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Mark Biek

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Quickly viewing Markdown files with AlfredApp

For years, I ve been a huge fan of AlfredApp as a replacement for the macOS Spotlight. I could write an entire post about all of the things I use Alfred for (and I probably should) but, for this one, I ll focus on a new workflow I built to quickly view Markdown files using glow. I [ ]

“Geography is 4-dimensional” – revisited

In Geography is four-dimensional, Derek Sivers says Geography is four-dimensional. You can’t know a place only a place as it was at a time. Where is bound to when. From age 6 to 15, I lived in Redding, CA. At my youngest, I wasn t really aware of it as a place at all. At [ ]

I built a self-hosted RSS reader

I ve tried lots of different RSS readers over the years (RIP Google Reader) and haven t been super happy with most of them. The biggest issue is finding something that works equally well on desktop and mobile. Most of the solutions I tried had various sync issues and were cumbersome to use, especially on mobile. So [ ]

An Automattic Experiment

This month, we re running an experiment at Automattic called Radical Speed Month. For a month, small (usually two-person) teams have been given the go-ahead to build and ship whatever they want! No approvals required. If you have an idea for something cool, an experience you ve always wanted to fix, whatever, this month you can do it. [ ]

We need junior developers

I started my career as a junior developer in 1998. I was incredibly fortunate that a company was willing to take a chance on a new college graduate and start teaching me the realities of software development outside the classroom. I wrote a lot of terrible code, made mistakes, broke things, mis-estimated projects, and pretty [ ]

Shout out to my mom

This International Women s Day, I have to shout out my mom who is the entire reason I learned about computers and fell in love with them. She brought home a Commodore 64 when I was 6 years old introducing me to the joy of computer games and BASIC programming. She owned a medical transcription company [ ]

Announcing the launch of Boring Space Game

https://boringspacegame.com This is a clicker/resource-management game in the style of Universal Paperclips or Kittens Game. You play as a benevolent AI in charge of helping humanity flee a dying earth. You will eventually start colonizing our solar system and, if you manage things carefully, maybe even travel beyond. It s playable in the browser on desktop [ ]

I built a personal AI agent and then killed it

Yeah, that title s kind of sensationalist. You won t believe what happened next! Since I m a human and we pack-bond with and anthropomorphize everything, I actually felt kind of bad shutting her (it? 🤷) down. There s a Github repo if anyone else wants to use it as a starting point: https://github.com/markbiek/pilar-bot The bot has her own [ ]

Simplenote MCP Server

I ve been an avid Simplenote user, long before I started working at Automattic. I love how easy it is to just fire up a note and start typing. I can tag, type text, use markdown formatting, and link to other notes. And that s basically it! I ve tried things like Obsidian and Notion but they just [ ]

I built a file-watching tool

I love automating small tasks. It s so satisfying to have something done for me automatically without having to open a terminal and run a command. One thing I do a lot is to convert .heic or .heif files from my iPhone to JPG. I was thinking about writing a little alias in my ~/.zshrc but [ ]