iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 15h

I've memorized Ctrl-U 101 as ā, but I have not memorized the unicode codepoints for the other vowels. In reading a master's thesis, I realized that I can use Ctrl-U 304 to add a macron afterwards. Much easier for me to write kererū now! (And there were two on the street today, though not these.)

Three kererū perching on some not-that-big branches. They have lush green heads and white chests.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026

I would rather not download an app to use bike share in Toronto.

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Reposted by Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

Spotted at a cafe in Montreal: A man (50s?) wearing Yoda pants waits in line. He is carrying a little black and white kitten in his arms. Occasionally he pets the kitten. @georgepenney

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026

Spotted at a cafe in Montreal: A man (50s?) wearing Yoda pants waits in line. He is carrying a little black and white kitten in his arms. Occasionally he pets the kitten. @georgepenney

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Reposted by Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

MonkeyKing @monkeyking.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026

#JukeboxFridayNight #PersonalPlaylist Wouldn't exactly say it's a favourite but I suspect I spent enough time listening to this while in the phone queue it warrants an entry! Warning - still not great despite (because of?) being autotuned to within an inch of its life! Immigration New Zealand […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 13/09/2026

I wrote a photos post for August and posted it a few days ago, but haven't had time to post a thread yet. Here it is. Once again, I'm travelling, so the thread may be somewhat delayed... patricklam.ca/post/20260907-august-… Featuring pictures from […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

Multi-tiered waterfalls with a slow shutter speed and hence creamy-looking water. The falls are running in front of slabby rocks, with more rock (overhanging) to the left. There is various lush Aotearoa greenery on the fringes of the picture.

A horse in a pasture near the Maison Vielle refuge above Courmayeur. The white and brown horse looks like it's prancing. There's also a cow in the picture doing cow things.

A view of the Fleuve St. Laurent from atop a ski hill (Le Massif). It's like you're skiing right down into the river. This was in winter just before the staff went on strike.

Me with a mountain bike, looking muddy and somewhat the worse for wear. Note the new tears in my jacket.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 12/09/2026

Buongiorno de Napoli. I feel like one could easily get run over by a car here.

A narrow street with paving stones and several-storey buildings. It is open to cars.

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Reposted by Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

Eleanor G @zaichishka.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

“If we want to keep kākāpōmaxxing, we need to fix the kākāpō housing crisis” Update: This was the best kākāpō fuck season ever thespinoff.co.nz/science/08-0...

thespinoff.co.nz

Update: This was the best kākāpō fuck season ever

The world may be burning but at least the world’s fattest parrot has been boning.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 02/09/2026

This is a quite Canadian message associated with the red warning for severe thunderstorms in Waterloo: "Destructive wind gusts, loonie to ping pong ball size hail and heavy rain are possible."

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 01/09/2026

I was sitting on the bus from the airport the other day and saw this, which inspired a small rabbit hole and new learning about how things work...

A yellow plastic thing that something could be attached to.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 31/08/2026

Yesterday as I was waiting in the biosecurity line at WLG there was a family of 4 in front of us with all their stuff moving to Aotearoa, maybe from the US? I heard something about a job at Pacific Radiology. Good luck!

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 27/08/2026

Me: "... But we don't really want to get to the ferry terminal two hours early" Random guy next to us on the bus: "sometimes you do!"

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 23/08/2026

I really don't like the "we should have standard time all year" thing even if the scientists say it's allegedly better. Here I am in Bitola (North Macedonia). It's 638am (up early for a hike) and it's 40 minutes past sunrise. Sunset is 722pm. At home usually I […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

Morning golden hour on Širok Sokak in Bitola. Looks urban, with a bunch of buildings all 3-4 stories high and next to each other.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 22/08/2026

Turns out that we ended up in Bitola for the White Night. I don't think kiwis have the wardrobe to pull this off. More the opposite.

People walking down the main (pedestrian) street of Bitola, Shirok Soakak, at night. Most are wearing white.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026

July pictures. This flight has another 30 minutes. Well, I can at least post four pictures in this time. patricklam.ca/post/20260804-july-ph… This includes a lot of pictures from a Whale Watch Kaikōura trip in July (a last minute but highly […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

A stylish white-faced heron taking off. Mountains in the background, a building behind the bird, and some greenery to the left.

Scratchy the humpback whale shows the results of epic battles with squid down below: the back is black, but there are many white scratches.

Picking up the rental car in Blenheim, we found that it came with ice on the windshield and no scraper. Credit cards work.

Three fish and some coral on the Great Barrier Reef: humpnose big eye bream, a blue fish, and a black fish. There is some pinkish coral in the frame below, and sand in the background.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 13/08/2026

Darn! I thought I would run out of flight but I actually ran out of power first.

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Reposted by Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

Sue Smith @sue.glasgow.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/08/2026

"But if you zoom out, it becomes clear that almost every “breakthrough” since last summer has concerned the narrow domains of computer code and math, which are defined by highly structured languages and come accompanied by massive amounts of specialized training data. And yet, even in this […]

glasgow.social

Original post on glasgow.social

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 07/08/2026

I received an AI-slop cold email from a prospective PhD student. I wrote a few more words but I think I started my reply with "I hate LLMs". Ugh. (The cold emails from students who are interested in microelectronics aren't much better...)

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 03/08/2026

Went skiing at Whakapapa and Turoa on the weekend, which prompted a couple of thoughts. 1. Lift tickets at NZ$160/day feel expensive, but I did the inflation check, and it's just me being old. The NZ inflation calculator says that it's NZ$80 in 2000 dollars […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

Actually pretty icy snow on Turoa under a clear sky. Taranaki Maunga is visible in the distance!

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Reposted by Patrick Lam :tinoflag:

Phil Stevens :tinoflag: @phil-stevens.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 26/07/2026

I finally got irate enough at RNZ's continued climate silence that I sent them some feedback. See below: -- I have noted a disturbing trend in RNZ reporting and commentary over the past couple of years, and it has reached the point where it has assumed the dimensions of an elephant in a […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 26/07/2026

Finally a beautiful day in Auckland. I was vaguely thinking of taking the ferry to Rangitoto Island but didn't actually bother to check the time. Oops, the single sailing for the day leaves at 930 and I checked at 926 far from the ferry terminal. #MissedTheBoat

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 19/07/2026

Floss expires?! I've eaten food that has an expiry date further in the future than this.

A container of floss that expires in 2029.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 10/07/2026

I guess it was somewhat rainy here. We decided that this was a good time to call it quits on this walk.

A walking track that is wet enough to have two black swans swimming in it.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 07/07/2026

I have a paper submission to work on (occupational hazard), but here's my photos post from June anyway. Will post to it as I take breaks from paper editing. patricklam.ca/post/20260701-june-ph… We'll have pictures from the Old Ghost Road, Tour du […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

A classic slow-shutter-speed waterfall picture, with numerous thin white streams of water, and pretty Aotearoa-looking ferns surrounding.

Weird high-compression scaly grey rock in the Swiss Alps. Trees in foreground and grass above the rock.

A pied stilt has long, thin legs and a thin bill, and is white underneath and black-backed (but way smaller than a black-backed gull!). It is standing in shallow water which reflects its image. There are some plants around.

Always got to look at the landing to score the throw, but this is going to be a full point. A person in a white judogi is finishing a throw of a person in a blue judogi at Kapiti College.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 06/07/2026

And yet another submission, this time on the NZ Conservation Amendment Bill: patricklam.ca/post/20260706-submiss… > As I write this on 6 July, a rainfall gauge in Dunedin reports 160mm of rain in the last 48 hours. Conservation lands and the Department of […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 26/06/2026

Yeah so the weather in Pōneke Wellington is very average. Normally there are 1200 cyclists around 6pm. Yesterday 300. Today 100.

A cyclist counter (Hutt Road) indicating 102 cyclists so far today.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 10/06/2026

No thank you. I do not want Gemini in my Google Sheets. #noAI

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 09/06/2026

A few weeks ago I biked to Petone on Te Ara Tapua and visited the Petone Settlers Museum. What are the Mounties doing here and why are they in brown? Is NZ Mounties going to be on the citizenship test?

A mural at the Petone Settlers Museum with things that we would associate with settlers, but also, Canadian Mounties in brown?

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 05/06/2026

Photos dump time. Posted 22 sets of photos in May, which is up from January-April but not as many as late last year. The backlog is back down to under two years, with the next set being from the Ghost Ridge in late June/July 2024 […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

A view of the actual Cascade Saddle, with the ground sloping upwards and to the right, and a track in front of a curved cliffy carve-out from the ground. There is a person barely visible in front of the cliff. The Dart Glacier is visible in the upper left corner.

Blue Lake is somewhat turquoise and surrounded by darkish green trees, with a meadow on one side of the lake itself. The peaks go above treeline with scree and rocks, with one ridge just above Blue Lake, and another ridge behind, perpendicular to the first one. The sky is mostly blue, with some wispy white clouds.

The distinctive-looking Kapiti Island (kind of like Antequera in Spain, but less face-like) is glowing in this shot taken around noon on a cloudless day in May 2025, as we look out over the Cook Strait.

A stripey brown and grey cat sits outside a shed in France, with an ebike standing next to it. In the corner, there are some red flowers in a large pot.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 04/06/2026

Artisanally coded a small (100 line) Python script last night to automatically do the things that I previously did manually with pictures: 1) rename them to add a prefix nn_ so that they will be listed in sorted order according to the EXIF date-taken stamp, and 2) integrate other code I've […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 01/06/2026

Yesterday in Pōneke Wellington: * by the waterfront right by Harbourside Market, members of a gang of juvenile gulls take turns diving and fishing in front of the yachts; * walking down Courtenay Place, numerous gangs of teenagers emerge from a Shakespeare Globe Centre event at St James Theatre […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 30/05/2026

Right. So being a bit lazy about inflating bike tires is very much a false economy. (The public pump at Vic Uni doesn't actually work, and the new one at the Central Library doesn't come with a gauge. I'd thus been putting it off for a week even though I bike past the pump on Hutt Rd pretty often.)

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 29/05/2026

From the archives. At least it has segregated bike infrastructure in front? (But, despite people saying that Christchurch is kind of bikeable, I find that it's a bit sprawling; and it is quite good when there are trains that are easy to bring bikes on.)

A Christchurch street with Car City and Remarkable Cars in front of a bike lane. There are, I think, the Port Hills in the background.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 28/05/2026

Seen in Bill McKibben's newsletter, quoting Seth Klein: > Pakistan, Vietnam, and the Philippines are all cancelling plans to import LNG, C'mon #nzpol

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 27/05/2026

Fantastic. In today's volunteer-computer-touching news, it looks like I've successfully fixed SPF and DMARC for ontarioallianceofclimbers.ca. I was kind of grumpy about it yesterday and left it in a broken state, but it seems to work now, with less annoyance than anticipated. #veganLinux

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 26/05/2026

I wonder what's up with the fireworks in Wellington right now.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 19/05/2026

Heard at WLG by people coming from Sydney: "it's freezing outside". It's 13°C.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 18/05/2026

Heard on a plane: "if you're suffering from social media withdrawal syndrome, it is now safe to turn off airplane mode".

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 14/05/2026

Spotted (or heard) in Wellington yesterday evening: * a dude crossing the street outside the Beehive with a portable speaker on his shoulder playing music. Is it a ghetto blaster? Did I get transported back into the 80s?

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 13/05/2026

This is a quite positive profile of Lely, which makes robots for dairy farmers: spectrum.ieee.org/lely-dairy-robots Lely staff are posing the right questions about the role of robots and automation in society. There is no mention of whether they have a John Deer-style extractive […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 11/05/2026

I did write a modest photos post for March & April: patricklam.ca/post/20260501-march-a… It's mostly pictures from Cascade Saddle in February 2026, but includes random other pictures from the archives across Aotearoa and some from the Eastern […] [Original post on mastodon.nz]

Person on the shores of Lake Pukaki (deep turquoise) looking at Aoraki Mount Cook underneath a blue sky with some wispy clouds.

Chiaroscuro on a mostly cloudy day illuminating a scree ridge. The picture is mostly brown and tan.

Moon low in the sky over a treed ridge. The moon is a crescent with craters visible and there are pink/orange clouds behind the moon.

From Quebec: the top of a snowy small hill (Mont Bernard) with a bunch of tree-less leaves and the sun in the upper left corner. Various other hills visible in the distance as well as some signs eg indicating that some trails are closed.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 09/05/2026

Wellington City Council is asking for feedback on the proposal to cut the $10.5 million budget for cycleways for 2026/27 to $3.4 million. Here's what I think: Look, I think that the cycleways program should be even more than budgeted. The State of Transport in Wellington City report from […]

mastodon.nz

Original post on mastodon.nz

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 06/05/2026

Kia ora Wellington! I left Waterloo on Monday and here I am in Wellington on Thursday.

A picture of the Carter Observatory at the Wellington airport. There is a round telescope dome under a starry night. The picture is at the end of a hallway where a ramp descends and turns around.

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Patrick Lam :tinoflag: @va2lam.mastodon.nz.ap.brid.gy · 05/05/2026

Overheard on the commuter train: "I have to study my cheeks off for that".

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