Taste Is All That's Left
On what is left to do once the machine can make anything, and why taste is the last craft worth keeping.
NotAShelf's Blog
Personal notes on Linux, Nix, NixOS, System Administration and Programming
Latest posts
The Tool and the Tedium
Scaffolding, not the destination. How I stopped worrying and learned to love the tedium
Nix Evaluation Is a Scheduling Problem
Why I built Evix, and my ramblings on Nix evaluation
No Software is Ever Truly Finished (And Neither is the Land)
Why my farm experiment failed, and why I opened my terminal again
Moving To A Farm
Trading the metropolis and software for a new life (on a farm)
Nix's Substituter List Is Not a Routing Table
Optimizing Nix's binary cache model
Why I think Go is a Terrible Language
Rants and ramblings on this little known language known as Go
The Nihilist's Guide to Cross-Compiling Dioxus for Windows
One stack to rule them all
2025 Wrapped & 2026 Wishlist
Projects shipped, things learned, and what I want less of in 2026
The Tradeoff Trap
When simplicity feels like surrender
I am Not Convinced by Vibe Coding
A critique of vibe coding and its false promise of effortless software development.
The Federation Fallacy
Thoughts on federated networks and their implications
On Mutation Testing
Do you have a moment to talk about your codebase's extended warranty?
The Curse of Knowing How, or; Fixing Everything
A reflection on control, burnout, and the strange weight of technical fluency.
Considerations
Yet another heart-to-heart for no reason other than to empty my head
My New Tech Stack
From Javascript, to Golang and Rust: A technical journey
NixOS Testing Framework I: On VM Tests
Introduction to the NixOS testing framework with flakes
What is nixConfig, Should You Trust It?
A quick look into Nix's 'controversial' nixConfig settings
Building Deterministic Typst Packages with Nix
Every time I think to myself 'no way Nix can do this,' Nix does it anyway.
On Editors and Things
Heartfelt ramblings about available editors
NixOS Security I: Systemd
First installment to a series on securing your NixOS systems
Signing Git commits with SSH keys
Setting up SSH signing for your many, many Git commits
Nix Remote Builders
Taking full advantage of Nix's scalability.
Full Disk Encryption and Impermanence on NixOS
Notes on setting up Impermanence with Full Disk Encryption on a NixOS system
When, Why and How to Extend Nixpkgs' Standard Library
Reasons why and how you might create your own extended library
Lazy Evaluation in Nix: Where Your Conditionals Go to Die
Exploring lazy evaluation in relative depth
Stop Scraping my Git Forge!
Just one of those that should be illegal, but is not.
Enter: Beginner's guide to Writing Error Messages
Thoughts and rants on key principles of writing polite, effective and user-friendly error messages
Hello World
New year, new blog and new obsessions; all in one place.
Please Just Stop!
Picking the right tool for the job, Nix
On SysRq
Understanding, using or disabling SysRq as per your needs
Headscale on NixOS, Tailscale anywhere
Brief introduction to running your own Tailscale coordination server, Headscale
Nix Remote Builders on non-standard OpenSSH ports
Setting up Nix remote builders on unique setups.
Packaging NextJS Webapps with Nix
Quick tutorial/journal on packaging NextJS projects with Nix
System Backlight
A quick encounter with System Backlight on a random Linux Kernel update.