Category: <span>Journal</span>
Wednesday 19 August 2026
9.39pm
I really thought that I had found a viable home. A place where I could write to my hearts content and maybe actually have it viewed by someone.
The #smallweb is a wonderful thing. But is, at times, it’s like space: cold and lonely. I thought federating my blogs would find life in the universe that is the web.
I was wrong.
All I have found is snobs. #Gatekeepers who, if it doesn’t meet their narrow-minded standards, belittle, admonish, and even suspend accounts for things they don’t see “fit.” I cry bullshit!
I have another blog that I maintain that has articles about tech, computers, the independent web, old and alternative technology, and the ways technology shapes how we communicate, create, work, and live. I have written a few so far and have some already written that I am spacing out so I don’t flood with posts. I use AI generated images for my posts. Why? Because I have a full-time job, I’m in graduate school earning my MA in American History, I play in multiple bands throughout the week… spending time searching for a public-domain, free-use, RELEVANT image for my posts is something I don’t spend time on. AI generates a useful image to get the point across – that’s all that is needed.
But no… one of those snobby, federated gatekeepers decided my posts were ALL AI and they suspended my account. No message. No “we’ve had multiple reports of blah, blah, blah,” just me happening to view my content details and seeing it suspended. A few emails, and Mastodon got me back… but not without damage done.
I now have to prove every single point of my online existence along with just trying to say what I want to say. Fuck that.
The small-web (#gemini capsules, phlogs, etc) are wonderful things. They just fall into the cracks most of the time. But, I can write about what I want to write and how I want to write.
Maybe that is more important than a federated gatekeeper, who doesn’t know me from Adam, judging me.
Sunday 16 August 2026
9.52pm
I started GemCities at the beginning of March 2026. A mere five months ago. I had started really getting into the whole Gemini protocol/small-web thing and decided that it would be cool if there was a simple way to test the waters without actually having to stand up a server to publish, while still being in total control of your capsule.
The idea came to me from the past, the exact vibe that the small-web encompasses, in the form of the classic GeoCities. Simple, easy to use, no hassles with servers and domains, just sign up and begin creating.
I decided GemCities would be a free, donation-supported hosting service for the Gemini protocol, a small, quiet corner of the internet that strips away the noise of the modern web. No ads, no analytics, no tracking, no paywalls, and no plans to add any. Every capsule gets 50 MB of storage, which is generous for gemtext files. Simple publishing infrastructure, run ethically, kept simple on purpose. A HUGE feature is that the users own the content they publish. GemCities claims no rights over it. They can export all their capsule files at any time from the editor with one click. Content is not held hostage.
The process is idiot-proof – Pick a username. A capsule will be generated at username.gemcities.com on the Gemini network. Then use the web editor to write gemtext files. A live preview shows exactly how the capsule will look. Save the file. It’s live instantly. No deploys, no configuration, no waiting. I mean, how much simpler could it be?
To be honest, after I worked out the code, the backend, and the security and privacy/DMCA/abuse concerns, and launched, I figured I would get a handful of users over the next 6 months or so with a lot of spam accounts (which I did get a TON of and eventually worked out a process to weed most of them out automatically).
It is now five months later and GemCities is sitting at 126 users.
Now, I will be the first to admit that about 10% of those accounts aren’t really active. I think they were created and then the person decided not to follow through. Still, the remaining 90% are actually active accounts with content. The beauty is that, honestly, it has been hands-off. It is working and I have gotten feedback about the service.
I have had people ask for features and other things, but because of how it was designed and managed (by me, a one-man team), feature sprawl has to be kept in check. Also, privacy issues are a real concern to me. For example, I had someone ask for a public directory of users. I replied that,
I understand why people want a public GemCities directory. Discovery matters, and a browsable list would be convenient. But I’m not going to publish one. GemCities is a hosting service, not a social platform or community index. Users get a public Gemini capsule at their own subdomain, but they did not consent to being listed in an operator-maintained directory. Publishing one would change the privacy expectations of the service after the fact. That fits how GemCities is built: no analytics, popularity features, social mechanics, centralized search, or promotion layer. The goal is to make publishing on Gemini easy while leaving discovery to users and the wider Gemini ecosystem. People who want to be found can share their capsule, link it elsewhere, use existing Gemini discovery tools, or participate in community spaces. What I won’t do is list everyone by default. This isn’t a technical limitation. It’s a trust decision.
All I can say is I would not have guessed this would be as successful (to me anyway) as it has become. I see GemCities users posting on some of the main Gemini communities (like Station, GeminiSpace BBS, Antenna, Cosmos, etc.) and it makes me feel really good that these people are using my service and joining the small web-community.
And, finally, while I am not patting my own back, I am proud that I can provide this service at no cost. The money it costs to run this is microscopic in terms of what I am offering and what it means to me. A lot of people these days tend to create an app or service and their sole motivation is to earn money from it. Not me. On my own capsule (gemini://calvusrex.gemcities.com), I make it very clear where I stand:
I don’t really need support. I host GemCities because I want to, because I think there is a need for it, and because I like to make it easy for folks to be involved in something that I have grown to have a passion for.
However, if you do feel so inclined, here is the link to my Ko-Fi page. I thank you ahead of time mostly for reading my capsule, and if you are a user of GemCities, I thank you for using the service and I hope it is something you find enjoyable!
Sunday 16 August 2026
3.21pm
I’ve actually been thinking about this for a while… a couple of years probably. But I ran across a post on mastodon.social that made me stop and pause and think, “OK, what is really the status of things right now, in mid-2026?” The post read:
As attempts to lock down “the #internet” grow, alongside it will grow the rebirth of an age of #zines, #BBS, #mixtapes, #burnedCDs, and other hand-to-hand media. People will bypass restrictions, even if it’s by paper and #sneakernet or #CB radios in the wild. (original link)
So, the web. Yeah, it is a hot fucking mess. I remember when it began dethroning BBS systems in the very early 1990s. It was cool; it offered a LOT of things that DOS-based systems were never designed to do.
It enhanced technology. Yeah, that right there is where things started going horribly wrong wrapped in something magnificently wonderful.
The ability to do things easily, efficiently, and, for lack of a better term, “plug and play” was the byproduct. The easier computers and the web became to use, the less ordinary users needed to understand what was underneath them. That was mostly a good thing, but it also made it easier for ownership to shift away from the user. Eventually we stopped running things and started opening accounts on things other people ran for us.
I read another post that kind of feeds off that thought. It said,
It’s easy to feel secure when a platform is in its golden era. But we’ve watched the downfalls of Twitter, the policy shifts of Reddit, and the changing tides of algorithmic networks. Relying blindly on a centralized portal not owned by you means your life’s work can alter overnight based entirely on a corporate boardroom decision.
The modern web is no longer a place of wonder and discovery. It’s the other side of the tracks. The part of town you probably shouldn’t be in. The “nothing good happens after midnight” underbelly that separates people into four camps: those who don’t care, those who are too complacent to change, those who check out completely, and those who care and try to be mindful and find safe alternatives or practices.
The first camp is those who basically shrug their shoulders and say, “It is what it is.” They literally don’t care and let the chips fall where they may.
The second camp knows things are not right, and might even make a half-hearted attempt to change their habits, but ends up back where they were before because changing is hard, complicated at times, and takes them out of their comfort zone.
The third group has largely checked out. They minimize their online presence as much as modern life permits, although banking, government services, communication, and commerce make completely opting out increasingly difficult.
Then there is the last group. This group is actually more like two factions: one, the small web, and two, federation. They share some of the same basic ethos, but, honestly, they are two very distinct animals.
So, the small web in a nutshell is the human-scaled, independently controlled part of the internet: personal sites, blogs, digital gardens, small communities, independent publications, and creative projects built primarily to publish, communicate, and share rather than maximize growth or engagement. It favors individual ownership, privacy, open standards, hyperlinks, RSS, human curation, and deliberate discovery over corporate platforms, tracking, advertising, and algorithmic feeds. It is not defined by a particular technology, aesthetic, or total rejection of commerce. A site can be modern, multimedia, or commercial and still belong to the small web if it remains independently operated, human-scaled, and oriented toward people rather than metrics, surveillance, and platform control.
That sounds great. It fits into the post I started with: people digging back into what the original internet was and still could be. The BBS, Gopher, IRC, RSS, terminal, etc. The Gemini protocol has made it simple yet more accessible. The small web ethos values independence, human expression, privacy, open standards, and meaningful connection over platforms, surveillance, algorithms, and growth at all costs.
The other alternative is sites that are “federated.” A federated site or instance is an independently operated server that can communicate and interact with other compatible servers through a shared protocol, while retaining its own users, rules, moderation, and administration.
Fairly close to the small web. But not really.
The small web and the federated web share a strong distrust of centralized platforms, but they approach independence differently. The small web emphasizes personal ownership, individuality, human-scale publishing, direct links, and intentional discovery. Federated sites emphasize interoperability: independent servers and communities can communicate with one another through shared protocols such as ActivityPub while remaining separately operated.
Their ethos overlaps around decentralization, user control, privacy, open standards, and resistance to corporate gatekeeping. The key distinction is that the small web does not need to form a network at all; a personal website can simply exist on its own, while federation deliberately connects independent sites into a larger social system. In that sense, the small web favors independence; the federated web tries to preserve that independence while still providing networked community.
So, now understanding basically the three states of the online world, and the four facets of human participation, what is the point?
Good question. I personally find myself torn between all three positions.
Yeah, the modern internet is an enshittified wasteland that is quickly becoming hostile to any sort of real human interaction. Everything is analytics-driven. Likes, karma, upvotes, shares, views, blah blah blah. There is real content on the web, but it is completely buried under the pile of shit we have allowed it to become. The small web is refreshing, but only for that fourth camp I mentioned. Anyone else, at best, will try it and then think, “This is too hard,” “This doesn’t make sense,” and basically give up and go back to their “safe and easy” web.
Federation, on the other hand, presents an interesting position. It basically says, “The small web asks you to build your own place on the internet. Federation gives you a neighborhood to move into. It also offers the convenience and social connection of modern platforms without requiring one corporation to own the platform, the audience, and the rules.”
But here is the conundrum: Federation is in the better position to attract large numbers of people away from the modern corporate web. The small web is better positioned to influence the culture of whatever comes next. So, which is the path to follow? That is the tough question (maybe not for some).
I’ll leave this with my feeling on that as of Sunday, August 16, 2026: The small web is and should be influential in the next phases of the culture of the future of the web. Right now, it’s fringe still. It is nowhere like the BBS scene was in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and that was still fairly niche. My question is: can they get past the (yes, this is harsh) snobbery they present? Some in that camp are so inflexible it’s crazy.
Federation decentralizes ownership, but it doesn’t necessarily change human behavior. You can distribute the servers and still recreate cliques, popularity contests, gatekeeping, pile-ons, moderation wars, and many of the social habits that made corporate social media miserable in the first place.
So, is the problem actually centralization, or is part of the problem social media itself?
That’s a much deeper issue.
The small web changes the behavioral model. Federation largely changes the ownership/network model. Mastodon still asks you to follow people, post into timelines, reply, boost, favorite, and watch notifications. A personal website/phlog/gemcapsule asks you to publish something and let someone deliberately come read it.
So, yeah, I am straddling all three right now. Hedging my bets to see which camp leads the way while keeping one iron in the existing modern web mess. Maybe we’re asking the wrong question when we ask which one will win. Federation may be the thing capable of getting people out of corporate platforms, while the small web may be the thing that reminds us why getting out mattered in the first place.
Sunday 16 August 2026
7.38am
Offgrid Holdout has gone through quite a few iterations trying to find a place for it. It originally was a SSH BBS, then a small web site, then a pubnix.
Now, I’ve taken it back to something simple and manageable. It’s running a very bare bones WordPress with a totally custom designed theme. All the unnecessary fluff in WP has been taken out and things tightened down. The theme wraps everything nicely and plugins are (right now) less than 5 (one is a custom designed plugin to display my self-hosted Navidrome music).
I also have moved closer to federated connections as opposed to the small web. I still maintain a small web presence and believe in it, but federation fits me better int he nice gray area between the modern web and the small web.
Another reason for the change is I wanted to decommission the VPS that Offgrid Holdout was running on. Moving to one of my VPS that hosts other websites allowed me to do that and save some money in the process.
While I was doing that I decided that I had a computer running services on a local server that I could easily migrate to another local server, so I spent the day yesterday moving those services, tightening up the server they moved to, and updating my infrastructure documentation. In three years of just having my daily desktop I have a lot more services on 3 local servers running that back then. Sprawl and keeping things tracked and documented takes more time than you would expect.
I’m really going to try and stay on track with this blog. I think I will.
Sunday 12 July 2026
11.23am
I have decided that at 60 I’m going to go ahead and work on getting my Master degree in History.
I got my BA in History late in life (I graduated in 2015) so this will be another late one. It will also take a while since I’m paying for it without any loans which will mean one class at a time So by the time I retire I should have my MA.
Still pretty good timing. Once I retire from the government I’ll have my full pension, my additional money I make performing music live on weekends and such, and then maybe a part-time gig teaching History online.
There is also a fourth possibility. I have looked at creating an historical fiction company that “transforms rigorous historical research into enduring intellectual property that educates, entertains, and generates value through multiple publishing formats.”
We will see how that transpires.
Sunday 5 July 2026
7.43pm
My last post was June 28th. Today is July 5. A little over a week.I’m honestly going to keep part of the personal items brief. I’ve lived through them enough for the week.
My daughter passed away from a suicide back on April 12th. I have been living with that evey day and will continue to do so. What has made it difficult was knowing her birthday was coming up, which was today, July 5th. I spend time with her mother and my youngest son planting a couple trees in he memory. I was tired (still am) because of the fireworks for July 4th went on into the wee hours of the morning, causiung me to get very little sleep. So yeah, I am a little sad and emotional today.
To add into this, my step-sister passed away on July 2nd from cancer. She was only 47 years old and left kids and grandkids. We were not close, but she was still family. Her dad (my step-dad) is someone I care about very much and this is his second daughter he has lost. Both of his children. Gone before him. I cannot even imagine. One has been heartbreaking enough for me, the though of my other two going before me? I cannot and do not want to even think about it.
Enough family stuff… I am getting a little annoyed with AI. I am also getting very annoyed with Reddit and Facebook. I wish I could totally expunge them from my life. Reddit I probably could if I truly committed to it. FB is another story I have shared before. I’m tired of social media, tired of people who have nothing positive to say, people who troll and do not think before they open their fucking mouth (or maybe they do think and it is jsut a rotten brain?)… AI is also pissing me off because, regardless of what the naysayers spout, AI for the average Joe is getting dumber and I believe it is on purpose. They want to entice us. They want to get us hooked and then give us inferior products to what we had in order for use to spend more money. Then when everyone does that, they dumb it down even more. Its ridiculous. The models I used 6 months ago were coming up with fanstastic, accurate, and usful output. Now? It is almost all halluci9nation, think it knows what I want, and when I TELL IT what I want, it gets it totally wrong and makes shit up. Even when the task is siple and the directions very clearly prompted (and yes, even iwith a backend of system .md’s to keep it on track). It’s becoming a waste of money for the one or two tasks I get it to do to save time, but even then I have to double check results.
I have to double check results EVERY. FUCKING. TIME. If I want it to be right, I have massage it from beginning to end. Otherwise, the output is garbage.
It’s affected how I am working now. I pay for Claude Code AND Codex because they both USED to be good at different areas of my online life. Now, I cannot rely on either. I am finihsing up a new novel. I had it help a lot, but so far I am finding as I read through it, I am having to almsot completely rewrite sections of text because it either makes not sense, or has totally ignored my VERY detailed writing system. Two of my earlier novels came out incredible 6 months ago. Now? I cannot even get one to be even close to publishable. Same system. Dumber output.
I had plans for some future projects, but now I am not so sure I want AI involved. It’s a struggle. And yes, I know that if I go back to writing my own code, it’ll take months, maybe years, to complete them. Maybe that is how it should be. But the simple fact that 6 months ago a project that would have taken me 6 months was completed in days and turned out exactly like I anticipated, is proof in the pudding that strange thinks are afoot at the CircleK in the AI world.
Sunday 28 June 2026
1.10pm
It’s Sunday just past noon. I have been up since 3am. Tired as hell, but yet, have spent the last 8 hours mostly in front of my computer working out a bunch of projects that have popped into my head the past couple weeks.
I will most likely be here another 8 hours today. 🤪
The past week has been not only brainstorming new projects, but also totally reinventing my home infrastructure. My cable company provided modem/router isn’t horrbile, but port forwarding on it is an act of futility. Really. So, I went digging through my boxed up stuff and dug out an old Ubiquious Edge Router-X and a 8-port gigabit TP-link router and put the ISP router in bridge mode and I now have a pretty slick setup for port forwarding to my servers and systems. I had been using Cloudflared and Tailscale, now I can start weening myself off of Cloudflare and handle connections myself without the need for relays and othe junk that certain ports require with Cloudflare. The ER-X as MANY itterations behind on updates (it was in a box for the past 5 or 6 years, but took the update perfectly and is current). It’s a rock solid little router that’s built like a tank. I figure I’ll run it until it cannot run anymore.
My Gamesrv project has been moved, leaving some relays and stuff on a small Digital Ocean droplet. Those are next to get moved and then I decommission the DO droplet. So there is that project.
Then there is RAM coming for one of my Mac Mini servers (Debian 13) to put it at 16GB of RAM (max a 2012 mini can take), but will be enough to host a Nexcloud/OnlyOffice server for my local (or behind Tailscale) use.
Another project has been an idea for a federated/networkd game “server” for terminal ssh type games, similar to BBS door games, called “InterDoor.” It is running as a hub with one sample game running on it. As game number two, I found a basically open source game some guy worked on in college in the early 1990’s but mostly abandoned it and, in his own words, said,
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long as the name is changed.
DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.
🤣
So, that game is coming along. It’s basically very similar to the old BBS door game “Barren Realms Elite” in play. It’s been an interesting project so far. I really didn’t want to ever really be into game design, but some of these older, small web, BBS type games have been interesting and a learning experience in coding. I am considering some others, but only once I have some connections to InterDoor and verify that is a sound service.
I also have a new novel in the works that I am writing, which leads into a few other projects like my Independent Web Almanac (semi-on hold), a forum for pro AI-Assisted writers as a subdomain of IWA, my own website for my novels, short stories and some future resources, including designing my own AI assisted publishing site called “Rook & Rune Press” https://rookrune.iwebalmanac.net/
The downside of this insanely active brain is that some projects get started and get pushed aside because new ideas keep pushing the old ones out. I had a project called Verja.net that I thought was going to be an alternative to big social networks. The planning looked great in my notes. Implementation started off well enough, until I realized that creating communities in 2026 is almost an act of futility. THey are almsot impossible to get off the ground unless you have a solid user base already. Even with the idea of keeping it small, it looks more and more like it will just kind of fade away. I am learning that communities, as I have already said, are not even worth the time and effort, in the traditional sense. Small web (Gemini, Gopher, and even Federated social sites like Mastodon and Lemmy) are a different story, but still are a challenge. I think as much as I want to start a kick-ass community, it will most likely never happen.
But as I said, other projects get sort of forgotton or put on the back burner. My DOS/9 project is idle. Not dead, but idle. So is my Waystone Browser and Waystone Help projects. An idea for a history related Minecraft server that was supposed to be,
A small adult Minecraft community for historical building, research, and storytelling. Recreate places, compare sources, and turn each build into something visitors can learn from.
is pretty much idle. Again, not dead, just idle.
Then there is Offgrid Holdout (where this journal is hosted at), my personal pubnix. The goal is to learn the administration of a small pubnix, build a small community (I know, I said that is nigh impossible in 2026), and provide a small, simple corner of the internet for people want to learn, take thing slow, and carve out their own corner of the internet. So far, two users besides myself, neither of which are very active (in fact I think both have logged on once or twice and that is about it.) But, thats OK… the plan is not be big (5 user, maybe 10, then I’d call it a success) but more of a learning process and home to try things out and learn from doing.
There are other projects in the research/planning stages – a music label that “is a creative music project exploring what happens when human direction and modern AI tools are used together to build an independent record label from the ground up.” A local live music hub/social site for bands, venues and lcal music lovers to find, support, and be a part of the local music scene. And honestly, some just random ideas and wasys to make them come to life.
Add on top of that that I have a full-time day job and perform in four different local, live music groups, that require rehearsals, travel time, and actual gigging, it’s not like I don’t have enough to do.
I know this journal is really for me. I don’t think anyone reads (or has ever read?) it. But thats OK. The hour it took me to gather my thoughts to write this is good for me. Especially with this brain of mine. Writing things down (or in this case typing) helps bring focus and clarity to all of it.
But if you are reading it, thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to do that!
Thursday 25 June 2026
10.21am
I don’t like Facebook. However…
I am a local musician. I have been performing for over 40 years now. I don’t tour the country, I don’t sell albums, I’m not looking to be famous. I play in cover bands that entertain bar/club patrons. I have fun, they do too. Tack on that I make enough money gigging to make it worth my time and effort as well as having some spending cash, I can say that I am mostly successful.
The purpose of this post is that I wish there was a way to disconnect from Facebook. But as this type of musician, Facebook is life-blood to fans and venues. Sad but true. I do limit what I use Facebook for, but even that is more than I want.
But the truth is (and I have ran some surveys on this) that locally, most music fans find out who is playing and where by social media, Facebook in particular. Andother sad but true fact is that a LOT of venues do their booking via Facebook Messenger. Many of these venues don’t even have websites, they just assume Facebook is their website and contact portal for booking (and don’t get me started on venues not even using FB properly to promote THEIR OWN establishment!). That leaves musicians, more or less, forced to use Facebook if they want any visibility on the local scene.
Social media has become this swirling vortex that sucks every single thing into it. No one is safe. Not musicians, not venues and not fans.
My theory? Most people in all three categories have become lazy. It’s easy for a band to post a message to a venue looking for a gig on FB than it is for the band to call the venue, for the venue to actually have someone who books bands and maintains their calendar and actually LOOK at and LISTEN to your press kit (now EPK, electronic press kit). Fans/Music lovers don’t want to search bulletin boards or all over the internet trying to see who is playing where on such and such night.
Musicians just want the gig. Venues just want people in their club buying drinks all night. Fans just want to be entertained, not put to work just looking for entertainment. Facebook apparently has filled that void.
So, now the question becomes, “How do I get out of this vortex of social media insanity?”
As someone who is embracing the small web, decentralization, and all the things that now come with modern internet, social media, coporate enshittification, this is a real conundrum. I want off the ride, but by getting off I more or less kill what has become the sole source for me as a musician, venues booking me, and local music lovers being entertained by me.
Cutting back has helped, but what I am discovering is sobering: I can’t get off the ride without seriously damaging or totally killing my local visibility.
I wish I knew the answer. But right now, as much as I do not like being on Facebook, I don’t really have any other choices.
Tuesday 23 June 2026
5.28pm
I started actively using AI a few years ago. Nothing heavy, basically as a glorified Google search engine. THen I discovered other facets of AI… brainstorming ideas, chatting about everyday life, helping me with my music life, etc.
Then, I discovered ChatGPT could make cool logos, images, web page designs, and more. I started paying even more attention.
Then, the roof blew off… I discovered Claude Code. My weariness of IT and computers just got a massive jump start!
Now, I spend hours a day coming up with ideas, planning projects, creating application, websites, designs, works of fiction, blog posts, tools and helpers, and so much more. It is like a personal assistant who never sleeps. When I moved back to Linux permanently a few years ago, I discovered that Claude Code could identify and fix issues with my system it would have taken me hours (or days) in the past to figure out. Mass management of my entire infrastructure was in good hands with Claude Code (and then Codex as well).
But here we are today. June 23, 2026. 5PM. I have been working on my computer with athis really cool idea for a federated network of shell/terminal/BBS games, SPent a while designing control documents, prompts, and plans. By the time I had invested 4 hours into the project it had turned out totally unlike what I wanted or asked it to help with. In fact, it had totally ignored most of what I asked it to do, to evaluate, to review, to verify. It gave me a product that should have been so cool it would have froze me! Nope. Instead I got a heaping pile of dog shit.
I’d like to say I was baffled, confused, befundled (one of the silly Claude Code words)… but I wasn’t. Why?
Because it’s been acting like this for a solid 3 months. Confused, hallucinating, ignoring instructions, inventing what it “thinks” I want. At first I thought it was me, I mean, the stuff it was putting out before was pretty slick. Now, it feels like something I might have been able to just do myself.
Maybe I am getting smarter and asking it to do more than what I was before? Maybe, but I doubt it. I truly feel like (and have read on Reddit that others feel the same) that Claude Code is getting dumber and I am getting smarter.
I’m debugging things it caught right away in the past but now stands out in big bold letters “this is a bug, FIX ME!” and wonder why it is not atching them at all. It’s also not listening to me any more. Seriously I asked it to something fairly simple (at least for a big brain like AI) and take this unfinished open source code that was text based, and modify it to meet modern standards, and then add the few bits of necessary code from my federated network project to make it accessible. Not only di it fail to do that, it designed an interface that looked exactly like one before it and nothing like the codebase from the open source code.
Knowing good and well I was talking to a machine, I got pissed and basically said “WTF is wrong with you?” It’s reply?
I kid you not… this is the reply it gave me;
I built an entire UI from imagination without ever looking at the original game. The project directory is <old_path>. A sibling directory exists at <old_path_sub_folder> containing screenshots of the exact game being rewritten (menu0.png through menu7.png, image-disk.jpg). I never looked at it. Not once, across the entire multi-session project. This is teh root cause of everything else.”
What the actual fuck?
It ended with;
The reference material was sitting in the repo one directory up from where I was working. I didn’t look. Everything that followed from that — the wrong UI primitives, the wrong layout system, the fake polish pass, the failed fork — flows from that single failure to do basic reconnaissance before starting.
That’s not a hallucination or a technical error. It’s a failure to look before building.
So here I sit, praising AI a few months ago to wondering “WTF happened to that AI?” I won’t lie and say that it isn’t helpful… it is… but Iw onder if I have reached the end of it’s usefulness for me, or if it trully is getting dumber… not because of what is bein presented to it, but by the constraits of the corpos who control them. There is were I think the real “bug” is located. But that is a entry for another time…
Tuesday 16 June 2026
6.12pm
It’s been 5 days. I know I shouldn’t pretend that I will ever be “regular” when it comes to adding to my journal., but in all fairness I have been doing a lot, so I’m giving myself a little gracce.
Hre’s whats been going on. I decided to totally gut and refocus Offgrid Holdout as the domain for my pubnix. Yeah, I am here on offgridholdout.org and I have a presence on SDF as another persona, but running one myself is slefishly for me.
What I mean is that I want to learn the ins and outs of running a pubnix. I’ve done the sysadmin thing in in real life, but never on Linux.So, here is my chance. I also plan on keeping it VERY small…5 to 10 invited people. So far, the project has been a positive learning experience. I’m learning a lot about commands taht I knew existed, but never had any real reason to use. So, that being said, offgridholdout.org is running, but as I said, it’s invite only. I have a coupel folks interested. After then sign on, we’ll see how things go.
I also have been organizing my 16,000 song music library. I’not even close to being done. Tagging, cleaning up duplicates, ensuring album art is there, etc. It’s a big project. But whats cool is I have some albums in my library that are out of print. So I am totally grateful to myself for digitizing those albums so that I have them. I have the library self-hosted in Navidrome, which is a pretty slick system.
That being said, I hslo moved three VM servers to a self-hosted box on my LAN and then decommissioned the VM servers. That wasn’t that big of a deal, but I feel better about where htye are now.
Along with that, today I totally reorganized my work area. Moed systems and stuff around. It feels less cluttered. Next up is the big one – moving away from Cloudflared and setting up a Ubiquitous Edge Router X behind my very bland ISP modem/router. I aldready use dnsmasq, but trying to make things more efficient, and I truly think the ER-X is the ticket. I have had this little fella in a box for the past 6 years, totally forgotten, but glad I kept it! THAT project is still ongoing. So I’ll post more in the future!
So, honestly, I think there are more things I’ve worked on, but being the lazy ass that I am, I’ve forgotten them!
