A Hundred-Year-Old Pedagogical Theory That Elevates AI as a Thinking Partner
“Explain it so a ten-year-old would understand!” A hundred-year-old pedagogical model combined with a theory about language models has helped me think about how to best use ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini as sounding boards and for learning new things – without losing the ability to “fly by the seat of my pants.”
There is no cloud, but a server in a closet
This spring I got an old motherboard from a colleague. "Build your own server," was the challenge. Half a year later it's running at home in a closet and has replaced several cloud services I previously used.
Linkding is my new bookmark manager
Mastodon was right. Linkding is a great bookmark manager.
Some quick suggestions for your reading list
Busy weeks, and not nearly enough time to complete any of the drafts for the blog. In the meantime, at least a couple of links to interesting things I’ve read lately.
Preparing to share my bookmark backlog on the blog
Looking for recommendations on good bookmark managers, as I plan to start sharing what I have in my read it later pile on the blog.
Town squares, backyards, better metaphors, and decentralised networks
I continue to think about decentralized networks. And I'm wondering, among other things, if we need squares or courtyards, and why good metaphors play a role in wise decisions.
Decentralized is more important than being decentralizable
“Why did you choose Mastodon and not Bluesky?” This is my answer to that question. It begins with a law from the turn of the millennium that was initially described as a failure, takes a path through domain names I've owned for nearly three decades, a need to test the winds, and ultimately lands on the fact that right now, I prioritize “decentralized” over “decentralizable” as a matter of principle.
Three apps that bring your feeds together in one place
Being an internet user means constantly jumping between different services and websites to check what's new. But there are alternatives. Tapestry, Reeder, and Surf are three apps that let you gather much of the content you're interested in—all in one place.
Media monitoring with LLM assistance
Language models make it possible to approach media monitoring in a new way. Instead of keyword searches that try to filter out what I might be interested in, the job is handled by a language model that “assesses the news value” of my most important feeds — based on a prompt where I describe both myself and my interests.
Condensing The Iceberg
What we need isn't algorithmic-free feeds. We need access to the nuts and bolts so that we can tune the feeds, i.e 'condense the iceberg', in ways that makes sense to us.
🤞Fingers crossed! If everything works as expected, this should be cross posted from my blog to Mastodon, thanks to #n8n
Trying to understand DMARC, DKIM, SPF, and other email authentication protocols. Goal: Improving email deliverability. Status: Not even halfway there.
Preparing your Instagram export for Pixelfed import
I my social feeds I see questions on stalled Instagram imports when trying to move images to Pixelfed. I struggled with this a few months ago, and found a solution (at least for the particular problem I had): Pixelfed doesn’t like caption-less posts.
Blog question challenge 2025
Blogging. Why do I do it, how, history? Let’s dive in.
Additional Thoughts from Simon Willison's 2024 Review
Simon Willison's summary of AI developments in 2024 makes for compelling reading – as I have previously shared on my blog. Upon reviewing it again and processing my own notes, I thought I would share some additional thoughts here.
If you are short on time, this is the AI summary of 2024 to read
If you only have time for one summary of what happened in AI during 2024, Simon Willison's is the one to read.
Yay! Got Drafts integrated with GitHub so I can post both thoughts and link posts from mobile with very little friction.
Fingers crossed! If I've got everything configured as I hope, this is a note published to my blog from my phone, and further pushed to my Mastodon feed using #echofeed! 🤞
My Top Newsletter Picks Right Now
In a Slack thread at work, we started sharing newsletter recommendations. These are mine.
First test. A short thought captured using iOS Shortcuts, pushed to GitHub, and built on Netlify. Or?
Got a recommendation to have a look at WorkingCopy, a Git client/editor for iOS, for a mobile workflow for posting to this blog. Seems to be exactly what I needed for getting new posts online. And as a bonus, it integrates with iA Writer!
I'm just getting up to speed with Git. What a thing. Amazing to have the equivalent of "Save Game" in your code editor. And how it would have helped me when I wrote my books!
We need to refine our discourse on Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is an incredibly expansive concept. It encompasses a plethora of technological innovations and ways to utilize them. If we're to find the right way to use this tech, we need to sharpen our conversations about AI. Only then can we apply it correctly and for the right purposes.
Finite feeds and friendly friction
How a little road bump in your iPhone nudges you to make more deliberate decisions on where you spend your time.
Social media, algorithms, user control, and server costs
What I want is better control over the algorithms, both on a general level and also access to some settings to fine-tune how they perform.
Tinkering with tools is not necessarily procrastination
You have to practice to become better. And trying out tools – be it features you are not using in your current one or exploring something completely new – is a way to practice.
Put a personal domain name under the Christmas tree
Online services come and go. A personal domain name is there for as long as you want it to be.
Three thoughts on Tana
On freeform structure, complexity, and data portability.
Obsidian plugins and future proof notes
Obsidian plugins help with different parts of your knowledge work, and with different kinds of notes. Understanding those differences can help when deciding what plugins to use, and how.
What is the exit plan for your notes?
I'm willing to sacrifice both features and UX for the longevity of my notes collection. And right now, I only find longevity in locally stored markdown files, text files that can be opened in any text editor on any device.
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