Alex

@madfordmac.bsky.social

92 Followers 129 Following

Geek! 🤓 Server Engineer by day. 🌞 Church organist by night/weekend. 🌜 Occasional audio engineer. 🎙 Safe space. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ He/him

Jul 18, 2026 game board for hankgreen.com/smush with the letters: L R I Y S P G N U My final score was 344 points, winning the ★ pangram, clean plate, and no hints bonuses.
A graphic from the language learning app Duolingo features their owl mascot, Duo, holding a flame. The graphic reads, “I completed the June challenge. That is faster than 92.0% of all learners on Duolingo!”
A graphic from the language learning program Duolingo with their character Sari, who has a blue butterfly perched on her finger. It reads, “I completed the May Challenge. That is faster than 86.6% of all learners on Duolingo!”
Four Teladoc Health zippered cases are arranged on a beige blanket. In the back, two larger, structured, heather gray cases are showing their tops. The left case has a sky blue capital “D” on the center of the case. The center of the letter is made by a camera icon turned on its side. The right case has a lilac capital “A” in the center. The center of the A is formed by the icon of a computer monitor and the space between the legs is formed by a computer keyboard projected at an angle. In the foreground, two smaller, softer, black cases have their top edge tucked under the front edge of the larger cases. These cases also have letters matching the other cases, except the D is in lilac and the A is in sky blue.
A red Hyundai Kona EV parked on the shoulder of a rural road beside a stand of tall pine trees, photographed from a front three-quarter angle on a clear day.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Snow is falling heavily on the handicap ramp and empty outdoor seating area of a restaurant, covered in snow. Plumes of snow blowing off the roof are barely visible through the new snowfall.
A close-up of a black exterior door handle on a tan truck, with rusting chrome running boards along the bottom of the door and snow visible on the ground below.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
6 turkeys are standing in a snow-filled clearing in front of a mix of deciduous and coniferous trees. The snow has a variety of well-worn animal tracks through it, and the front of the frame has a burm of dirty snow piled up from a snow plow. 5 of the turkeys are at the right side of the frame, about to wander out of sight. One of them is looking back at the sixth turkey which is several yards behind them at the left of frame, hurrying to catch up with the gang.
Two shallow white rectangular plastic containers are sitting side by side in a portrait orientation. The bottom of the containers are lined with a grey rubber mat with a wave pattern. The top edges of the containers are labeled in bold black type. The left container has a battery icon with 1 of 4 charge bars filled and the text, “Used.” The right container has a battery icon with all 4 charge bars filled and the text, “Charged.”
A brown and white King Charles/Chihuahua mix stands in the grass facing down-right, but looking back down-left where her leash enters the frame, attached to the back of a red-and-black checked harness that has pulled over to her right side. A boarded walkway is visible top-right of the frame.
Drawn in a paper-cutout cartoon style, Duo, the owl mascot for the language-learning app Duolingo, kicks up his feet and holds up a white, 8-pointed star above 4 layers of blue clouds. 5 other 4-pointed stars of various sizes and a gradient of colors from orange blending back into the blue background are scattered around the focal star. Text in bubble letters at the stop of the image shows this is from the Duolingo Year in Review and says, “I’m a Stellar Student! I’m in the top 4% of global learners”
A stand mixer with a dough hook kneads a smooth ball of dough inside a stainless-steel mixing bowl.
Red and green northern lights dance above the silhouette of tall coniferous and deciduous trees, growing taller as they reach the left edge of the frame.
Alt text: A large parking lot is shown under a mostly cloudy autumn sky. Several vehicles are parked, including a blue SUV in the foreground with a few shopping carts nearby. Beyond the parking lot, a Murphy USA gas station with red and white signage stands on slightly higher ground, displaying gas prices at $2.71 per gallon. To the left, a beige industrial-style building with an “O’Reilly Auto Parts” sign is partially visible. In the background, a wooded hillside glows with rich fall foliage—vivid shades of red, orange, gold, and green stretching across the horizon. A row of utility poles lines the base of the hill. The lighting is the soft glow of late afternoon or early evening, with sunlight breaking through clouds to illuminate the autumn colors. The overall mood is calm and seasonal, capturing the contrast between the commercial parking area and the natural beauty of the wooded ridge beyond.
My current Pokemon Go level is 57: 4,788 Pokémon caught, 784 Pokéstops visited, 528km explored.
A tall deciduous tree stands beside a house, its branches spreading wide with dense foliage that’s beginning to change color for autumn. The upper canopy shows vivid patches of orange and red mixed among green leaves, while the lower sections remain mostly green. A few black utility wires run horizontally through the upper part of the image. Below the tree, a lilac bush appears mostly bare and brown. The house on the left has beige siding and part of a sloped roof visible. The background shows a clear blue sky and additional trees in partial view.
A sheet pan is sitting on top of a household range. Taquitos are arranged in two columns of 19. On top of the neatly arranged taquitos is a piece of aluminum foil with the edges neatly folded up into the shape of a pan, just big enough to hold two additional taquitos.
White plumes of smoke billowed from a black kettle grill in a yard. The grass is green but long. There is a green, carpeted stoop and awning of a porch on the left in the foreground and you can see a house with tan siding on the other side of a waist-height chain link fence in the background. There are streaks of late afternoon sun across the grass and through the smoke, but the scene is largely in the shade.
A loaf of sandwich bread on a wooden cutting board with shiny metal loop handles on both short ends. The bread is oriented vertically to show off the top scored in the shape of a grain of wheat and is has splotches of leftover flour scattered across the top.
A graphic from the language learning program Duolingo. The program’s character, Lily, is asking the user to translate the sentence, “My turtle, Raphael, is a police officer.” The user has provided an answer to Lily, written in German using 1-word building blocks, “Meine Schildkröte, Raphael, ist Polizist.”
Four clips from grilling the ribeye. First shows the lump charcoal just getting started in the chimney with newspaper ablaze underneath. Second clip is the charcoal almost ready with blue-hot flames coming out the top of the chimney. Third clip shows the steak after the first flip with dark grill marks over the hot coals now out of the chimney in the bottom of the grill. Fourth is a still picture of a dinner plate with half the steak and the garlic mashed baby red potatoes with a fork and steak knife crossed underneath.
A grand piano and Clavinova set up in the corner of our sanctuary. The corner of the Easter banner is showing behind the piano.
Graphic with a cartoon owl glowing bright orange like a trophy and the words, “I’m on a 200 day learning streak!”
Map of the U.S. state of Michigan with counties colored to show the percentage of people without power. Regions in the top and bottom of the mitten as well as the U.P. show 60% of the people without power.
A cat stares at a bulletin board stereotypical of one in a police drama with all the clues in the case. A post-it note on the bulletin board reads, "Where'd it jo?" The image is captioned, "The cat has become too obsessed with catching the laser."
A letter from a scammer offering to give me 30% of his $5M if I help him invest.
A "child" chicken is sitting on a couch in front of a T.V. talking to his "parent" chicken: "Video games are not a waste of time! Name another form of escapism that provides me with self-defense training for the zombie apocalypse!" The sound "Brains!" is coming from the T.V.
A graph showing predicted high and low “feels like” temperatures for January 20, 2025. The high is -10°F and the low is -23°F.