iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 21/09/2026

It's been a while since i've posted my reading log. just finished Red Rising and am starting Golden Son.

stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 29/07/2026

@thisguise.wtf just found your archimedes engine recap trying to remember who the hell aljan is while reading helium sea. top notch work, gonna need this.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 20/05/2026

i have finished dungeon crawler carl #8. that book refused to stop and take a single breath. i am ready for book 9 already.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 28/12/2025

2025 stacked. 52 finished. Not pictured: book 3 of the poppy war trilogy since i donated my paperbacks in anticipation of the 3rd book’s deluxe edition.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 07/12/2025

someday, @anyaustin.bsky.social will get around to kingdom come deliverance and we’ll finally get the economic analyses of fictional medieval bohemia that the game deserves.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 07/10/2025

i'm sorry but a 2000 mustang GT is not a "historical car". i am not OK with this.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 27/09/2025

i don't know much about much, but i do know that if genndy tartakovsky says "hey i wanna make an animated film about", you stop him right there, and say "yes, how much do you need."

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 23/09/2025

next up, the once and future king by t.h. white. i grabbed this while reading @levgrossman.com ‘s “the bright sword” earlier this year (which was amazing) and i’m in the mood to dive back into the arthurian thing so here we go. idk if i’ll read it in one shot or break it up into its component novels

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 23/09/2025

i finished gibson's 'neuromancer'. probably the book i enjoyed the least this year, but that was mostly because it was so hard to remember every time a cyberpunk trope happened, that this was where that was all invented. basically the holy scripture of cyberpunk.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 08/09/2025

Had a 3+ hour flight today and time alone at a hotel, so... I finished Katabasis by RF Kuang (only had like 15 pages to go) and I also had plenty of time to read all of Starter Villain by @scalzi.com (who has quickly become one of my favorite authors). Both were different kinds of fantastic.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 30/06/2025

halfway through the year, not bad so far. 33 down, 1 DNF. 14313 pages, 80/day on average.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 22/06/2025

next up on the reading list: the ministry of time by kaliane bradley. science fiction time travel story with an interesting premise of government employees tasked with guiding people brought from the past through acclimating to modern society, shenanigans ensue. www.goodreads.com/book/show/22...

goodreads.com

The Ministry of Time

A time travel romance, a spy thriller, a workplace come…

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 21/06/2025

terry pratchett had this habit of writing a series of words so ridiculous that, before being written, had no business being placed in that particular order, but he did it anyway, to great success.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 07/06/2025

due to some preorder shenanigans, i have an additional download code for mario kart world. happy to part with it for the $50 extra that the mario kart bundle cost me.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 04/05/2025

oh and if you haven’t already go read the dungeon crawler carl series by matt dinniman. just finished book 5, book 6 hardcover arrives in 10 days, book 7 hardcover out in september, and he’s started on book 8. these are spectacular. funny but dark and getting darker.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 04/05/2025

1/3 of the way through 2025, 19 books completed, 1 book abandoned. 8611 pages read so far. the backlog grows, i keep finding stuff i wanna read.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 31/03/2025

this vonnegut fella, turns out he was quite good with words.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 09/03/2025

2025 reading log as of today. i'm on pace for 60 books this year, which not bad considering I don't think i'd read more than 1 or 2 in a year since 2007, and most of those years I didn't read any actual books.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 09/03/2025

@coxsportsohio.bsky.social question for ya: how do you organize your books at home? I originally shelved everything alphabetically but then you have to slide everything around when you get new stuff. do you have a system or is it just vibes?

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 08/03/2025

started dungeon crawler carl, plowed through 140 pages this evening. and i get the feeling i’ll be buying all 7 books. @mattdinniman.bsky.social has something special here, i get the feeling this man spent as much time in the dungeons of diablo games as i did.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 07/03/2025

never gave a jason isbell record a full listen because i'm an idiot, but holy hell is 'foxes in the snow' a fireball. it should be illegal for 'good while it lasted' and 'true believer' to be back to back without a warning. this man can write a song.

youtube.com

True Believer

YouTube video by Jason Isbell - Topic

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 27/02/2025

“He looked up at the empty clouds, and as he died he wondered, not for the first time but for the very last, why it should be that we are made for a bright world, but live in a dark one.” yeah. get this book. read it. it's good.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 26/02/2025

On the home stretch of The Bright Sword by @levgrossman.bsky.social, never read anything by him, but i will be reading more. definitely a unique take on the tales of king arthur, worthy of a read.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 23/02/2025

just caught the latest @techconnectify.bsky.social video about algorithm complacency, and it SHOULD be required viewing before being allowed to use the internet in 2024. also, i cannot imagine NOT using the subscription feed on youtube. the front page is useless. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJp...

youtube.com

Algorithms are breaking how we think

YouTube video by Technology Connections

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 22/02/2025

just finished “dr. no” by percival everett. it was good. not my favorite book of all time. took some effort to get through parts of it because of how it was written, a lot of theoretical math jargon because of the main character being a mathematician of sorts, but was still good.

A sly, madcap novel about supervillains and nothing, really, from an American novelist whose star keeps rising The protagonist of Percival Everett's puckish new novel is a brilliant professor of mathematics who goes by Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains, means "nothing" in Tagalog, and Kitu is Swahili for "nothing.") He is an expert on nothing. That is to say, he is an expert, and his area of study is nothing, and he does nothing about it. This makes him the perfect partner for the aspiring villain John Sill, who wants to break into Fort Knox to steal, well, not gold bars but a shoebox containing nothing. Once he controls nothing he'll proceed with a dastardly plan to turn a Massachusetts town into nothing. Or so he thinks. With the help of the brainy and brainwashed astrophysicist-turned-henchwoman Eigen Vector, our professor tries to foil the villain while remaining in his employ. In the process, Wala Kitu learns that Sill's desire to become a literal Bond villain originated in some real all-American villainy related to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. As Sill says, "Professor, think of it this way. This country has never given anything to us and it never will. We have given everything to it. I think it's time we gave nothing back." Dr. No is a caper with teeth, a wildly mischievous novel from one of our most inventive, provocative, and productive writers. That it is about nothing isn't to say that it's not about anything. In fact, it's about villains. Bond villains. And that's not nothing.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 21/02/2025

Wanted to make a concerted effort to read more books, and really started in earnest this year. Here's where I am so far, and here's my backlog.

List of books currently read, including pages, dates, days to read, and pages per day.

Title Author Pages Date Started Date Completed Days Pages/Day
Dune Herbert, Frank 516 2024-07-01 2024-07-21 20 26
Dune Messiah Herbert, Frank 267 2024-07-21 2024-07-24 3 89
Children of Dune Herbert, Frank 475 2024-08-01 2024-08-23 22 22
God Emperor of Dune Herbert, Frank 473 2024-08-24 2024-10-25 62 8
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Dick, Phillip K. 224 2024-10-26 2024-12-06 41 5
I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons Beagle, Peter S. 275 2025-01-01 2025-01-04 3 92
James Everett, Percival 303 2025-01-04 2025-01-08 4 76
Fourth Wing Yarros, Rebecca 498 2025-01-08 2025-01-14 6 83
Iron Flame Yarros, Rebecca 623 2025-01-16 2025-01-23 7 89
Onyx Storm Yarros, Rebecca 527 2025-01-23 2025-02-04 12 44
The Frugal Wizards' Guide to Surviving Medieval England Sanderson, Brandon 364 2025-02-04 2025-02-10 6 61
Exodus: The Archimedes Engine Hamilton, Peter F. 893 2025-02-10 2025-02-20 10 89

List of books in my backlog, title & author
Title Author
The Bright Sword Grossman, Lev
Dr. No Everett, Percival
Dungeon Crawler Carl Dinniman, Matt
The Last Unicorn Beagle, Peter S.
Dragonfall Lam, L. R.
Off To Be A Wizard Meyer, Scott
The City In Glass Vo, Nghi
Neuromancer Gibson, William

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Reposted by stephen, in real life.

Your Internet Friend Tom Tomorrow @tomtomorrow.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

This is just to say I have fired the bureaucrats throughout your government Even the ones that were probably keeping planes in the air Forgive me I am not very smart So efficiency Much savings

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 15/02/2025

i need to build more bookshelves but i have no clue how to arrange everything in a way that doesn’t get thrown completely askew when we buy new books! this doesn’t even include the other 100+ books in the kids rooms that they bought themselves, or all the science books below in cabinets.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 13/02/2025

next up, grabbed this off the cover blurbs. so far, 240 pages in, it’s pretty neat! hell of a way to hype up an upcoming video game, which i will surely be buying.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 10/02/2025

this is the sort of conclusion that human history should make obvious to everyone. when a tool does a job for you, the ability to perform the job manually atrophies. could you navigate with a road atlas?

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 10/02/2025

finishing up “the frugal wizard’s guide to surviving medieval england” by brandon sanderson today, bought it off the cover and title alone, and it went places i did not expect at all. very very engaging, strong recommend.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 10/02/2025

looking for suggestions on software that manages a home library of books/games/music, takes in ISBN or USB and pulls down information from wherever, ideally something that can be shared by a family.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 05/02/2025

i don’t think i’m the target demo she was going for but by golly am i glad i went “huh, dragons you say? guess i’ll check this book out, i like dragons” because this series is very good. just finished onyx storm tonight.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 21/01/2025

that decision to kick a field goal was so bad, martin luther just posted a 96th thesis.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 15/01/2025

finished this tonight. definitely not the type of book i pictured myself enjoying but enjoy it i did, and the last page sure was unexpected. i picked up iron flame and will start on that next!

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 11/01/2025

it’s the perfect @vinny.vinesauce.com / vdub collab stream, unboxing the beach boys funko pops

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 09/01/2025

hey so this is a really fun read! i’m about halfway through but already picked up book 2 tonight.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 04/01/2025

ok i finished this book and hey go buy it and read it.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 04/01/2025

some book stuff: recently picked up "i'm afraid you've got dragons" honestly because i thought my sons might like it despite it being an 'adult' book', but I read it first and it's really quite good! not the most difficult or longest read, but i definitely recommend it!

book cover for i'm afraid you've got dragons by peter s. beagle

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 27/12/2024

the clock module is done! we’ll start the actual 6502 project tomorrow.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 22/12/2024

i’d like to be the first to congratulate @markskog.bsky.social on being able to go to bed early. i honestly expected for osu to get cooked fast.

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 20/12/2024

just finished putting my current vinyl collection on discogs. i ofer zero apologies for the abundance of jimmy buffett, and instead ask why you don't have every 70s and 80s buffett album as they are filled with bangers. www.discogs.com/user/screevo...

discogs.com

screevo / CollectionDiscogs

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stephen, in real life. @stephenmartin.io · 20/12/2024

to celebrate me bringing my record player upstairs and getting it hooked up so i actually use it, a little treat for me. also these meze classic 99s doin' the job with these records.

amazon order status showing better oblivion community center vinyl arriving monday

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