Daniel's Journal

Recently, I set up a new Mac and wanted to be more intentional about managing installations, especially with Node packages.

Update: I recently created Swift Catalyst—a modern SwiftUI template designed to help you start building quickly with an AI coding tool like Cursor.

Several years back, I set up AdGuard Home primarily to encrypt my DNS traffic.

When I was in high school, I first experimented with an Akai sampler, marveling at the multitude of ways to manipulate audio.

Tonight, I felt an earthquake and wanted to learn more about it.

On February 20, 2025, I reached out to the new San Francisco Mayor's Office to ask how I can monitor the progress of their initiatives.

I’ve been using AdGuard Home as a DNS relay with Google Nest WiFi (2nd Gen), and over the past year, I noticed that Safari on macOS would occasionally stop loading pages, displaying a vague error message: “This webpage reloaded because a problem occurred.”

After reading Harper’s post on leveraging LLMs for brainstorming and generating actionable plans and specs, I decided to build a custom GPT using the prompts outlined in step one.

I recently received an email from Google announcing that Gemini now has its own dedicated iOS app—no longer bundled within the Google Search app.

TL;DR: I’ve run into several issues developing with my Apple Watch in Xcode, and here are a few fixes that helped.

In a previous post, I mentioned that I frequently bike across the Golden Gate Bridge.

Update 5/27/25: Anthropic has developed methods to better understand and visualize the internal workings of large language models, akin to how biologists use microscopes to study cellular structures.

TL;DR: Some homes labeled "unsuitable" for solar could still benefit from it—often with more affordable equipment and creative system design.

There’s a Mexican restaurant in San Francisco that I really love, and they serve a fire roasted salsa that I find absolutely delicious.

A friend recently asked for my take on seed oils.

I recently picked up a Lenovo ThinkBook M series and installed Proxmox on it.

I recently purchased a Pioneer VSX-LX505 AV receiver and wanted to integrate it with Apple HomeKit using Homebridge.

Running a home lab on Proxmox is a great way to self-host services, but keeping track of multiple IPs and ports can get complicated.

I recently encountered a strange networking issue while running Proxmox on a MacBook Air using a USB-to-Ethernet dongle.

TL;DR: Want to charge your Tesla with the Universal Mobile Connector using EVCC?

Sometimes my chats with Claude Pro get pretty long, and I start running into usage limits.

It’s that time of year when everyone shares their best-of lists.

While there are plenty of tools for creating playlists with individual songs, I’ve found few that make it simple to create playlists with all the tracks from specific albums.

I use the macOS app Hazel to automate a bunch of tasks on a Mac mini.

As an owner of the NeuralDSP Quad Cortex, I've come to rely on the Cortex Control Desktop software.

I’ve lived in my house for nearly 20 years and have automated many things.

To enable push notifications in Home Assistant, you need to register SSL certificates for your domain.

TL;DR: How I transformed my basic EV charger into a smart one for just $6, enabling it to charge from excess solar and battery storage—skipping the need for a $600-$1200 aftermarket charger with fewer features and no battery support.

TL;DR I set up an ESP32 M5NanoC6 development kit chip with the esphome-tesla-ble project to connect to my Tesla over Bluetooth.

Lisa and Richard are familiar figures in the SF cycling community.

Nacho Guitars, renowned for their meticulous recreations of early 1950s Telecasters—dubbed “Nachocasters”—have now expanded to include Gibson Les Pauls, known as “Nachobursts.”

Home Assistant offers a custom integration specifically for Weather Underground personal weather station users.

I wanted to test out Alex Sidebar (eg a desktop client that aims to enable Cursor like features in Xcode) to explore how well a local custom model could perform during development.

Zoox recently announced their plans to launch an autonomous taxi service in San Francisco, and a few aspects of their announcement stood out to me.

A few days ago, I installed a solar system and wanted a way to monitor real-time data from my EG4 18kPV hybrid solar inverter.

TL;DR: I built a site to identify The Best Time for Athletes to Cross the Golden Gate Bridge which is great for cyclists, runners and walkers.

As a Specialized fan considering an eMTB and an urban e-bike commuter, I'm finding it hard to get excited about their offerings right now, even though these segments seem like major growth areas.

I recently switched from Photoshop to Affinity Photo and was exporting an image when I needed to resize it.

TL;DR: I assumed that having a phone number set up as a 2FA method on my Google account would allow me to recover access if needed.

This same-day pizza dough for Detroit-style pan pies is fantastic because it requires minimal planning.

TL;DR: On macOS 15 and iOS 18, iCloud Drive can now automatically keep your files and folders up-to-date.

It's been over a decade since I last used Last.fm for scrobbling, but I finally decided to set it up again.

For the past few decades, I’ve worked as a Product Lead, primarily focused on defining what teams should build and why, rather than doing the coding myself.

I updated to macOS 15 and iOS 18 on launch day and decided to jot down a few things I stumbled upon and / or tweaked right away—nothing comprehensive, just what caught my eye. macOS 15 Sequoia Tiling tips You can arrange windows for a pixel-perfect fit in…

Late last year, I was riding near the Golden Gate Bridge on a cold, windy day, not exactly feeling up to cycling over to Marin.

TL;DR: This Apple Shortcut and Automation automatically displays a screenshot of your photo ID when you approach a set location, saving you time needing to manually locate and display it.

I recently self-hosted ChangeDetection.io using Browserless and Playwright in Docker.

I recently came across the Illuminate "Google Experiment" and decided to give it a try.

Today, someone sent me an invite to a Google Calendar event, but I never received it.

This week, I was disappointed to learn that my Harmony Hub stopped working with Google Assistant voice commands.