Tootfinder

Reflective pause in Cirque de Troumouse, Pyrenees (just too grand to photograph)...
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #Photography

Maybe a good opportunity to illustrate the purpose of one of the more uncommon packages in #ThingUmbrella: The https://thi.ng/hex package provides hexadecimal formatters for a variety of word sizes (4-64 bits) and also a…

Americans are dying from extreme heat. Autopsy reports don’t show the full story https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/oct/09/extreme-heat-deaths-autopsy

This from @… and the maybe-apocryphal story of software devs paid per bug fixed are •classics•, cannot be repeated often enough https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi/115544773972842232

Renationalisation of train operating companies will be complete in 2027 (Louise Haigh's legacy) but it's important to note that the profitable rolling stock leasing companies will remain private, continuing to leach money out of the system.
Most of Great Britain’s major rail operators are back in public hands – is it working? | Rail industry | The Guardian

Inside the downfall of the BBC's top bosses: many see their departure as part of a wider political effort to shift BBC reporting to the right on key issues (Michael Savage/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/media/ng-i…

'iptraf-ng' is a TUI network monitor; it's a really easy way of watching bandwidth on each of your interfaces, and has modes to split between say IPv4/IPv6/TCP/etc, or packet size; and shows you all the IP connections currently transferrign thing, or all the ethernet devices currently doing stuff.
https://github.com…

The utopias of yesterday – GfZK Leipzig presents the history of Robotron...
(Robotron was East Germany's largest computer manufacturer and they also made the machine I first got to use on my way to becoming a "computer toucher"... Almost exactly 10 years ago, I wrote about those early experiences and the lessons learned already back then in this long read article here:

The Jacob’s Ladder of coding
Anecdotes and questions about climbing up and down the ladder of abstraction: Atari, ARM, demoscene, education, creative coding, community…

‘The glacier is slowly melting, it’s clearly visible’ – This is climate breakdown https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/nov/10/lake-palcacocha-glacier-melt-peru-this-is-climate-breakdown…

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #EasternEchoes
Trịnh Công Sơn:
🎵 CUỐI CÙNG CHO MỘT TÌNH YÊU
#TrịnhCôngSơn
https://tinhmahoney.bandcamp.com/track/cu-i-c-ng-cho-m-t-t-nh-y-u
https://open.spotify.com/track/3GieeMT3tACs6bnJhYXeD1

Been in-depth studying the PDF file format spec for the past few days... it's mind boggling that this format with its capacity for monstrous complexity managed to become the de-facto standard for modern documents. So many questionable decisions & undue flexibility in there (in the wrong places) making even a simple task of reliable metadata extraction (for example) incredibly hard... I understand and value flexibility, but not at this cost! Guess I will have to keep on using one of t…

Alaska hit by severe flooding that carries away homes (CBS News)
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/alaska-flooding-typhoon-halong/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251013/p60#a251013p60

It's f#ck*ng unbelievable what effort it takes to re-install a d%mbsh!t tool like SnippingTool* on Windows 11 .. especially when offline.
Seriously... installing W11 last week (it took me 2.5 days as I tooted last time) ... and configuring it to be even usable in some kind freaked and stressed me out so much... I grew grey hair in my beard.
When I shaved on sunday it was a real WTF moment.

Democracy dies behind closed doors...
https://mastodon.social/@chatcontrol/115539210365913782

Fight Chat Control (@chatcontrol@mastodon.social)
Attached: 1 image

I read up about the history of the German/Austrian Alpenverein[1] and its former widespread antisemitism and exclusion of women, starting from very early on (from the mid/late 1800s). Several of its regional sections were explicitly founded for "christian baptized, aryan citiizens" only. Already in the early 1920s, 90% of the club's sections voluntarily adopted the so called Aryan paragraph[2] in their bylaws, jews were expelled and not even allowed to enter some of the mountai…

Deutscher Alpenverein – Wikipedia

🇺🇦 Auf radioeins läuft...
Talking Heads:
🎵 Psycho Killer
#NowPlaying #TalkingHeads
https://nooid.bandcamp.com/track/talking-heads-psycho-killer-nooid-bootleg
https://open.spotify.com/track/7dSCxR4LqkmxoBrq9MzVSD

Samsung rolls out its Vision AI Companion, a generative AI-powered upgrade to its Bixby assistant, across its 2025 TV lineup, with support for 10 languages (Dominic Preston/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/news/818355/samsung-tvs-bixby-generative-ai-con…

Samsung brings a generative AI-powered Bixby to its TVs
Samsung Vision AI Companion will let you ask Bixby questions about what’s on screen in real time, powered by Copilot and Perplexity.

Wow! This is important.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/nov/08/off-road-wheelchair-trackchair-hiking?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Wow! This is important.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/nov/08/off-road-wheelchair-trackchair-hiking?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I love when technology is used for actually good things https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/nov/08/off-road-wheelchair-trackchair-hiking

Alone at the (seeming) end of the world. The Hochjoch Hospiz at the end of the Rofental, near the former confluence of three (formerly) major glaciers in the central Alps: Hintereisferner, Kesselwandferner and Hochjochferner. Vernagtferner is also nearby, which at times interrupted the outflow of these other glaciers, caused an ice lake to form, which when it burst led to widespread destruction in the valleys below (several times since the early 1600s). These days all of these glaciers are s…

Las Vegas Review-Journal NFL Challenge picks — Week 15 https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/betting/las-vegas-review-journal-nfl-challenge-picks-week-15-3595045/

The next launch attempt for New Glenn with #ESCAPADE is no earlier than November 12, due to forecasted weather and sea state conditions: https://www.blueorigin.com/missions/ng-2 - Blue Origin has worked with the FAA and range to select a launch window from 19:50 to 21:17 UTC; the live webcast starts at T-20 minutes.

from my link log —
A workflow for maintaining feature branches and submitting patches to PostgreSQL.
https://blog.2ndquadrant.com/maintaining-feature-branches-submitting-patches-git/
saved 2019-01-15

Breaking: Thing everyone expected to happen, happens. Now what? (Charles Gaba/ACA Signups)
https://acasignups.net/25/12/11/breaking-thing-everyone-expected-happen-happens-now-what
http://www.memeorandum.com/251211/p150#a251211p150

Oh no! My beloved dinosaur, the cassowary, has been kicked to the curb, once again unfairly out of the running for the Guardian's bird of the year comp. 😭🦖
Looks like it's now up to my favourite chorister, the magpie, once again.
#ByeByeBirdie #BirdOfTheYear

DHS says shutdown layoffs at CISA will proceed despite court injunction
https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/11/dhs-says-shutdown-layoffs-cisa-will-proceed-despite-court-injunction/409332/?oref=ng-homepa…

DHS says shutdown layoffs at CISA will proceed despite court injunction
The cybersecurity agency says it has complied with the court’s order because the firing of 54 people in its Stakeholder Engagement Division was planned beforehand and doesn’t affect unionized employees.

The ruin of Gaza: how Israel’s two-year assault has devastated the territory | Gaza | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/oct/07/the-ruin-of-gaza-how-israel-two-year-assault-has-devastated-the-territory

#ThrowbackThursday Platinum printing session at the now defunkt Oregon College of Art and Craft. The pictures are from an unforgettable winter hike in the Eagle Creek valley, just a few days prior (and 6 months before a wild fire consumed the entire valley)...
(Also see my prev. message for my new darkroom setup :)

How "porno-troll" Strike 3, owner of porn production company Vixen, made millions by filing copyright suits accusing users of illegally downloading its videos (Tarpley Hitt/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interact…

RE: #QuoteOfTheDay: "Not to be dramatic but we are living in societies with soul-shatteri…

NFL Week 15 betting breakdown: Predictions for every game https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/betting/nfl-week-15-betting-breakdown-predictions-for-every-game-3595073/

MonochromeEvolutionaryBioDigitalMultiCellularSymbiosisStruggle
(Selected stills from my infinitely evolving C-SCAPE project, 2022 - made with #MonochromeMonday

How "porno-troll" Strike 3, owner of porn production company Vixen, made millions by filing copyright suits accusing users of illegally downloading its videos (Tarpley Hitt/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/society/ng-interact…

Just pushed a new version of https://thi.ng/genart-api (v0.31.0) with these updates:
- (Art) platform adapters can now have an optional `.configure({...})` method to customize platform-specific behaviors. To ensure future portability of your artwork (between different art platforms), calls to this method shoul…

thi.ng/genart-api

Sharp bettor backs side before line moves on Raiders-Eagles game https://www.reviewjournal.com/sports/betting/sharp-bettor-backs-side-before-line-moves-on-raiders-eagles-game-3594700/

Alone into the rocks: Tunnel walk and traces of glacial plucking at 2200m
(And yes, the colors really were that stunning...)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography

Monday mood: #n5MD records at its best: diamat — misunderstood pt. 2 (2013) — contemplating, harmonious, slow, epic build up...
https://soundcloud.com/n5md/diamat-misunderstood-pt-2

Aeolian dune simulation (made in 2017) for #MeerMittwoch:
The images show a screenshot of the JavaScript application to create the simulation and some Houdini renders of exported height fields. The sim itself had 5 macro params to control the behavior of the interactive deposit/erosion/transportation process. It supported tileable patterns, customizable seed terrain (images) and ran r…

GrungyDistanceFunctionVoronoiPixelArt for #TextureTuesday...
These are some selected snapshots of a single [endless] variation of my generative De/Frag V2 piece from 2021, an intentional attempt at creatively breaking the traditional aesthetic of #Voronoi diagrams and revealing the inne…

Into the reeds...
#MorningWalk #NaturePhotography #Texture

On the way to Gepatschferner, September 2025... How I miss this place!
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography

Been updating my personal Mastodon tooling to download and convert my bookmarked toots. Here's how little code is needed to download a single message and convert its HTML content into Markdown, all using these #ThingUmbrella packages:
- https://thi.…

Long winter nights, red light on, UV burner on... So have missed making my own prints, and so glad to be able to pick this up again (and also working with older techniques, which are new to me), all after more than three decades... Still some more kinks to work out before I can share some proper prints, e.g. experimenting with different exposure times, toners (gold/selenium), fixers, concentrations... All very much like a science experiment and meticulous log keeping has been key (as have be…

An interesting 4-part series of articles about ore formation processes (published on Hackaday, of all places):
Introduction And Magmatic Processes
https://hackaday.com/2025/08/13/ore-formation-introduction-and-magmatic-processes/
Hydro…

Ore Formation: Introduction And Magmatic Processes
Hackaday has a long-running series on Mining and Refining, that tracks elements of interest on the human-made road from rocks to riches. What author Dan Maloney doesn’t address in that series…

Favorite landscape and time of year.
(Upper glacial valleys are often so colorful and especially in autumn, when the colors of the many different types of rocks are complemented by those of the tundra vegetation up there... it's a harsh climate/environment, at the same time so peaceful/friendly [if the weather is right] — a feast for the eyes and good for the soul... yet, each time also a bittersweet experience, seeing how fast glaciers are disappearing)

One early morning in November, on my way to bird watching...
(There're actually hundreds of birds on that lake, just out of view, but I wanted to capture that quiet mood and surreal light first...)
#MorningWalk #Autumn

An old thread about a 2021 project (incl. animations) for #TilingTuesday...
https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi/111510598139643775

From yesterday's early morning walk...
#LandscapePhotography #NaturePhotography #MorningWalk

Incredible light and detail in this oil painting...
Hans Gude, Fjordlandskap fra Balestrand, 1848
(Norway Nasjonalmuseet)
#Art #Painting #Landscape

Reading about the #Arduino acquisition brings up dear memories from its early days... Co-running/hosting some of the very first Arduino workshops in London in 2007/8, sharing the office with Massimo's mini-company TinkerIt Ltd., meeting the Arduino core team for dinners... prior to that, working on Processing with Casey Reas and Hernando Barragšn (creator of Wiring, from which Arduino emerge…

Just found this image on Wikipedia[1] and added some arrows to point to the locations where I took the following photos, on two sides/valleys/countries of the same ice field...
#1 Gepatschferner (Austria)
https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi/115508735940502202
#2 Langtauferer…

@… has a very good short summary video about the wider impact of RAM price hikes (likely to last at least 2 years)...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWNSPL6BRuY

Reading this below on the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and by extension the symbolic end of the GDR, the place I grew up in... with neighbors and parents of classmates belonging to the Stasi (east German secret police), the fear my own parents might be disappeared — years later seeing the thickness of the files of surveillance materials the state/stasi had collected on my family... remembering early autumn 1989, joining friends protesting in the streets every Monday after …

Tall Goldenrod — 100% living up to its name... Such a stunning sight in the November morning light! 😍
#NaturePhotography #Photography #MorningWalk

Just pushed an update for https://thi.ng/genart-api (v0.29.0) which now supports dynamic switching of time providers. This is useful for situations where you want to switch from realtime animation to offline-based timing, e.g. to export high-resolution image sequences and give the browser time to grab & encode e…

thi.ng/genart-api

The unforgettable evening light & hike on the day I resigned from my job back in 2021...
#MonochromeMonday #MountainMonday #BlackAndWhite

Only one way to go here, always forward... just as in life!
(This is the equally stunning & adventurous ridge between Feigenkopf and Große Klammspitze, the summit ahead, almost touching the clouds — if you zoom in, you can just about make out the summit cross... One of my fave hikes ever. Picture is from early May 2022)
#SilentSunday

(Yet another) 1-minute excerpt of an #Umbra variation, one of my recent algorithmic/generative realtime animation art pieces, constantly evolving and exhibited exclusively on Layer.
Very much love this color theme, especially after ~15 seconds... 🤌
(See above hashtag for other clips)
Made with ❤️ and my opensource

Neither #Affinity nor #Darktable seemingly support 1D LUTs, which would have been too easy and useful for my #DigitalNegative preparation tool... Instead they both insist on using only 3D LUT…

Another 1-minute excerpt of an #Umbra variation, one of my recent algorithmic/generative realtime animation art pieces, constantly evolving and exhibited exclusively on Layer.
(See above hashtag for other clips)
Made with ❤️ and my opensource https://th…

Exactly my own approach:
“I avoid grandiose plans. I start with a small piece that I can do. I go to the root of the problem and then work around it. It's building brick by brick.” — Muhammad Yunus
#QuoteOfTheDay #BottomUpDesign

More details about Surrogation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrogation
"[...]managers tend to use measures as surrogates for strategy, acting as if measures were in fact the strategy when making optimization decisions. This appears to occur even if a measure-maximizing cho…

Tags are sets. Many apps support tagging of content, but most of them (incl. Mastodon) treat tags only as singular/isolated topic filters, akin to a flat folder-based approach. But tagging can be so, so much more powerful when treating tags as sets and offering users the possibility to combine and query tagged content as sets (think Venn diagrams), i.e. allowing tags to be combined using AND/OR/NOT aka intersection/union/difference operations...
Below is a simple query engine to do jus…

Just WD40-ed all the joints and screws in my old cranky & creeky tripod... and oh my, everything's sooper smooth again... 🤌

Piz Cambrena (3607m) and its glacier viewed from Bernina Pass at sunset, two weeks ago... A sliver of Lago Bianco in the foreground.
...and the same place in 1911:
https://akon.onb.ac.at/#id=AKON_AK082_104

The Big Short Guy Just Bet $1 Billion That the AI Bubble Pops
"According to the Securities and Exchange Commission filings, his fund, Scion Asset Management, bought $187.6 million in puts on Nvidia and $912 million in puts on Palantir, as CNN reports.
Burry similarly made a long-term $1 billion bet from 2005 onwards against the US mortgage market, anticipating its collapse. His fund rose a whopping 489 percent when the market did subsequently fall apart in 2008."
…

The Big Short Guy Just Bet $1 Billion That the AI Bubble Pops
Michael Burry, who shorted the housing market in 2008, has bet over $1 billion that the shares of AI companies Nvidia and Palantir will fall.

Been working on some additions/adjustments for #Umbra, one of my recent algorithmic/generative art pieces, currently shown exclusively on Layer.
Here's a 3 minute segment (of an infinite realtime animation). Give it time to develop/change! Fullscreen playback probably best...
Made with

Not quite Canadian Shield, but close... and at much higher elevation (~2300m)
(Another impression from the same region from yesterday's pictures, see description there...)
#MountainMonday #LandscapePhotography

Beautiful colors a week ago, yesterday everything was already white up there... 😍
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography #Alps

Rediscovered yesterday and again can't stop listening to this minimal, yet stunning, haunting, evocative live performance by loscil...
Nomadic Streams - VNM Festival 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_fHWXxryfk

Btw. Apologies for being very slow to catch up with various replies received over the past days... 🙏

Always amazing to see how storms/clouds make landfall (or literally bounce off like on the west coast of Greenland)
(Also wish this account would exist for European weather... sickly warm! :)
https://weatherishappening.network/@WEATHERISHAPPENING/1153178597031…

No Fishing on this morning walk...
(From a beautiful and positively frozen Sunday AM in late 2022... I shared those images already back then, but hey...)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography

Another track/demo made with Forth and https://thi.ng/synstack (see previous toot), at least partially, i.e. everything but the drums... Improvised live via MIDI (Korg Nanocontrol), then sampled and arranged in Ableton...

thi.ng/synstack

Just discovering #looptober and wanted to share this old Forth experiment (from already 9-10 years ago 😱) with my https://thi.ng/synstack VM and its DSP/Synth vocab, all running on STM32 dev boards. This Forth-based sta…

Arrived at the "office"... Working in/above the clouds today (at least so far...)
#MorningWalk #OutdoorComputing

Some images from earlier this year, edited with #ThingUmbrella tools)...

Researching DIY solutions for preparing digital negatives for my salt/kallitype printing experiments. Working on a little curve fitting tool/library (of course using https://thi.ng/umbrella) for computing tone mapping curves derived from sample swatches (here 5% steps of gray/density). The screenshot shows 2nd - 5th d…

#ReleaseFriday — New version 3.1.0 of the recently talked about https://thi.ng/args package, a declarative & functional CLI argument parser & app framework. I updated the arg specifications to be fully self-desc…

RE: https://godforsaken.website/@Shrigglepuss/115661852506660130
Wondering about practical effects of this RAM price gouging... e.g. will it lead to increased awareness of memory usage/demands and better resource usage, more people/orgs switching …

Drifting away into the mist on this cold gray day... this track communicates it pretty well! Meditative.
Sebastian Mullaert - In The Blurry Mist Of Yourself (Wa Wu We Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1xurxy2DDE

Randomness in Narrative Video Games: Aesthetics of Different Random Systems
https://azhdarchid.com/randomness-in-narrative-video-games-aesthetics-of-different-random-systems/
Some of these considerations & differences als…

Randomness in Narrative Video Games: Aesthetics of Different Random Systems
On virtual dice, cards, and other alternatives.

Btw. I know there hasn't been much new work on #ThingUmbrella over the past month. That's because I've been spending _a lot_ more time on my multi-faceted toolchain for note taking, asset management (images/videos, incl. auto-creation of different versions) and also aimed as generator for blogs/websites, feeds, visualizations (e.g. incl. those on the current

Open source building blocks for computational design. Est. 2006
thi.ng is a set of ~350 complementing code libraries & projects, a long-term effort devoted to Computational Design and Art in its many forms.

Finally got around documenting a little more the small CLI app "framework" I've been using for almost a dozen projects now (incl. several work projects). The package in question is now already 3 years old (https://thi.ng/args), but I've only just managed now to add a basic, commented usage example for th…

Declarative, functional & typechecked CLI argument/options parser, value coercions etc.

Rest in peace, Jane Goodall! 😢
#RIP

So close, yet still so far...
(Standing roughly where the Hintereisferner glacier reached to in 1850. From here it's another 20 mins to the Hochjoch Hospiz at 2413m... where I was the only soul there that day, enjoying true edge of the world vibes. Wonderful!)
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography

Seven days ago... At 2200m, enjoying some of the last blueberries of the year (and the colors of their bushes/environment)
#ThrowbackThursday #NaturePhotography #Photography

My son has added a new project to his portfolio and is also looking for job as environment artist/designer... check it out!
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@Nekso/115309157319706178

Nekso (@Nekso@mastodon.gamedev.place)
Attached: 4 images Recently finished my latest personal work "Processional Way". Breakdown and more shots on my Artstation: https://nekso.artstation.com/projects/rlNRzG Credits: Trees - Ardacraft tree build team https://essentialschematics.gumroad.com/ Terrain - "Thalassira" by Redranger https://www.planetminecraft.com/project/thalassira-conquest-reforged-9k-x-7k/ Mod - Conquest Reforged Shaders - Bliss shaders by Xonk #footpathfriday #minecraft #conquestreforged #photography

Swiss evening lights (from a week ago)
cc/ @… :)
https://mastodon.thi.ng/@toxi/115247559670254950

#WinterWonderland arrived early this year...
(From our #EveningWalk in the Ammergau Alps last night... 25-30cm fresh powder everywhere, -7℃, no people, but lots of animal tracks)
#SilentSunday

Recursively subdividing/tessellating a hexagon with Catmull-Clark (made with unreleased thi.ng/geom-mesh pkg, anim is from March 2017)...
#TilingTuesday #Geometry #Subdivision

Four ways (of many) recursively subdividing/tessellating a pentagon (made with #TilingTuesday

#ReleaseWednesday — Thanks to a user suggestion, I've added support for declarative canvas pixel density adjustments in the following packages:
- https://thi.ng/hiccup-canvas
-

Hiccup shape tree renderer for vanilla Canvas 2D contexts

Natural particle system, frozen in time (1/1000s exposure time).
(Close-up side view of the 160 meter tall Stuibenfall in the early morning light...)
#WaterfallWednesday #NaturePhotography

Just beam me back there again... Right now, exactly two weeks ago. Alone in the valley, on my way back to civilization. Alpenglow forming at the peaks opposite...😍
#FootpathFriday #LandscapePhotography

A 260 meter, 65 floor sky scraper in Zermatt... "a symbolically disruptive gesture that radicalizes the densification trend found in mountain resorts"
Very much hoping this proposal will be shut down before it gets traction! 🤬
https://www.domusweb.it/en/news/gall…

A skyscraper in the heart of the Alps: in Zermatt, the tallest tower in Switzerland
The newly unveiled concept aims to bring to the Swiss Alps the densification and verticality strategies typical of metropolitan agglomerations.

Close-up view of the audio-responsive LED floor installation I co-created for the KEF Muon launch in 2007 @ Sala del Cenacolo (Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia in Milano). The animation was repurposed from one of my first projects I created with Processing (in 2003)...
The 2 meter tall speakers were designed by Ross Lovegrove and made from milled solid aluminium...
The installation was created by Moving Brands (my old employer), a short video of the project/instal…