Cat Parole, Coding Sprints, and a Memorial Tattoo (Catching up: July 11 – July 31)
TL;DR: It's been a hectic three weeks. The main event has been the slow, tense, and ultimately successful integration of our new cat, Minnaloushe, who graduated from "cat jail" to a tentative peace with the other furballs. In between managing the cat drama, I got a memorial tattoo for Puck, poured a ton of work into decafclaw and other side projects, and fell down a rabbit hole of game streaming and retro classics.
The Great Cat Parole Experiment
When we last spoke, Minnaloushe was in "cat jail" in my office. Well, the big guy has been on a real journey. After a scuffle that put him back in solitary, he's slowly been earning his freedom. There have been many cycles of parole, supervised visits, and a lot of just hoping for the best.
The good news is, we seem to have turned a corner. The cat jail gate has been retired, and we're now at a stage of uneasy but peaceful coexistence. They're even eating together without any bloodshed. It's a relief, honestly.
Of course, a free-roaming Minnaloushe means a new level of chaos. He's a menace who chews on arcade sticks, steals the rubber feet off my laptop stand, and generally causes adorable trouble. But he's also a big, goofy bear of a cat and I'm glad to have him out and about now.
A Tattoo for Puck
In the midst of all the cat drama, I got my second tattoo, a memorial for my old friend Puck, who we lost back in 2015. It was done by the talented Katy Bisby, and it came out beautifully. It’s a wonderful way to remember a very good boy.
Shipping, Shipping, Shipping
At some point, I should probably write more about workaday projects. I'm pretty quiet about those. But, it's been a productive few weeks on side projects: I've been banging away on decafclaw, my personal agent project, and byom-sync, the "bring your own music" playlist tool. The GitHub activity stream has been a blur of commits, PRs, and new issues.
For decafclaw, there's been a ton of work on improving the scheduling system, fixing bugs in the vault and skill loaders, and generally trying to make the whole system more robust. I even started to tackle the project skill's tendency to hallucinate tools.
For byom-sync, I've been focused on improving purchase link resolution, adding support for RSS feeds, and starting to spec out a "shopping list" feature.
It's been a lot, but it's satisfying to see these projects moving forward.
Adventures in Game Streaming
I finally caved and tried out GeForce NOW, and I have to say, it's pretty impressive. It's led me to rethink my whole living room gaming setup, a project that's been evolving for nearly a decade. The idea of a powerful PC tucked away in the basement, streaming games to any screen in the house via Moonlight and Sunshine, is very appealing.
For those not familiar, Sunshine is a self-hosted, open-source replacement for NVIDIA's now-defunct GameStream, and Moonlight is the open-source client that lets you stream from it. The combination promises a high-performance, low-latency experience. Might just be the end of an era for my dedicated living room gaming PC.
Miscellanea
A neighbor had a block party with a live brass band, which was a delightful surprise. Here's the playlist of a few songs I recognized - wish I'd taken notes! Also, this is me trying out my new mixtapes site as an embed:
I watched a raccoon have a full-on pool party in our backyard pond, and I'm not even mad.
The pond bandit returns. I also bookmarked Tiago Forte's guide on "How to Build a Second Brain".
A few more interesting reads from the past few weeks: htmx ~ Working With AI: A Concrete Example, an essay on the pros and cons of AI in development, and how to avoid the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" problem; I love LLMs, I hate hype, a classic from geohot on the difference between genuine excitement and the hype cycle; and Memories Can’t Wait—or, How I Learned to Keep Worrying About the Web, a call to action from Jeffrey Zeldman on the importance of owning your own content.
I also bookmarked The Internet Doesn't Want Readers. It Wants Livestock., a wonderfully grumpy take on the state of the web.
On the more technical side of things, I saved a link to Playwright on GitHub Actions: The setup that actually runs fast which has some great tips on speeding up CI, and a post about Firefox in WebAssembly, which is just cool.
And finally, a couple of interesting articles on the culture of coding: It's OK to Use Coding Assistance Tools To Revive The Projects You Never Were Going To Finish and The LLM Critics Are Right. I Use LLMs Anyway., both of which resonate with my own experiences.