Hi Everyone. I know it's been a minute since I was last here.
There's nothing like a little technical side-project to force me to write some things down. But, a lot has been going on these last few months--and years, actually, since my last post was in
{checks notes}
2023?!?
Well. There's no day like today to break the streak. Let's get into what's been going on.
Spring Break 2026 🏖️
One of the reasons I’ve finally been able to write is because I just came off of spending a week off with my kids during their spring break. It really felt like the first time in a long time that I took a moment to breathe and do things that actually give me energy. I’m forty years old but still figuring out how to live my best life... go figure.
It started with spending a couple nights camping at South Carlsbad State Beach.
And then it moved on to having time to just organize the house, clean the garage, and do some gardening. Boring for some; clarifying and life-giving for me. I think the reason these kinds of activities are so helpful for me is that every little bit of disorder I observe exists as a sort of psychic splinter in my mind. Any time I can take action to reduce those splinters, I really do feel a lot better about existing.
For example: cooking spices. I recognize this is 💯 a first-world problem, but we’ve just been tossing them into a pantry sliding drawer for the last eight years. Which meant any time you wanted a specific spice, you had to either remember exactly what the lid looked like or lift every single one to see the label. Madness! I mounted eight spice rack shelves inside the pantry door and I just... feel just that much more more relaxed in my day.
Nerding Out 🤓
I have such a love-hate relationship with technology. And most of the time it's love - it's probably the main way that I've survived/thrived in my line of work for as long as I have. So after we camped and I cleaned, I decided to take on a new project: self-hosting the a local AI model that I could run on my old gaming pc. Gemma 4 in case anyone is curious. I mean. Probably not.
Running an LLM is kinda like owning a 3d printer (which I don't....yet). It's really cool to have. You do a do a lot of cool things with it once you get it all working and stood up. And then it will be there collecting virtual dust until it's totally surpassed by a new model in the next couple hours.
I say all that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, of course! Going through the motions of standing up llama.cpp, compiling it from source, selecting the right model, tweaking tons of settings and configs for my WSL2 environment, token context window counts, system prompts - to some extent, it's fun for me. Of course, TBH, there is an undercurrent of the exercise that is work-motivated for me - given the somewhat existential oppor-threat-tunity that advanced LLMs are bringing to the technology space[1].
The project isn't quite "done" because while the model is running, the tokens-per-second count is... not stellar. Even with 64GB of system RAM, I only have 12GB of VRAM. I think the advent of LLMs is the first time I’ve ever been truly covetous of people with Macs. Them and their unified system memory!
I'll probably continue spending time working on it, tweaking it, trying to eke out the best performance I can. And then I'll hook it up to a CLI tool like Aider and see how well it can stack up against Claude Code[2]. Because if I can save some money on tokens, I am going to try to do it.
Finally, I spent a few nights experimenting with using the Google Antigravity to migrate this-here very blog from being a static site built on the Hugo framework to Ghost CMS. Why Ghost CMS? Well that was it's own long journey and we are not going to get into that this go round[3].
Note to self: a bunch of friends have asked me about how I'm practically using AI in my day-to-day life. Probably a good thing for me to write about in the future. What do you guys think? Let me know if you're interested in those thoughts. ↩︎
This is not me saying that I credulously think I can achieve Claude levels of capability w/ a local model. But given how finicky things have been with their pricing model, API stability, and how quickly I've burned through tokens - it definitely feels worthwhile to consider having a broad set of capabilities to be able to leverage for different problems. ↩︎
I did try to use Liferay DXP. I tried very hard. Among other reasons, let's just say that a Synology NAS is, at least right now, not up to the task. This also is probably it's own full blog post. ↩︎
Speaking of new blog...
✨New Blog!✨
In addition to the new coat of paint here there are some substantial differences in terms of functionality and how this blog actually works. Because of the new platform we're running on, it enables me to post content with different levels of visibility:
| Access Level | Who can see it? | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Public | Everyone | Random guides, general essays, and public reflections. No login required. |
| Members | Subscribers (Free) | Mostly what this means is that you can opt to get updates here sent to you as email newsletters - but it is required if you want to get access to the Family & Friends content. |
| Family & Friends | Verified Circle | The most personal stuff—family updates (like what I would write for our yearly christmas card) and more unfiltered thoughts. |
So, in order to access some of the content here you will need to sign in and you will need to be added (manually) to the Family & Friends group. I'm honestly looking forward to this because I'll feel more free to write and share about updates on our family and myself without worry that things are going to the public internet.
There's also some cool stuff that's not really important to anyone else, like how the blog is now entirely self-hosted from my NAS in my house and that newsletters from the site to anyone who joins will be a much more reliable fixture. If you're interested in getting access to the more personal thoughts, please subscribe or read more about the blog here: About
What's Next?
Well. Hopefully more writing. I don't know. We'll see. 🙃 Thanks for being you. And for being cool.
-jr