iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Dawn comes up like Maxfield Parrish on a deadline.

Trees in dark green silhouette in the foreground; above them a V of sky loaded with clouds, pink and underlit purple and golden highlights, churning like the froth of a stream

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

We might have accidentally set the sky on fire.

A spectacular orange, hot pink, gold and purple sunset fills the sky over a small parking lot with a recent model white muscle car in the foreground. A line of bars and restaurants fills the middle distance, under the brilliant sky.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

And a reminder: no matter how much damn electronics you think you know, or can even prove you know, you will not be allowed to go to outer space naked.

An image of the engraving from an old International Telephone and Telegraph stock certificate, fine dark lines on a greenish-yellow background, showing a seated naked man what short, wavy hair, apparently of European descent, holding a drawing in his right hand draped in a manner that conceals his crotch, while he stares at a vacuum tube surrounded by stylized electron orbits as if it was the nucleus of an atom, held in his left hand at eye level. Behind him on the floor are a few large books, a rolled blueprint and some kind of electronic chassis. Rising behind them are two racks of old electronics with analog meters and big calibrated knobs, and part of a very large, gridded oscilloscope screen, showing a wiggly trace. At the very back, in the upper left corner, a 1960s rocket streaks upward. They didn't let the naked guy on board. Nope, they'll have none of that!

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Skippin' Jenny, which is Hoppin' John reheated. Here, with additions.

An off-white bowl with a maroon ring and a dark blue ring, filled with deep red-brown stew, featuring brown sautéed mushrooms, pink ham, blackeyed peas, green okra, green olives, bright red pepper, peppers, some orange pickled carrots, and other pickled vegetables, and all manner of deliciousness. There are fresh cherry tomatoes in this, multicolored ones, chopped up and sautéed. They didn't add much color, but they had a great deal of taste.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Electroluminescent panel, cheap picture frame, printable transparency, color gel.

Glowing orange letters on a black background in a black frame read "STUDIO IN USE." it's about 5" x 8".

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Night time Orb Weaver with an impressively large web, about 5 feet high and 3 feet wide.

Slightly out of focus golden Orb Weaver spider in the dark. She could sit comfortably on a U.S. 50 cent coin if she scrunched up a little. She is pale brown, with a pattern on her abdomen, like snake scales, and an even lighter plus or cross mark on the center of her abdomen. Her web is strung on an anchor strand that runs from one of the gutters of my house, all the way across the side yard and down to a temporary fence post for the hazard fence around my neighbors house that a tree fell on. The web is easily 5 feet high and 3 feet across. She pierce to take it down every morning and spend a new one every night. Now that's industriousness! She leave the anchor stand in place during the day, to mark her spot and save what must be a huge effort. In the background is shaggy green grass, a little bit of gray sidewalk, and some green ditches not currently blooming.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I'm happy with how these shelves turned out. The poplar is highly colored dark and light, and held together with glue and exposed dowels of the same wood that went very dark with the oil finish and wax.

The vertical side of a set of low bookshelves, showing the golden and dark brown coloring of the poplar wood. You can see the dark ends of the exposed dowels as well. To the left of it, a brown catalogue case is temporarily supporting manuscript for a short story, plus some notes from a talk that I was a part of at the public library a couple of years ago. To the right side of it you can see the top-nailed oak floor of my dining room/library.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Too much radio, too little free time.

A madly crowded ham radio shack, with 3 Ten-Tec transceivers, at least one National SW3 receiver, a Pilot AC Super Wasp, a homebrew regenerative receiver designed by John Huntoon, and a great many semiautomatic and straight telegraph keys. It includes keys made by Eddystone by Vibropex by Benali and by a number of other manufacturers, some of them quite obscure.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

They've cloned (somewhat) The Microphone Of The Beast! Warm Audio's Retro 64 picks up the aesthetics of the E-V 666, a subset of the "Buchanan Hammer" design, with the uncommon and costly D-shaped UA connector. Knowing Warm, it's probably got similar sound. images.ctfassets.net/h4x5uvaoia7v...

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Clouds over my back yard tonight in the manner of @michaelwhelan.bsky.social

An outside view at night at the bottom of the picture in the immediate foreground are dark buildings and trees and various tunes of CPI and the deepest possible forest green above that a blue sky crossed by a few dark wires in the center of the blue sky, a towering slightly curved cloud with a large top and shades of violet, dark blue and light gray. It looks very much like something from cover art for a science fiction or fantasy paperback. Alas, I cannot crop it nearly so well as one of those talented artists would frame it up in the picture.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

So, who can ID this fungus? (human foot for scale.)

Green grass and weeds, seen from above. At upper left, two coarsely-wrinkled lopsided oval tan and dark brown mushroom caps. At lower left, a woman's foot in a tan size 10 shoe with colorful laces and a dark sock.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Today was...not okay. This is my neighbors house. They're landlords these days but we're between tenants.

A small, one story house with light tan siding and a dark roof, partially crushed by an oak tree that has fallen across it due to high winds.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Stay okay today! Hand-cut stencil, freehand decoration and signature.

On a gray concrete surface, stenciled hot pink letters with orange centers spell out in all capital letters "STAY OKAY TODAY," they're centered and stacked vertically. There's an ornamental marking in acid green directly under the last word, a couple of curly lines converging towards the center and a circle composed of two curved lines at the lower right it has been signed in dark pink with one letter in Morse code. It's the letter B. It looks like paint, it's actually liquid chalk. Eventually, I suppose it will wash away, but since it's on the concrete of my front porch underneath the roof, it may last quite a while. We'll see.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

The ants have domestic animals. THE ANTS HAVE DOMESTIC ANIMALS. They'll start smoking, drinking and running for office next.

Close-up of a twig from a tulip tree. It is brown with greenish splotches, and large green, shield-shaped leaves can be seen in the backgroun. Along the twig are peculiar looking lumps, large ones and small ones, and ants are crawling among them. The lumps are scale insects, kind of gray-yellowish, and have waxy a buildup on them, which is what they do. The ants are in fact, farming the scale insects, and harvesting that waxy sap-laden stuff that accumulates around them.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

You may say my hacksaw is old, and you're half right. The frame is old, and I really need to go over it to remove rust and generally clean it up, but you put a new blade in it every so often and it cuts like a brand new saw. It's amazing how well a new blade, tightened properly in the frame, cuts.

A classic old-time hacksaw frame, a bit brownish with rust and probably originally japanese black, with a finished wooden handle, rest on a gray picnic bench in the sun you can see green weeds growing through the patio blocks below it.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

"Yankees put too much stuff in chili." Yes. Yes we do. But this is red stew. Shown before the crushed tomatoes, it has bacon, lean ground beef, white onion, mushrooms, multicolored bell peppers, canned chilis, peppadew peppers, pepper bruschetta, pickled red onions and pico de gallo.

Ground beef, bacon, bright red peppadew peppers, red, yellow and green bell peppers, white onions, tan diced mushrooms, pico de gallo with red tomato, beige garlic, green herbs, in a shiny stainless steel pot.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Pop quiz! Foil-wrapped American teabag or foil-wrapped condom?

A red foil packet, with the words "Take this moment just for you" printed on it in white. There's something in the packet, and it's about an inch and a half square or slightly smaller. Could be a condom, could be a teabag. Personally, I'd be hoping it was a teabag. Even American tea. The legend seems like something that would be printed on the package for a condom with the ribs on the inside. Oh, we all know That Guy.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I can't see the name, logo or ticker symbol for SpaceX without thinking of Babylon 5's creepy counterpart.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Dill fireworks! I need to cut and dry the dark green parts. They're really intense.

Tiny yellow and pale green dill flowers, above the dark forest green of the aromatic dill itself. My weedy garden in shades of medium green below all that.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Even the electric meters loathe 'em!

A gray watt hour meter strapped to a dark brown pole, could sun a blue sky and a streetlight beyond it. A sticker on the side of the meter reads, "FUCK NAZIS/FUCK COPS/FUCK TRUMP" with a circle-A, antifa double flag, and hammer and sickle underneath it.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Why You Should Not Let A.I. Write Articles, number 4,398: a "drop tank" holds aviation fuel; it is not a clanking, treaded battlefield horror with a big gun.

"The Curtiss P-40 Warhawk remains one of the most instantly recognizable aircraft from World War II. Designed in the United States and released in 1938, the single-engine, solo piloted fighter plane quickly became a critical workhouse for Allied forces. Over 13,000 units were constructed for the conflict, which saw the P-40 deployed across the Pacific, North African, and European theaters. Early versions featured a 1,000 horsepower Allison engine, although some later iterations included an improved Rolls-Royce Merlin under the hood. Aside from its .50 caliber guns, the P-40 sometimes also boasted bombs and even the ability to drop tanks." The phrase "even the ability to drop tanks" is underlined in red, because they are not the kind of tanks implied, and this sort of tank is not a weapon.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

The rest were fairly snide Roaring-20s substance abuse references:

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

My recent repost reminds me of some remixes I made:

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

It sure seems like this is the kind of thing the eventual end of which is going to feature in documentaries later.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

The Metropolitan Epicenter of Indianapolis (unofficial) is in my neighborhood!

In the foreground, a greenish-brown treated wooden post 4 inches square sticks 30 inches out of the ground in the green grass and weeds of the "devil's strip" between an unseen sidewalk and a blacktop city street. On the far side of the street, green grass and two houses, one yellow and one gray-blue, with white railing porches, are visible. On the post, a dark brown sign plate has gold letters that read, "METRO EPI-CENTER." Three white and red bricks are laying at the base of the post.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

This tiny thing is an all-wave radio. That's a normal-sized pencil below it. AM, FM, shortwave, longwave, and it has a tiny speaker as well as a headphone jack. USB charging, about US$30. Only one knob, lots is menus. Still!

A tiny black radio receiver is laying on a yellow quilt. There is a white pencil laying horizontally beneath it. A shiny silver antenna extends upward from the left top of it. The radio has a little screen that displays the settings and the frequency it is tuned to, 88.70 MHz. It has one tiny knob on the right front, to the right of the screen. It is an SDR based receiver.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

From the fiction of Frank Herbert, and with, of course, no relation to the real world:

Large block letters spell out "BUTLERIAN JIHAD NOW," referring to a revolt against thinking machines in Frank Herbert's "Dune" SF series. It's in a handy format for printing onto stickers or cutting stencils, or printing on a T-shirt. Not that anyone would do that.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

The cat will see you now -- if you can find him.

A fluffy cat with white, sable, gold and tan markings on his face peers out from a round opening in a cardboard box with bold, white stripes of tape that read FRAGILE and HANDLE WITH CARE in red lettering. He is in shadow; the box is sitting on a wooden floor. If you walked by him quickly, you might not even notice he was there.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

By the way, anyone who needs a proportionately large screwdriver for Barbie, Ken or old-style G.I. Joe might want to make contact. These little beauties are about 48 mm/1-7/8" overall and I have ended up with plenty. Saving two for earrings but I need to get my lobes redone.

A couple of dozen tiny, transparent-blue handled, straight blade screwdrivers. The blade part is shiny steel. They're laying on a grid paper blotter with squares about a quarter inch in every dimension. The little screwdrivers are about 48 mm or an inch and 7/8 long.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

Found in the employee lunchroom machines. You will note they do not specify the protein -- and that fingernails and hair are, in fact, proteins. Presumably, this was made from monster hair.

A small clear plastic container sitting at a white refrigerator rack has brown fried, looking lumps inside it, and a tan label on the top that reads "monster protein bites, 20G of protein."
Monsters lead such *interesting* lives, don't you think?

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

The President keeps talking about it, but until today, I had never seen it for myself.

A paper bowl of pink, baby blue and white candies has a blue on hot pink Post-It note sticking up that reads, "FOR EVERYONE!"

OMG!! What can it possibly mean?

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Can you make Hoppin' John with Shakshuka sauce as the tomato component? Sure! Can you serve it over zucchini? Yes! But what do you call it?

Blackeyed peas, red onions, sausage, red, orange, yellow and green bell peppers, green chilis
And dark green okra with green and white zucchini, swimming in deep orange Shakshuka sauce.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Reheated red stew with Black Eyed Peas and a little bit of pickled okra, seasoned with gumbo fillet and some Cajun seasoning, a little smoked paprika.

Dark orange, red tomato broth with Black Eyed Peas ground beef chorizo, sausage little pickled okra, some carrots, celery, onions, bell peppers, green chilis, I'm not sure what all. It's very colorful. Of course the Black Eyed Peas are pale tan with dark spots on them, the other vegetables are green and orange and translucent. The okra is dark green.

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Roberta Ecks @robertaecks.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Red stew with added mushrooms, celery, mild green chilis, corn and peppers, and Mexican-style brown rice with peppers.

"Red stew" originally made with ground beef, chorizo, mushrooms, multicolored bell peppers, celery, carrots, white onion, mushrooms, a few other things, tomatoes, of course. Now reheated with even more mushrooms another can of green chilies, yellow corn with red and green bell peppers and served with brown rice cooked in Mexican style tomato sauce with more peppers.

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