Off today so catching up with the blog. Lots going on as always; at work I am increasingly being led down a technical leadership path, which is not always comfortable for me, and mostly takes me away from doing lovely technical stuff, but it seems to be what they need me to do; the global health work is progressing, but as always taking longer than expected.
Reading
I am a bit behind with my reading plan, due to work spilling over into life, but I have just updated my reading log; I am travelling abroad soon and hope to catch up then.
Social media fatigue
I have got over my initial enthusiasm for Bluesky and now just occasionally browse it or Mastodon, usually when I am too brain-dead to even watch television.
Karakeep for bookmarking and RSS
I have set up Karakeep on my home server and really like it; I am back to following lots of RSS feeds and Karakeep hoards any web pages I have visited in a searchable form; the Android app is simple but fine; I have even configured it to use the OpenAI API for automatic tagging.
Paperless GPT for document management
Having realised that the OpenAI API was simple to use, and not that expensive if you carefully choose your LLM, I then set up paperless-gpt to sort out my PDF collection; since I got it working it has worked well.
Vibe coding and AI chatbots for technical problem solving
In general, and in part inspired by this article (Why You Should Be Vibe Coding in Your Home Lab Right Now!), I’ve been resorting to AI chatbots more and more to solve technical issues; I am not sure it saves time, as you often have to iterate several times to get working code, and then carefully check what it has given you, but it can be more fun than frustratedly Googling some obscure issue.
PeerTube for training videos
I set up PeerTube as an interim platform for training videos, which I made using Awesome Screenshot; it is a little bit slow to load but otherwise has worked well.
Anki flashcards
I am back to using Anki more - it even helps with guitar practice.
Kodi media centre and Samba file sharing
I managed to install Kodi on the family TV without breaking anything; now I can watch videos downloaded to my PC (usually free film noir or other classics from YouTube or similar resources - I don’t have the bandwidth for anything illegal) from any device that can connect via Samba, including my phone using Cx File Explorer.
Blog and Proxmox updates
I have upgraded and tidied up the blog but there are still some things I don’t like about the current theme and I keep looking for alternatives. Upgraded Proxmox to the latest version on my home server without major issues and added another terabyte of storage; it is not fully automated but all my backups now go to BorgBase.
Xerte Online Toolkit
I fixed my instance of Xerte Online Toolkit so that a colleague can experiment with it for e-learning.
Looking ahead
Looking forward to a belated post-pandemic recovery sabbatical next year - only taking three months off, but planning to do lots of climbing and meet up with far-flung friends I haven’t seen in a long time.