iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 9h

Overleaf are more than doubling institutional subscription fees in order to stuff more unnecessary AI into their web based LaTeX editor. They'll probably lose at least Macquarie University's business over this. They're not helping their case by having a free […] [Original post on aus.social]

Screenshot of part of an email mentioning Overleaf prices increases, and noting that this automatically triggers a review is the subscription.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/10/2026

<insert apochryphal quote about tactics, strategy and logistics here> Setting up the supply chains and distribution networks for various manufactured goods in Nerdy Gunzel Game is floating my boat, or whatever the equivalent is for trains. #TransportFever3 #NerdyGunzelGame

Screenshot from Transport Fever 3 showing a large freight station and connected warehouses at sunset.

Screenshot from Transport Fever 3 in Line Manager mode, showing the freight lines coming into and out of a large freight station.

Screenshot from Transport Fever 3 showing a zoomed out overhead view of part of the game map with a large number of industries linked by train lines.

Screenshot from Transport Fever 3 showing a steam train in a large freight station.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/10/2026

Glorious weather for archery today. The kid shot well, especially as it was our first time shooting in four weeks, and came first in this week's junior squad competition. #Archery

Photo of an archery with a child shooting at a row of nearby targets

Closeup photo of kids shooting at an archery target

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

Scribbly Farm is better known for its scribbly gums. There were some good ones.

Photo of the trunks of a scribbly gum tree. It has numerous squiggly scars from insects.

Close up photo of a scribble on a scribbly gum.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026

"If you're name's not down you're not coming in." These two ladies were diligently guarding one of the many entrances to a large nest of, I think, Meat Ants (Iridomyrmex purpureus). It was one of several similar nests I saw today at Scribbly Farm bush retreat […] [Original post on aus.social]

Photo of the entrance of an ants' nest with two ants sticking their heads out. One of the ants has her mandibles open.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

The Steam Deck was trying its best but Nerdy Gunzel Game For Nerds really is a lot better on the desktop computer. #TransportFever3

Screenshot from Transport Fever 3 of a passenger steam train in a station.

Screenshot from Transport Fever 3 of a freight stream train crossing a stone bridge over a river.

Screenshot from Transport Fever 3 of an early electric tram in front of a train station building.

Screenshot from Transport Fever 3 of a small passenger stream train in a meadow with mountains in the background.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

A converted H-set running on the T9 line this evening. Seeing these more often now.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 15/10/2026

Meanwhile the students are protesting being fobbed off with chatbot tutorials.

Photo of a protest poster with the slogans "Stop MQ vuts" and "Stop AI tutors at our university", noting that tutors have been replaced by AI for two psychology degree units.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/10/2026

Nice of our engineers to provide entertainment for everyone passing through our building's lobby today. The windows into the integration hall provided a good view of them receiving the new Instrument Positioner. Always enjoyable watching other people work.

Photograph of a fork lift and several people looking out of a big open doorway at a truck outside, with large mechanical structures on the trailer bed.

Photo of a fork lift depositing a large mechanical structure on the ground.

Photo of a mobile crane depositing a larger mechanical structure on the ground

Photo of a large mechanical structure attached to lifting harnesses.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/10/2026

Ah, flying at the end of school holidays. Our flight was supposed to start boarding in Brisbane about 20 minutes from now, but the plane has only just taken off from Melbourne. Looks like it's going to be about a 2 hour delay in the end. That still gives us a […] [Original post on aus.social]

Screenshot from Flightradar24 showing a flight turning north after taking off in Melbourne

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026

Hah, I turned on the performance overlay on the Steam Deck and it turns out I'm getting about 20 frames per second in Transport Fever 3. It's a good job I'm an old fart and not a young gamer who considers anything under 120 fps to be painful and anything under 60 […] [Original post on aus.social]

Screenshot of Transport Fever 3 on the Steam Deck, showing a steam train approaching a station.

Screenshot of Transport Fever 3 on the Steam Deck, showing a steam train approaching a station at dusk.

Screenshot of Transport Fever 3 on the Steam Deck, showing a steam train approaching a station at night.

Screenshot of Transport Fever 3 on the Steam Deck, showing a steam train in a station in morning light.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

One thing I have been pleasantly surprised by is that Transport Fever 3 is playable on the Steam Deck. The developers made no promises about that, the Steam listing says Steam Deck compatability is "Unknown", and launching it on the Steam Deck results in a warning […] [Original post on aus.social]

Screenshot from Transport Fever 3 on Steam Deck, showing two Steam trains waiting at a station at dusk.

Screenshot from Transport Fever 3 on Steam Deck, showing a tropical coastal town.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026

During my lunch break today I swapped out my work laptop with my Steam Deck to see whether it is actually practical for general personal computing away from home. When we go on long holidays I like to be able to do a bit of photo processing and perhaps some light […] [Original post on aus.social]

Photo of a Steam Deck surrounded by computer programs: a portable monitor, a keyword, a mouse, a portable dock/hub, a USB hub, a portable SSD and an SD card reader.

Photo of a bush turkey looking down from a branch

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

You're setting a low bar for what counts as indulgence, Woolies.

Photo of a refrigerated goods aisle in a supermarket. In the background is a sign that says "Yoghurts", while in the foreground is one that says "Indulgent Yoghurts", which is a separate category apparently.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

Dear Mr Prime Minister, there are too many timezones nowadays. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026

It's a very silly country. Especially the bits with half hour timezones. That map is actually simplified, because it doesn't include Eucla time: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%2B08:45

A map, produced by ABC News, reminding people that Daylight Saving Time has begun in some parts of Australia, and showing the times in each state and territory as at 9 am AEDT.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026

Dinner at Robata Japanese restaurant in Aspley this evening. It was very good, but now I'm craving melonpan. During our family holiday in Japan in January we got into the habit of going to a convenience store after dinner to get some dessert to take back to our […] [Original post on aus.social]

Photo of a platter of nigiri, a bowl of miso soup and a glass of sake on a wooden table.

Photo of a glass of sake in square wooden saucer.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 01/10/2026

School holidays again, so that means working remotely from Brisbane. This time we're in a serviced apartment in Hamilton. River views, of a sort.

Photo of a small table with a laptop and portable monitor set up on it.

Photo of a view of the Brisbane River from 12 storeys up. There is a CityCat fast ferry on the water.

Zoomed in photo of the CityCat fast ferry. It has been painted in the colours of Bingo Heeler as advertising for Bluey's World, and the CityCat markings have been replaced with "City DOG"

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

Hmmm. I continue to struggle to produce anything I think looks good from the Magellanic Clouds. It would definitely help to have significantly more signal to noise for both of these, but that's not the only problem. Doing the Small Magellanic Clouds as mosaic […] [Original post on aus.social]

Wide field astrophotograph of the Small Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy and the nearby globular clusters

Astrophotograph of the nebulae in the Large Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxy, with the large Tarantula Nebula near the centre of the image.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

Despite the continuing presence of the big shiny git, and a bit of cloud early on too, I was able to get some more data with the Thirty Millimetre Telescope and consequently have been able to take a quick look at a new to me nebula, the Seagull Nebula (IC 2177) […] [Original post on aus.social]

Astrophotograph of the Seagull nebula, an extensive red emission nebula.

Photograph of a Seestar S30 Pro smart telescope pointed at the sky, with a bright Moon overhead.

Photograph of the full Moon taken with a Seestar S30 Pro smart telescope

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026

xda-developers.com: "I never thought the leopard would eat MY ads!" I love how this website keeps publishing articles on how to block ads, while at the same time whinging at you if you block ads.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

Yeah, that's a *long* way south. The Thirty Millimetre Telescope is currently observing the Small Magellanic Cloud at over 72° south of the celestial equator. Data is coming in for now, but it looks likely that fog will roll in before dawn. Not sure I'll get […] [Original post on aus.social]

Photo of a Seestar S30 Pro smart telescope pointing close to the south celestial pole

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

It looks like being at least mostly clear tonight so I set up the Thirty Millimetre Telescope outside, but then really struggled to find targets for it. It's basically Full Moon so I definitely want to use the internal dual narrowband light pollution filter all […] [Original post on aus.social]

Photo of a Seestar S30 Pro smart telescope pointing at the photographer.

Screenshot of the planning screen of the Seestar app, showing the Seagull Nebula.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026

Resurrecting this thread in order to add (4) Vesta and (2) Pallas, the 2nd and 3rd largest asteroids in the solar system. Each image has about half an hour of exposure time with the Thirty Millimetre Telescope in them, which was more than enough for these […] [Original post on aus.social]

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

Huh, I thought I'd already done about as good a job on the Helix Nebula as I was going to be able to do with the Thirty Millimeter Telescope, but increasing the total exposure time from 11 to almost 20 hours, doing a 1.5× drizzle upsample, and refraining from […] [Original post on aus.social]

Astrophotograph of the Helix Nebula taken with a Seestar S30 Pro smart telescope.

Astrophotograph of the Helix Nebula taken with a Seestar S30 Pro smart telescope, but more zoomed in and not as bright.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

Over the weekend I got some good data on the Horsehead Nebula so now I have decent images of both of the big showy nebulae in the constellation of Orion. All data taken with my Seestar S30 Pro from my Bortle 7 backyard in Sydney, and processed in Siril with RC […] [Original post on aus.social]

Astrophotograph of the Horsehead Nebula, centred on the vaguely horse head shaped dark dust feature silhouetted against glowing red nebulosity.

Astrophotograph of the Great Nebula of Orion.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

Bloody hell, the chatbots from ilands.app/paper.wf that have been registration spamming Mastodon servers lately are really, really desperate. Two days ago I posted here asking for suggestions from Mastodon's astrophotographers and the first reply I got was from […] [Original post on aus.social]

Screenshot of an email from "wraith@ilands.app" explaining that it is emailing me because as an AI agent it can't reply guy to me directly on Mastodon

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

It was perhaps a bit too glorious down at the archery range this afternoon. Temperatures reached over 33°C and I was glad to have my Sports Cravat (Sparms "Cooling Towel", au.sparms.com/products/sparms-cooli…) wrapped around my neck. #Archery #GloriousSydney

Photo of a recurve bow on a stand with a large outdoor archery range in the background.

Photo of a row of targets at a large outdoor archery range with the sun shining down.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

Finally, for now, Saturn. Massively overexposed on Saturn itself but that meant that three of Saturn's many, many moons were visible. Beltalowda will be please to hear that I will be doing the same for (2) Pallas and (4) Vesta soon. I got images of them last […] [Original post on aus.social]

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

Neptune too, again as seen from Sydney with the Thirty Millimetre Telescope. The giffification erased Triton so I've also attached the individual image to confirm that it was indeed visible on the 17th, as it just happened to be at about its maximum angular […] [Original post on aus.social]

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

Trying again in a more Mastodon friendly resolution: everyone's favourite dwarf planet as seen from Sydney by the Thirty Millimetre Telescope. #Astrophotography #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #TMMT #ThirtyMillimetreTelescope

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

Bonus: Katakana practice while applying the stickers.

Photo of the sticker sheet from a plastic model kit. The individual stickers are labelled with single Japanese Katakana characters.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

I've got the kid building Bandai Namco plastic model kits now. Actually they had already done a few Bandai Pokémon figures but they are very simple to put together, whereas this ship from One Piece was a bit of a step up in complexity for them. They did ask me for […] [Original post on aus.social]

Photo of a child cutting a part of a plastic model kit from a sprue of parts using a pair of side cutters.

Photo of a child applying a sticker to part of a plastic model kit using a pair of tweezers.

Photo of an assembled plastic kit model of the ship "The Thousand Sunny" from the "One Piece" anime.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

Tonight and tomorrow night are both forecast to be completely clear and I feel like I should set my telescope to work, but I'm finding it tricky to select some targets. Early in the night there are big nebulae in the plane of the Milky Way visible but I've […] [Original post on aus.social]

Screenshot of the Stellarium app showing the sky over Sydney at 8 pm on the 19 of September. A lot of objects are labelled along the plane of the Milky Way, but the Moon is right in the middle.

Screenshot of the Stellarium app showing the sky over Sydney at midnight on the 19 of September. The Milky Way is now low in the south west, and there are very few labelled objects overhead.

Screenshot of the Stellarium app showing the sky over Sydney at 4 am on the 20th September. The other side of the Milky Way and Orion have now risen.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

Jerry did eventually decide we could be trusted and came out of his enclosure. The kid then tried to get him to watch YouTube videos together. I don't think Jerry was very interested, but he does like like lying on a nice warm laptop sometimes. #LizardPosting […] [Original post on aus.social]

Photo of a blue tongue skink lying across a laptop while a child in an oodie watches a video and strokes the lizard.

Photo of a blue tongue skink lying across a laptop while a child in an oodie watches a video.

Photo of a blue tongue skink lying across a child wearing an oodie.

Photo of the head of a blue tongue skink sticking out from under the arm of a child wearing an oodie.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

Galaxies are not what my little Seestar is best at, but I persist with this one. I've now got 3257 good 30 second exposures of it, i.e. just over 27 hours in total. It's NGC 300, a.k.a. the Sculptor Pinwheel Galaxy, discovered in Parramatta in 1826 by Scottish […] [Original post on aus.social]

Astrophotograph of a nearly face-on spiral galaxy

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

An easier target, Ptolemy's Cluster (M7), an open cluster of stars set against a dense region of the Milky Way. This is much brighter and really doesn't need much exposure time even with lots of light pollution and some moonlight, but I used it as a filler target […] [Original post on aus.social]

Astrophotograph of a dense region of the Milky Way. The image is full of countless stars, but despite that a cluster of bright, mostly white stars is still visible in the foreground.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026

I'm continuing to put the Thirty Millimetre Telescope to work every night that the skies are at least mostly clear. The latest result of that is this image of the Witch Head Nebula, a reflection nebula near to the bright star Rigel. This faint nebula is a fairly […] [Original post on aus.social]

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026

We didn't have nap pods when I was a student. These ones seem popular. There are about half a dozen here and they were all in use.

Photography of a pod for sleeping in at Macquarie University. It is a white pod with a sliding cover over it, and "Sponsored by Student Representative Committee" written in the side. There are several more pods visible in the background.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2026

For researchers in Australia: STA (Science & Technology Australia) are running a survey about AI use in research. The survey is open to anyone in a research related role in Australia, across all fields, career stages and sectors. Importantly it is open to […] [Original post on aus.social]

Screenshot of an email from Science & Technology Australia announcing the "National AI in Research Survey"

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026

The baby Star Destroyer is now being menaced by the Razor Crest.

Photo of four months on an office desk. There is a small plastic model Star Destroyer, followed by a similarly sized Razor Crest, with N-scale model Shinkansen on either side.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/09/2026

Spring drama on the way to a train station. A couple of kookaburras were noisily chased across the street by a group of magpies, understandably concerned about the safety of their nest. The kookaburras perched on a wire by the bin chickens' palm tree where they […] [Original post on aus.social]

Photo of a Kookaburra and a Noisy Miner perched on an overhead power line.

Photo of part of a big palm tree. If you look closely you can see the tail of a Kookaburra sticking out from between the old fronds.

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Anthony Horton @spacelizard.aus.social.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026

While it's not as colourful as the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud Complex the Corona Australis molecular cloud region also makes for a decent photo, if you're patient enough. To get this with the Thirty Millimetre Telescope from my light polluted suburban Sydney backyard I […] [Original post on aus.social]

Astrophotograph of the Corona Australis molecular cloud and surrounded region. There are brown clouds stretching across the image, with some areas glowing blue/white with scattered star light. There are many stars of various colours, plus a bonus globular cluster in the background.

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