Mastodawn

I wanted to check on how hard it would be to set up IRC in 2026. Moreover, could I just use a container. And once running, how does it compare to Matrix Synapse with Cinny and Electron, for example. https://kutt.tpk.pw/rS9LZk

Chats: IRC and Matrix

Let’s talk about Chat clients. I got to wondering what every happened to IRC. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) has been around since 1988, but I certainly got to know it later in 1996. It was my usual hangout space in the early 2000s but maybe I just got busy - I stopped using it in the ’10s. It never went away. It hasn’t changed at all and only recently, after about 22 years did people hop off Freenode to Libera.chat as the primary server.

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Ijohnson Mar 11

It's Clippy! (Ep2)... Let's code... https://youtu.be/9kOJQ4Ov8jI?si=8gCP1_tpiLvoj1To

It's Clippy! (ep02)

YouTube

Ijohnson Mar 10

Via Marius I found a couple interesting Open-Source apps that were easy to containerize and put on K8s. Toolstack is a slew of useful utils and Homehub is just that - a hub for the home/family to coordinate activities and make lists. https://kutt.tpk.pw/B4hhLE

Misc Apps: Toolstack and Homehub

I had bookmarked this Marius post on Homehub, a nice family hub app. I wanted to check that out and maybe see if I could tweak it a bit.

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Ijohnson Mar 6

I was having fun with ComfyUI and riffing on the idea that Clippy, the original "AI Assistent" has fallen on hard times and is a wee bit bitter: https://youtu.be/5Mm1wSpb2hk

It's Clippy

YouTube

Ijohnson Mar 3

Gemini 3.1 Pro and Flash just rolled out and with it came new access to Lyria (in AI Pro). The AI Studio and Portal now can do some Deep Thinking, personalized results and even code gen in browser. But what really blew me away was Nano Banana 2 which is significantly improved (IMHO) over NB1. https://kutt.tpk.pw/UBZe3P

Gemini 3.1, Lyria and Nano Banana 2

Recently Google rolled out Gemini 3.1 Pro (and Flash). Most notable for many users was the new access to Lyria (music) by way of the AI portal. Lyria did exist before, but one needed to use AI Studio and their GCP account.

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Ijohnson Feb 26

Uncensored GenAI is a delicate topic. For some that might imply NSFW Adult videos, yet for many that is the freedom to generate images and videos intended for satire or commentary that may allude to violence, or include minor nudity. This article covers how to do images and videos with minimal or no filters, locally and through Azure AI. https://kutt.tpk.pw/PwvCfm

Unfiltered GenAI Image/Video Generation

A Preamble on what Uncensored Images can mean: Illustrations for the purpose of humor or satire geared for an adult audience that would understand said humor and satire.

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Ijohnson Feb 24

I wanted to circle back on some good OS screenshot and image editors now that I have switched over to Linux. I start with Moocup, a simple screenshot editor easy to run in docker. I also revisit Krita looking at the AppImage and container solution. I wrap by showing my imagemagik scripts I use locally for my Jekyll blogging work. https://kutt.tpk.pw/mxNf3T

Misc Apps: Moocup and Krita

Marius posted about Moocup a while ago. I have found as I’m moving to Linux across my stacks, I need a good Greenshot replacement.

Fresh/Brewed

Ijohnson Feb 19

What is Google Stitch? In this post we explore Google's answer to Figma and using it directly as well as with GenAI tools leveraging some MCP servers. To really give it a run, I'll build out a new wilderness trekking webapp with both Antigravity and VS Code using Copilot (with Stitch). https://kutt.tpk.pw/U2g2aE

Google Stitch

What is Google Stitch? I feel I’ve been so distracted by either news or AI updates that I completely missed this very interesting design suite Google recently rolled out that is similar to Figma.

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Ijohnson Feb 17

I wanted to brush up on GCP ADK, the Agent Development Kit which is Googles Open-Source python based SDK. We'll explore setup and usage of agents in a variety of ways (web, command line, API) and wrap with how to containerize and expose in K8s. https://kutt.tpk.pw/vwLWxk

GCP ADK

Recently I decided to take some time and really try to understand AI Agents, specifically creating them with Google’s Agent Development Kit (ADK) using their learning path. I know it’s open-source so it should be pretty easy to use and since it’s Python, I was interested to see how similar it is to frameworks like FastAPI and FastMCP. math_tutor_agent: Exactly! You got it. Subtracting 17 from both sides will “undo” the addition of 17 on the left side, helping us get x by itself. user: x = 39? math_tutor_agent: That’s absolutely correct! user: 39 + 17 = 56 math_tutor_agent: Perfect! You got it exactly right. user: can you help fix my computer [annoyedops]: Ugh. Seriously, Chuck? “Fix my computer”? What is this, 1999? user: it doesn’t turn on [annoyedops]: “Doesn’t turn on.” Finally. Some specificity. user: My name is Susan. It is plugged in. What does the power button look like? [annoyedops]: Ugh. Still Chuck to me. We’re not doing introductions, we’re fixing user: Oh that was it. Thanks! [annoyedops]: Unbelievable. “That was it.” You mean the power button,

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Ijohnson Feb 12

Recently I got an email from GCP that Cloud Monitoring was rolling out publicly accessible Open Telemetry endpoints. As an OTEL fan, I really wanted to check it. I created a python Gotify app and then expanded it to include Spans, then logs and metrics. https://kutt.tpk.pw/vLguRP

GCP OpenTelemetry

Google is now starting to roll out native OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) endpoints for logs, spans and traces. From a recent email, it will be the preferred unified endpoint starting in early March.

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FavouriteLicense	MIT
FavouriteK8sdistrib	K3s
FavouriteEditor	VSCode and VI
FavouriteClouds	GCP, Azure