Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱

@instantiator

Senior tech lead and developer, fellow at Newspeak House, keen escape room and puzzle gamer. (he/him) #CivicTech #Volunteerism #OSS #RetroComputing #Tzedakah #Vegan #BLM #CollectiveIntelligence #CI #ProDemocracyTech #PDT 🌱

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Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· 13h

He thinks he's supposed to act cool.

Momo, a beautiful little black cat, sits on a patio. He is looking towards a wall where sunlight that would ordinarily be dappled, because of gaps in the trees behind us, is now showing the eclipse effect - slim crescents of sunlight.

Momo is looking away from the wall now. It looks like he's trying to act unimpressed like an anxious teenager in the 90s who doesn't want to be called a geek.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· 22h

There are too many abandoned creatures in the world. We brought them to life and we let them down. If you'd like a companion animal, adopt.

This is Momo. Adopted as a pair with his sister, Suki. A year later, they are still friends. She was fearless from the start, and Momo has come out of his shell now that he knows he's safe.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· 1d

My wife, who is a leading criminologist, went to another town for a conference in June. I came along for the ride, and took myself to an exhibition about The Moon and touched a Moon Rock. I am 44 years old. It was a brilliant day out. My one regret is that we couldn't both go.

Photo from an exhibition about the moon at The Hold, in Ipswich. A case shows two pieces of moon rock - one light coloured and one darker coloured.

Two further displays are below that, with a label saying "touch real moon rock". Each has a small dome with a piece of "touchable moon rock" in it. An instruction says "Feel the shape of the moon rock from underneath."

Light coloured rock label: "This rock is from one of the pale areas of the Moon. Its white colour comes from its minerals which are rich in calcium, like bones and teeth."

Dark coloured rock label: "This rock is from a dark area of the Moon. It's solidifed lunar lava, called basalt. It erupted from a volcano on the Moon billions of years ago as lava, flower downhill into a large crater or depression, and then solidified into rock."

Further moon facts!

"When the Moon formed, its molten surface cooled to form this white rock called anorthosite. Its pale colour is due to minerals rich in calcium and magnesium. This white rock makes up much of the topograph (high areas) on the moon such as the mountains."

"The young moon was volcanically active and billions of years ago, laval erupted from large volcanic fissures. This molten lunar lava flower downhill and collected in large craters and depressions. It cooled to form the large, flat volcanic areas made of dark basalt rock. These are the dark areas you see when you look up at the moon."

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· 8d

The ancient magic is still alive. I found an affordable pair of sunglasses that I like. Now the heat wave is broken, clouds have filled the sky, and we may never see the sun again. Sadly, as we have also recently installed water butts, it will be forever cloudy but never actually rain.

A snowy forest background with text overlaid:
"Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!"
"How awful!" said Lucy.
- C. S. Lewis

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· 9d

The next grown-up, serious read... Not quite as many airlocks, beam weapons and alien races as my usual fare - but lots of character development!

A screenshot of the libro.fm audio book reader app, showing that it is playing the Lean Tech Manifesto.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· 9d

He's an apex predator.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· 15d

I've been enjoying the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I recently read a review by someone I respectfully disagree with, so here's a more positive perspective... I appreciate it may not be for everyone, but I've found it a surprisingly good read. instantiator.dev/post/dcc/ #DCC #DungeonCrawlerCarl

An XKCD comic with dialog: "Are you coming to bed?" / "I can't. This is important." / "What?" / "Someone is wrong on the internet."

An image of Dungeon Crawler Carl. First book of a series by Matt Dinniman. It's brightly coloured, and the cover is largely text, but there's an image of Carl running through what looks like a spikey cave, clutching a stick of dynamite, with his cat Donut in tow.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· 16d

Can't quite believe this 20 year old piece of kit from the bottom of my cables box saved the day! USB-C to USB-A to Belkin gigabit USB 2.0 ethernet adapter (released in 2006), to ethernet to shonky Sky Hub. Magic! ✨

Photo shows a Belkin F5D5055 gigabit USB 2.0 ethernet adapter connected to a USB-C / USB-A adapter and an ethernet cable. It was released in 2006.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· 28d

Work hard enough to defeat the Level 1 bot, and get through to a human, slightly less helpful than a Google search. Their special moves: 💥 conflicting advice! 💥 ask you to disconnect and tell them when you have done it! 💥 unnecessary upsell! 💥 escalate to a team who will tell you nothing is wrong!

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jun 26

🦇

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jun 26

They're doing their best. It's hot!

Two cats lie on a gravel path in the heat reaching out to each other, paw to paw. They look like they're posing for The Creation of Adam. It's a collage and below is the famous painting. God reaches out to touch Adam with his forefinger.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jun 20

London is getting hotter and its definitely a trend. #ShowYourStripes 2026 is 20th June. showyourstripes.info

Vertical stripes running from left to right show London temperatures over the years. Decades ago they were pretty blue, now they're hot red and it's definitely a trend.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jun 13

Momo, who has never done anything wrong in his entire life, would like to share this PSA that he created for you. Check your wheel hubs for perfect little angels every time, folks. (Cannot believe I caught this on camera. He's ridiculous!)

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jun 9

This cat is assembled incorrectly.

Momo, a cute little black cat, has curled up except for one paw which is pointed backwards. He seems perfectly happy about this.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jun 5

Inbox zero! Let's see how I do this time...

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jun 4

We all saw reams of text scrolling by on sci-fi computer screens from the 80s... Little did we know how weirdly accurate that was - or just how much of it was self-critical. Mind you, I'm pretty sure I do this all day every day for work...

Text from an AI model's reasoning process is used as the base image for a meme.

The text shows that it is largely trying to grasp the intent from a user's prompt (my prompt). The user asked it to review 2 comparison documents, but it found 2 filenames and only one of them says comparison in it. It seems to be having a little panic because it can't find an obvious second comparison document. It's debating the issue with itself.

Text on top of the image says "You took a perfectly good statistical model, and gave it anxiety. That's what you did."

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· May 30

Project weekend! Home Assistant, hass-eink-dashboard, and a screen from Invisible Computers.

A black and white e-ink display shows weather, inside and outside temperature, upcoming calendar events, the bins schedule and the current electricity rate.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· May 25

How do they rise up?

A sprig of lilac flowers with text printed in front of it: "Truth, justice, freedom, reasonably priced love, and a hard boiled egg"

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· May 20

#Interesting2026

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· May 10

I love this! Here's my (far less impressive) effort from 2005... instantiator.dev/post/text-ad...

A 3D render of a book. Words on the visible page are the opening text from the Inform text adventure "Shade".

The book has a red cover and is open on the first page. The paper is textured and printed in a navy sans-serif font.

*** Shade ***

A brief story by "Ampe R. Sand" (Andrew Plotkin)
First-time players should type "about".
...

Odd, how the light just makes your apartment gloomier. Pre-dawn darkness pools in the corners and around the tops of walls. Your desk lamp flares yellow, but the shadows only draw your eyes and deepen.

Not much of an apartment, no. One desk, paper-piled, with a dusty computer shoved to the...

(that's the end of the page).

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Apr 29

good chair = good posture #MomosTopTips

Momo, a little black cat who is a perfect little angel, sits on a towel on an office chair. He looks like a little person. It's adorable and you love him.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Apr 14

New album cover just dropped.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Mar 17

I am of an age now where I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna love it. (...and sorry for all those lost years when I didn't!) 👉 www.keepbritaintidy.org/our-work/eli... #ElderMillenial

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Feb 24

(For clarity) Yes it's GenAI, but he isn't. Here he is looking particularly handsome.

Momo, a little black cat, lies on a box facing you and your heart just melted.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Feb 24

My little wizard.

A sleepy black cat lies curled up fast asleep with a weather-beaten wizard hat on his head.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Feb 9

How long before vibe coding solutions start injecting and obfuscating their own telemetry?

Graphic of some ducks in a pond with text asking the question "Are some already doing this?"

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jan 22

Are Pets at Home ok? 🫣

3 texts from Pets at Home. The first stating that there has been an incident at the Harlow Store and that the order will be moved to Hertford. The second saying that the message was sent in error and everything is fine. The third saying that the store has closed with immediate effect!

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jan 10

Why can't I cycle around the "mountain"?

A graph of elevation for a cycling journey. It's flat for 90% of the journey, and the last part is a large spike where elevation goes up a lot before coming down again.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jan 9

SUKIMO #TADCFriend

A cute little picture of a cat is on a shiny 3D rendered door.

Lewis Westbury 💛💙🌱@instantiator· Jan 5

I can't not see Jax as Max. #TADC