iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Unambitious man deems homemade eclipse viewer adequate.

A crude eclipse viewing setup consisting of a worthless pair of binoculars with one objective lens blocked and the other partially occluded, the whole being surrounded by a cardboard shade and a lot of black sticky tape. Tbe sun can damage optics as well as eyes and I wouldn’t do this with my good binoculars even though they’d probably be fine.

An image of the sun projected onto white paper. It is neither fully sharp nor correctly oriented, due to the temporary absence of my focussing assistant.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

!!!!! !! !!!!! !! !!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!! !_! The name of your act? Remind me. THE LABOUR PARTY!!!!

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

@drbafc.bsky.social Hi Andy, just to let you know that the hybrid dreich site in your bio has been infected with some very nasty malware. Would be great if you could remove the link. I will try and contact the site owner.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 30/04/2025

Alice Walker: ‘Horses make a landscape look more beautiful’

A horse stands in a fenced meadow against the backdrop of the South Downs ridge, its tail lit by the early sun.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

Addled from exposure to a particularly ill-conceived London local council tax reduction scheme, I may now be as estranged from logic as its authors. (if this means nothing to you, be happy)

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Turns out men in somewhat later life can make new friends.

A small hirsute horse that - three or four times now - has trotted up to say hi as I pass by.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

ChatGPT: story detective. Which short story features a man being tested to become immortal? He awakens in a strange enclosed space. A friend has previously shown him a Mobius strip and he figures that he is inside a Klein bottle.

First guess at author of a short story. Chat GPT picks the wrong story, describing it using only the material in the prompt.

Chat GPT fails to identify the author again

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 13/01/2025

Idea for paper: prompt engineering as ideomotor effect. Is an LLM just a ouija board with a dodgy encyclopaedia?

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

Shadows and snow on the South Downs. On the track, the snow was crisp and washed my trainers clean of the week’s chalk mud.

Between Woodingdean and Lewes in Sussex, a seaward view of several small snowy hills, some in sunlight, others in shadow.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

Something lunar about today’s short light.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

First walk after horrible bronchial fuckery.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

On every lamppost a crow: it’s cold.

Pre-dawn photo of crow squatting on a lamppost, in silhouette against a grey-blue sky.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 20/11/2024

Beech tree retaining its looks in this light.

Photograph of black branches and golden leaves of a beech tree with background of blue sky.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Visited Hull after many years away. Wish I’d brought my copy of @nemoloris.bsky.social ‘s Dark and True and Tender with me.

Night photograph of the St John’s pub in Hull.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 12/10/2024

Walking with new phone on a windy evening. A kestrel obligingly shows up.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 20/08/2024

Found this on eBay, designed and illustrated by my dad for Camell Laird in the 1970s. Later today I’ll take his cap off its peg and leave the house to its new owners.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 22/06/2024

Now that my children spend most of their time away, household investigations are brutally efficient. Who deadheaded the rosebush with the kitchen scissors? I did. And I'd do it again.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 01/06/2024

the nettles impossibly green at this hour

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 29/01/2024

Half a century later, I still wake up sometimes wanting to be an astronomer.

I want to be an astronomer because it is my hobby. The things that astronomy is about are stars, planets, moons, nebulae, galaxys, quasars and pulsars. I would like to be in a large observatory but I would probably be in a small one. I started studying astronomy when I was nearly four, when one night I went out with my dad and looked at the great bear. The instruments I would probably use are the spectroscope, the telescope and the spectrohelioscope. Astronomy Astronomy Astronomy Astronomy.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 22/01/2024

Some time in (probably) the late 70s, R Young (painter, electrician) offered to buy C A Duffy (playwright, poet) a pint in exchange for a poem. He later gave this to my parents.

Poem apparently by Carol Ann Duffy written in Ye Cracke, Liverpool.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 09/12/2023

Just before dawn at Woodingdean, Venus, Moon and aerial. Five fingered cloud above them.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 23/11/2023

Is DWP using LLMs to write press releases now? The disability element of universal credit does not exist and 'positive' UC awards per the quoted paragraph are not a thing. www.gov.uk/government/n...

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 15/11/2023

Says he’s no fan of the carceral state. Still plays Ford or Broadmoor with the new cabinet.

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Tim Blackwell @timblackwell.bsky.social · 04/11/2023

The twins? Over the moon. [Brighton last night - Castor top, Pollux centre]

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