Google’s Gemini CLI is command line, context aware assistant: it looks at your current directory, tools, and tries to make helpful suggestions. Here I go over how I was able to somewhat trim it down to a simple adhoc helper. I just type ? "How do I..." and get an…

My terminal-based text editing almost always occurs in short sessions. I’ll usually want to modify something and get out. To me, it makes no sense to have to step on a learning curve for a text editor. A good tool gets out of your way, which is why I don’t…

My favourite feature of any mouse that I’ve ever used is the automatic infinite scroll wheel mode. This is a mode where the scroll wheel, in its normal clicky mode, is flicked with enough force, and then continues to spin freely for a while, eventually slowing down and returning to…

When my previous office building shut down, I ‘inherited’ a Pi-aware which had been set up many years ago. I was vaguely aware that it made use of something called RTL-SDR, but I didn’t actually understand what that meant. I thought it was just for tracking aircraft, but it turns…

I have been looking at using uv for a Python project, and I’m quite satisfied with the productivity and performance it brings to the table for a local development environment.

Feature flags (or toggles) are often used to control the visibility of new features in a product. There are a few different ways to implement them, but the most talked and marketed about is to use feature flag management software. The simplest way of course is to hardcode them, though…

Compose keys are a Linux feature that allows you to type special characters. They’re very useful for typing accents, umlauts, diacritics, and other special characters. All operating systems have a way of typing such characters, but they are, to put it mildly, a convoluted mess.