This is my experiment to see how far you can get using free models that are currently available in the OpenCode Zen. As they are (mostly) open weights, I could also run them locally if I felt like it, someday. What was available today: GLM-5 (with some rate limiting, unfortunately) MiniMax M2.5 Big Pickle (?) Trinity Large Preview (?) Scaffolding I copy pasta’d some configuration files (e.g. Makefile, .golangci-lint.yml) from another project, wrote README.md (which is bit inconsistent with the prompt by design, to see which model honors or if it asks questions), and also left one error in place in the Makefile (lint target doesn’t work due to depending on another target which is no longer in the file). ...
The joy that is macOS CI
Background We’ve been building an app ( Automatic Life Tracker ) for year and half now. For the first half year, we used Github Actions macOS runners to run the CI for iOS part of the app. That was both slow and expensive, as unfortunately it seems that the cost of the mac runners are quite crazy. I think we were paying few hundred dollars per month for handful of developers’ rare Mac builds’ CI. ...
(my) docker compose at home
My home infrastructure has been gradually more and more complex, mostly because I like testing things in home before using them in production. This describes bit more my multi-container workload handling (an earlier post in 2024 covered it briefly too, but there has been a lot of developments since). Background A lot of the software I self-host consists of single containers. For them I have rather nice pyinfra deployment script for each, which sets up the container as systemd unit, making it possible to start and stop the podman container on demand (and to start it on boot), handle upgrades, etc. in unified way. ...
Complexity of algorithms does actually matter - case: Apple Image Capture
Background I am getting out of Lightroom ecosystem because its sync system simply sucks. During the last year, the sync has failed three times (and I use it rarely, so it is often), and resync takes almost day because the system is slow (with ~20k pictures, I don’t even want to know how much it would take if I synced my full library). Due to that, I decided to switch to simpler model. Immich in my Kubernetes cluster with all my recent mobile photos. Immich automatic upload does not support selecting window of pictures to upload - and I do not really want to have my old mobile pictures in my new ‘recent pictures only’ Immich test installation). ...
Why Jujutsu version control is not for me, yet
HackerNews has had Jujutsu version control post every couple of months last four years (at least). Apparently it is a thing at Google. I am not going to talk in length about what it is - there’s documentation about it, but it is basically some Mercurial/changeset driven semantics that happen within git repo (or its own backend). It has some nice features, but also three I disliked enough to skip using it, for now. ...
I am using two polar opposites of language design space at same time
Our startup ( Time Atlas Labs ) is still doing an app. We designed it from the start so that we can target it for both iOS and Android, and that necessitated backend that we could reuse. As we wanted deep integration with native APIs, the typical ‘React Native that looks like iOS’ wasn’t really tempting for us, and due to that we settled on stack which consists of (top down): ...
Apple iOS review processes - how long does it take?
TestFlight TestFlight review process (if any) seems almost instant, even for external use. I am not sure how it exactly works, as there seems to be some optional(?) review stage for external use, but it has never blocked us for any amount of time that I remember. App store review process (iOS) Getting app on the app store, on the other hand, does take some time. All of these are for this year ( 2025 ), and here’s the rough data: ...
Kubernetes at home HARDER ( try 2 )
As noted before, I have used kind (Kubernetes in Docker) in home for a while just as Docker compose replacement (and to tinker with some Kubernetes-only tools at home). For a while I have wanted something I could upgrade, and in general HA, and kind is not that. So I bought some hardware (see earlier post). Then I setup some software (this post). What did I want? I wanted HA tinfoil hat cluster, in other words: ...
Kubernetes at home, next generation, part 2/2: Software
As noted before, I have used kind (Kubernetes in Docker) in home for a while just as Docker compose replacement (and to tinker with some Kubernetes-only tools at home). For a while I have wanted something I could upgrade, and in general HA, and kind is not that. So I bought some hardware (see earlier post). Then I setup some software (this post). What did I want? I wanted HA tinfoil hat cluster, in other words: ...
Some notes about Tailscale
This interlude is some thoughts about Tailscale. I am mostly happy user of it. I will perhaps write more about Kubernetes next. My background, pre-Wireguard solutions I have been involved on and off with VPNs for 25 years and change. I even co-authored some IPsec standards on the topic, and I also worked on multiple implementations of it as well. IPsec has been to some extent superseded by the various TLS VPN solutions due to ease of deployment (presumably), and interest in mostly securing just TCP traffic, for which typical TLS VPNs are just fine. ...