zacwest

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 07:41:36 -0800

Reduced chezmoi apply time from 15 seconds to 70 milliseconds by moving the binary externals (fonts and a binary application) to a local ansible role. Should have investigated that sooner.

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 22:05:32 -0800

The compelling part about these command-line coding assistants is that anything with a specific textual representation is game: DNS configurations in DNSControl? Wildly refactorable, able to enforce descriptive sorting conventions, etc. It’s so much easier to structure thought for mundane tasks.

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 20:08:52 -0800

I empathize with the “ranting section” portion of the gluetun release notes. There’s something special about working on open source software which touches corporate interests.

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 20:06:26 -0800

Quad9’s IPv6 addresses are the first that stand a real chance of being memorable. 2620:fe::fe! It’s beautiful.

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 20:39:26 -0800

A couple fun ways I’ve used Claude Code recently: updating my backup script to create and download UniFi backups; and reverse-engineering an obscure Bluetooth home automation protocol from Wireshark logs followed by generating an ESPHome configuration.

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 15:44:01 -0800

My LG dryer doesn’t support delaying start, just remotely starting when preconfigured. A fun little automation I made this week is triggering remote start when electricity prices hit their lowest overnight. A few minutes of work for something a 30¢/kWh difference.

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 07:34:23 -0800

Tapo smart plug energy monitoring is great: exportable data & graphs of usage ranging from hourly to yearly. Although it’s WiFi not Thread, Matter support is solid.

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 11:14:07 -0800

A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan Book 2) by Robert Jackson Bennett ★★★★★: Although I felt like I had a pretty good idea what the resolution was going to be, I still really enjoyed the worldbuilding. Everything Bennett writes is worth reading.

Tue, 14 Oct 2025 21:04:36 -0800

A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking ★★★★☆: I stumbled upon this “I should read that some day” book and enjoyed it. He does a phenomenal job explaining concepts from the ground up. The updates from years later were inspiring about humanity’s progress.

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 20:51:29 -0800

Everybody Wants to Rule the World Except Me by Django Wexler ★★★★☆: This felt right as a duology. The world-building really ratcheted up to a new level and completely sold me on the story.

Tue, 30 Sep 2025 20:46:50 -0800

Written on the Dark by Guy Gavriel Kay ★★★★★: I actually finished this shortly after it was released, but sat with it in my head for a while, not sure how I felt about my time with it. Incredibly compelling story, I couldn’t stop for a moment. The characters were just so fun!

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 12:43:43 -0800

Great totally unspellable idea for an assistant app from the wonderful Rob Words newsletter:

NOMENCLATOR: a servant employed to ensure their master doesn’t forget anyone’s name

Tue, 03 Jun 2025 19:14:08 -0800

Haven’t been very successful with AI assistants writing production Swift or Objective-C, but I did find a valuable debug use: annotating code paths and methods in a file with print statements. Helps those gnarly timing or ordering bugs.

Mon, 28 Apr 2025 21:25:20 -0800

The age plugin paper-age looks to be neat way to print small secrets on paper. I don’t see myself writing the passphrase onto it, though.

Wed, 16 Apr 2025 19:01:22 -0800

There’s something really soothing to my brain that Fedora 42 came out on the same day that baseball players were wearing #42 for Jackie Robinson Day.

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 19:50:55 -0800

Stalwart has Proton-like on-receipt encryption which encrypts incoming messages against a destination’s public PGP key. I’m not sure I have the willpower to self-host email but it’ll be tempting once it gains calendar/contact syncing and push on iOS.

Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:32:08 -0800

It’s nice to see the former Twitter building return its sign and clock to normal.

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 12:55:29 -0800

Starting off the season by emailing NBC Sports to ask that they please use a monospace digit font for the centered pitch clock countdown so it stops bouncing around.

Sat, 29 Mar 2025 12:28:17 -0800

Continuing what would be my normal complaining about baseball streaming costs, this year is such an improvement:

$20/mo for MLB.tv Giants. No commercials‽ This is heaven.
$26/mo for Peacock+Giants. Bad quality video, frustrating app. Easy “no.”
$85+/mo for anything else.

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 09:49:22 -0800

Unlike macOS, iOS and Linux, Android does not support a CNAME to private domains (in this case a Tailscale ts.net) because its resolver doesn’t request after it encounters one; it just fails. A tad frustrating since it means a significantly more complicated DNS setup just for the one OS.

Fri, 21 Feb 2025 16:17:06 -0800

“AI-free since 1990” is a great tag line for SiriusXM; doubling-down on not doing algorithmic radio is hopefully a long-term strategic success for them. Human-curated just hits differently.

Thu, 20 Feb 2025 20:10:26 -0800

Enclosed is the platonic ideal of an encrypted pastebin: beautiful, performant, scriptable, open source and easy to self-host. It even supports file uploads.

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 07:06:46 -0800

Amazon is removing the ability to download purchased Kindle content, which is the only way to read it on my Kobo or elsewhere. What this means is I will no longer be purchasing (“a license to”–ick) any books by the mostly independent authors who exclusively publish there; just cancelled preorders.

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 07:00:00 -0800

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying (Dark Lord Davi #1) by Django Wexler ★★★★☆: What a surprise! I went in somewhat blind expecting something softer like his Forbidden Library series and it is quite not. It’s a funny, violent, isekai-meets-Groundhog Day adventure with just the right amount of world building. I normally shy away from fantasy intersecting with our world but it worked well.

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 23:11:05 -0800

I’ve been using my phone for sysadmin tasks as laptops are tough around young kids. Vim keybindings are so good! Significantly reduces the toil of editing on a phone. I want it in every app.