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I’ve been fighting not having a proper pick/hook in my toolbox for a long time. This fathers day weekend my son pulled out an old box of rc plane supplies from my days trying to build planes like flight test. Inside there was a pack of piano wire. Rules [1]-8 Need a tool make a tool. He had pulled this out while I had the soldering iron hot plucking away at a keeb build that I’ve had sitting idle on the workbench for a long time. The dream of having several identical working builds at the same time is very close to fruition, I just need some more work on the clone. Posts tagged: keeb [2] I was struggling to pull wires through traces of 3d prints. You see I was once a mechanical engineer, not electrical, so 3d modeling is my hammer that I can turn into a tool for any solution, and I’ve just not put the time into learning pcb design. Someday maybe. I always just take some scrap copper make a little look and twist it around until I can get it close enough to pull with some tweezer...

Today I got sick of my go to online keyboard tester [1] not supporting holds and fighting an issue with holds on one of my boards, I vibed out a replacement. I did a bit of work with it to get it how I wanted. gpt5.4 still likes to make lots of cards and build readable sites with a reasonable width for reading, not full page apps. keyboard tester A keyboard tester that works for me, how I like it keys.waylonwalker.com [2] The main feature is to be able to see when alt+key or shift+key is pressed, the keyboard tester was not able to do this. 73e71d2d-eaf9-4a0a-9e04-0039a1df0b26.mp4 [3] Here is a video of me using it. I tend to use keyboard tester a lot as I build a lot of weird keyboards so I suspect this one to get a lot of use and may grow over time, but for now it works good enough for me. I can already think of a whole list of features like supporting keycodes for js, pygame, zmk, qmk. But for now I’m just building what I need and not overcomplicating it. References: [1]...

Recent Arch linux vulnerabilities are a good reminder of a few things. - AUR [1] is not the official package repo - The AUR is community driven - AUR packages are not always safe The first thing I’m doing to stop myself from running any aur updates automatically is removing any arch helper. sudo pacman -Rns yay paru paru-bin Currently the reported vulnerabilities are supply chain attacks limited to the aur, keep your arch system up do date, BUT do not update packages from the AUR right now. In fact I’m auditing my aur usage and removing anything I have not used in awhile. Here is a nice script I’m using to walk through my packages and get rid of things I installed and probably don’t need anymore. pacman -Qemq | fzf -m --preview ' echo "== package ==" pacman -Qi {} 2>/dev/null echo echo "== required by ==" pacman -Qi {} 2>/dev/null | grep "Required By" ' | xargs -r -o sudo pacman -Rns Supply chain attacks are getting real scary in 2026, maybe we should listen to Ginger...

I was listening to @syntaxfm this morning and @wesbos said at 328s [1] “The prompt seagulls are driving me nutty”. 100% hard agree Wes. Now I didnt just come off of a conference where they dropped fable 5. I’ve not logged into twitter in months, but I see it around work. prompt-seagulls “Prompt, PR-ompt, promt, PROMT” There is no such thing as magic [2] # [3] Asking for the prompt as a first question here, is a clear sign you are looking for magic. What are the magical incantations I must pass to all master clanker to get it to do the things that I want. Wrong, there is no magic prompt to get impressive results, its people that know and understand their craft that get amazing results. They have taste. They have design in mind, They see what the end product should be. They are guiding the model to do what they want and are not surprised when they get it. prompt-seagulls “Prompt, PR-ompt, promt, PROMT” process # [4] No one is one shotting their work and kicking up their feet f...

Agentic coding has this nice trick of letting you bang out a project in an afternoon, something complex that would have take some real time to implement, not just some rounding error that can slip right in between the jira board. Then it will be perpetually never done. There will always be bugs and thorns rear their head up, new features no one ever thought of, and now no one really has to think much about beyond having the idea. This part of software engineering has always been here, its the root of the never complete 200 side projects. But now it feels like fuel has been poured on the fire, like we can get more done than ever. But we are tricking ourselves, these projects will never be “done”. There’s always more to add. Without feeling any of the pain of implementing it yourself, why not just keep adding new features forever. This is the mentality that is crushing me right now. It pulls at your token anxiety like crazy. You look at the usage board and you are almost cooked so y...

EDC # [1] I try to keep a pretty light every day carry, but it never works out, keyfobs and headphone cases end up causing more bulk than I’d like, but My EDC is no where near the bulk I had as a kid with my cargo pants decked out with everything I could possibly need. I hold no attachment to anything in my EDC. Nothing on my person has sentimental value. Anything I carry can be lost, stolen, or destroyed at any point in time. I pick things of sufficient usable, utilitarian, quality sufficient to work. No extra fluff. --- - Google Pixel 6 - Ridge Wallet - Olight Perun - Since April 2022 - Civivi Qubit - Since March 2024 after my last one was donated to the Indianapolis Stadium - OpenFit Shokz --- Rules # [2] - lightweight - replacable - no emotional attachments - utilitarian - everything serves a purpose My kit # [3] [4] Photo taken March 2023 Phone # [5] Google Pixel 6 I will not get finance a new phone for the foreseeable future again. The last time I feel lik...

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile now. For years now, fuzzy pickers and last session have been my go to. They have served me well. I can typically only keep so much in my head anyways. I’m often doing a hub and spoke pattern between main project, notes, and infra repo, maybe two projects. Don’t get me wrong, I regularly run with a dozen or more sessions running at a time, but only two to three are in my immediate context at any point anyways. The Design # [1] harpoon for tmux press a hotkey followed by one more keystroke, currently any left hand letter SIMPLE, FAST, thats of utmost importance, what I want are sessions that I can can be assigned in order of importance from middle row, top row, bottom row. I added this binding to my tmux config. Now I can press c-a a to go to the first session, c-a s to go to the second session. c-a and pause to think j/k to navigate, space to pick up a session and move it, x to kill it. bind-key -n c-a popup -E '~/go/bin/tgo' Enter the ag...

Inspired by @mollywhite’s verify [1] slashpage [2]. This page serves as the system of record for my online identity. The best places to follow me are: - My Website: waylonwalker.com [3] - YouTube: Waylon Walker [4] - YouTube Gaming: Waylon Walker Gaming [5] - Twitch: Waylon Walker [6] - Twitter: @_WaylonWalker [7] - LinkedIn: Waylon Walker [8] - GitHub: WaylonWalker [9] - Dev.to: Waylon Walker [10] - Bluesky: @waylonwalker.com [11] References: [1]: https://mollywhite.net/verify/ [2]: https://slashpages.net [3]: https://waylonwalker.com [4]: https://youtube.com/waylonwalker [5]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHuxc1HRsd3aRjvL6C817tQ [6]: https://www.twitch.tv/waylonwalker [7]: https://twitter.com/_WaylonWalker [8]: https://www.linkedin.com/in/waylonwalker [9]: https://github.com/WaylonWalker [10]: https://dev.to/waylonwalker [11]: https://bsky.app/profile/waylonwalker.com

After having brotato and doing a few runs every once in a while I finally beat the most basic balanced run in the game! Wyatt wanted to play tonight and its such an easy game to jump in do a few runs and move on without getting overly invested. [1] Watching back I cannot believe how lucky I got, barely scraping by with 1hp at this point Your browser does not support the video tag. [2] the last 80s of the game [3] References: [1]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/file/07c87b1d-60a0-4527-a045-d4203ca929db.webp [2]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/file/f1711b94-dad1-4f97-b6ac-1de34db4a779.mp4 [3]: https://dropper.waylonwalker.com/file/9b108e98-1f43-4b94-8824-467abcbf9e54.webp

Definitive ranked lists of my top 3 favorites plus an honorable mention. Terminal Tools # [1] - neovim [2] - modal editing changed how I think about text - tmux [3] - terminal sessions that survive disconnects and allow me to hop between projects at the speed of thought. - k9s [4] - S tier tui interface that all tuis should strive for Honorable mention: ipython [5] Python Tools # [6] - pandas [7] - This is what got me out of corporate spreadsheets and back into code/software. - kedro [8] - data pipelines with opinions I agree with - fastapi [9] - my favorite python web framework Honorable mention: typer [10] - fast cli apps Games to Play with Kids # [11] multiplayer - Minecraft [12] - infinite creativity, modding potential - Wobbly Life [13] - Open World Co-op - Stardew Valley [14] - cozy, collaborative farming Honorable mention: Terraria [15] - 2d world builder Games to Play Alone # [16] singleplayer - Hollow Knight [17]/Hollow Knight Silksong [18] - S tier 2d pl...

Inspired by @fyrio’s yep [1] slashpage [2], a list of S tier things I enjoy, use, recommend, want to know more about, or seek out in no particular order, updated as I think about it. Seealso [3]/nopeInspired by [3]@baty [4]'s nope slashpage, a list of ** things I don't like, don't care, avoid, overhyped, or won't do in no particular order, updated as I think... Feb 11, 2026 /yep # [5] - coffee - small web 1.0 - RSS - minecraft - Hollow Knight - Silksong - terminals - python - vim keybindings - self-hosting - open source - running kubernetes in my basement - mechanical keyboards - markdown - data engineering - Woodworking - Fingerboarding - Darts - Skateboarding - Biking - Trampoline - 3d printing References: [1]: https://fyr.io/yep [2]: https://slashpages.net/ [3]: /nope/ [4]: https://baty.net/ [5]: #yep

Inspired by @baty [1]’s nope [2] slashpage [3], a list of F tier things I don’t like, don’t care, avoid, overhyped, or won’t do in no particular order, updated as I think about it. Seealso /yep Inspired by @fyrio's yep slashpage, a list of ** things I enjoy, use, recommend, want to know more about, or seek out in no particular order, updated as I... Feb 11, 2026 [4] /nope # [5] - roblox - mobile games - telemetry - Windows - VSCode - allow notifications - subscription hell - ads - social media - clickbait - WYSIWYG editors particularly ones that use proprietary non text formats - politics - short form video References: [1]: https://baty.net/ [2]: https://baty.net/nope/ [3]: https://slashpages.net/ [4]: /yep/ [5]: #nope

Stop babysitting your agents, treat them like a real team and they will reward you. Back in December I saw theo make a comment that code is now cheap, its the run rate of models, He quoted a study, not sure that he fully even believed it, but it claimed that the average developer after all meetings, training, emails, planning and extra shit in their day averages out 10 well tested lines of code per day. Opus 3.5 made him 10k loc (lines of code) that day. We have all agreed for decades that lines of code is not a proxy to productivity or quality. Often more code means more risk, more review, more infrastructure. This has become MUCH different. Lines of code are still far from any sort of good metric. That aside, your agents are not doing 10k lines with you babysitting them, and in fact its very likely that the product quality is MUCH worse as you babysit them. You need a tool for planning and tracking, otherwise you are playing babysitter rather than Product Manager (PM).

The state of development in early 2026 is all wrapped around learning how to manage many agents running in parallel. Everyone’s trying to figure out the workflow. The Plan Is Everything # [1] The secret I’ve discovered is a good, well-defined plan. This could be a markdown file or a GitHub issue. Agents are actually great at writing these for you. They’ll include reproduction steps, outline changes needed, and structure the work. This is your opportunity to step in. Read the plan. Look for hallucinations. Spot where it’s going off track. Edit the plan before the agent starts coding. I had one today where it laid out reproduction steps beautifully, but I could add context about network requests that completely changed the approach. This editing phase is what most people are missing right now. Skip it and you’ll watch your agent solve the wrong problem with impressive efficiency. The Pace Problem # [2] Here’s what nobody warned me about: managing these things is exhausting. Dep...

I was listening to these guys talk about migrating off of boomer ai the other day. Introducing the term boomer ai to describe using chat, copy, paste instead of agents. Something magical happened to the tooling and models around december, they got really good. The chatgpt $20 plan hooked into opencode is good, the Free models in Opencode Zen (Big Pickle and Kimi K2.5 Free) are really good. Neither of these quite match up to the speed and quality of the larger plans, but they are good. good enough to throw away your boomer ai techniques and start using agents. Agents are the future, and they are here now. If you are still using chat, copy, paste, you are doing it wrong. Stop using boomer ai and start using agents. You will be amazed at how much better your results will be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dmPKuTWbsI

I can now just mention people from my markata [1] Waylon Walker [2] Blogroll [3] like @simonwillison [4] or @swyx.io /now [[ upto ]] [[ doing ]] Aside This is an aside! References: [1]: /markata/ [2]: /about/ [3]: /blogroll/ [4]: https://simonwillison.net

- open code - libre free as in beer and speech - Copilot - corporate 9-5er - Cursor - You sip on Philz coffee with your macbook - Claude Code - Agentic Workflows or Bust - Jetbrains - I didn’t know you wrote java - Vim/neovim - definite neck beard - VsCode - What else is there?

User states: Upon picking up an old project and trying to install pip says “cannot find a version to satisfy” I’ve got this, I’ve had this a hundred times before it’s a python version, a rogue package, maybe a yank from the pinned deps. I pop open the project get us on the same commit. I get a different error, make a few updates and we are good, except the user gets the same error from the start. They never saw the error I did, and my fix did not magically resolve their error. We circle all the things it could be for hours. I consistently wipe my venv, and recreate with ease, send them the commands I ran to no avail. Something is up and I can’t put my finger on it. We’ve checked all the things and inched as close as we can to running everything exactly the same. - Os - python version - Network vpn - uv version Nothing makes any sense. Finally I throw in the towel, is it the artifact server. I forge a token and give him one to borrow. BAM it works, like magic. The first sign ...

Last updated Jan 2026. Seealso Looking for all posts tagged with ai see [[ tag/ai ]] Ai is a tool I use a lot for code generation, research, image generation, and debugging. The words I publish on this site are my own unless explicitly stated from the top. There’s only one or two posts in this category. Words are mine # [1] The core of what this blog is, is my thoughts ideas, sharing experiences. The words are the important part. They are not perfect, I often do not spell or grammer check, and what is here is from a flow state of writing and very often not refactored. No AI unless explicitly stated code gen # [2] Up till around 2023 all of the code to create the site was hand written by me. I have my own site generator that I maintain markata [3]. From 2023 through 2025 snippets of code, sometimes entire plugins or modules were created in chat apps like chatgpt. There was no agentic coding, windsurf, cursor, claude code, opencode, none of it. It was all integrated into the ...

I’m making an effort to make my og [1] images better yet again, I’m going for that next 10% better. I really like my og images, but there are some title sizes that overflow. This page is a page to help debug. How I make these og images is for another day. Script # [2] I use my own static site generator markata [3]. I can use it to generate a list of posts wrapped in their og image. I use itertools to do a groupby so that I can do roughly every 5 characters larger, and see a wide variety of sizes. from markata import Markata from itertools import groupby markata = Markata() lens = [{'length': len(post.title), 'title': post.title, 'slug': post.slug} for post in m.posts] lens_sorted = sorted(lens, key=lambda x: x["length"]) groups = { k: list(g) for k, g in groupby(lens_sorted, key=lambda x: (x["length"] // 5) * 5) } posts = [g[0] for g in groups.values()] ogs = [ f'[![{post["title"]}](https://shots.waylonwalker.com/shot/?url=https://waylonwalker.com/{ post["slug"] }/og/&height...