A reactive notebook with algebraic effects for building backend/AI-engineering pipelines.
Reactivity can update the state of the notebook automatically, so you don't have to keep track of which cells to execute again. Side effects are managed to make it easier to reason about while maintaining reactivity and ability to interact with the outside world.
Fully open source cinematography drone. Spoilers: I only started a few weeks ago and I've got a long way to go still. Currently prototyping the gimbal for more context and wasting a ton of PLA in the process.
Same thing as comparing a phone camera to a professional camera really. For the average person, nothing really changes beyond a steep learning curve. But better quality video, faster(not fpv fast of course), can carry a heavier payload, a lot more options when making videos/capturing photos(which will likely be my next biggest challenge - geting the wiring from the drone to the gimbal and camera. But one bridge at a time - the gimbal is proving to be insanely challenging as it is so far.
1. Right now, working on standing up an MCP server in Java. Not using the Spring Boot support at the moment, but rather setting up embedded Tomcat and doing it the more "low level" way just for didactic purposes. I'm sure I'll use Spring Boot once I get deeper into all of this.
2. Plowing through the "AI Agents in Action" book. I'm just wrapping up the section on AutoGen and about to move into crew.ai stuff.
3. Reading a book on Software Product Line Engineering.
4. I have an older project that's Grails based that I let linger without any attention for a really long time. I'm working on updating it to run on the latest Grails and Java versions and also writing some automated smoke tests.
Before starting this book I'd worked with LangChain, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, Ollama, the OpenAI API, etc. to varying degrees. What's been good about this book (so far) is that it has covered a number of technologies I had not previously explored: AutoGen, Crew.ai, SemanticKernel, etc.
The downside though, is that it doesn't go super deep into any of those things. So for me, it's been good to at least get a taste of what each is useful for and to serve as a starting point for further explorations. But just be aware that you won't become, say, a Crew.ai expert or whatever, from working through this. Still, I think it's valuable and I'm going to keep grinding through it. In Chapter 5 now, I think.
Thanks for the feedback. I should probably make it more clear - there is no description field.
The block of text is the 'Likely to outsource' column. I use Perplexity Deep research to try to infer what services the company might need based on it's probable current challenges.
In this case it was: "Cloud infrastructure support to manage rapid scaling, pivoting, and new product integrations as part of business model transformation[3]., Specialized consulting (e.g., industry-specific financial regulations, fintech compliance, and go-to-market strategy) to facilitate entry into new verticals and optimize operational resilience[2]."
Unifi Video was replaced by Unifi Protect some time in 2020. I wasn't sure how to self-host Protect, so I never migrated to it. I've recently reached a situation where some phones can no longer install the Unifi Video app. These phones are now relegated to using the rough-on-mobile UI. The Unifi Video web UI has also never worked well in Firefox for me.
Replaced my Synology surveillance station since 2023, and has been running great. I also have a Google Coral for the image processing, but this is optional.
Thought it was goofy that I was still reading newsletters through my inbox. I really don't want to open my email unless I'm working. Anyways, some friends and I made Scrollz to fix that and also add some cool features to the newsletter reading experience. AI summaries, newsletter discovery, audio narrations, etc.
I'm also not a fan of email newsletters, and the reading interface of scrollz looks nice, but I'm not understanding how scrollz actually fit into the reading workflow. How do the newsletters in my inbox get opened for reading in scrollz?
Yeah so we didn't want to build out anything that invades your inbox, for privacy concerns, I know I would not feel comfortable with that.
So we've curated a ton of the top newsletters and made the process of adding them to the platform super easy. You just subscribe to them within Scrollz. If you sign up and have any that you're missing we can get them added in no time!
moving off of Ghost to an astro blog b/c I don't write often enough to justify a $110/year fee and I also found out there's no way to moderate spam comments.
To do the same, move your blog to the free plan on digitalpress.blog (a Ghost hosting provider). Then use the Ghost JavaScript SDK to pull content and build a static site with Astro. You can write posts in the Ghost editor and publish them seamlessly with Astro.
1) a note-taking workflow in Obsidian (you take bite-sized notes about a topic, then connect "prerequisite" notes in Obsidian's canvas editor)
2) a tool that uploads each note and graph data to a database
3) a webapp that presents those notes algorithmically using spaced repetition. This enables you to allow others to "traverse" your note graph in a guided and self-paced manner.
You can add "challenge presets" to each note so that your mastery of each piece of knowledge can be tested with simple flashcards, multiple choice, free response, or some visual/actionable task to force active recall. An algorithm uses your success rate and spaced repetition data to introduce & drill more advanced notes into your long term memory.
Even if there are a lot of imperfections and flaws about this project (like the sheer difficulty of curating a good knowledge graph to begin with), I'm hoping to make my note-taking in Obsidian more structured and thorough, replace my Anki routine, and make any of my notes into an automated + algorithmic course. If someone has another similar project (combining note-taking with hierarchal, topological knowledge graphs with spaced repetition and testing all in one platform) I would love to hear more about your approaches. Quick shoutout to one person I've seen who is doing something similar: https://x.com/JeffreyBiles/status/1926639544666816774
I did write about that! tl;dr I think it'd be really cool as an augmentation, the only thing steering me away from solely AI-generated graphs are hallucinations. But I think it definitely has a place in some capacity for anyone who wants to discover "what they don't know that they don't know", to find the prerequisite skills they don't realize they're missing.
I was getting tired of summarizing long articles & threads on HN/Reddit with ChatGPT so I made a simple little Chrome/Firefox extension to do it for me:
When I was looking for a job last summer, I got frustrated with the current resume builders on the market and decided to build one exactly how I wanted to use it.
- No signup, no login, and no payment.
- Suggest a professional summary (with highlighting) to match a job description [0].
- Preview as you go.
- ATS friendly templates.
- Find relevant jobs for my resume.
[0] Recruiters skim through resumes, and highlighting the keywords they look for has always helped me to get their attention, so I decided to implement this feature using AI.
Just released a “Loudness Contour” audio plugin. Let’s you apply various equal-loudness contours like Fletcher-Munson, ISO-226, LUFS style K-weighting, etc.
Fits into my “loudness series” suite of tools.
Have 3 more in development and then it’ll be on to the next series.
Vibe coding a few apps I always felt humanity deserves (a bit exaggerated but kind of not :) )
- https://padsnap.app/ : PadSnap is a simple web app that adds customizable padding to your images so they fit Instagram’s/custom dimensions — no cropping, no quality loss. All on browser, no server uploads. Also no ads or login.
- https://shiryakhat.net/ : redid my podcasts website last week: Shir Ya Khat podcast, which translates to "Head or Tails" in Farsi, began its non-profit journey in 2016 with a mission to make blockchain and cryptocurrency technical knowledge accessible to Farsi speakers worldwide.
1,124 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 424 ms ] threadReactivity can update the state of the notebook automatically, so you don't have to keep track of which cells to execute again. Side effects are managed to make it easier to reason about while maintaining reactivity and ability to interact with the outside world.
Feedback, suggestions or contributions are very welcome! :)
[0] https://github.com/vadimdemedes/ink
https://akkartik.name/post/2025-03-08-devlog
https://merveilles.town/@akkartik/114547652849162554
1. Right now, working on standing up an MCP server in Java. Not using the Spring Boot support at the moment, but rather setting up embedded Tomcat and doing it the more "low level" way just for didactic purposes. I'm sure I'll use Spring Boot once I get deeper into all of this.
2. Plowing through the "AI Agents in Action" book. I'm just wrapping up the section on AutoGen and about to move into crew.ai stuff.
3. Reading a book on Software Product Line Engineering.
4. I have an older project that's Grails based that I let linger without any attention for a really long time. I'm working on updating it to run on the latest Grails and Java versions and also writing some automated smoke tests.
The downside though, is that it doesn't go super deep into any of those things. So for me, it's been good to at least get a taste of what each is useful for and to serve as a starting point for further explorations. But just be aware that you won't become, say, a Crew.ai expert or whatever, from working through this. Still, I think it's valuable and I'm going to keep grinding through it. In Chapter 5 now, I think.
The block of text is the 'Likely to outsource' column. I use Perplexity Deep research to try to infer what services the company might need based on it's probable current challenges.
In this case it was: "Cloud infrastructure support to manage rapid scaling, pivoting, and new product integrations as part of business model transformation[3]., Specialized consulting (e.g., industry-specific financial regulations, fintech compliance, and go-to-market strategy) to facilitate entry into new verticals and optimize operational resilience[2]."
In the past few months, I've finally started working on a basic replacement NVR that works for me: https://github.com/AlbinoDrought/creamy-nvr
Like many video projects, it's a glorified ffmpeg wrapper :)
Replaced my Synology surveillance station since 2023, and has been running great. I also have a Google Coral for the image processing, but this is optional.
https://www.scrollz.co/
So we've curated a ton of the top newsletters and made the process of adding them to the platform super easy. You just subscribe to them within Scrollz. If you sign up and have any that you're missing we can get them added in no time!
To do the same, move your blog to the free plan on digitalpress.blog (a Ghost hosting provider). Then use the Ghost JavaScript SDK to pull content and build a static site with Astro. You can write posts in the Ghost editor and publish them seamlessly with Astro.
1) a note-taking workflow in Obsidian (you take bite-sized notes about a topic, then connect "prerequisite" notes in Obsidian's canvas editor)
2) a tool that uploads each note and graph data to a database
3) a webapp that presents those notes algorithmically using spaced repetition. This enables you to allow others to "traverse" your note graph in a guided and self-paced manner.
You can add "challenge presets" to each note so that your mastery of each piece of knowledge can be tested with simple flashcards, multiple choice, free response, or some visual/actionable task to force active recall. An algorithm uses your success rate and spaced repetition data to introduce & drill more advanced notes into your long term memory.
Here's some more reading I was inspired by:
https://www.mathacademy.com/pedagogy
https://www.justinmath.com/individualized-spaced-repetition-...
Even if there are a lot of imperfections and flaws about this project (like the sheer difficulty of curating a good knowledge graph to begin with), I'm hoping to make my note-taking in Obsidian more structured and thorough, replace my Anki routine, and make any of my notes into an automated + algorithmic course. If someone has another similar project (combining note-taking with hierarchal, topological knowledge graphs with spaced repetition and testing all in one platform) I would love to hear more about your approaches. Quick shoutout to one person I've seen who is doing something similar: https://x.com/JeffreyBiles/status/1926639544666816774
https://euvinkeel.github.io/tart/Traversing-Knowledge-Graphs
https://literead.ai
When I was looking for a job last summer, I got frustrated with the current resume builders on the market and decided to build one exactly how I wanted to use it.
- No signup, no login, and no payment.
- Suggest a professional summary (with highlighting) to match a job description [0].
- Preview as you go.
- ATS friendly templates.
- Find relevant jobs for my resume.
[0] Recruiters skim through resumes, and highlighting the keywords they look for has always helped me to get their attention, so I decided to implement this feature using AI.
https://resumeyay.com
Fits into my “loudness series” suite of tools.
Have 3 more in development and then it’ll be on to the next series.
https://apu.software/contour/
- https://padsnap.app/ : PadSnap is a simple web app that adds customizable padding to your images so they fit Instagram’s/custom dimensions — no cropping, no quality loss. All on browser, no server uploads. Also no ads or login.
- https://shiryakhat.net/ : redid my podcasts website last week: Shir Ya Khat podcast, which translates to "Head or Tails" in Farsi, began its non-profit journey in 2016 with a mission to make blockchain and cryptocurrency technical knowledge accessible to Farsi speakers worldwide.
- life timetime visualizer, still WIP, feedback welcome: https://shayanb.github.io/timeline/
Reflect - an app to track anything and analyze your data, including a feature to run self-guided experiments [0]
Later - an app to schedule non-urgent tasks and ideas, with an SRS-like scheduler to punt items [1]
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/reflect-track-anything/id64638...
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/later-set-intentions/id6742691...