Author: Brad Root
-
AI Horde Text Worker – Quick Start Guide for Windows
I noticed a lot of people ask in the AI Horde Discord how to run a worker. I thought it would be useful if the community had a blog post to point people to, and maybe that can be this post. Let’s go! How to get an AI Horde API key Be sure to get…
-
Introducing Inneal
While most of my AI related app releases have been dedicated to image generation, (counting two Ealain releases and then Aislingeach), my gateway into generative AI was chatbots. If you look at the chronology of this blog, that’s pretty obvious, since it all began with my post about “uncensored” chatbots, which I’ve recently updated to…
-
The Varying Levels of Getting Started with “Uncensored” LLM-Powered Chatbots (2024 Update)
This post is an update to my previous post, May 2023’s “The Varying Levels of Getting Started with “Uncensored” LLM-Powered Chatbots“. A lot has happened in 11 months. Well, not a lot, but, things have changed a bit. I think that post is still worth reading, because it explains more in depth what we’re talking…
-
How I Build Apps (And So Can You)
I’ve built a few apps now, apps that people actually pay money for–not a lot of money; a very, very small amount of money, but enough that my Apple Developer fee has been paid for until I die, at the very least. I don’t say this to brag, but to establish that I’ve done this…
-
Introducing Ealain for Apple TV
Just 11 days ago, I released Ealain for Vision Pro and now I’m very happy to introduce Ealain for Apple TV, which is the same app, it’s just for Apple TV now. You can find it at the same App Store page for Ealain for Vision Pro, because it’s a universal app (or whatever they…
-
The Weight of Disappointment
This is my Apple Vision Pro review. I wrote several within the first week I got the headset but none of them seemed to be saying anything that wasn’t already being said. Now that the honeymoon period is likely over for most people, and the AVP Discord is getting much quieter, maybe it’s my time…
-
Introducing Ealain for Vision Pro
A few months ago I released Ealain, a screensaver for macOS that shows bauhaus-style abstract art generated with Stable Diffusion. When I got the Vision Pro, I thought about which of my apps or screensavers would make the most sense ported over. This process took a while and was rife with indecision. Eventually I realized…
-
Darker Waves 2023
This weekend I went to Darker Waves in Huntington Beach. It was pretty great. We saw: Molchat Doma, The Cardigans, DEVO, Soft Cell, The Psychedelic Furs, The B-52’s (via video screen), and New Order. We also overheard Tears for Fears on the way out, saw a bit of X, heard a touch of OMD, and…
-
The Best and Only Advice Anyone Should Ever Give You
Cultivate a strong sense of curiosity within yourself. That’s it. That’s the advice. You don’t even need to read the post now, move along!
-
On Shame
I determined long ago that shame is a feeling I don’t handle particularly well. This can be problematic on the internet, because people will, from time to time, declare that some behavior people regularly engage in is actually quite shameful. This takes all sorts of forms, the “behavior” can vary so widely it feels useless…
-
La Colombe Cold Brew Fridge Pack Review
I posted this over on the La Colombe Cold Brew Fridge Pack page, and, as is my want as of late, I am posting it here for posterity. Happy wife, happy life My wife decided to start drinking cold brew instead of using K-cups, and as I am diehard La Colombe Nizza drinker, I made…
-
Introducing Aislingeach
Back in May (2023) I stumbled my way into a a full blown interest in what people are erroneously calling “artificial intelligence”. I’d played with Midjourney back when it first gained traction, and even paid for a month of access, but my interest in it quickly faded. It wasn’t until I learned there was a…
-
AeroPress Clear Review
I posted this on the official product page for the AeroPress Clear but you never know if they’re actually going to publish negative reviews or not, so here it is for posterity. It is what it says it is, but is also kinda stinks – ★★★★☆ I almost want to give this product five stars,…
-
AeroPress Flow Control Filter Cap Review
I posted this on the official product page for the AeroPress Flow Control Filter Cap but you never know if they’re actually going to publish negative reviews or not, so here it is for posterity. Not a great version 1.0 – ★★★☆☆ I’ve been using the cap for well over a month (or two?) now,…
-
Introducing Ealain
I mentioned the other day I was working on an app for generative art, a year or so late to the bandwagon. While playing with it, I stumbled on a great way to generative abstract art, in the vein of bauhaus, and it reminded me of a want I’ve had for years: a screensaver that…
-
The Varying Levels of Getting Started with “Uncensored” LLM-Powered Chatbots
Update – April 2024: I wrote an update post for this one, you can read it over here. Original Post – May 2023: LLMs like ChatGPT have been in the news quite a bit, but I’d mostly avoided using them too much because they seemed silly, probably due to my own deep seated fears about…
-
Postico 2.0 – macOS PostgreSQL Client
When I first started my professional development career nearly five years ago now, I was handed a copy of Postico and a business license for it. Since then I’ve used it probably every single working day and a few personal days. It’s a great macOS app, arguably the best, for accessing PostgreSQL databases. Yesterday I…
-
Fixing ASUS ZenWiFi AX 5Ghz Uplink Mode
When we moved recently I went on Wirecutter to look at their recommendations for the best Wi-Fi mesh setup. Since my new internet was allegedly gigabit, I bought the ASUS ZenWiFi AX that they recommend. It worked great! At first. After a few days, all of a sudden the single node I had wouldn’t use…
-
On Social Media
I’ve been thinking a lot about social media this past week. It’s been hard not to, since for many of us “internet people” the sale of Twitter to Elon Musk has become some sort of political watershed moment on par with the election of Donald Trump. I don’t think I am exaggerating how emotionally affecting…
-
Diablo Immortal
Diablo Immortal came out a few weeks ago. If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, this is the free to play mobile Diablo MMO that was announced to great fanfare years ago. I wasn’t planning on playing it at all, despite my love of ARPGs, because MMOs turned me off…
-
The Staircase
The Staircase, the new HBO series that just wrapped up, was very entertaining. I didn’t watch the original documentary, but I had read an article all about “the owl theory”, which I had found very convincing, so I was vaguely familiar with the murder of Kathleen Peterson. To someone unfamiliar with some of the details…
-
Mustang Micro & iRig HD 2 Comparison (for iPad users)
I recently purchased a cheap electric guitar setup so that I could take my third… fourth?… try at learning to play guitar, in the hopes that I can start writing songs. I knew from experience that I would want some sort of audio interface for the guitar (for recording) and that I wanted to use…
-
What I’m Up To – Week 20, 2022
Last week I got my Panic Playdate in the mail. I preordered it last July, and have been following it since the May 2019 EDGE announcement, so you could say it was a long time coming. It’s such a nice feeling device, and good looking, too. Sure, the non-backlit screen can be annoying, but I…
-
What I’m Up To – Week 11, 2022
What I got up to this week: some minor changes to the next version of MultiClock, and… well… not much else.
-
New blog, who dis?
I migrated this blog from Gatsby to WordPress. I’m sure to many people that sounds insane. There’s so many tutorials online on how to migrate in the other direction, and even plugins that export all your content to Markdown files to stick into Gatsby, but nothing if you want to go another way. I’m doing…
-
What I’m Up To – Week 49, 2021
What I did over the past week: I built and released dotBeat, a small macOS menu bar app.
-
dotBeat Internet Time
This week on stream I built a small macOS menu bar app I’m calling dotBeat Internet Time. It’s a small, focused app with two features: 1) It displays the current Swatch Internet Time in the menu bar, and 2) It allows you to figure out how Internet Time corresponds to your local time, as well…
-
What I’m Up To – Week 47, 2021
What I did over the past, uh, week? Year? Who knows. It’s been a while.
-
Making PICO-8 Development Easier
A quick guide on how to make developing games on PICO-8 a bit friendlier for established developers.
-
People Can Be Dishonest About Work
Details of my experience with someone trying very hard to commit unemployment fraud.
-
Zip Multiple Files for Download from AWS S3
Ever need to serve multiple files from S3 at once? Wouldn’t a zip function be great? Well, here you go.
-
Numu Tracker Shut Down
After three years of Numu Tracker being a part of my life (the first year of it spent slowly developing it), I am moving on and shutting it down as of today. There’s several reasons for it, so I figure I will briefly talk about them as honestly as I can, and also reflect on…
-
Automating Python Lambda Deployments with Docker
A quick guide on how to automate Lambda deployment package creation using Docker.
-
My Favorite Development Tools
A continually updated list of my favorite development tools, including VSCode, Postico, and more.