iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I don't need your affirmation to know I'm right 😉 No, that's not what Zionism is. What the Israeli *government* is doing today is despicable, and has nothing to do with Zionism.

010

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 3h

After the 9/11 attacks, I educated myself of the history behind the creation of the state of Israel, which included the Zionist movement. Historically it was a movement to simply find somewhere peaceful for Jews to live. Caroline's analysis and position is spot on. Zionism is not the issue.

100

Reposted by Wayne Young

Prof Bill McGuire @profbillmcguire.bsky.social · 14h

#FOTW Daily Post 5 Favourite denier myth - volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans Ask me or any other volcanologist — false Volcanoes: ~300 million tonnes CO2/year. Humans: 130 times more Please pass on the truth. Share and tag 2 others #FateOfTheWorld #TogetherUnstoppable

15580276

Reposted by Wayne Young

Jodrell Bank @jodrellbank.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

🚀 It's #WorldSpaceWeek! From tracking the earliest ventures beyond Earth to exploring the future of sustainable satellites through our exhibitions & collaborations with The University of Manchester researchers, Jodrell Bank remains connected to the past, present and future of space exploration

02911

Reposted by Wayne Young

The Spaceshipper 🚀 @thespaceshipper.com · 04/10/2026

Nice! Sputnik 1, the first artificial Earth satellite, was launched 69 years ago today.

1929667

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Never heard of them - though I've used IDT parts in a previous life. Thanks.

000

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

If they were custom mask (rather than fused) gate arrays, they would have had to have had a lot of them made in order to amortise the cost to an acceptable level. I'm trying to think what other company used a "Q" as their logo? 🤔

120

Reposted by Wayne Young

Sandy Horne @sandyhorne.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

With news that the old solar power station at White Cliffs in remote New South Wales has been listed on the State Heritage Register, I thought I'd share this photo of it that I took in 2017. Decommissioned in 2005, it was one of the first in the world to sell solar power commercially.

728339

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Fascinating! I've never seen ICs with connections like that. Also - Are those Quantel branded ICs on the main circuit board? (the ones with a big "Q" on them). I know they used a lot or programmable logic, but didn't know they had custom chips made.

120

Reposted by Wayne Young

DextersTechLab - The Quantel Guy @dexterstechlab.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

#Quantel repair time! Salvaged two NVRAMs from a dead CPU43 board so they can be used as replacements on CPU board that needs new ones. Quite a job to remove them as the 'Snaphat' ICs are SMD so Quantel made these adaptor boards with very fiddly turned pins. All good to go!

1112

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Might this be an additional constraint on the search for life on exo-planets? Maybe we should look for water + specific star temperatures? Otherwise, wouldn't the majority of the energy of the star go into heating the atmosphere? Barely any would reach the surface.

000

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

how much of the rings are shown? The rings are over 100,000 km wide. To see objects 2.5 km tall like that, you'd have to be very close to them, relative to the size of the rings, which doesn't match the perspective in the rings - unless you are looking at a very small piece?

010

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

They should have cast Alan Titchmarsh ... 😂

010

Reposted by Wayne Young

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

🥳 New Observatory alert! (Yes, she cuts ribbons!) Huge congratulations to Dr Charles Wang and all the wonderful #Aberdeen University team who have built the brand new Anne Cruickshank Observatory! 🔭🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 ℹ️: www.abdn.ac.uk/news/26204/ 🎥: Dave Galloway NorthSound1

710020

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This is really not good. Not good at all 😟

Graph showing the global average sea surface temperature anomaly for 2026 (red line).

000

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

What could be more natural than moving that middle finger W, S, W, S ... 😉

110

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

By the way ... my guess as to why the rudder was damaged is that during the rapid descent, the aircraft exceeded "VNE" - or velocity to never exceed. It may even have briefly broken the sound barrier. The aerodynamic stresses probably cause the rudder to break up. But that's just a guess.

000

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Yes, it's linear time, but the resolution is too coarse. Don't forget that the jet is travelling horizontally at about 16 km per minute, so a drop of 2 km per minute means an 8:1 glide slope. Extreme in terms of normal operation, but certainly not extreme in terms of angle. That's only 7 degrees.

021

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The people would not go weightless unless the 'plane was *accelerating* downwards. If the rate of descent was constant - however fast - then everything would feel normal. It is the acceleration - the second order differential of altitude - that people feel. You need to differentiate the graph twice.

000

Reposted by Wayne Young

Jodrell Bank @jodrellbank.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

An icon of science, captured in black and white. 🔭 Zoom in and discover the details of the Lovell Telescope. Have you ever looked this closely before? 📸 Simeon Davies

0327

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

And the answer also depends on whether you are using FP16, FP32, or FP64. If only we had two fingers instead of ten. Then we wouldn't run into these representational precision issues 😉

000

Reposted by Wayne Young

Jodrell Bank @jodrellbank.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Two months on from the announcement about Jodrell Bank Observatory's future funding, almost £50,000 has been raised thanks to your generosity. While discussions continue, no solution is yet in place. Help protect Jodrell Bank with a donation: donate.manchester.ac.uk/p/jodrellba…

06027

Reposted by Wayne Young

Sophie Carr @sophiecarr.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

On this day 12 and a half years ago I saw the coolest ever iceberg. Never seen one like it since. Fellsfjara, Jökulsárlón, #Iceland

A six-foot (ish) high turquoise iceberg with a small friend on a black sand beach. Grey rainy day with some of the turquoise reflected in the blank sand, and long exposure smooth waves breaking.

1669890

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

And your nephew's didn't get a picture of the aftermath? What a missed opportunity 😊

110

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

So many questions ... Being installed, or decommissioned ? If the former ... WHY?!? If the latter ... WTH were they used for? 😮 Regardless, that's a lot of CRTs. Don't stand in front of them too long; I hate to think how much x-ray radiation they emit.

000

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Even a stopped clock comes at the right time twice a day 😉

010

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

And there it is. The average sea surface anomaly temperature is now as warm as 9 January 2024 - which was the previous record high - and is still rising. New records set every day since the start of June. The oceans are now warmer than they've ever been since records began.

Copernicus Climate Pulse data showing the average global sea surface temperature anomaly, with 2026 highlighted in red. It shows that the anomaly is now as high as the previous record high in Jan 2024, and is likely to rise even higher.

020

Reposted by Wayne Young

Jodrell Bank @jodrellbank.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

What is the Lovell Telescope revealing about our Universe?🔭 Inside the Observatory: Discovering the Universe from Jodrell Bank, on 1 Oct, is an evening with some of the Observatory team exploring the cutting-edge science happening at Jodrell Bank Book now: ow.ly/ACNR50ZRo5w 📸 Andrew Brooks

0225

Reposted by Wayne Young

Jodrell Bank @jodrellbank.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Celebrate the opening of The North Revisited, with photographers John Bulmer and Simon Hill, and BBC broadcaster Mark Radcliffe for a fascinating conversation about the people, places and stories that have shaped the North over the last 60 years ✨ 🎟️ 10 October ow.ly/LjQj50ZQ1iT 📸 Simon Hill

0114

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Nice! Here's the output of the ray-tracer I wrote in about 1990. I seem to remember it took considerably longer than 13 minutes to run ...

A ray traced image of some geometrical objects (sphere, cone, cylinder, disc) floating above a reflective checkerboard floor.

001

Reposted by Wayne Young

Alice Averlong 🏳️‍⚧️ @alice.averlong.com · 22/09/2026

Did some canonically forbidden raytracing with POV-Ray 1.0 from 1992, on MS-DOS

The DOS output of POV-RAY 1.0, Persistence of Vision Raytracer Version 1.0
The file FORBIDN.POV statistics are shown, for a file 1280x960 pixels, which took 13 minutes and 25 seconds

828232

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

What are the parameters of this introspection? Are we talking PC-only games? Or do arcade games count? The first *ever* game for me was probably Tail Gunner. Then Defender on the BBC micro Followed by Star Wars, then Rise of the Triads.

Screenshot of the arcade video game Tail Gunner

Screenshot of the computer game Defender on a BBC micro.

Screenshot of the arcade game Star Wars.

Screenshot of the computer game Rise of the Triads

110

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Initial component placement for the second of the pair of circuit boards that will become the Floating Point Unit of my FP co-processor. I'm just so glad it all fits!! 😊

Computer rendering of a printed circuit board showing component placement prior to the start of trace layout.

000

Reposted by Wayne Young

Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The two #Equinox are the only days when the Sun rises due East and sets due West, everywhere. At the Dec solstice the sun rises in the S-East. At the June solstice it rises in the N-East. As the days pass between the two, the sunrise position slowly changes passing due East each equinox.🤩 🔭🧪

519479

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Leia : "You came in that? Well, they saw you coming!!🤣" Han : "Great shot kid! See? That wasn't so hard" Luke : "Shut down all the brash contractors on the detention level!!!"

010

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I'n't it great how you can have fun by substituting some humour? It's a sign that differentiates you as the best aunt. Just make sure you keep them focussed so they don't go off at a tangent. 😉

110

Reposted by Wayne Young

Freya Holmér @freya.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I used to think "eh, phone cameras are so good these days, there's no need to get a dedicated camera" anyway I was very wrong, I'd just forgotten how much better proper cameras look

1145026

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I don't normally re-post this kind of content ... but seriously, this is just too good not to share. If this doesn't put a smile on your face, nothing will 🤣 sound on.

141

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Being in the UK (and that it's not black enough), I'd say it's *not* a black widow (annoyingly the tell-tale red hour glass is on their underside). However, having lived in California, my instant reaction was "widow". As an aside .. 2 came back in the shipping container when I moved back to the UK.

110

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Great thread explaining how the Moon moves relative to the Earth .... it's complicated !!

100

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Great thread! I knew about the 5 degree tilt, and 18 year cycle, but I didn't know it was because of lunar orbital precession! Thanks! 🙂

010

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Finished!! First of four PCB cards for a project I first thought of back in the 1980s. Only three more to go ...😬 @computinghistory.org.uk

A computer rendering of a printed circuit board with various integrated circuits and sockets.

Image of the layout of a 2 layer printed circuit board, showing the two copper trace layers as red and green lines, as well as the component side silk screen text in teal. Integrated circuit pads are shown in yellow.

000

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Or ... (Part of my public outreach kit) Maybe not as fun as an orange, but certainly less messy 🤣

Painted papier mache representations of the Earth and Moon, along side a flashlight/torch and a 30cm ruler

240

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I've seen a lot of analemma pictures, but this has to be in the top 5, if not the best. Absolutely amazing!!

050

Wayne Young @slartyb.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

OK .. I've seen a *LOT* of analemma (the figure of 8 shape) pictures, but this one is rather special. Just .. WOW!!! 😮

011