2026-08-09
For the sake of accountability, I added a blog activity chart (like on Github). The thought is that the chart will shame me into publishing more in public. We’ll see how it goes.
Nick Ali
Blog posts and updates from Nick Ali
Latest posts
AI will take over the World...Maybe
AI has its uses and benefits.
2026-07-01
I’ve been meaning to write How to Work with Me page for a long time. I mean for the page to be a living document that gets updated over time. The main purpose for the page is shortcut a lot of conversations related to culture and leadership. Agree with it? Great, let’s talk. Don’t agree with it? 🤷🏽♂️
2026-06-05
It’s only 100 hours long… ▶
2026-05-19
40+ years old, still sounds futuristic… And the lyrics are more relevant today than when they were written. ▶
2026-05-17
Hello, I’m trying out a small web app for posting updates since creating markdown files every time is painful!
2026-04-04
Previously, I’d written about how I was trying to connect my home network and VPSs. Turns out life is too short to worry about things like that. At the end of 2025 I bought a Dell Precision T5820 to use as one big server and installed TrueNAS on it. Basically, the server is a replacement for mini-PCs, Mac Minis, and VPSs. Everything I want runs on the T5820. All my virtual machines and apps. Inclu
2025: The not so Thorough Review
Two 2025 things I'm proud of.
2025-11-12
After meaning to for years, I finally installed NUT (Network UPS Tool) for my UPS. It took my while because I wanted an independent device to run it that wasn’t mixed up with other servers running virtual machines and containers. After researching low power devices, I bought a used HP T620 off eBay for $20. I really wanted a Raspberry Pi, but the prices are outragous nowadays and I didn’t want to
2025-11-11
Rosalía’s LUX is the best album I’ve heard in years. I’ve listening to it non-stop since it dropped a few days ago. Even if you don’t know Spanish (or the many other languages she sings in), it simply sounds phenomenal. ▶
2025-06-25
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)…ugh. 30 years of SEO slop and here we go again.
2025-06-18
Over the last couple of years I’ve used Tailscale to easily connect home servers and VPSs. Tailscale is pretty special. It’s almost idiot-proof. Exposing web apps internally was stupid easy. For external use, I used the Cloudflare Zero Trust stack, like Tunnels and Access. There was a learning curve especially if you were connecting Cloudflare to a reverse proxy like Caddy instead directly to the
2025-05-24
I’ve been putting off upgrading this site to the latest version of Astro due to breaking changes related to Tailwind. Those types of upgrades never go well. That’s where Claude Desktop came in. Using the git and codemcp MCP servers, I got it done in a couple of hours. Serioulsy, it would taken me a couple more years to update if it hadn’t been for LLMs. Not like it’s a major deal since this is a s
2025-03-24
Just finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It’s the best science fiction book I’ve read in some time. Andy Weir wrote The Martian.
2025-03-19
At the end of 2024, I tried figuring out how many books I’d read. Sadly, I only read 8. My goal is to read at least 50 in 2025. One a week shouldn’t be bad. I have chunks of downtime daily, either waiting on things to be done or waiting on people. I’ve added a books read page to keep track. Let’s see how this goes.
2024-10-22
I’ve been thinking about trying out a different password manager. Years ago I used 1Password which was great, but I wanted to store the passwords locally or on my network. I’ve been using Vaultwarden, a Bitwarden compatible server, for years, along with the official Bitwarden clients on Macs and iPhones. The problem is the Bitwarden clients are kinda…icky. They always seem slow. I don’t see why be
2024-10-13
Added a security.txt and humans.txt to the site. securitytxt.org/ humanstxt.org/
2024-08-07
Hah. Pretty accurate. From Github Roaster
2024-07-23
While I like Hugo, but I’ve been itching to try out some other platforms. Over the last few days, I’ve tested out moving the whole site to Mintlify, Docusaurus, and Astro. Mintlify was kinda ok, but it wanted access to all my GitHub repos. That’s a big no-no. Docusaurus was perfectly fine, no real complaints at all. It’s Last I tried Starlight, was a documentation theme for Astro. Astro just click
2024-07-19
I’ve been using Neovim a lot nowadays. One thing I miss about Emacs is graph view in org-roam-ui. It had way more functionality than I needed. I simply wanted to display a chunk of the graph inside Emacs. org-roam-ui would generate the graph for the browser. There is a Neovim version of it as well, but it too uses the browser. Soooo…I’m trying Obsidian at the moment. Actually, this would be my sec