played Rose Tyler in the 2000s but in the final sequence, the Doctor played by Ncuti Gatwa regenerated into Billy as Rose. Maybe.
The still shows the head and shoulders of a blonde white woman in a white dress. She has an enormous grin, and gold sparks of regeneration energy are coming off her.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Yoo hoo there all. It's quartidi 24 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. Today is St Hubbins' day, patron saint of quality footwear [editor's note, are you sure this isn't just a Spinal Tap joke?] Whatever, let's celebrate the best footwear there is, Doctor Marten's, DMs or just Docs.

A photo of two pairs of Doctor Martens, sat on a pale wood chair on a pale cream tiled floor. Yes, it's the Poms' kitchen and those DMs are mine. On the left, black eight hole boots with black laces. On the right, black three hole shoes with black laces. I like black shoes, ok?

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Afternoon you lot. We're at tridi 23 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. Following on from the RNLI yesterday, to whom I hope you donated, let's celebrate lighthouses. Out there in all weathers, keeping those at sea safe. I got quite obsessed with them during covid. More in alt text.

A photo of a lighthouse. Quite a small, decommissioned lighthouse sat in a park on a cloudy day. The tower is thirteen metres tall, painted white, with sandy yellow brown edges and the dome of the light room itself is black. These are the standard colours of the Northern Lighthouse Board. They're in charge of lights around Scotland and some on the Isle of Man.
You may be asking yourself, Pom seems to know a lot about lighthouses. Well, it's the band (British) Sea Power's fault. During the covid lockdowns, we were all looking for distractions. Tim Booth of The Charlatans started organising listening parties for records on Twitter (never X), and one of those was (British) Sea Power's From The Sea To The Land Beyond. That's the soundtrack to a documentary about Britain's relationship with the sea. We and I think most people watched as well as listened along. There's a brief section where the voiceover says something like, if all the lights of British lighthouses were combined, they'd stretch from Dover to Kingston, Jamaica. That sounded like bollocks to me. I started looking into it, and after a couple of years of on and off research, the answer was probably not, but it would have been close and a lot of lights had their distances reduced in the 1990s. So there I was, too much newly acquired information about lighthouses sloshing around my head and a new found admiration of them.
One last thing for anyone who hung around the (British) Sea Power internet fan forum too much. The lighthouse above was decommissioned in 2006, is occasionally used for special events and is in Cromarty. Titters childishly.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Hello there good folks of BlueSky. It's duodi 22 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. I'll keep it brief today. We're celebrating the Royal National Lifeboat Institute, the RNLI. They do an important job, as volunteers. Chuck a few quid their way & fuck fascism. rnli.org/support-us/g...

rnli.org

Donate to the RNLI and help save lives at sea

Your donations really make a difference. We depend on your generosity to educate people to stay safe and prevent tragedies on and offshore. Donate here.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Oh yes, there's one in my local. Who could have put it there? 🤔🙂🐻‍❄️

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

A very good afternoon to BlueSky. Here we are on primidi 21 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. For today's celebration, we'll be praising an often overlooked medium for non hierarchical art, dissemination of information & advertising outside the capitalist norms. Stickers! Get sticking.

A photo of a laptop lid covered in stickers. Some of you may have seen it before on the website sticker top.art and if you haven't, it's a fun site anyway. It's the very old laptop of your pal Pomfob. Yes, it's mine. I'm not going to describe all of the stickers as we've only two thousand characters in alt text, but here are some highlights.
Top and left of centre, one of several stickers from the Black Iris Brewery. This is a round one, in the distinctive black and white style of Black Iris, advertising their long gone lavender grisette beer, Lovelace. It depicts a young Ada Lovelace at the Analytical Engine that she programmed.
Next row down, at the right edge, another round sticker, with lots of stylised yellow parachutes with bunny rabbits attached. This is for the music promoters Don't Panic, We're From Poland.
Central, another round black and white sticker from the band worriedaboutsatan. The illustration is a series of black and white stripes of varying width.
Bottom and to the left, a photo of the happiest marsupial, the Quokka. Would you like a leaf?
Next to that, a round sticker reminding us that Trans Rights Are Human Rights.
Bottom right, a curious sticker showing Snoopy the beagle from the Peanuts cartoon strip dressed in a blue pinstripe suit, wearing red trainers, a pair of 3D cinema glasses and waving a small glowing instrument. There's a speech bubble saying ALLONS-Y! What the connection between Snoopy and Doctor Who as played by David Tennant is, I don't know. The sticker looks cool though.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Saw some in Sainsbury's yesterday 🙄

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

Aloha folks. It's décadi 20 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. Today I'd like us to celebrate dinosaurs. Let's not get too bogged down in what actually is and isn't a dinosaur though. Any ancient lizardy thing will do. What's your favourite dinosaur? Here's mine, the psittacosaurus.

An illustration of a psittacosaurus. They're a species of dinosaur, about the size of a big dog that ran around on its hind legs in what's now Mongolia, China and Russia. This one is shown as a red brown colour, on a mossy green forest floor. It has some spines on its tail. Sometimes this is shown as a small ridge or sail, sometimes it's omitted. The psittacosaurus has a parrot like beak. That's where the name comes from. This one has big eyes and looks like it's thinking about something. It has a sort of chinstrap, maybe tusks? Some psittacosauri are depicted with quite complicated horns in their head. It's my favourite dinosaur.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Well then. Hope all's well with you on nonidi 19 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. Today, let's celebrate earphones, handy devices that allow us to listen to our obnoxious music or tedious podcasts without bothering anyone else. Wired or wireless, headphones if you prefer. Just use 'em.

An overhead photo of a dozen or so pairs of chargeable wireless earphones or earbuds on a grey surface. Lots of little plastic cases with two small curved plastic blobs in them. Roughly half are black and half are white. There's one pair of orange earphones brightening up the scene. Or possibly they're for the Rangers supporting loyalist anti-Papist who has everything else.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Would you believe it? Today is octidi 18 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. We're going to celebrate a musical instrument I know little about, but I love the sound. The pedal steel guitar isn't just for country & western. The pedal steel guitar always improves a song, like a sax won't.

A photo of a pedal steel guitar. I'm not going to pretend I know about these things, I just like the noise they make. Forgive my lack of technical knowledge.
The instrument is set up in the corner of a room with white walls and a smooth, possibly marble, speckled grey and white floor. There's also a dark wooden skirting board. It looks like a doctor's waiting room and I'd have thought the acoustics would be awful.
The pedal steel guitar is a flat, oblong box on four thin, silvery metal legs. You can just make out some wires leading down to the pedals on the floor.
The box has silvery metal sides, a black front with the words ReSound 65 on the right. Whether that's the maker or the model, I don't know. The flat top has what looks like a red leather cushion at the back of it, with the majority of the space taken up by the guitar part. It looks like the neck of an electric guitar, but different. It has ten strings and tuning pegs, and the neck is much thicker than you'd expect on a standard guitar. It also appears to be made of a silvery metal.
There's no body as such to the guitar, just a flat space where the strings are attached.
There's just the one neck here. While I was looking for appropriate pictures, I saw lots with two necks, and a few with four. I don't know which ones are most common or what the additional necks achieve.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

The Americans get a lot of the blame on here for missing the joke, but it appears to be an entry requirement for at least half of BlueSkyers to be painfully literal.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Yes, same here. One written by a German author about obscure islands. She mentions how in her childhood, West Germany always had the East across two pages so it lost territory in the middle.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Good afternoon and thanks for keeping the faith with the revised celebrations for the French Revolutionary Calendar. Today, septidi 17 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV, is the day we celebrate maps. They can be geographical, political, art or just help you get where you're going.

A map of the Great Lakes region between south east Canada, and various states not yet in Canada. These states are coloured orange, yellow and green to differentiate between each other and the unified nation of Canada, coloured khaki. The lakes are blue. There are five lakes. Superior, Michigan and Huron sort of run into each other. The other two, a little further to the south east, don't connect to those three or each other. These last two lakes are Erie and Ontario. Yes they are.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Let's be having you on sextidi 16 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. I had today earmarked for the celebration of gaffer tape, holding it all together. It's only proper gaffer tape if it's non light reflecting. But then I remembered this fantastic flow chart, so have a twofer with WD-40.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Lot of moulting going on in late August, so the birds try not to draw attention to themselves.

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pomfob.bsky.social @pomfob.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Top of the morning to you all, it's quintidi 15 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXXIV. As it's the month of fruitfulness, let's celebrate something any gardener, farmer or agriculturist appreciates. Compost! Simple rule, if you cut it up small enough & wait long enough, you can compost it.

A woodcut by Jonathan Gibbs to illustrate composting. As it's a woodcut, it's mainly black with details in white. There are some trees in the background, with at top centre of the picture a compost bin. It's a box made of wooden pallets or fence panels. There's a pile of compost mellowing down to something useable. In front of the compost bin is a strip of plants just poking through the earth, and in front of them a dibber and a garden rake.
Note the illustration is from the book Compost by Charles Dowding. He knows his onions about gardening, but he's also a bit of a posh crank. Swings and roundabouts, eh?

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