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My open notebook

I have been writing here since 2015. These days it is mostly about AI agents, Linux and the tools I build myself, what worked and what broke along the way. At heart I write about my own studies and experiments for myself; if you are reading, that is a bonus :)

23 articles

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18 Oct 202611 min readPi-hole blocking 1 in 5 DNS queries in the house
My homelab on a 2018 Mac mini: disks, DNS and Tailscale
A Mac mini on Ubuntu and CasaOS, drawing 5.5 W, holds the laptop backups, my music, this site's staging and Pi-hole, which blocks one in five DNS queries in the house. Installing the apps was the easy part; the work was deciding where the data lives and how each device reaches it.
#homelab
#linux
#networks
Quick preview
TL;DR // KEY POINTS
- The SSD holds the system, containers and databases; the 1 TB USB HDD holds the bulk, bound to /DATA via fstab.
- Services get .home names that Pi-hole resolves to the Tailscale IP, so they only work on a device in my tailnet.
- Pi-hole blocks 1 in 5 DNS queries in the house, but for months it only served 4 devices because of DNS set on the Deco.
Summarize with AI:
17 Oct 20268 min read309-line script with the cgroup v2 freezer
game-mode: I freeze work to play, without closing any window
A Niri shortcut freezes Chrome, Slack and the terminals with the cgroup v2 freezer, blanks the leftover monitors and turns on quiet mode. Steam and music keep going. Getting there cost a Steam painted black and a game mode that not even its own command could turn off.
#linux
#shell
#niri
Quick preview
TL;DR // KEY POINTS
- It freezes scope by scope under app.slice, not the whole slice, so the exit shortcut itself is not born frozen.
- Steam, emulators, Noctalia and whoever is playing sound in PipeWire stay out of the freeze.
- Opening an app with app.slice frozen paints the window black; that is why the script only freezes and never launches the game.
Summarize with AI:
16 Oct 20267 min read7 shortcuts, 1 script, 15 BATS tests
Scratchpad on Niri: windows that vanish and return with a shortcut
Niri cannot minimize a window. A 199-line script and a hidden workspace make WhatsApp, Obsidian and YouTube appear and disappear with one key, and Discord, Spotify and LocalSend return to the tray.
#niri
#wayland
#shell
Quick preview
TL;DR // KEY POINTS
- Niri does not minimize windows: a named, hidden workspace plays the role of i3 and Sway's scratchpad.
- The window returns on the focused monitor with move-window-to-monitor, not a workspace index, which repeats per monitor.
- Tray apps close to the tray; the rest goes to scratch, and a single line in the preset decides.
Summarize with AI:
16 Oct 20267 min read41 iPhone shortcuts migrated to YAML
espanso: iPhone text replacement, now on my Linux
I used macOS Text Replacement for years and still use it on the iPhone every day. On CachyOS with Niri, espanso does the same in any text field, after three tweaks the docs never mention.
#linux
#tips
#productivity
Quick preview
TL;DR // KEY POINTS
- On Wayland espanso reads the keyboard via evdev and needs setcap; without it, it runs and sees no keys.
- The first start exits 0 with the daemon stopped: espanso status is what says whether it came up.
- On us-intl quotes are dead keys, so text goes in through the clipboard so it does not arrive broken.
Summarize with AI:
15 Oct 20267 min read5 days → 30 min per dataset
From five days to thirty minutes: AI in an ETL pipeline
How preparing a dataset went from nearly a week of manual work to half an hour: API automation, AI where it helps, tests where it can go wrong and the deadline as a product rule.
#etl
#data
#ai
Quick preview
TL;DR // KEY POINTS
- Automation before AI: fixed rules for what is predictable, AI only for what is ambiguous.
- Queue, safe retries and one stage pulling the next removed the waiting, which was most of the five days.
- The deadline became a product rule: each phase has a budget, and the dataset shows on time, at risk or late.
Summarize with AI:
15 Oct 20266 min read7 sources, 0 dependencies, 328 tests
job-radar: I stopped scrolling job lists and let Python discard for me
Seven job sources, filters that discard before the score, the résumé as a qualifications list and a Discord channel that only gets what survived. Zero runtime dependencies, and the code is open.
#python
#automation
#open source
Quick preview
TL;DR // KEY POINTS
- Hard filters decide whether a job enters; the 0-to-100 score only ranks what passed.
- Qualifications come from the stack table in the résumé itself, with no parallel list left to rot.
- Dedup uses three keys: company plus title, canonical URL and SimHash of the description over 90 days.
Summarize with AI:
14 Oct 20268 min read0 browser scripts, 1 pixel at 1×1
No JavaScript in the browser: I built analytics for my site and follow it from the terminal, in Rust
I only wanted the basics of analytics, without injecting a script into the site and without sending visitor data to anyone. It became a middleware, a 1×1 pixel, a cookie named __session and a Rust TUI.
#analytics
#privacy
#terminal
Quick preview
TL;DR // KEY POINTS
- Counting lives in the middleware; prerendered pages use a /v.gif pixel served by the same domain.
- A daily code from IP, browser and a secret key ties the pages of a visit without a cookie and without storing the IP.
- Visits stay 30 days in Firestore and are read in the terminal by a Rust TUI with four tabs.
Summarize with AI:
13 Oct 202610 min read10 days capturing Xbox traffic
My study of Red Dead Online sessions: P2P, Rockstar relays and the double NAT I built myself
I spent ten days looking at my Xbox traffic to understand how a Red Dead Online session forms. I learned to tell a player from a relay in a capture, found that my gateway had dropped the NAT type to Moderate, and that hiding the home IP costs an MTU tweak.
#networks
#linux
#homelab
Quick preview
TL;DR // KEY POINTS
- The session has two layers: TCP 80 and 443 with Rockstar, and P2P on UDP 6672 and 61455 to 61458 between players.
- The gateway masquerade plus the modem NAT became double NAT and dropped the Xbox to Moderate.
- Hiding the home IP behind a VPN needs an MSS clamp: the tunnel has MTU 1280, and the large TLS packet died silently.
Summarize with AI:

Drafts in progress

AEO vs SEO: is SEO dead?
The AI designer put the business rule in the copy: my prompt told it to
Blog comments without page weight: Giscus only loads when you reach the end
From Noctalia v4 to v5: I ported the plugins with both shells running
Screen recording to GIF with a shortcut, with a counter on the bar

Updates in the terminal

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