I was inspired in writing this post after seeing this article from Stephen Robles being reposted on Mastodon. It is a very interesting read, and certainly resonated with me in some areas, but also I was surprised by the final result. The TLDR is that AI wasn’t good enough to take an idea and make it into an app, all the while having zero coding experience.

Here we go again! I know I’ve recently teased this project, but it’s finally live. The Tako family is expanding and today I’m excited to officially introducing Tako Writer - a lightweight Markdown editor for quick and easy Wordpress posting. As I’ve outlined in my previous post, I do sometimes suffer from procrastination, especially when it comes to writing online.

Am I the only one that thinks this way? I’m currently typing this from my next app (I know..0 to 1000 in a minute!), something that I’ve built to post more on this blog. Why? Because my head kept telling me that if only I had the right tools, I would 100% write more. It’s not at all because I’ve been finding any good excuse not to write!

Let me add my two cents on the international nightmare of the model picker! Since the launch of GPT-5, Open AI has drastically simplified the model picker, to the point that initially there wasn’t really one anymore. If you ask me, that was the right move. One of the things I never liked about the UI of ChatGPT was that model picker, mostly because the names of the models never made any sense.

It all started with these two renewals…the rest became a journey I didn’t expect. I have a lot of apps on my phone. With some of them I engage on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day. Some bring me joy, some stress, other are simply useful. Then there are some which are over-engineered for what they do. Or maybe, to put it in a better way, they are over-enginered for my needs.

Vibe coding is a conversational, AI-first programming paradigm popularized by Andrej Karpathy in early 2025, where developers provide natural language prompts to LLMs to generate working code, and the user guides and refines it—often without direct, line-by-line programming. It’s great for rapid prototyping and non-experts, but carries risks in terms of code quality, comprehension, and security when used in serious development contexts.

Hello and welcome back to the regularly scheduled updates for Project Tako! Since the hardware is all in place and the software is 90% there, I’ve started tinkering with a possible case design to bring it all together. I’ll be honest, I’m not super happy (yet) with the design I’ve came up with. Main reason being is that I’m terrible at creative design, but I guess projects like this one could be gateway to experiment and improve.

We are finally on the move!! I’ve been dreading some of the electrical circuits needed to make Tako an actual movable remote, but alas, here we are! As you will see from the video, all the wiring and soldering is still very rough, but I’m still learning so much on hardware and software that those are not my primary concerns yet.

Hello again! It has been a while since the previous update, but holidays and small home office renovations came in between me and Tako!! Not to worry, this update is quite a doozy! As you’ve seen in the title, there is a brand new navigation system for Tako: a joystick! I was somewhat dissatisfied with the buttons, as they felt a bit more clunky than expected for moving around the UI.

Well, I don't know why am I surprised about this, but The Iconfactory did it again! The recently release Tapestry app has proven to be the best new app for Internet consumers in recent memory. And especially after yesterday's update V1.1, it has truly cemented its place on my homescreen! As you can see from the screenshot above, cementing a place on my homescreen is no easy feat.

Progress on Project Tako continues! I’m having a lot of fun (but also frustrating) conversations with ChatGPT in order to continue fine-tuning the code for this. I guess I’m fully embracing the “vibe-coding” approach with this, using AI to continuously iterate and move the code forward. The frustrating part is linked to the AI not always grasping the concepts I’m trying to move forward, therefore still requiring a lot of direct input and manipulation of the code (at least I have an idea of what’s going on in the code!).

Well, here we go again! As "simple" dashboard projects were not enough, I've decided to (re)embark on a new HA related mission: Project Tako! What is Project Tako, you ask? It's my renewed quest on the never-ending journey for custom control of HA. Having apps on your phone or dashboards on your wall is nice, but what about when you are not in front on any of those 🤣

Let’s continue the series of tinkering projects completed in the last couple of months, by switching to watchmaking instead of electronics. Watchmaking as well? Yep! I’ve always liked mechanical watches, from simple Flik Flaks to Rolex’s family heirlooms. They’ve all had their roles and importance over the years in my life. Most recently I’ve had a small gap when my primary watch became an Apple Watch Ultra, but I guess at the back of my mind, there was always the bug of mechanical watches.

Yesterday I did a quick post detailing the design and assembly process behind my DeskPi. I was blown away by the response and interest in the project on Reddit, including the number of questions around my other surface mounted dashboard - which I affectively refer to as WallPi! I did tease this project briefly, so it's only fair I revisit the project now, to give some extra details on it.

The more I dig into the world of HomeAssistant, the more I keep falling down a deep rabbit hole! Lately, after increasing the number of “smart” devices installed in our house, I started looking more into surface mounted dashboards, in order to control the madness! A first successful attempt was to mount a Raspberry Pi 4 (with a PoE HAT) on the wall, behind a larger touch screen, all encased in a simple translucent case (there is an LED strip mounted inside, for mood lighting at night!)

I consider myself an “internet native”. Being of the generation that I am, I remember when the internet first started to become a thing once we started getting dial-up at home. I remember clearly t…

I do love 3D printing! It’s a recent love, but nevertheless it’s becoming a big passion for me! I bought my first 3D printer almost 2 years ago, leveraging the usual Black Friday discounts and I’ve…

I guess I still need to master my power of manifestation! The other day I was wishing for some improvement to iPadOS for business usage and for gaming. I guess I kind of received one of the two? Fr…