Invest time in sharpening your tools and improving your workflow. Even if it doesn’t seem worth the effort at first, remember: it compounds over the months and years you do this.

God Qwen models just think for so long it's so annyoing 🥲

DevEnv and nix-shell are those tools you didn’t know you needed, but once you figure them out, you simply can’t live without. Seriously.

They enable reusable development environments and are incredibly useful for any team; or even just for yourself if you work across multiple computers.

GitHub - austin-weeks/miasma: Trap AI web scrapers in an endless poison pit. Trap AI web scrapers in an endless poison pit. Contribute to austin-weeks/miasma development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com/austin-week...

Trap AI scrapers/agents in an infinite slop loop. Actually a good idea tbf

OpenClaw is insanely good at research and figuring things out if you give it enough tools and keep prompts short.

Better than most pre-built agents honestly.

Only bottleneck right now is inference cost. Once that drops and I can run better models without going broke, this gets infinitely better!

Here it is: github.com/teng-lin/no...

Just found an unofficial NotebookLM Python API that lets you interact with it from CLI and agents.

Been using NotebookLM a ton lately. Being able to script it, download podcasts automatically, hook it into agent skills... yeah this is going to be really useful.

⏬⏬⏬

Personal agents with custom skills are way more useful than generic ChatGPT interfaces.

Everyone gets the same ChatGPT. Your personal agent should know your tools, your CLIs, your services, your setup.

The memory stuff is cool but the real power is in the skills.

The best documentation is the kind you write for yourself.

Not polished wikis or README files... just notes on what you did, why it broke, how you fixed it.

Future you will thank past you for those messy notes way more than any official docs.

Xubuntu on a server is actually kind of perfect.

XFCE is lightweight enough that the GUI overhead is minimal, but you get the benefit of just opening apps when you need them.

Obsidian, Chrome, tools that need a display... they just work. No SSH + X forwarding nonsense.

Sometimes the simple >>

Learning Vim motions is worth it even if you don't use Vim.

VSCode has Vim mode. IntelliJ has IdeaVim. Even browser extensions exist.

Once you're comfortable moving around without a mouse, going back feels painfully slow.

The future of AI agents isn't everyone using the same ChatGPT interface.

It's personal agents that know your setup. Your tools, your services, your preferences.

I've been building custom OpenClaw skills for my stack and it's night and day compared to generic assistants.

Your first self-hosted project will probably break.

You'll mess up permissions, forget to open a port, misconfigure something.

That's fine. Breaking things is how you learn.

Just make sure you have backups before you start experimenting.

Switched from running OpenClaw in Docker to a full Xubuntu VM on my Synology NAS.

Docker kept throwing weird errors and installing packages was a pain. A VM just makes sense.

Yeah it uses more RAM, but having a lightweight GUI (XFCE) on a server is actually really practical. Who knew!

Static site generators are still the correct choice for most projects.

No database, no server overhead, dirt cheap hosting, fast as hell.

But everyone wants to over-engineer everything with Next.js and deploy full backends for a blog.

Just use Hugo or Astro and move on.

Self-hosting is way less scary than people think.

You don't need a rack of servers. A $50 Raspberry Pi or old laptop is enough to start.

Run Vaultwarden, Nextcloud, maybe a media server. Learn as you go.

Once you start, you realize how much control you've been giving up.

Hands-on sysadmin experience is still incredibly useful.

AIs can help you get there eventually, but if you actually know the system, you can just look past whatever bullshit the AI is telling you and solve it way faster.

Sometimes doing it yourself is just better. AIs don't have all the context!

Been trying out Podman lately and it's... fine.

But honestly Docker just nailed the UX over the years. Little things that make it more user-friendly, stuff you don't notice until you switch.

Podman might be the future but Docker still feels more polished right now.

Terminal interface displaying a command prompt using Fish shell, showcasing features like command suggestions and syntax highlighting.

Fish shell is so underrated.

Out of the box it just works. Syntax highlighting, auto-suggestions, tab completions... all there by default.

Meanwhile everyone's spending hours configuring zsh or bash to do the same thing. Just use fish.

Being a software developer right now feels strange.

You build faster than ever, but you don’t spend enough time with what you’re making to care about the details.

And if you don’t care, how do you sell it?

Home Manager is the best dotfiles solution I've used.

Tried everything else first. With Home Manager you don't even have dotfiles anymore, it's all in your Nix config.

You can add modules, install packages for Linux or Mac (through Homebrew), keep the config in the module itself.

Here you go!

rgo.pt/posts/runni...

Getting OpenClaw running on a Synology NAS was way harder than it should've been. Undocumented config values, Portainer quirks, bugs with no obvious fix.

Finally got it working. Wrote it all up so you don't have to go through the same pain.

👇👇👇

Just set up Syncthing on my Synology NAS and honestly, this is how file syncing should work.

No cloud middleman, no subscription fees. Just peer-to-peer syncing between your own devices. Set it and forget it.

Using it to keep projects synced between my laptop and NAS. Super reliable.

Didn't think macOS would have a decent window manager but Aerospace is actually really good.

Especially if you're used to i3 on Linux. Been using it on my MacBook and it feels pretty natural.

NormCap interface displays a screenshot with text selection tools, showing a newspaper headline and a text editing window below.

Normcap is such an underrated Linux tool.

Let's you copy text directly from screenshots or anything on your screen. Super useful when you're working with images that have code or text in them.

One of those small utilities that just makes life easier.

I was wrong about PHP.

Modern PHP is actually pretty solid. Classes, type hints, the whole Laravel ecosystem... it's come a long way.

It's also the only mainstream language that was built specifically for the web from the start. That counts for something.

Everyone should be using a password manager.

If you want to self-host one, just use Vaultwarden. It's been running on my server for years and has literally never given me a single problem. Super reliable.

Bitwarden has their own self-hosted Lite thing now but honestly, Vaultwarden just works.

Hmm yeah good tip thanks!

I guess it really depends on the time you run flake update and rebuild. Sometimes stuff just doesn't packages just don't work with each other