Time for another monthly post sharing some of the IT discoveries that crossed my path lately. Below you’ll find a mix of articles, links, and resources, some of which tie into my current activities and areas of interest.
01Some thoughts
AI and blog automation
It’s been five years since I started writing these monthly summaries and link aggregations. Some months are leaner than others in terms of shared content, but I often have a wealth of links to share.
I’ve been thinking about the time I spend copy-pasting links and formatting markdown for these posts. While it’s not a major issue, I thought, “Why not automate it?” With the current AI hype, it seemed like a fun side project to experiment with LLMs and implement some automation.
Initially, I considered using Agents, but that quickly felt like overkill for this task. My goal is simple: parse a list of links, extract some basic information from each website, generate an AI-powered description, and compile it into a monthly blog post. It’s definitely not rocket science.
After some back and forth with Cursor and a few fresh starts, I now have a working pre-alpha version. It’s far from perfect, but done is better than perfect, right? I plan to share more details once I’ve polished it up.
Creative Coding
This month, I had the pleasure of attending Creative Coding Amsterdam: May Madness @Mollie. It was an awesome meetup with three inspiring presentations. I was particularly impressed by the creativity on display.
First, Giedrius Tamulaitis showcased his “Doom Phone,” a wonderfully absurd project where he turned an old rotary phone into a wireless controller for playing Doom. Then, Masa took us on a journey through his interactive pixel art worlds, sharing the evolution of his charming and creative coding projects. Finally, Piter Pasma dove deep into the beauty and magic of SDFs (Signed Distance Functions) and his “Rayhatcher” algorithm, which creates stunning 3D art with mathematical code.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time or stamina to stay for networking afterward, but I’ll plan better for the next one. The event was packed with inspiring ideas, and I’m definitely planning to attend more of these meetups in the future.
A snapshot from the first presentation at the Creative Coding Amsterdam meetup, featuring the “Doom Phone.” It’s a vintage rotary phone ingeniously rewired to play the classic game Doom—for no practical reason other than pure creative fun.
02Articles
10 linksReading RSS content is a skilled activity
Enter RSS: An opportunity to reclaim your attention through simple and open tech.
A Life Engineered: Visibility Without Bragging: A Practical Guide
5 practical strategies to make your impact visible.
How Facebook served billions of requests per second Using Memcached
The largest Memcached system in the world.
How I Created Perfect Wiki and Reached $250K in Annual Revenue Without Investors / Habr
Hi, my name is Ilia. I founded Perfect Wiki — a SaaS product for creating internal company knowledge bases that works directly within Microsoft Teams.
Write Like You Talk
The article by Paul Graham discusses the importance of writing in spoken language to make writing more accessible and engaging.
The 7 must-read Engineering Management books - Manager.dev
Written by Engineering Managers, for Engineering Managers. All you need to know about your job.
Working on Complex Systems: What I Learned Working at Google
Explore the key characteristics of complex systems and learn practical patterns for tackling complex problems.
Coding Without a Laptop - Two Weeks with AR Glasses and Linux on Android | Hold The Robot
I recently learned something that blew my mind; you can run a full desktop Linux environment on your phone.
From engineer to consultant: The powerful shift from inward to outward focus
The article outlines the differences between less experienced engineers and seasoned consultants, particularly in how they engage with unfamiliar codebases.
03Productivity
1 linkWhy high performers make assertions: The difference between insights, suggestions, and assertions
An insight is just a starting point. The rare, courageous thing to do is to develop an assertion, i.e. a hypothesis and point of view that answers “so what?
04AI
4 linksHow to use the AI-boom to level up in your career and land a job
Actionable strategies and exact prompts from the CEO of Formation and ex-Staff Engineer, Sophie Novati
2025 Guide to Prompt Engineering in your editor for Software Engineers
Tiny prompt tricks with big impact, backed by experience
LLMs are Making Me Dumber - Vincent Cheng
These are all deliberate trade-offs I make for the sake of output speed. By sacrificing depth in my learning, I can produce substantially more work. I’m unsure if I’m at the correct balance between output quantity and depth of learning.
05AI Tools
4 linksCrewAI
Framework for orchestrating role-playing, autonomous AI agents. By fostering collaborative intelligence, CrewAI empowers agents to work together seamlessly, tackling complex tasks.
asgeirtj/system_prompts_leaks
Collection of extracted System Prompts from popular chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude & Gemini
TmuxAI - Intelligent Terminal Assistant
TmuxAI enhances your existing tmux workflow with AI-powered commands, automation, and context-aware assistance.
06Security
4 linksFacebook isn’t eavesdropping, but the truth is more disturbing
Last year a longstanding conspiracy was reignited, telling the tale of how your smartphone is listening to your conversations and delivering targeted ads, but it still isn’t true and the way you actually get your ads is much more unsettling.
How I Set Up a Home Server That I Can Access from Anywhere | Medium
This is the beginning of my home server journey — and I’m taking you along for the ride.
The Beauty Of Having A Pi-hole · Den Delimarsky
So, check this little idea that I have - I want to browse the internet without all sorts of unscrupulous actors collecting every little bit of metadata on me and my family they can possibly get their hands on.
07Python
3 links14 Advanced Python Features
… as someone who’s written Python for the past 12 years, I’ve come across a lot of really interesting, underrated, unique, or (as some might say) “un-pythonic” tricks to really level up what Python can do.
Textual: Algorithms for high performance terminal apps
Textual has been a constant source of programming challenges. Often frustrating but never boring, the challenges arise because the terminal “specification” says nothing about how to build a modern User Interface.
Making PyPI’s test suite 81% faster - The Trail of Bits Blog
Trail of Bits collaborated to optimize PyPI’s test suite, reducing execution time from 163 seconds to 30 seconds while increasing the test count from 3,900 to over 4,700.
08Django
2 linksThe Database Row That Did and Didn’t Exist - The Future Is Now
Every now and then, I run into a bug so mystifying on its face I know it’s going to be a journey just from the error message.
Dataclass For Django Custom Command Arguments | ontowhee
I was cleaning up a custom Django command yesterday and ended using a dataclass as a way to keep the code DRY.
09Python libraries
1 linkGitHub - D4Vinci/Scrapling:
🕷️ An undetectable, powerful, flexible, high-performance Python library to make Web Scraping Easy and Effortless as it should be! - D4Vinci/Scrapling
10Tools
3 linkspaxtonhare/demo-magic
A handy shell script that enables you to write repeatable demos in a bash environment.
Awesome Docker Compose
A collection of self-hosted apps you can quickly set up with Docker Compose
Manifest - Meet the 1-file micro-backend
Instant Micro-backend with Admin Panel, REST API, Auth, Storage and more. All in one YAML file.
11Other stuff
2 linksWhat is HDR, anyway?
It’s not you. HDR confuses tons of people. In this post, we finally explain what HDR actually means, the problem it presents, and three ways to solve it.
12Videos
19 linksPyCon US 2025 YouTube Playlist
djangotv.com: A Guided Tour Through Postgres Internals with Elizabeth Garrett Christensen
This video features Elizabeth Garrett Christensen at DjangoCon US 2024 in Durham, NC USA.
LeanProductivity - Sascha D. Kasper: Want a PERSONAL AI for your notes and files? Msty is the answer.
SekurakTV: Poznaj AI. Praktyka, narzędzia, ciekawostki - szkolenie sekurak.pl
Tomasz Palak - Prawo vs Twoja strona internetowa. Przyjrzyjmy się jej, zanim zrobi to kontrola - YouTube
AI generated summary
Tomasz Palak’s presentation at Infoshare Conference 2025 covers legal considerations for websites, common errors, and ways to avoid penalties.
Jak działa serwer MCP? Tutorial: Jak Zrobić własny Serwer MCP z Vibe Coding w Cursor AI! - YouTube
AI generated summary
A tutorial video by Mike Tomala on creating an MCP server using Vibe Coding in Cursor AI, covering setup, tools, and maintenance tips.
Privacy, Crime, National Security, Human Rights & You in the Middle • Bert Hubert • GOTO 2023 - YouTube
AI generated summary
Bert Hubert’s talk at GOTO 2023 delves into the complex relationship between privacy, crime, national security, and human rights, highlighting the role of technology in these areas.
Oddly useful Linux tools you probably haven’t seen before - YouTube
AI generated summary
This video introduces viewers to a selection of lesser-known Linux tools that can improve productivity and efficiency. It is available on YouTube and runs for about 9 minutes.
I made my own TUI to release my album! It’s a bash script (+ ffmpeg) that you can run yourself! - YouTube
AI generated summary
Dave introduces his TUI project for releasing his album, created with a bash script and ffmpeg. He shares insights on programming, sys admin, and Unix, while also critiquing bad code humorously.
How Stanford Teaches AI-Powered Creativity in Just 13 MinutesㅣJeremy Utley - YouTube
AI generated summary
Stanford University explores the integration of AI in fostering creativity, presented by Jeremy Utley. The video is part of EO Studio’s storytelling initiative.
Brad Frost: Death to Bullsh*t - YouTube
AI generated summary
Brad Frost’s ‘Death to Bullsh*t’ presentation highlights the need to remove unnecessary content from digital experiences to improve user engagement and focus on meaningful interactions.
Why Can’t We Make Simple Software? - Peter van Hardenberg - YouTube
AI generated summary
Peter van Hardenberg’s talk addresses the difficulties in achieving simplicity in software development, highlighting the inherent complexities that arise even with the intention of creating simple systems.
Programming’s Greatest Mistakes • Mark Rendle • GOTO 2023 - YouTube
AI generated summary
Mark Rendle discusses programming’s greatest mistakes at the GOTO 2023 conference, aiming to help developers learn from past errors to improve future software development.
Building Cheap & Efficient Home Servers with… Laptops? - YouTube
AI generated summary
This video discusses how to build cost-effective and efficient home servers using laptops. It highlights the benefits of using laptops, such as lower power consumption and cost savings, and provides guidance on setting up a laptop as a server.
AI-Powered Office Automation: Fun and Frustrating | Harper Reed | Ignite - YouTube
AI generated summary
Harper Reed discusses the benefits and challenges of AI-powered office automation, emphasizing its potential to boost productivity while also presenting new obstacles.