News
AI Journey 1977-2025: Part 5 of 5 - SIIMPAF - Four Decades of Technology Lessons in One System
This is Part 5 of a 5-part series documenting the technical evolution from early introduction to role-playing gaming in 1977 and hobby programming in 1979 to modern distributed GPU computing and self-hosted Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The series traces patterns that emerged over four decades and shows how they apply to current challenges in AI development and computational independence. This final part brings together four decades of lessons in DGPUNET's, AILCPH's, & SIIMPAF's architecture, explaining how patterns from 1979 remain relevant in 2025.
AI Journey 1977-2025: Part 4 of 5 - Building Distributed GPU Infrastructure When Centralization Threatens Innovation
This part addresses the GPU scarcity challenge and demonstrates how decades-old distributed computing patterns apply to modern AI infrastructure.
AI Journey 1977-2025: Part 3 of 5 Professional Applications and Breakthroughs (2005-2020)
This is Part 3 of a 5-part series documenting the technical evolution from early introduction to role-playing gaming in 1977 and hobby programming in 1979 to modern distributed GPU computing and self-hosted Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The series traces patterns that emerged over four decades and shows how they apply to current challenges in AI development and computational independence. This part focuses on applying technical skills to therapeutic and educational contexts, culminating in systems that outperformed commercial alternatives.
AI Journey 1977 to 2025: Part 2 of 5 - IRC Bots, Beowulf Clusters, and Distributed Computing on Commodity Hardware
This is Part 2 of a 5-part series documenting the technical evolution from early introduction to role-playing gaming in 1977 and hobby programming in 1979 to modern distributed GPU computing and self-hosted Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The series traces patterns that emerged over four decades and shows how they apply to current challenges in AI development and computational independence. This part focuses on scaling patterns from single systems to networks and building production infrastructure on commodity hardware.
AI Journey 1977 to 2025: Part 1 of 5 - How Role-Playing Games and Early Computing Shaped Four Decades of AI Development
This is Part 1 of a 5-part series documenting the technical evolution from early introduction to role-playing gaming in 1977 and hobby programming in 1979 to modern distributed GPU computing and self-hosted Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The series traces patterns that emerged over four decades and shows how they apply to current challenges in AI development and computational independence.
Building Education Technology the "Hard Way" (And Why That's Actually the Easy Way)
I've watched countless companies burn through millions (billions in the aggregate) trying to reinvent wheels that already exist. Not long ago, I reviewed a competitor's failed attempt to build what we launched in six weeks and less than $20,000 USD — they spent three years and $30+ million, and they still couldn't deliver. This isn't about being better-funded, or event smarter; it's about the wisdom of understanding a fundamental truth that most of the tech industry refuses to accept: in the 2020s, 90% of what you need has already been built.
Freedom to Create: The Relationship Between Open Societies and Innovation
Throughout human history, innovation has followed a fascinating pattern of peaks and valleys, strongly correlated with the degree of societal openness and free exchange of ideas. Recent comprehensive analyses combining archaeological data, historical records, and modern patent statistics reveal a compelling relationship between open societies and accelerated technological progress.
Getting WiFi 7 Working on Linux: The ASUS ROG USB-BE92
I recently upgraded to 5.5 Gbps TDS fiber, installed a shiny new ASUS RT-BE86U WiFi 7 access point capable of 10 Gbps, and grabbed an ASUS ROG USB-BE92 WiFi 7 USB adapter to take advantage of it all. The goal? Get my GPU cluster (what I call DGPUNET - Distributed GPU Network) running at multi-gigabit speeds for distributed AI workloads.
Building DGPUNET: Democratizing AI Innovation Through Open Source Infrastructure
Over the past several months, I've been working on something that started as a practical necessity but evolved into a philosophical statement about accessibility in AI development. When a startup couldn't get anything better than a pitiful G10 GPU instance from their cloud provider - completely insufficient for the machine learning workloads needed - I realized I had to take matters into my own hands, and home...
PoDoSOGoAdmin WebUI Mail Servers Administration Tool - Public Release Very Soon!
There isn't a free and open source combined administration tool for the mail server setup of: Postfix + PostGreSQL + Dovecot + SOGo Webmail, I have created such a tool, and will be releasing it publicly on github as soon as I can create a sanitized version.
Postfix, Dovecot, PostGreSQL, and SOGo Webmail on Debian 13
Debian 13 was fairly recently released, but AWS is already shoving it as the primary AMI, and make getting a good Debian 12 a few more steps. Most apps aren't yet compatible with Debian 13, so I recommend waiting for it to stabilize, but here is some information on getting a basic mail server working on Debian 13...
The Content Providers 67% Ownership Revolution: How ClimbHigh.AI and Its Community Are Rewriting EdTech's Rules
At ClimbHigh.AI (https://www.climbhigh.ai), our team, led by CEO Jake Douglass, is building something revolutionary: a platform where creators own 67% of the content equity. Not revenue sharing. Actual ownership...
Claude.ai adds throttling to max users but with no transparency.
I've liked using Claude.ai in many areas, but they are starting to get overwhelmed and have begun throttling "top 5% users", which apparently I am. But they aren't offering ANY transparency about this...
Unofficial Penpot Manual Installation Guide for Debian 12
Penpot opensource free self-hostable server (Figma clone) does not support manual install. They want everyone to use their SaaS cloud service or if self-hosting, use containerized versions. Here are instructions, from (as they suggested) reverse engineering their Docker setup, for a manual setup on Debian 12. YMMV.
Q4OS Debian 12 on Alienware M18 R2 Nvidia 4080
Notes on getting Q4OS Debian 12 with Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) working on Alienware M18 R2 with Nvidia 4090.
Install Godot on Debian 12 and BCI RPG Dev Environment Setup
Trying to avoid using Snap, Flatpak, and other package manager battles, sticking with either using tarballs or apt installs (preferred).
WHY A CTO SHOULD _NOT_ JUST BE A GLORIFIED CODER/ENGINEER
Increasingly, the title “CTO” is being used to induce engineers to provide underpaid—or even free—technical services. Don't fall for it! Otherwise your organization will very likely be ruined. Generally if they can't actually pay for a CTO, the organization should NOT even be looking to fill a CTO role yet. Instead they should be looking at roles more appropriate to their specific needs and resources.
USB Backup or Sync Android Phone with MacOS Sequoia on MacBook Pro m4
How to connect via USB to backup/sync Android device don MacOS silicon m4-pro.
Setting up for Developing on Apple MacBook Pro m4 48GB RAM
Information on clean setup preparing and using brand new MacBook Pro m4 pro with 48 GB ram, for Flutter, Dart, Python, Java, C#, .Net, JavaScript, Node, React, Angular, Kubernetes, Selenium, AI, etc.
Thoughts on Quantum Computing, "Qomputing", Organic Computing, etc.
I was recently asked on Linkedin for my opinion on Quantum computing, this was my top of head response...
Standards of Practice: Code Commenting Style Preferences and Recommendations
Too many programmers in the past 10-15 years increasingly seem to consider code commenting and documentation passe and too time consuming without enough benefit to justify the effort (they are outright _wrong_), but for those that understand the value of good and useful code comments, here are some suggested recommended guidelines...
Verbalizing Coding Parlance
A lot of symbols used in software developing coding languages have some inconsistencies in how they are described. This page shows my standardization on the terminology to reduce confusion when speaking aloud about code.
Another Round of Adventures in Microsoft Incompetence
One of the first adventures at PracticingMusician as their shiny new CTO, was migrating them from Godaddy's Microsoft 365 Tenancy to Microsoft's. They had been trying for several months and been getting nowhere, so I rolled up my sleeves, dusted off my MCSE (never expires) from 1998 knowledge and experience, and dug in. Here are some highlights from the adventures that ensued...
Rough Week! Alienware M18 Blew Up and Burned! Meanwhile Installing Q4OS TDE on Alienware M16
The first part of this posting covers my primary productivity system, Alienware M18 blowing itself up, in the middle of a remarkably rough week and last few months. The second part provides information on the installation and use of Q4OS (Debian 12 bookworm) with Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) on Dell Alienware M16 R1/0TC7T8 (the latter going surprisingly well).
Is the Jan.ai executable infected?
January 9th, 2024, 10:00 am Pacific Time, BitDefender Total Security Alert: @janhq\inference-nitro-extension\dist\bin\win-cpu\nitro.exe is infected with Gen:Variant.Tedy.258323 !
My preferred development release cycles list of environments
Many companies can't afford this, so there are many variations, but when I have been fortunate enough to work for organizations (or I had the money myself) to have the ideal resources in place, this it what it looks like for me to ensure 99.999% or better up times each year...
Remember CTRL-L for File Selector Full Text File Path Feature in Firefox Instead of 28+ Mouse Clicks Every Time
Using a mouse is 4-10x less efficient than hotkeys and typing. But alas, so many apps force you to use a mouse for repetitive tasks. This had stumped for a while after Firefox removed the full text path for the Select File dialog. Finally I found how to bring that back, CTRL-L!
If killall by name not working try pkill -f
In recent years some distros and apps no loger responding to kill -9 <app name> such as killall -9 firefox.
Document Actions
