I wrote a short post about using AI to help build this personal micro-blogging platform: https://philstephens.com/blog/rebuilding-my-micro-blog-with-ai-agents
Moments
Just got Claude Cowork to upload my entire Instagram history - 700+ posts - to this micro-blog. Pointed it at the export from Instagram and the OpenAPI spec for this site and away it went.
It generated a Python script to do the job - will probably add it to the repo for this site.
Really struggling to get iCloud sharing working on this new SwiftUI app I’m working on (alongside my mates Claude and Codex). Everything in the code looks right according to Apple’s developer docs, and everything is configured correctly in CloudKit console, but the app just isn’t receiving any CKShare.Metadata through any ingress point. With several days and countless tokens burned my AI teammates are both stumped, both recommending I raise a support issue with Apple 😂.
Seriously considering rolling my own collaboration mechanism if I can’t figure this out soon (it would make integrating an Android build a lot easier down the line if I did).
Things are getting serious - just renewed my Apple Developer Program membership for a year. Looks like I might be shipping some apps 🚢
(Agentic) Development of my new personal micro-blogging system is going well. Have both a workable server and iOS app. Still need to add editing posts to the app, but things are going well. Biggest hurdle so far has been getting paragraphs and <pre> code blocks to render with a bottom margin in iOS 🤷
Check out https://github.com/theprivateer/moments and https://github.com/theprivateer/moments-ios for progress.
Using agentic/spec-driven development to rebuild a micro-blogging platform I dreamt up in 2017. So far, so good - but it has all been within my comfort zone of Laravel/Tailwind CSS. Now things should get interesting as a I attempt to build a companion app for iOS…
Slowly coming to the realisation that being loyal and staying for as long as I did at my previous employer - despite the red flags and gut instincts - has definitely stunted my career progression/prospects.
Perfect month.
The double-edged sword of being back on the job market - I need to start answering calls from unknown numbers that I would otherwise screen, on the off-chance it is a recruiter calling with an opportunity.
Added my resume to my website - time to start applying for jobs 😬.
Release day tradition: updating all my Apple devices (except for my work laptop) to the latest OS. Whilst I'm very tech-savvy, and am fully aware that the difference between a late-stage beta and the official .0 release is non-existent, for some reason I never upgrade during the beta period.
46 years old.
The last year where I’m genuinely in my ‘mid-forties’ before the not-so-long downhill to 50.
Identifying duplicate values in a MySQL database:
SELECT email, COUNT(email)
FROM users
GROUP BY email
HAVING COUNT(*) > 1;
(pretty simple but I always forget)
I’ve been using my 5th generation iPad Mini with my 1st generation Apple Pencil for years - how have I never figured out that you can 'wake up' the Bluetooth connection by bringing the pencil to the slightly magnetised edge of the iPad? So many times I’ve been taking the cap off and plugging it into the Lightning port to 'pair' it 🤦
A little (very) late to the party but really enjoying using Freeform.app for mind-mapping and general note taking - especially on iPad with Apple Pencil.
Spent some time converting my Bookshelf page - all the books I've read in the past few years - from a static list to a more dynamic record-based list similar to the 365 Albums Project.
I plan on adding some interesting functionality around filtering and linking books by type, author, genre and series, as well as eventually adding some notes to help me summarise what I took away from each book.
Getting my hands dirty with some custom Shortcuts to post to my site from my iPhone...
Put together the beginnings of a new post in my digital garden - a list of my favourite products, tools and gear (which is not necessarily the same as my /uses page).
Looking forward to updating this over time.
Finished reading Cibola Burn last night - four books of The Expanse series down, only five more to go (not including the novellas written around the main story arc).
Hibernating my LinkedIn account. As somebody that doesn't typically use social media, I find it too distracting without much benefit.
Maybe I'll reactivate again at some point.