Why I Switched to a Flip Phone Recently, I decided to switch to a flip phone as my daily driver. The main reason? To reduce my access to distracting apps and to be less available to those not incredibly close to me. While I believe willpower is the best defense against distractions, I see the flip phone as “training wheels” — a temporary tool to help me avoid distractions until I can do so without assistance....
When managing multiple servers, it’s important to have a reliable load balancer in place. In many cases, you may want to prioritize one server, using it as the primary, while having a backup server only take over when the primary is unavailable. This approach is called a “preference-based failover.” In this blog post, we’ll go through the steps to configure Caddy as a reverse proxy load balancer with a preference-based approach....
How to ask questions about your local files
An Obsidian trick I’m using to keep track of my recipes, and other files.
I’m a big fan of tiling window managers. Today I use i3, which I happen to have configured to use dmenu, which is an efficient tool for searching across all your applications. I often find myself wanting to add custom applications to dmenu, say a custom script I’ve written, and I’d like to capture how that’s done. Example Desktop File Let’s say you want to add Postman to your dmenu. You’ll need to create a desktop file for it....
Intro Large language models (LLMs) are impressive, capable of generating human-quality text, translating languages, and answering questions. However, there’s a catch: they are limited to the data they were trained on. This means their knowledge can be outdated and they may struggle with topics that emerged after their training. But what if we could give our LLMs access to the vast ocean of information available on the web? This powerful combination would allow your local LLMs to:...
Introduction In the world of software development, there are many different approaches to building applications. One approach I’ve had the pleasure of using is called “schema first development”. This approach emphasizes defining the verbs, routes, request and response structures before diving into writing code. This methodology proves especially beneficial when developing HTTP REST services. Benefits Instead of jumping straight into coding, schema first development encourages you to start by creating a formal specification of your API using a standardized format like Open API (formerly known as Swagger)....
Introduction Living in a house without central air, I’ve dreamed about getting heat pumps and mini splits installed. Until I can pull the trigger on that large project. Types of AC Units I’ve made peace with considering window AC units, which come in two main styles: window AC: They sit in your window sill. Part of the unit is inside and part of the unit is outside. portable AC: They sit entirely inside your home....
When writing software, we often need to handle various types of input arguments. To maximize flexibility and ease of use, I propose prioritizing the following methods for accepting arguments: Command-line arguments Environment variables Default hard-coded values As we move down the list, the flexibility of defining these values decreases. Command-line Arguments Command-line arguments offer the highest level of flexibility and are the easiest for end users to provide. They can be specified directly at the terminal or included in scripts that call your program....
Privately chat with your own data using RAG.