Pengo Wray
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pengowray.bsky.social
Pengo Wray
@pengowray.bsky.social
820 followers 1.8K following 120 posts
Game developer, information designer, nature photographer, amateur radio aficionado, threatened species conservation, biotech dropout. Melbourne, Australia. Developer of: Sprinto the discord bot, STREAMLING overlay, FT8play. 🐨🦘🐙🐳
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pengowray.bsky.social
Pengo Wray @pengowray.bsky.social · Nov 12
Hi. My claim to fame is that I designed the visual language for extinction risk on Wikipedia.

I wanted to avoid presenting an inevitable march towards species loss. That's why EX is not the final category, but the first. The mental model is of a fuel gauge. A full tank indicates the least risk.
Example screenshot of the Wikipedia taxonomy infobox (taxobox) as it is seen for species which use the older IUCN 2.3 system. This taxobox is for the Western swamp turtle of Western Australia, which is threatened with extinction and assessed as critically endangered, indicated by a red highlight on the letters CR, which are displayed alongside other IUCN conservation status abbreviations from EX (extinct) to LR/lc (Lower Risk / least concern). This species has not been re-evaluated since 1996, so the old IUCN 2.3 categories are seen here, including the possible option of CD or "Lower Risk / conservation dependent" which is a category no longer used in modern extinction risk evaluations. Above the conservation status in the taxobox is a photo by Bahudhara of a turtle swimming in an aquarium environment at Adelaide Zoo. "CITES Appendix I" is listed under the IUCN status, indicating the species is protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and is included under the first appendix, the highest level of CITES protection. The taxonomy infobox (taxobox) as it is seen on the angonoka tortoise article on Wikipedia, displaying the modern IUCN 3.1 categories for conservation status. The angonoka tortoise of Madagascar is critically endangered, as communicated by a visual indicator of the IUCN assessment categories. At the top of the taxobox is a profile portrait photo of the tortoise. The rest of the Wikipedia article—which mentions that the name angonoka comes from the Malagasy word used as the local name of the species and that they are also called ploughshare tortoises—is not shown.
pengowray.bsky.social
> git undo git: 'undo' is not a git command.
November 5, 2025 at 3:27 AM
pengowray.bsky.social
love the BoM but a sunny day with a 25% chance of reaching one millimeter of rain at 7pm does not warrant a raining storm cloud icon for today
September 28, 2025 at 10:53 PM
pengowray.bsky.social
What if the experience of consciousness resides wholely within a single cell of our brain, and it gets replaced when we sleep? #ShowerThoughts
September 11, 2025 at 11:09 PM
Reposted by Pengo Wray
rosemarymosco.com
FYI this is my favorite sign I’ve ever seen
A sign with a silhouetted person sitting on a beluga whale with a red circle with a line over it.
September 2, 2025 at 2:26 AM
pengowray.bsky.social
Galapagos tortoises aren't named for the Galapagos Islands. The Galapagos Islands get their name from the galápagos (giant tortoises). #TodayILearned #TIL
(Not a Galápagos tortoise). This is an Aldabra giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys gigantea) at a zoo in Japan. Their shell is smooth and dome shaped. Galápagos tortoises by contrast can have a saddleback shell and an extra-long neck, though some also have dome shells too (they are morphologically diverse, varying between islands). The Aldabra and Galápagos tortoises are approximately as different from each other as cats are from dogs, each going their separate ways about 50 million years ago. The Galapagos tortoise is critically endangered. The Aldabra tortoise's threat of extinction is less immediate but the two other giant tortoise species of the same genus did not survive human cohabitation. Photo by Pengo Wray 2005.
August 26, 2025 at 5:47 AM
pengowray.bsky.social
i think these guys remember me. #pigeons #pigeonsky 🪶
Late at night, a couple of pigeons looking curious on an interstate train platform. I've encountered these pigeons only once before over a year ago. They ran up to me when they saw me.
August 25, 2025 at 9:58 PM
Reposted by Pengo Wray
nuheyenuh.bsky.social
ballpoint arowana details #illustration #sciart
Detail shot (1/2 of a single drawing) of a ballpoint pen illustration, printed into multiple editions using the pronto plate lithography printmaking technique. It features a popular aquarium hobby fish, the Asian Arowana, Scleropages formosus, on a white backdrop, glaring at the viewer. Arowana are considered a difficult and controversial variety of fish. They’re endangered under the IUCN Red List and illegal to keep in many countries, although captive-bred fish farm programs for some regions thrive to meet demand. They can grow to 35in. long, and eat a meaty, high protein diet. Individuals can live 15-20, sometimes 25+ years in captivity. Detail shot (2/2 of a single drawing) of a ballpoint pen illustration, printed into multiple editions using the pronto plate lithography printmaking technique. It features a popular aquarium hobby fish, the Asian Arowana, Scleropages formosus, on a white backdrop—this half shows his tail and rear fins.
August 18, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Reposted by Pengo Wray
andyjohnson.xyz
"A kind of SF detective story, starring the curious combination of three scientists, a cop, and a pair of friendly killer whales." I wrote about Cachlot (1980), one of my favourite Alan Dean Foster novels so far, in 2022.
August 18, 2025 at 9:54 PM
pengowray.bsky.social
does anyone play WASD shooters like this?
hand on the home row, pinky pressing w
August 18, 2025 at 11:36 PM
pengowray.bsky.social
idk
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, ... 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 44, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 45, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 46, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 47, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 48, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 49, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 51, 52, 52, 52, 52, 52, 52, 52, 52, 52, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 53, 54, 54, 54, 54, 54, 54, 54, 55, 55, 55, 55, 55, 55, 56, 56, 56, 56, 56, 57, 57, 57, 57, 58, 58, 58, 59, 59, 60
August 12, 2025 at 3:57 PM
pengowray.bsky.social
i used to feel self conscious about phrasing things awkwardly but now it means i sound less like ai i guess
August 2, 2025 at 10:34 PM
Reposted by Pengo Wray
wilderness.org.au
The ngolak / Baudin's black cockatoo is a striking icon of WA's jarrah forests and the south-west.

When they fly overhead, they'll often be observed in flocks. But the population of these stunning birds is in a critical decline, and they are now listed as endangered.

#australianbirds #WildOz
A photographic portrait of a Baudin's black cockatoo, with black feathers and open beak, yellow pollen visible on the edges of the beak. The bid has a startling black eye with red rimmed around, a cheerful expression and a blurred background.
July 23, 2025 at 4:33 AM
pengowray.bsky.social
Nice to see the revival of old memes, looking forward to that penguin running left and right with a blue or red background
June 4, 2025 at 12:04 AM
pengowray.bsky.social
If a chessboard's tiles are jumbled, can a tool help rediscover the underlying structure using only the motion of the knight?

I found the fCoSE graph layout algorithm stood out from the rest, published just 4 years ago.

#InformationDesign #visualization #complexity #NetSci #dataviz #sciart #♞
April 21, 2025 at 3:50 AM
Reposted by Pengo Wray
glynmoody.bsky.social
Why is there a “small house” in IBM’s Code page 437? - blog.glyphdrawing.club/why-is-there... this article is so insanely detailed I felt my head about to explode... (v LanguageHat blog)
Why is there a "small house" in IBM's Code page 437?
There's a small house in the moddle of IBM's Code Page 437. Why?
blog.glyphdrawing.club
April 14, 2025 at 7:59 AM
pengowray.bsky.social
For noveling month, I'd always spend too much time coming up with a ridiculous book concept and then spend November writing something completely different. Here's the earliest I can find

Going to have to back these up before the site goes down for good. RIP nanowrimo dot org 🪦
"Pretend Hen: The Tail of an Underwater Albino Peacock" project on nanowrimo website and edit box for my noveling project description from 2011 because this is the only way to view the text, which follows: project summary: A sunburned albino peacock overcomes his fear of slimy seaweed while journeying to the bottom of the ocean where he meets a beautiful merpeahen, who helps him on his quest to find a vitamin supplement to reduce his overall cancer risk.
April 1, 2025 at 8:28 AM
pengowray.bsky.social
I briefly considered letting you pull your currently playing song directly out from of your music player's memory. But this approach was too hacky, difficult, generally unnecessary for most music apps, and now I've found the library to do it also triggers alerts
So i won't be able to let you pull your currently playing song name directly from of your media player's memory using this neat little .net library. I mean I could but it'll make my software look like a trojan. Fortunately there's very few music apps where this approach would be needed or helpful. Screenshot of a Microsoft security alert for memory.dll, from the nuget package found at https://github.com/erfg12/memory.dll/ which is a package that I guess is also used by malware
March 24, 2025 at 2:55 AM
pengowray.bsky.social
I am a good responsive developer
An itch.io forum post of user requesting a feature (Apple Music support), and the response just 338 days later, me saying I've added it.
March 24, 2025 at 1:59 AM
pengowray.bsky.social
fonts are more similar than different. don't let graphic designers tell you who you are based on your typeface.
March 20, 2025 at 11:33 PM
pengowray.bsky.social
Orcas can't smell
March 3, 2025 at 1:31 PM
pengowray.bsky.social
while half awake this morning i got stuck staring at the unicode character for zero divided by zero like why would that even have an encoding %
February 14, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Pengo Wray
azbatrescue.bsky.social
Snuggle buddies. A cuddle pile of female Mexican free-tailed bats (T. brasiliensis). 🦇
January 28, 2025 at 7:01 PM
pengowray.bsky.social
Connected up an old hard drive to use for backups and found this
Screencap of Explorer with a hard drive named "This Disk Is Slowly Failing (D:)" which is a warning I left for myself
January 25, 2025 at 12:09 AM
Reposted by Pengo Wray
rebbitzman.bsky.social
Past lives and loves. #hamradio
January 16, 2025 at 5:33 PM
pengowray.bsky.social
wish i were a writer so i could write things
January 6, 2025 at 1:22 AM