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Pi, more than a coding harness I’m a big fan of the Pi coding harness.

Ask LLMs to Teach You, Not Tell You A large language model can help you understand a subject, but usually people just use it to get an answer.

Software Design in a World of AI How we build and design software is obviously changing with LLMs.

The Wake of AI I saw this graph posted on Hacker News recently of Stack Overflow questions over time: The rise from 2008 to 2014 mirrors the explosion of web development, mobile apps, and an entire generation learning to code.

Safer Parking Lot Design Typical parking lots seem like they’re designed for cars first and people as an afterthought.

Create an IMDb Query Agent with PydanticAI After building my IMDb MCP server using FastMCP, I wanted to compare it to another approach using PydanticAI.

What runs mkaz.blog This post documents the various technology stacks I’ve run this site.

Jujutsu VCS - Getting Started Guide Jujutsu (jj) is a new version control system that’s been picking up a fair amount of interest.

Create a Local IMDb MCP Server in Python I was looking for examples on creating an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server in Python and took me awhile cobbling together a few different sources and actually getting it to work.

Functions Functions are one of the core building blocks of any language.

Classes Classes are Python’s way of creating your own custom data types, used to bundle related data and functions together.

Project Structure Organizing your Python projects with a clear structure and modern tools makes your code easier to maintain, test, and share.

Python Idioms Python has many idiomatic patterns that make code more readable, maintainable, and “Pythonic”.

Dev Environment Python Development with uv I recommend using uv for Python installation and package management.

Type Hints In Python 3.5, type hints were introduced as a means for adding type information.

System Commands To embrace the unix way, letting each tool do it’s thing, you need to be able to execute a system command from Python.

Python Testing Guide: How to Test Your Code with pytest Testing isn’t as hard as it seems.

Regular Expressions Regular expressions in Python use the standard module re.

Reading List 2024 A look back at what I read in 2024, split into fiction and non-fiction books.

Setting up Jupyter Notebook on Raspberry Pi Setup Install Jupyter Notebook and dependencies. python3 -m pip install numpy pandas matplotlib tabulate plotly python3 -m pip install jupyter Create the config file a ~/.jupyter/jupyter_notebook_config.py # Al…

Neovim plugin in Python The Vimwiki plugin is quite useful, but I only use a small subset of its features, primarily the daily notes and checking off of todo lists.

Reading List 2023 A look back at what I read in 2023, split into fiction and non-fiction books.

Collections Aside from lists and dictionaries Python has several other collection objections that are useful in the standard collections module.

No. 4 Pihole Drive I run a Pi-hole to block internet junk at the network level, which I wrote about previously.

Terminal Animation with Python I got stuck while working on the Advent of Code Day 12, 2022 puzzle and turned to using a terminal visualization to see what was going on.

Lists The primary data structure for collections in Python are lists.

Numbers Convert string to integer You must explicitly convert strings to integers, use the int() function to convert.

Control Flow Conditionals Basic if conditionals The basic if syntax in Python, with elif (else if) and else: x = 5 if x > 0: print(f"{x} is positive") elif x < 0: print(f"{x} is negative") else: print("Zero.

Strings A set of examples working with strings in Python.

Working with Files Reading files Here are several common ways to read files in Python.

Dictionaries The Python dict data structure is an associative array, or key-value pair data structure.

Add React to an Existing Page I wanted to add React to an existing page, just some Javascript to fancy up the UI.

Reading List 2022 A look back at what I read in 2022, split into fiction and non-fiction books.

One-line Journaling Journaling is a practice that always sounds better then actually doing.

Using REAPER instead of Audacity for Podcasts I’m switching to REAPER for editing our podcast audio.

Reading List 2021 A look back at what I read in 2021, split into fiction and non-fiction books.

Fixing software bugs Set screws.

The WordPress Command Line Tool One of my favorite WordPress tools is WP-CLI, the wp command-line tool.

Using Block Patterns as content templates Block patterns are great, one of the features I’m most excited for in WordPress.

Gutenberg and WordPress Core I recently had the need to update Gutenberg packages that are in WordPress core for a point release.

Make your own create-block templates Did you know the create-block script can support templates?

Using theme.json in a classic theme WordPress 5.8 introduced theme.json, a way to specify styles to be generated for the editor and front-end.

Modern WordPress Development There is a good discussion on modern WordPress development and a general lament about it’s complexity and change in the developer experience.

Working with Animated GIFs A few resources and snippets for working with animated GIFs on Linux.

Conditionally Load Block Assets, Part 3 In WordPress 5.8, releasing on July 20, there is a much easier way to conditionally load block assets.

The Hill We Climb I absolutely love the inauguration poem The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman.

Reading List 2020 A look back at what I read in 2021, split into fiction and non-fiction books.

Use Cornell Notes for Online Class I’ve found two things that help me get more out of online classes: first is to make space and pay attention, and second I use the Cornell Note taking method during the class.

Enable Learning in Technical Writing My goal writing documentation is to enable a student to learn, give them confidence they can learn, and not just copy-paste their way.

Scale QT Apps for HiDPI Most of Ubuntu/GNOME scale nicely with a high dpi (hidpi) display, there has been built-in support since 19.04 and now fractional scaling is just a simple toggle away in the latest 20.04.