Retrospectiva #10
July was busy — like always — but we made sure to take some time and touch some grass. Or mountains in our case. With the high temperatures across Europe we went to the Trentino region and hiked around the Dolomites for five days. Cool temperatures and beautiful scenery. Vitto's idea of course.
Work is busy - but very fun as always. Allegra is growing fast which is incredible to see (while trying to fight sleep debt as much as we can).
Using
herdr: Never thought I'd see the day where something would replace Tmux for me. Tmux is ingrained in my muscle memory (a bit like Vim). Tmux is just the way I've always worked. When my friend Alex asked me if I was already in the herdr train, I told him no, of course - why should I? Until I realised I used multiple agents, but always had to keep checking if they were done. Not anymore. Oh, and the tmux-like bindings also help.
Bergans Kids Lilletind Child Carrier: There's no way we could've done 50 KM+ of hiking with an 8 month old without this thing. Vitto bought it used in Denmark and Allegra loved it.
Llama macOS: Local LLMs are here to stay. I'm convinced we won't need frontier intelligence (e.g., Sol or Fable) for every single thing under the sun. I want my experience when running local LLMs to be simple, but powerful.
Organic Maps: I use a Garmin watch. But I hate the Garmin Connect app: slow, buggy, and just too much. You want to follow a trail, you have a GPX file for it, and just want to follow it: Garmin Connect complicates things, Organic Maps doesn't.
RSSHub: RSS is how I read news. I follow hundreds of websites on my self-hosted FreshRSS and use NetNewsWire to read them. Everyone is (still) actively trying to force you to go to their website even though I don't want to. I want to use RSS. For Reddit, I found a solution: I use toprss. Now, with RSSHub I can do the same for Youtube channels. I like having all the things in the same place.
OpenDesign: You like Claude Design, I like Claude Design, but I don't like having an Anthropic subscription. OpenDesign solves just that. It's a Claude Design inspired product, but it's (1) open-source, and (2) you can use it with any coding agent/model under the sun. Your vibe coded presentation won't be pristine - but it will get you 80% of the way there, and allow you to iterate on a bunch of potential good designs.
Reading
Show Your Work!: A nice read for those who like doing creative work. How to build an audience, why having your website is important. Not life changing - but light, well written, and inspiring.
Laguna M.1/XS.2 Technical Report: One of the most well-written technical reports I've read in a while. Doesn't tell you all the secrets, but gives you enough detail to be really educational. Software, pre-training, SFT, infrastructure, RL, what went wrong during training.
Moshi: A speech-text foundation model for real-time dialogue: How do you build a full-duplex model? Something that can speak and listen just like we do? Moshi is an oldish paper but goes into exactly that. Also recommend the DSM paper from the same lab.
How to Build a Reasoning Model from Scratch: I've read almost all of Raschka's books. I love the way he writes. Onto his latest.
Listening
WHACK'S MUSEUM — Tierra Whack: Easily the most I've enjoyed a hip-hop/rap album in the past five years.
Feel Forever — Tokyo Tea Room: My favourite band of the moment has been dropping singles from their upcoming album. And they are all bangers.
Watching
Welcome to Wrexham: There's just something sports documentaries do for me that no other genre does. I think it's the storytelling. I love everything about this show. From the way it's produced, to the storytelling, to pulling me into a world I know nothing about.
Wherever you are this summer. Remember to recharge and touch some grass.