Do you love reviewing code other people wrote? Do you get a tickle of pure joy to find and criticize the mistakes and problems in sloppy code? Me neither. You know what I do love? I love pouring my creativity and insight and empathy into a project. I love designing architectures and solutions […]

My New Year's resolution is to throw out Kinder Surprise Egg toys right after I build them.

[pragmatic llm use] LLMs are fantastic at transforming text, and this includes migrating config and boilerplate between two similar tools. Yesterday, I replaced a puppeteer test script with playwright in 2 seconds. Today I modernized a react site from webpack 4 to vite while I gave my son a […]

#photo #snow #barrie

Frohes Neues Jahr!! 🥳🍾

Bought and beat Unpacking the other day it was pretty fun. I like games I can beat in a few hours to round out the 100s of hours I put into other games like Zelda or Minecraft. Started Wanderstop yesterday and am enjoying it so far. #wanderstop #unpacking #gaming #cozygames

I'm a very nuts-and-bolts kinda guy and this morning I'm struck VIVIDLY by just how weird that is Like I read so many threads on here that go, like, 🐰 I have a problem affecting me 🦆🐇🐴🐢🐀 40 post discussion 🐹 The actual problem is capitalism AND THAT'S THE END OF THE THREAD And like, 🐹 isn't […]

Grandma's coming over for dinner, time to vacuum behind the oven.

Anyone sort the books on their bookshelf in chronological order by publish date? Seems like a fun approach. #books #MastodonReads

Trying to run an LLM on my local computer, but every time I ask it a prompt I have to pour a bottle of water on my computer. wtf?

Most futuristic error message I've come across: *** WARNING: connection is not using a post-quantum key exchange algorithm.

I just completed all 12 days of Advent of Code 2025! #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/ What a lovely and funny ending! I'm glad I explored my hunch instead of overthinking this one. See you all next year! My solution: https://github.com/jesseskinner/adventofcode/tree/main/2025/12

I just completed "Reactor" - Day 11 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/11 This one was definitely more approachable than yesterday's. Part one took a few minutes, and part two took a few attempts but didn't need anything too crazy. Only one day left! Looking […]

I've completed Part One of "Factory" - Day 10 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/10 I'm gonna have to give up on part Two. I kind of know how to achieve it.. but it's taking up way too much of my time and energy. Maybe I'll try part one of the other puzzles […]

Anyone using Zen Kernel? Every time I install Arch, I'm learning about some wild new thing.. #zenkernel #linux #arch

I wish someone would remaster all of B.I.G.'s albums to strip out Puff Daddy's voice...

I just completed "Movie Theater" - Day 9 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/9 I feel lucky I eventually got the right answer here.. there were some (literal) edge case flaws in my algorithm, I think, but fortunately my input data didn't run into any of those […]

"Playground" - Day 8 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/8 I gave up.. I was able to solve the sample, but couldn't find the correct value for the input. My logic looks correct and I can't see any bugs.. Spent hours on this, so I guess today's the first day […]

I just completed "Laboratories" - Day 7 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/7 Well, this was the first day that caused my laptop fan to spin up, because my algorithm would've probably outlived the heat death of the universe. In the end it was simpler than I […]

I've completed "Trash Compactor" - Day 6 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/6 Not too hard at all, but wasn't able to reuse much from part one in part two. My solution: http://github.com/jesseskinner/adventofcode/tree/main/2025/06

I just completed "Cafeteria" - Day 5 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/5 Part one was super easy. Part two took me a long time to find a "simple" solution, even that ended up being more complex than I expected. My solution is here […]

I just completed "Printing Department" - Day 4 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/4 This one was nice and fairly straightforward too. Waiting for the impossible ones to start dropping :) My solution here […]

I just completed "Lobby" - Day 3 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/3 I liked this one.. problem two forces a nice refactoring. My solution is here: https://github.com/jesseskinner/adventofcode/tree/main/2025/03

[Pragmatic LLM use] Going through some ancient burned CDs. Found one with one file, "1st_read.bin". I couldn't run it, so I ran "strings 1st_read.bin" to extract any text from the binary. I pasted that into Claude and it told me it's a "Sega Dreamcast homebrew application—specifically an […]

HEY CANADA. MP Elizabeth May is sponsoring a petition to get Electoral Reform back in front of Parliament. Could all of us who were utterly betrayed in 2016 when JT reneged on this please go put our electrons onto this one? yes, yes, the petitions don't mean a thing WILL happen, but there was […]

I just completed "Gift Shop" - Day 2 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/2 My solution here: https://github.com/jesseskinner/adventofcode/tree/main/2025/02 My laptop was already on fire trying to brute force this one, and it's only day 2. Going to have to be a […]

I just completed "Secret Entrance" - Day 1 - Advent of Code 2025 #adventofcode https://adventofcode.com/2025/day/1

This Black Friday is looking pretty white... #blackfriday #snow

Taking a bit of a risk on this refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad P1 gen 4 with 64gb ram. If it turns out not to be a scam and I don't get ripped off, I think it'll end up being a very good deal […]

[Using LLMs for coding] I've been coding with LLMs for years, but I'm frustrated with the hallucinatory, sycophantic garbage it generates. I've tried a lot of different things, but I found a new workflow for coding with AI that I'm really enjoying. I'm using Claude Code, but keeping it in […]

Tip for junior software developers: if you're asking your client/manager something like "Is it possible that we're going to want to do X one day?" the answer is always yes, whether or not they say so. Everything's possible, so architect for flexibility.

How to tell something was written by an LLM: - Your eyes glaze over immediately - Emojis used as list bullets - You fall asleep by the third paragraph - Doesn't say anything that hasn't already been said a million times before - Heavy use of em dashes - Probably trying to convince you to […]

OpenAI might be really big, but it ain't too big to fail. https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/tech/openai-backtracks-government-support-chip-investments

Need help completing easy but boring programming tasks? Would you rather spend more time thinking at a high level and crafting good specifications and documentation? Want an intelligent assistant that can learn and improve over time? Happy to review code and guide development through ongoing […]

Quantum entanglement exists, therefore we have the power to acquire material wealth through intention. Isn't science cool??

TIL you don't need Microsoft Office (or whatever it's called) to view powerpoint files. You can just upload them to this sketchy website to view them for free: https://m365.cloud.microsoft/ Make sure you have popups turned on for that site because, well, it must be made by some company that […]

I went to a web dev conference (Web Unleashed) and the hottest tech was server-side rendered basic HTML and CSS with a sprinkling of vanilla JavaScript. The tides are definitely turning back to where they were 15-20 years ago.. My 2007 book Unobtrusive Ajax is surprisingly cutting-edge again! […]

It doesn't happen often, but running `terraform destroy` to destroy an entire application - database, vpc, autoscaling pool, load balancer, database, etc. - is such an amazing time saver & feels exhilarating. #terraform

What book tracker do you use if any? Any recommendations? I want to be able to own my data, but would also like recommendations and maybe a community. I just want to track books I've started & finished. Goodreads is Amazon so I'd rather avoid that, I think. BookWyrm is cool but I don't see an […]

I promised myself I wouldn't try to time the market by selling stocks anymore, but damn is it ever tempting right now... #stocks #investing

I can't find anything about this online. Any ideas??? #linux #exploit #security

Should I do it?

You know that side project of yours that you feel bad for never working on? Is it something you really enjoy? Or is it work disguised as a hobby? Or maybe an obligation you created for yourself a long time ago? Here's your opportunity to let that go, take a deep breath, and make room for […]

It begins... #autumn #trees

I'm thinking of trying Defold for game development. I love Lua, and I like the maximum-backwards-compatibility philosophy of Defold, because my biggest fear is using some engine that I then have to upgrade/maintain/replace down the road. The cross-platform publishing looks really promising. Has […]

Turn on, tune in, log out

The striking thing migrating from AWS to OVH is just how many features are built into AWS that I took for granted. Autoscaling, SQS queues, SES email sending, CloudWatch analytics, security groups, secrets management, just to mention a few. The problem is that if someone is trained in AWS cloud […]

I don't have to work today. Or tomorrow. (I'll have less money, but I can choose that if I want.) My day is a blank canvas. I get to decide how I'll fill it. What am I most curious or excited about? What do I want to work on, if anything? Being able to set your own hours as a freelancer […]

The past few months, for the first time, I prioritized coziness & rest, minimizing stress and ambition and mindfully enjoying time travelling with my family. I just dropped my son off at school, and now I feel it's time to start a new season of focusing on my business again. But I feel the […]