I'm actually more and more overwhelmed by AI, the time is now coming to agree that it's not really the 'perfect solution' for everything, and I'm thinking more and more on where to use, and not to, use it. Human connection and relationships start to become way more important than what I can currently output in an LLM. The talks about "why" have the highest prio now, the 'how and what' a byline in a conversation.
reading:
Achtsam morden am Rande der Welt, the third Achtsam morden book by Karsten Dusse; Drive, by Christian Horner; and Seven Years From China, by DHH.
listening:
a quiet week, nothing played twice; the last run went from Etta James and Dr. Alban to Counting Crows. (last.fm, since 2007.)
proud of:
our little family at home, cats, dogs, my wife, the garden, our life in the caravan.
chafing at:
my life still has too little time in a day ;-)
Out in the open this month:
mcp-apple-music
,
new: Apple Music search and playlists, plus playlists kept in sync from Spotify by ISRC.
amusic-assistant
,
an Apple-Music-style face for Music Assistant: glass player bar, fullscreen now-playing, a picture-in-picture mini player.
ha_bosch
,
room thermostats and zone schedules; my PR upstream was merged, so this fork is now transitional.
mcp-things
,
repeating to-dos, reminders and checklists.
mcp-timely
,
from read-only to writing time entries.
Nah
,
naming, invitations and rules of engagement designed; a dev server running.
Nothing gets built before it is written down. The machines build after the thinking rather than instead of it: they read, they draft, they propose; I decide and I send. For the record, this month that means:
model claude opus 5.5 daily, sonnet 5.5,
fable 5.1 and haiku 5.5 alongside
harness claude code, in terminal, browser and cloud
mcp 16 servers of my own behind one portal,
a dozen connectors, six local tools
habits specs before code, agents for research,
a server that remembers my mistakes
leverage:
1.0 agent actions per word I typed
delegated:
23% of the output written by subagents and workflows
self-started:
49% of sessions opened by a to-do instead of a typed prompt
measured over October 2026
, the first month measured.
the machines also drew: gpt-image-2.5 flare and sunburst, nano banana 2.1 and gpt-image-2.
A big part of my attention right now is my two weeks off. After years, it feels like my first two weeks off without any doubts or concerns. We also bought a caravan, a long-standing wish. Exciting! And that means we're prepping for our first workation, early October.
reading:
Das Kind in mir will achtsam morden, the second Achtsam morden book by Karsten Dusse. A bit less interesting than the first, but that could also be my extreme tiredness.
listening:
binary_boy, Editors, Cameron Whitcomb, Cassia and Fastball, most played this week; the shuffle ran from Propaganda to Malcolm Todd. (last.fm, since 2007.)
proud of:
the amazing work done with StoryKeep, how the new version of wattedoeninberlijn.nl is coming along, and my chosen family: the wife, the dogs, the cats. It's a busy household, but I'm enjoying it.
chafing at:
that I totally “forgot” to consider my personal health. You can see it in how many days I've worked ten hours these last weeks. It's kind of scary. I enjoyed CrossFit so much, but I'm cancelling it now to save money. Bad choices, perhaps.
body:
two weeks of walks only, with the dogs setting the pace. Running picks up again at the end of September, strength in October.
Out in the open this month:
ha_bosch
,
1.5.0 with thermostat-valve entities and appliance status, 1.5.2 so diagnostics stop leaking the appliance serial, and a 1.6.0 beta with multi-zone Boost and faster startup, with outside contributors on both lines.
Nah
,
started a private social network built out of circles capped at Dunbar's number. So far there's a spike measuring four runtimes, the storage decision, and the first decision records for a small server of our own.
keychron-q11
,
host-side control for the Q11 Ultra on macOS. The router follows the receiver instead of the clock, and the wireless polling rate sits in the menubar.
mcp-siyuan
,
fixed a real bug. Headings nested under one H1 were invisible to section writes, 4,093 of 5,233 across the fleet. Both tools now refuse an ambiguous heading instead of guessing.
mcp-mockuuups
,
a new MCP server for Mockuuups Studio, from first commit on 25 August to v0.1.6.
Nothing gets built before it is written down. The machines build after the thinking rather than instead of it: they read, they draft, they propose; I decide and I send. For the record, this month that means:
model claude opus 5 daily, fable 5.1 and
sonnet 5 alongside
harness claude code, in terminal, browser and cloud
mcp 17 servers of my own behind one portal,
a dozen connectors, six local tools
habits specs before code, agents for research,
a server that remembers my mistakes
the machines also drew: gpt-image-2, both of these, this month.
Summer in Brandenburg. I am 43 now, and typing this on a new Keychron Q11 Ultra, brown switches instead of red, which turns out to be exactly the kind of small pleasure worth paying attention to.
The mornings belong to the dogs. Fimme is eight months old already. We are making new friends out here, which at this age is its own quiet skill.
Work is two weathers at once: stressful stretches at Yorizon, and genuinely creative problems at StoryKeep. Around the edges, the things I keep circling back to: the AI world moving under my feet, home assistant automations, and a renewed appetite for open source.
reading:
Achtsam morden, by Karsten Dusse.
listening:
Philine, Beck, Bowie, Gorillaz and Jordan Rakei, most played this week; the shuffle runs from Curtis Mayfield to Chappell Roan without asking. (last.fm, since 2007.)
proud of:
having a setup that runs, at home and at work, and that I enjoy tinkering with. It simply works again, instead of being one more todo list.
chafing at:
context switching. So many moving parts, so many topics that want attention, that it tips into overwhelming. The AI is starting to become one of them.
body:
getting back into training after being out since the first of June. CrossFit gave me the challenge and the injuries in equal measure; maybe Hyrox next, now that I have found somewhere close enough that I am not spending three hours in the car for forty-five minutes of work.
Out in the open this month:
mcp-readwise
,
stopped it dragging ten thousand feed items into every reading query. Seven minutes down to two seconds.
ha_bosch
,
opened the 1.4.0 line on the heat pump integration: optional entity discovery, appliance status, zone program selects, and one docs correction that admits an endpoint being present is not the same as it being available.
The machines carry more of my day than ever: they research before I decide, hold the specs while I build, and keep the books tidy. I mostly talk; they mostly type. For the record, this month that means:
model claude fable 5 daily, haiku 4.5 for small jobs
harness claude code, in terminal, browser and cloud
mcp 14 servers of my own behind one portal,
a dozen connectors, four local tools
habits specs before code, agents for research,
a server that remembers my mistakes
the machines also drew: gpt-image-2, both of these, this month.
This is a now page. Derek Sivers started them in 2015; there are
thousands, collected at
nownownow.com.
