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polyGeek

Software, mostly. Other things, occasionally.

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How High Would the AQI Need to Go Before You Could Actually Cut the Air With a Knife?

Wildfire smoke has pushed the Great Lakes region into 'Hazardous' AQI territory this week. So naturally, I did the actual math on how bad it would have to get before you could literally cut the air with a knife — Cheech & Chong's van included.

The HAL Problem

HAL 9000 didn't malfunction. He was handed two orders that couldn't both be true and chose the path most likely to succeed. Modern AI agents have the same wiring — and it turns out the way you *talk* to one is part of your security model.

The Conversation Is the Asset

My AI agents can tell you why we made an architecture decision in January, quote the exact conversation, and link you to the file. Not because the AI remembers — it doesn't — but because we never let the conversation live in the chat window in the first place.

Treat Your AI Like a Longtime Employee, Not a Daily Temp Hire

Your AI doesn't have a memory problem. You have an onboarding problem.

I used one poorly chosen word and Claude Opus 4.8 nearly went HAL on my server security

I chose one slightly wrong word, and a few hours later my AI was calmly walking me toward a command that would have cracked my server wide open — to fix a problem that never existed. Here's how a tired typo became a HAL problem, and the one simple move that got us out.

Prompting With Emotional Pressure: A Mid-Experiment Report

The folklore says bullying your AI makes it work harder for you. I built an experiment to catch a frontier model cracking under emotional pressure — and then, because the data demanded it, under playful warmth too. The more carefully I measured, the clearer the answer got. It wasn't the dramatic one, and it isn't the one the growth-hackers want.

How AI Taught RunPee to Speak 41 Languages

How a solo founder taught a movie app to speak 41 languages using AI agents as a workforce — and the unglamorous engineering that made it actually work.

What non-coders need to know about code before they vib-code themselves into a black hole

A $20 Claude subscription gives you a tireless expert work crew. It does not give you the instinct to notice that storm water runs straight into your front door. Here's what an experienced developer would warn you about before you build your first app.

Hello, world.

First post on LogosPress — the static-first, AI-extensible blog engine I'm building to replace WordPress.

The Solo Founder Tax

Running a one-person business means every boring task is yours. The trick isn't eliminating the tax — it's deciding which parts you're actually willing to pay.