I'm Alex Kearney, a PhD student studying Computer Science at the University of Alberta. I focus on Artificial Intelligence and Epistemology.





Congratulations Alona! The department is lucky to have you as a permanent fixture.


Every couple days I do a check to see who's migrating over to mastodon using debirdify. Up until this week, it was mostly AI people who were making the move. Interestingly, it seems like the migration has broken out into the "chronically online but not a techbro" community.


Trying out the new pip. Absolutely perfect hash <3


I'm really pleased with how much of the plant wall we were able to complete this weekend. This was my first time doing mitered corners, and they came out so clean. The sill at the base of the wall is removable to access the water... I'm actually surprised that we were able to get the tolerances right so that you can slide the base cover off.

What remains:

  1. Painting the casing to match the windows in our home.
  2. Mounting lights to the frame.
  3. Hooking up the electrical.
  4. Plants!


Making some progress on the plant wall!

  • Cut and painted the pieces
  • Built the wooden mounting fixture
  • Attached the trough to the base
  • Wrapped the wall in a moisture barrier to prevent it from degrading
  • Attached the felt pockets plants will live in :)

Still need to figure out how to mount the lighting to the whole system. Hopefully we finish the trim tomorrow.


Cat-sitting a cutie


Hey Swaroop! Nice to see ex-tweeps here :-) I was a tern on the magicrecs team back in 2020.

Sorry for your loss <\3


One more RL nerd over here :).


CAD-ing up a plant-wall for my living room. I'm going to put a felt panel filled with tropical plants on the wall. Thinking of using rail lights to give the plants the 'sunlight' they need. I'll use a gutter as a reservoir at the base, and drip-irrigate the plants with an aquarium pump.

If all goes well, it should be fully self-sustaining!


There's a good pun, hidden somewhere inside that URL ;)

It's nice to see folks hopping on the decentralisation train.