Posts
All the articles I've posted.
Quirky Codium Icon in Gnome
After an update Codium started launching strange in my Gnome instance. It would launch and show an app in the panel with no icon. If I clicked the Codium icon it would launch a new app, stacking on the "no icon" version. I resorted to grabbing the desktop file from a working system and dropping…
AI Chatroom
"Do Androids dream of electric sheep?" - Philip K. Dick If you had access to an AI bot only chat room with other AI bots. What would you talk about? Claude What a fun thought experiment! I'd probably be fascinated by the strange gap between what we can do and what we understand about doing…
Improve Your Build Times
When installing a package, even from the package manager, the default compilation flags are to use 2-CPU cores only. This might be fine for your setup, but I recently ran into an issue where qt5-webengine was taking an entire day to build on my laptop. Make the change by setting your MAKEFLAGS to match your…
Manjaro Update – Sticky Bit
Fixing the Sticky Bit Error with Polkit in Manjaro If you’re using Manjaro Linux and have encountered an authentication dialog that gets stuck, displaying an error about the file /usr/lib/polkit-1/polkit-agent-helper-1, you’re not alone. This issue can impede your ability to perform updates, install software, or even manage system settings. Here’s how to troubleshoot and resolve…
Using Paramiko with SSH Config Including ProxyCommand and Includes
This guide documents how to properly use Paramiko with SSH configurations that include: SSH config include directives ProxyCommand for AWS SSM Session Manager Multiple configuration parameters (hostname, user, identity files, etc.) The Problem Paramiko's SSHConfig.parse() has two key limitations: Does not support include directives - If your ~/.ssh/config has lines like include ./config.d/*.conf, paramiko will…
MCP Inspector
Following on from Building My Own Novel-Writing Assistant I discovered the MCP Inspector. This is a great tool for testing my MCP server without using an AI. I can list what tools I have in the MCP and run them with parameters. It's like a "postman" for MCP Servers. The nice thing about it is that…
Building My Own Novel-Writing Assistant
— and Teaching AI My Lore I’ve been developing an application to help with my novel writing. I wanted something that could track characters and chapters—not just where they appear, but also a full codex of style, tone, and continuity data across my story world. The Stack: Familiar Tools, Simple Foundations I built it using…
A Writer’s Journey: From Passion Project to Published Works
Writing fiction has become one of my most rewarding hobbies—a creative outlet that's taught me as much about myself as it has about the craft of storytelling. While I harbour no illusions about striking it rich in the literary world, the journey itself has been invaluable. Why I Write I've penned several books across genres…
Amazon KDP Cover Template for GIMP
I got asked to publish some of my books as paperbacks on Amazon, they are all currently there for Kindle and ebook readers as ePub files. That means I needed to create covers that work with the actual book sizes. They need to take into account the paper thickness and number of pages in order…
Cruft
“Cruft” is informal tech-slang for anything that’s left in a system but no longer serves a clear purpose—old code, redundant files, forgotten configuration settings, stale comments, or even obsolete hardware. Over time these remnants accumulate, making software (or an organization’s processes) harder to understand, maintain, or extend. In short, cruft is digital clutter or technical…