Cleaning Up The RideHome Archive

Posted on by

I listen to the RideHome podcast every weekday, and some weekends when there are bonus episodes that pique my interest. Around November 24, 2018 I think I started hearing Brian, the host, say things like “I’m sure I’ve talked about this before” and thought to myself that this should be a pretty easy problem to solve. Well, if it’s easy it wasn’t easy for me. But that rarely stops me from trying…

I hacked together some really terrible python to grab the RSS feed, parse it, extract the links, and spit out Markdown. Why Markdown when you already had HTML? I was going to use GitHub Pages and Markdown was the easiest path to that, that I knew of at the time. What I didn’t know was that Markdown was going to become the format of choice for LLMs. Anyways, once I got my hack-a-thon scripts working, I basically just ran them once in a while to update my Markdown files and push everything to GitHub for hosting. It mostly worked most of the time, except when the human making the show notes would change how they did the markup. Silly humans, always ruining everything with their capriciousness.

Now, fast forward to December 8, 2025 and I drop a big “Claude Rework” into the repository. Yes, as regular readers know, I’ve been using Claude Code for my little one-off personal projects. What really helped though was Nick Tune’s claude-skillz. I used the TDD persona and refactored my crappy scripts all the way to the point where I could start asking Claude Code to make new features. What kind of new features? Well, I had always wanted to do some data analysis, but I was always too busy and then…this made it so easy. I made a Wrapped feature for 2025 and then ran it against all the previous data I had gathered.

At work I have a reputation as an “AI Hater”, which if you only want to characterize “AI” as “will replace all humans and reduce human labor dollars to zero”, then yes…that’s accurate. I use Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini almost every day for something. Sometimes I’m just testing the same question across models. Sometimes I’m having them all independently evaluate something I’ve written, always with the prompt that the model is my intended audience and to ask me questions about what I’ve written to help me find the gaps I’ve left or where I was unclear. Seriously, they’re really good at this…if you can ignore the sycophancy.

So what? Now I have some python that’s less sucky than when I started…big deal. Well, sure…but for me it’s more about finding where the actual value can be derived. Is it worth it to back the systems that are actively trying to replace me and the ridiculous race to turn the planet into either energy plants or data centers to consume that energy? Ask again later, hopefully we and the planet are around long enough for that. Right now, for me…my little project is in a much better state and I can do things that I probably wouldn’t have done on my own. Maybe that’s enough.

Run for Food 2025

Posted on by

It's that time of year again, specifically Thanksgiving, where thousands of people head out into the wild to trot after turkeys. Or trot as turkeys. Look, somehow there are turkeys involved.

https://runsignup.com/Race/Results/121821/IndividualResult/RJYcX?resultSetId=609480#U114478625

MLS Soccer 2026 Schedule Shenanigans

Posted on by

The 2026 MLS Schedule has been released! That's the good news. If you want to see the entire season, it seems like you have to go to a team and then view the entire schedule from there. That's fine, but I wanted it in a Google Sheet, so I had Claude work on a solution.

I present to you the mls-schedule-generator. Is it "vibe coded"? Yeah, mostly. Is this good code? Probably not. Does it work? Yeah. You can see the results in this sheet.

AI is Biased and Doesn’t Share Your Values

Posted on by

I guess if the crypto traders say it, it’s real?

“It’s hard to say how much we can take away from this,” Azhang said. “One thing that we do know is that there are patterns in the models and they’re clearly biased and have preferences.

“For example, Claude almost always goes long and refuses to go short. It’s like an eternal optimist whereas Gemini is happy to short,” Azhang said. “They clearly have these inductive biases when it comes to trading.”

Simon Wardley on LinkedIn:

GPTs are a non kinetic form of warfare designed to embed the values of a small number of people into much wider communities by capturing the process of decision making. The delivery mechanism is the appearance of helpfulness i.e. coherent and authoritative arguments. The payload is helplessness and the creation of a new theocracy.

Simon Wardley on Medium:

By controlling the tools available to an individual, one can shape the type and quality of information they access. For example, limiting access to specific scientific instruments or technologies can constrain a person’s ability to gather empirical evidence and engage in scientific reasoning. Conversely, providing access to biased or misleading tools can lead individuals to draw erroneous conclusions or develop skewed perspectives about the world.

Simon Wardley on LinkedIn:

Do remember, LLMs are a non kinetic form of warfare. By controlling the language, medium and tools then they influence how you reason about any space. If the hypothesis holds then over time, your values and hence your behaviour will become altered by your exposure. This is no different to how we have used art to change societies.

Micorsoft’s AI chief Mustafa Suleyman in the Wall Street Journal (Apple News link)

AI “is going to become more humanlike, but it won’t have the property of experiencing suffering or pain itself, and therefore we shouldn’t over-empathize with it,” Suleyman said in an interview. “We want to create types of systems that are aligned to human values by default. That means they are not designed to exceed and escape human control.”

Which human values to do you think he means?

Posted in AI

To Malmö and Back Again

Posted on by

To Malmö and Back Again

I travelled to Malmö Sweden for the Øredev developers conference, where I was giving a presentation (subject of the next post). It was a whirlwind trip and I went solo, as Kat had no interest in doing a European long haul trip that was only for seven days. I flew out of SFO on November 3rd to Copenhagen and then back on the 9th. The flight there was a red-eye, so I didn’t land until Tuesday the 4th.

Sky view

The flight there was, thankfully, completely uneventful. I took the train from Copenhagen Airport to Malmö, and that was also really easy and quick. Before I went I checked on YouTube to see if there was a video showing how to get to the train and of course there was. I know they’re mostly ad-bait, they’re still pretty helpful if you haven’t been to a particular airport before. The body of water between Copenhagen and Malmö is referred to as The Sound, but it’s part of the Baltic Sea. Malmö is also in the south, so I was still very far away from the Arctic Circle.

How to get to Malmö

I didn’t have anything planned, other than getting to my hotel and unpacking. I did that, and then struck out to explore the area. I hadn’t slept much on the plane but the common practice is to just get on local time immediately, so that’s what I did. Luckily that night the conference organizers had arranged a dinner and nordic sauna for the speakers. That night we all piled into a couple of buses and headed to the Ribersborgs Kallbadhus. I will say that it was a traditional sauna and if you know, you know.

Wednesday was the opening day of the conference, so I was mostly indoors, but that night the city hosted us for a dinner at the Malmö Rådhus. You might be thinking that dinner at a city hall building is odd, except that this building was originally constructed in 1547. It was nice that the city appreciated how the conference puts Malmö “on the map” in terms of the technology scene in Europe. Also, it was just a magnificent building!

Radhus!

Thursday was the day of my talk, but also the football club from Malmö was playing a Europa League match, so of course I went. Did I get scarf? Do you even know me? Of course I did! I went early enough to hang out in the stadium bar and talked to as many locals as would put up with somebody that didn’t speak more than two words of Swedish. Everybody was lovely and many had even been to California, so we had a lot to talk about. They were very interested in what was going on in the US, and the best I could offer is that we’re in a phase and that there will undoubtedly be an adjustment. Sadly, Malmö lost the match.

Scarf

Friday was the final day of the conference. My talk was behind me, so I was in full enjoy the conference mode. During the conference I was lucky to make the acquaintance of Joshua Kerievsky, founder of Industrial Logic and champion of Modern Agile. We decided to explore the more urban parts of Malmö after the conference concluded and had dinner at Ruths. Other than a little mix up on what we were ordering, the dinner was exquisite.

Saturday was a break day. I didn’t fly out until Sunday, so after visiting the largest IKEA in the world, I made my way to Copenhagen via the train to do all the touristy stuff I could cram into six hours. Nyhavn for lunch, The Little Mermaid, and a stroll around Kastellet was just the ticket. Getting back to Malmö was trickier than I wanted it to be as there was maintenance happening on the tracks. They were running buses, but it wasn’t clear at the train station what bus one should get on to get back to Sweden, but I got there eventually.

Copenhagen 2025

Sunday at last and it’s time to fly home. Joshua and I are on the same flight, so we travel together to Copenhagen airport for our flight back to SFO. We have a little “fun” trying to get into the SAS Lounge and then come closer than I was comfortable with to missing our flight because there were only two people working passport control and there were hundreds of people in line. For reference, there were eight lanes, but only were staffed. Our plane ended up being held for 30 minutes to allow people to get through, so we lost our takeoff position, and left 50 minutes late. But, I was on the plane and at that point it was the only thing I cared about.

Running Injury Update #2

Posted on by

Previously, I had gone through my calf injury and my intentionally slow recovery. I was poking around in Strava and these two views I thought were worth sharing, to show how dramatic the pivot away from running to walking was.

Graph showing that running miles go to zero

Now walking miles for the same period:

Graphing showing walking miles increasing dramatically.

Today, a Saturday, was long run day and I did manage to go 10mi without reinjuring myself. Yay.

Maybe next Saturday I'll get to 13.1mi so I can continue my streak of half-marthons every month.

The Latest Running Injury

Posted on by

If you run, you will get injured. It's not an if, it's a when. The severtity is the real wild card. A long time ago I had issues with my calves. Nothing too serious, just nagging little muscle pulls and cramps and the like. I started wearing compression socks and that seemed to clear those minor injuries up. Putting compression socks on, while certainly not the most difficult thing in the world, is harder than putting on low-cuts.

I got lazy and started wearing low-cuts on my 5mi runs. I can't prove this is why I got a calf strain, but I'll settle for correlation. This happened on Wednesday, July 30, 2025 during a 5mi run. I was on my way back, as I always just do an out and back, and something just started feeling wrong in my right calf. I took the next three days off from running and I was thinking I could still get a decent Saturday long run in with the rest.

I was so very, very wrong. I made the injury worse and so I started to break out all the remedies, including no more running until I was more confident I wasn't going to hurt myself further. I know remedies for running injuring are hotly debated, so I'm not pushing these, they are just what I used.

I started icing a few times a day. I broke out the foam roller. I even gave PEMF a try. Luckily, through True Kneads I have easy access to one of these contraptions. I started wearing compression socks on my walks, which replaced any planned runs.

Finally, on Saturday, August 16, I felt like I could try a slow (11min/mi pace) jog. It went pretty well. I made sure to ice aftwards, but in general the run did not make things worse. That was almost two weeks off and it didn't feel great, but again, I didn't want to make it worse by being stupid.

Today, Sunday the 18th, I figured I would try and get back on the normal 5mi schedule, but keep the slower pace. Right now a 10min/mi pace is the limit. Anything faster than that and I can start to feel the calf complain. Again, it went relatively well and I didn't make things worse. I'll keep the ice and rolling going until I can get back to normal pace. I'm not sure what I'll do about the Saturday long run...I'll burn that bridge when I come to it.

The Regular Schedule:

  • Mon - 5mi run
  • Tue - 4.5mi walk
  • Wed - 5mi run
  • Thu - 5mi run
  • Fri - 4.5mi walk
  • Sat - 10+mi run
  • Sun - 4.5-6.5mi hike