We put an electric gate opener on the gate on our driveway. There’s been a lot of tweaking and configuring, but it basically works. The solar panels, though, are insufficient to recharge the batteries after a day of contractors coming and going — this is one of the drawbacks of living in the redwood forest;Continue reading “Infrastructure Project: Gate Opener Battery Case”
Category Archives: Practical Applications of Knowledge
App Design Project: Inbox Assistant
The other day, Miguel de Icaza announced a pair of Swift packages to do email stuff. This, of course, makes me happy. I love email. Email is one of the greatest technologies in existence for the sometimes online computer: it gracefully handles periodic disconnections, so it’s my go-to for thinking about how to deal withContinue reading “App Design Project: Inbox Assistant”
Feature: Editing Preview
…or, WYGIWYG Context: in the Olden Days, I used a word processing application to write papers for school. The computer I used didn’t have pixel-level display, so rather than rendering the document as it would appear on my printer, I just got to edit the text along with the embedded control codes to turn onContinue reading “Feature: Editing Preview”
Local or Cloud? I Dunno.
This is more of a whinge than anything constructive. For all three readers who follow this blog, feel free to skip this entry unless you’re dying to find out why I haven’t made any progress on my current coding project.
Home automation system Home Assistant
Home automation is a thing that keeps getting talked about and marketed and played with, but which overwhelmingly manages to miss being actually useful for me. “Set the lights in the den to 50% and tinted amber,” is such a common example that I feel like I must be one of the only humans whoContinue reading “Home automation system Home Assistant”
Software Architecture Headache – Dependencies
I want to make my applications share data across devices, and do it even if the greater Internet is unavailable, if there’s a local network. So, peer-to-peer stuff. I went looking and found a framework that seems to be aimed directly at peer networking: LibP2P. There’s even a Swift implementation of it, sort of. EarlyContinue reading “Software Architecture Headache – Dependencies”
Framework: PowerSync
I’ve decided not to sweat trying to sell my applications (or even make them available) through the App Store. That is pretty freeing, really. It means I can stop trying to solve everyone’s problems and just focus on solving my problems. Given this new clarity, I’ve been thinking about what my problems really are, and the oneContinue reading “Framework: PowerSync”
My Creepy AI Tool
I recently spent some time with an LLM doing some brainstorming. Some people have observed that our current crop of AI models don’t so much create as they copy and remix. Let me just start out by saying that I’m not great at everything, and if there’s a way for me to ask the, I dunno, few hundred millionContinue reading “My Creepy AI Tool”
Bronze Age Brain Cloud
Discussions about the use of AI (specifically LLMs) in business are all around right now. Here’s some link soup, with fresh ingredients sourced over just the past few days: use of AI tools at work mandated vibe coding drops production database (but the question of not using the LLM doesn’t arise) AI generated music purportsContinue reading “Bronze Age Brain Cloud”
Static Site or Not?
Recently I’ve been interacting with Apple Help Books and, as a result, static site tools. I’m starting to wonder if maybe I should migrate my blog over to a static site kind of thing. The current site is a WordPress blog, but I’m in no way using all the whiz-bang options available there. What’s theContinue reading “Static Site or Not?”