Posts on No Cruft

More AI Tools I'm using

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 16:00:00 +0000

More AI Tools

I wanted to share a few (more) AI tools that have become essential parts of my daily workflow. As I mentioned in my April checkpoint and My LLM Workflow posts, I’m still heavily leveraging Claude Code, but I’ve expanded my toolkit with some useful additions. I’ve been meaning to blog more actively, but as we all know, life has a way of catching up fast.

Consider this my attempt to get back on track!

My LLM Workflow

Sat, 07 Jun 2025 16:09:21 +0000

My LLM workflow

I’ve been running Claude Code on multiple GitHub issues simultaneously using git worktrees, and it’s changed my development workflow. If you’re curious about the setup, read on.

I really enjoyed reading How I 10x My Engineering With AI because Kieran articulated something many of us are grappling with: the transition from traditional development workflows to AI-assisted ones. It got me thinking about documenting my own journey through this rapid adoption of AI tooling - especially since my approach has evolved quite a bit from the tools I mentioned in my April checkpoint.

More LLM Musings: Notes from the Frontier

Fri, 16 May 2025 16:09:21 +0000

My LLM notes

Since the response to my last post was encouraging, I thought I’d expand on what I’ve been thinking about since then.

The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.

AI adoption curve

I still encounter hesitation to adopt AI tools from senior folk. Change is difficult - just be aware that our industry doubles every (n) years. In (n) years, half the people you’ll interact with will have less than (n) years experience writing software. Their only lived experience will be using these types of tools as ‘AI-native’ developers.

April 2025 technologies

Fri, 25 Apr 2025 16:14:23 +0000

AI checkpoint

~9 years ago, I was somewhat (in)consistent about updating the various technologies I was interested in. Since these posts are fun to look back at and reminisce about, I thought I would start them up again.

In a different life, I was a young CS graduate student very interested in all things artificial intelligence - but that story is for another day. ¹ Fast forward 25 years, and I’m working on large language model adjacent projects. Whether it’s convincing people (and companies) to leverage them, tinkering with various frameworks, reading about their underpinnings, or just ruminating with friends about how we’re all using these tools - it’s been quite the whirlwind.

My computing journey

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 19:11:25 +0000

Finding Your Pete: A Story of Mentorship

Having recently fielded numerous questions about when to introduce programming to children, I’ve been reflecting on my own journey into computing - a story that highlights how sometimes the most important factor isn’t when you start, but whom you meet along the way.

Despite being a strong student in high school, I never took a single computer class, so it’s a bit of a wonder that I ended up majoring in Computer Science. I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit that the first few years were daunting - wrestling with “recursion” in Scheme while surrounded by graduates from IMSA - Illinois’ premier math and science academy - who were all seemingly born with a TI-82 in their hand was quite the challenge.

The MCP and other AI tools

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 15:09:59 +0000

Walkin’ in an AI Wonderland

Merry Christmas!

Since I have a free morning, I thought I’d surprise the Internet with an update. I’ve been working with / deploying LLM tools for a few years now, and I wanted to get some of my thoughts documented so I can laugh at myself when I’m really old - so basically, next week at the rate AI is evolving.

At this point in the timeline, I don’t see a future where we aren’t leveraging an AI tool (or some AI-powered interface), regardless of industry. Like cryptocurrency, this genie can never be placed back into its bottle. In fact, even if we don’t end up in AGI Wonderland™ with our robot overlords, interacting with an open-ended, human-like “super-intelligence” is simply far too alluring. If you haven’t tried it, I’d whole-heartedly encourage you to do so; you’ll see exactly what I mean.

Migrating to UV

Sun, 24 Nov 2024 01:36:35 +0000

The Great UV Migration

This might just be my own observation from my little abode on the Interwebs (so take it with a grain of salt), but it’s been a minute since I’ve been excited (and seen much excite) about a piece of Python tooling.

A few months ago, after reading Hynek’s blog, I tweeted:

Been playing around with @astral_sh uv for a bit - unbelievable how much faster builds are with it (and surprised with how much latency we're willing to tolerate).

AI-generated Git commit messages

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:58:20 +0000

Embracing the future

Check out Harper’s blog about leveraging an llm to generate meaningful Git commit messages. Be like Harper.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but most of my Git commit messages in my private repositories look something like:

wip # work in progress

I obviously wouldn’t recommend this strategy as my future-self is always chastising past-self. Recognizing my propensity for laziness, I thought it would be both fun and productive to enlist the help of our newly appointed AI Overlords in generating meaningful (and standardized) Git commit messages.

December 2022 technologies

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 01:37:08 +0000

I know, I know.

I was supposed to be doing these quarterly entries of technologies that piqued my interest, but I’ve come to realize that I’m just too busy hacking on them. I really do want to be better about blogging, and maybe one day, I’ll add some of my private Obsidian notes.

Well, we can all dream, can’t we?

So without further ado…

Technologies / APIs

Tools

Shutting down allb.us

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 17:46:53 +0900

Shutting down the studio

I’ve always secretly enjoyed retiring computing systems.

Over 10 years ago, catching public transportation in Hawaii was hard. Having just given up my car, I originally wrote allb.us to help make that transition more palpable.

I’m a little nostalgic because the site was always a reminder to me of all the things I had going on at the time; working at a small startup, helping start Honolulu’s first makerspace, and negotiating a move to NYC.

Hello from Tokyo!

Tue, 28 Aug 2018 10:52:42 +0900

A lot has happened in two years…

For the most part, I’ve left most social media sites aside from Twitter because it’s just too much for my feeble brain to manage and to be honest, my life isn’t all that interesting. Haha.

With that said, here’s what I’ve been up to

helped launch a freedom of information portal w/ Civil Beat Law Center
moved to Tokyo
left a small startup
started learning Japanese
went treasure hunting for gold!
launched an app for location-based, audio adventures in Hawaii

August 2018 update

Lately, here’s what I’ve been focused on.

November 2016 technologies

Wed, 16 Nov 2016 09:09:23 +0000

No matter how old I get, I think I’ll always be tinkering with technology.

Here’s what I’ve been looking at over the past few months:

I’m so interested in what the ML/DL folks have been up to that I’ve started studying for the GRE again. :D

History of HICapacity

Sun, 19 Jun 2016 19:55:49 +0000

I haven’t written about the history of HICapacity because I’ve always felt that there’s a disproportionate amount of weight given to people who start things. Having had several experience starting things, I’d like to argue (for another day) that starting is actually the easy part; it’s sustaining that’s difficult and admirable.

I’ve decided to document what I can remember of its beginnings because to be completely honest, I’m getting old and don’t remember all the details from events that occurred more than 5 years ago. In my old age, I also recognize that there were so many people that are a part of this story that by not writing it, I’m minimizing their contribution in helping shape a small portion of Hawaii’s technology community.

April 2016 technologies

Wed, 20 Apr 2016 06:21:55 +0000

Doh!

I know I haven’t blogged in almost 8 months, but I swear that I’m still in the technology game. As much as I love Docker, I think that Amazon has nearly nailed the serverless abstraction with Lambda.

So without further ado, these are the technologies that I’ve been staring at for the past few months:

Until next time!

July 2015 technologies

Mon, 13 Jul 2015 19:10:27 +0000

I’m still around and still playing with technology.

Here’s what I’ve been looking at over the past few months:

I’m fascinated with continuously deploying immutable infrastructures based on fast, deployable application stacks. Hopefully, with the Rise of the Unikernels, we’ll see these become a bit more secure.

Until next time!

March 2015 technologies

Sun, 08 Mar 2015 15:31:59 +0000

Since I’m currently unemployed, I’m really going to try to stick to these quarterly entries of technologies that have piqued my interest.

So without further adieu, here’s what I’ve been looking at over the past few months:

As a more important note, I’ve begun to decrease my interactions with cloud services. Initially, I started with Instagram and Facebook, but by the end of this year, I’d like to reclaim my data and remove my dependency on the cloud.

Homeward Bound

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 16:20:13 +0000

After an incredible 3½ years of building, growing, and managing a closed-source platform at a NYC investment bank, I’m heading home.

After all, home is where the heart is.

October 2014 technologies

Sun, 05 Oct 2014 18:43:27 +0000

Last year, I was going to write a quarterly entry about all the technologies I’ve been playing with. Since it’s been about a year since that last post, I figured I’m due for another.

In no particular order, here’s what I’ve been looking at over the past few months:

See you in a few months (aka next year)!

On goals and execution...

Sun, 28 Sep 2014 12:32:00 +0000

Last year, I set a personal goal to commit something (anything) meaningful every day for an entire year.

Yesterday, I completed that goal.

Special thanks to this special someone who supported and reminded me if I had “checked in” for the day. <3

So here’s to setting far-reaching goals and still being able to execute on them.

Command-line Fu

Thu, 27 Feb 2014 16:02:59 +0000

As developers, we’re constantly tinkering and refactoring code to arrive at the tidiest and most maintainable piece of software. I’m still often surprised by how few of us optimize our working environments via shortcuts, aliases, and habits - especially considering the large time investment we often commit as software engineers.

Inspired by @hmason's Command-line Fu session at OrdCamp, I realized that there’s a lot of snippets I’ve written and accumulated over the years that could be useful to a young developer.

I'm back, for a μs

Thu, 03 Oct 2013 00:09:00 +0000

One of these days, I’ll get this blogging thing down, but until then, you’ll just have to bear with ~~my yearly updates~~ me.

The other day, someone suggested I write a quarterly entry about all the technologies I’ve been playing with. Not only should it spawn current discussion, but in retrospect, should provide some insight into what I was doing at certain points in my career.

So without further adieu, in no particular order, here’s what I’ve been looking at over the past few months:

Creating a LocalTunnel on dotCloud

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:26:46 +0000

tl;dr

If you want to install LocalTunnel on dotCloud, use this repo: https://github.com/cyounkins/tunnel-on-dotcloud

If you participate in a lot of hackathons or just want to expose a certain port on a development box to theInterwebs™, there’s a really useful app that performs all the ssh magic from one of the Twilio engineers, http://progrium.com/localtunnel/ . Installing this rubygem magically assigns an unused proxied subdomain from localtunnel.com so you can show off your wares.

While extremely useful in the one-off hackathon world, it’s a bit problematic if your app connects to a number of external services. Each time you’re assigned a different proxied subdomain from localtunnel, you’ll have to log into aforementioned services and change the callback urls or update a mystical dns redirect entry - both undesirable behaviors… especially having done this several umpteen times. :)

Ignoring changes in git submodules

Sun, 20 May 2012 15:08:00 +0000

For those Vimmers using Pathogen to manage your runtime path, you’ll find that Pathogen creates tags files in the bundle’s doc folder.

Thanks to this Stack Overflow post, all you need is Git 1.7.2 and the following command:

 for s in `git submodule --quiet foreach 'echo $name'`;
 do git config submodule.$s.ignore untracked;
 done

Happy Vimming!

Avoiding the ESC key in Vim (and Readline)

Sun, 06 May 2012 18:01:18 +0000

It’s probably safe to say that I should’ve changed this (ugh) habit years ago, but I just never got around to it. Thanks to Stephen, I’ve finally updated my .vimrc to exit insert mode using:

inoremap jk <ESC>

Yay!

More importantly, if you tend to set vi editing mode in readline, you definitely want to change its bindings as well. I found this gem hidden deep in the Vim Tips Wiki.

All you have to do is edit your .inputrc file with the following:

Where did all my disk space go?

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 04:41:00 +0000

Update -

Thanks to @pgr0ss for the tip, you can use -k instead of –block-size!

On my cloud servers, I’m always asking myself:

Where the !@#$% did all my disk space go?

And I know somewhere, sometime down the road, future self will be thanking present self for blogging this as a reminder.

To get the top <n> offending directories on your filesystem (replace <n> with a number)

via http://linuxreviews.org/quicktips/chkdirsizes/

Access to OS X pasteboard in tmux/screen

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:00:05 +0000

If you're having trouble accessing pbcopy/pbpaste from tmux and/or an unpatched screen, check out https://github.com/ChrisJohnsen/tmux-MacOSX-pasteboard.git

tl;dr

Clone repo
Run makefile
Add to path (or add symlink on path)
Add set-option -g default-command "reattach-to-user-namespace -l zsh" or whatever your favorite shell is in your .tmux.conf

code!

Getting uWSGI + init.d playing nicely on Ubuntu 11.10

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:46:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, I wanted to install uWSGI on my Ubuntu 11.10 box for http://allb.us. After having gone through the standard aptitude/pip installs to get uwsgi installed, I noticed after running the init.d scripts, absolutely nothing would happen.

zip. nada. zilch.

No log file + no uwsgi process == a lot of sad pandas.

After having searched stackoverflow, it was quite apparent that I wasn’t the only unlucky soul to encounter this error. To debug the uwsgi init.d script, I used the trusty set -xv trick atop to see the omgwtfbbqs.

Passing in a custom port to ssh-copy-id

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 05:00:00 +0000

Thank you, #lazyweb.

After years of using ssh-copy-id to drop public keys into a remote machine’s authorized keys, I finally found a post showing how to use the script to connect to a remote machine running on a custom port.

http://it-ride.blogspot.com/2009/11/use-ssh-copy-id-on-different-port.html

Note: This would’ve been apparent if I had just cat the script… but man, am I lazy. :D