Essays
Computers
Advice, insights, and guides on utilizing computers for gaming, writing, and other creative endeavors. Discover new tools and techniques for your projects.
Dev, Test, and Prod Still Matter: What Gets Deployed Has Changed
Dev, Test, and Prod still matter for AI agents, but release gates must govern artifacts, authority, state, and evidence, not only deployed code.
The Sandbox Was Not the Boundary
The OpenAI–Hugging Face incident shows how proxy services, persistent state, and completion pressure can extend an AI agent beyond its sandbox.
UGS-1: Unicode Glyph-Variant Steganography, Version 1.1
A technical specification for Unicode glyph-variant steganography using Latin/Cyrillic homoglyphs, framed byte payloads, CRC validation, capacity rules, scan mode, detector guidance, and Unicode security constraints.
The Backlog Doesn't Blink
A hip-hop musical-theater song lyric about IT delivery, backlog pressure, enterprise risk, compliance, security, legacy systems, QA, citizen builders, and governance.
Customizing Copilot's Thinking Messages in VS Code
A practical guide to customizing GitHub Copilot's thinking messages in VS Code by adding a custom chat.agent.thinking.phrases setting to user settings JSON.
Shadow App Serenade
A hip-hop musical-theater song lyric about shadow apps, citizen builders, hidden automation, business-critical workarounds, governance, support, and enterprise IT.
Prompt Me a Palace
A hip-hop musical-theater song lyric about AI builders, prompt-driven workflows, agentic automation, prototype speed, system overload, governance, and enterprise architecture.
AI Engineer Coach: A VS Code Extension for Measuring How You Work With AI
A practical introduction to AI Engineer Coach, a local VS Code extension that analyzes AI coding assistant usage across multiple harnesses and exposes dashboards for activity, output, anti-patterns, context health, to...
Build It. Ship It.
A hip-hop musical-theater song lyric about citizen builders, AI builders, enterprise IT, security, data governance, operations, architecture, and the tension between speed and coherence.
Cyber+AI: Why Every Business Needs to Rethink Risk, Resilience, and Readiness
Cybersecurity and AI are now inseparable business issues requiring stronger governance, resilience, data readiness, vendor risk management, and workforce design.
Ticket in the Queue
A hip-hop musical-theater song lyric about backlog pressure, citizen development, shadow IT, governance, and turning a workaround into a resilient shared system.
Two A.M. in the Understructure
A song lyric in character voices about enterprise operations, night-shift engineering, shadow IT, citizen development, observability, and the invisible labor that keeps systems alive.
Euclid's Algorithm in Ada
A short reflection on an old Ada assignment that calculates the greatest common divisor using Euclid's algorithm.
More IT in IT
A song lyric about AI, citizen development, low-code platforms, and the need for more technology craft, architecture, security, governance, and accountability inside modern IT.
MCP's 2026 Roadmap: From Agent Integration Standard to Production Connectivity Layer
A structured look at the Model Context Protocol's 2026 roadmap, including stateless transport, server discovery, tasks, enterprise authentication, triggers, streaming, skills, MCP Apps, SDK v2, progressive discovery, ...
A Practical AI Training Plan Across OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft/GitHub
A practical AI training plan that maps official learning resources from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft/GitHub into a clear sequence: start with literacy, complete a quickstart, study prompting deeply, then move into...
Why AI Needs a Harness
This essay argues that the next chapter of AI is not the chatbot alone, but the harness around it: the architectural layer that gives a model tools, memory, permissions, verification loops, and guardrails so it can pa...
Stop Asking AI to Behave Like Legacy Software
This essay argues that the biggest mistake people make with AI is expecting it to behave like legacy software. The real change is a shift from menu-driven tools to conversational systems that can carry work across dom...
The Lab That Keeps Working After You Go to Bed
A Swiss folk tale and Andrej Karpathy's autoresearch project point to the same emerging reality: machines can now do the repetitive work that takes place in the middle of discovery long after the human has stepped awa...
An Introduction to OpenClaw
OpenClaw and Moltbook provide an early, visible example of agentic AI in the wild. As assistants gain the ability to act autonomously using real accounts and data, organizations must rethink governance, security, and ...
Agents Don’t Click
A thesis about how agentic workflows change software: systems of record and governed APIs become the durable value, while many UI-heavy workflows become synthetic, generated approval and audit surfaces.
REPRINT: The Death of Software 2.0
An essay on why agentic AI changes software economics: interfaces become ephemeral, while durable systems of record (data, state, and APIs) become the high-value layer—using the memory hierarchy as the guiding analogy.
A Color Chart You Can Move Around
Documentation for the tedt.org Color Chart tool: a fullscreen, pannable, zoomable palette workbench with URL-driven inputs, WebMCP hooks, and analysis tools.
The Pancake Protocol: an Agentic Kitchen
Using a pancake-making kitchen as a metaphor, this essay breaks down the emerging standards behind agentic AI systems. It explains the Model Context Protocol (MCP) as the wiring that connects hosts to tools, resources...
How to Communicate in a World of AI
AI speeds up producing documents, but it doesn’t preserve the intent behind them. This post argues that specifications—clear goals, constraints, and success criteria—are the shared language that aligns people and AI. ...
Gold Medals & Paved Roads
At the ICPC World Finals, OpenAI and DeepMind’s AI models rivaled human champions, while OpenAI launched GPT-5-Codex, an agentic coding system built to plan, execute, and review code across enterprise workflows. These...
The Skill that Outgrows the Tool
This article explores why relying on tool mastery is a risky career move in 2026. As AI begins to automate entire workflows, the most valuable skill will be translating business needs into AI solutions and understandi...
Prompting ChatGPT-5 Specifically
GPT‑5 acts as a router model that can think, browse, code, write, and orchestrate tools. This guide distills six moves that reliably raise output quality: set the reasoning and verbosity dials, explicitly name tools a...
From Industrial-Age Utility to AI-Centric Utility
White paper for utility leaders on consolidating platforms, building an edge‑to‑cloud data fabric with preserved context, and redesigning the workforce for AI—measured by edge→decision latency, TTE, reliability, compl...
Practical On-Prem AI: What OpenAI’s GPT-OSS 20B & 120B Mean for Utilities
How GPT-OSS 20B & 120B shift practical on-prem AI for utilities: capabilities, safety framing, infrastructure sizing, and concrete field automation patterns.
From Chaos to Clarity
A practical demonstration of how AI prompt engineering can extract clear business requirements from cluttered meeting transcripts, showing how three carefully crafted prompts can transform chaos into clarity, empathy,...
The Human Edge
Exploring the transformative impact of artificial intelligence on industries, employment, healthcare, and the human experience.
AI in Software Development - Breaking Myths and Building Teams
AI in software development isn’t about replacing developers or making them code faster. It’s about transforming teams, fostering collaboration, and expanding who can contribute to software creation.
Details on DeepSeek: Step 1 through 5
A comprehensive technical breakdown of DeepSeek R1's revolutionary five-step training methodology, explaining how the first open-weight reasoning model was built from scratch using reinforcement learning, with accessi...
Project Stargate Unveiled: OpenAI’s $500 Billion Bet on an AI-Driven Future
Explore the scale, ambition, and global impact of OpenAI’s Project Stargate, the $500 billion data center set to power the next generation of artificial intelligence.
Barrels, Ammunition, & the Future of AI in the Electric Utility Industry
Explore how utilities can leverage AI by investing in cross-functional talent, modern infrastructure, and collaborative strategies.
Custom Communication Styles in AI
Learn how to identify your unique communication style and use prompt engineering to make AI tools adapt to your preferences.
Custom Writing Styles in AI
Learn how to capture your unique writing style and use AI to generate content that sounds like you.
Bespreekbaarheid: The Missing Ingredient in IT Organizations
Explore the concept of Bespreekbaarheid, a Dutch term that encourages open dialogue and transparency, and discover why it's crucial for success in IT organizations. Learn how it fosters innovation, enhances problem-so...
AI User Interfaces and Experiences in 2023
An in-depth analysis of Google's response to the AI competition and its impact on the tech landscape. Exploring the shift from traditional search to AI-driven solutions, the article delves into the battle between Goog...
The Revolution of Mobile Computing: From Mainframes to Smartphones
This article explores the evolution of computing from mainframes to PCs, laptops, and ultimately to mobile phones. The author emphasizes how smartphones have become an essential part of daily life, offering all-in-one...
The Future of Web-Based Computing: Revolutionizing the Creative Industry
This article showcases videos of a MacBook Pro running Windows 7 that launches complex applications like Photoshop and Unreal tournament engine entirely through a browser using HTML5 and JavaScript. With the backing o...
Motorola's Project Ara: The Future of Modular Smartphones or a Doomed Venture?
The article explores Motorola's project Ara, an ambitious idea of creating smartphones with individual, purchasable components. While intriguing, the author argues that this model may be doomed due to its contrast wit...
The Evolution of Digital Realism: Sound, Graphics, and User Interface Design
The article delves into the remarkable journey of sound cards and computer graphics, from primitive 8-bit representations to near-CD quality sound and hyper-realistic visuals. It explores the implications of this real...
Theme Parks and Mobile OS: A Comparative Analysis
This article explores the parallels between theme parks like Knott's Berry Farm and tech giants Apple and Android. It highlights the experiences, attention to details, and innovation that define both worlds, and opens...
Revolutionizing the iPad Experience with ZAAG / Logitech Keyboard Case
A hands-on review of the ZAAG / Logitech keyboard case for the iPad, exploring its design, usability, and compatibility with Apple's design. Learn how this device transforms the iPad into a potential laptop replacemen...
Defending the Commons: Lessons from Robin Hood on Building Community
A thoughtful exploration of the concept of community and the common good, using the story of Robin Hood as a metaphor. This article delves into the core questions about what binds a community together, how to nurture ...
Enhancing Collaboration in the Corporate World: A Comprehensive Model
This article explores the intricate dynamics of collaboration in a modern corporate environment. Through the lens of Information Technology, it identifies key problems and offers a detailed model for improving collabo...
Building Engaging Conversations: From Clueless to Creators
This article reveals the four categories of people in conversations and explores strategies to transform clueless individuals into engaged consumers, commenters, and creators. By breaking down barriers and using the r...
The Three Types of People in Conversations: A Guide to Engaging Your Audience
This article examines the three fundamental roles in any conversation: starters, participants, and observers. Drawing parallels between social gatherings and website engagement, it explores how these roles dynamically...
The Power of Collaboration Tools: Treating Them Like Pen and Paper
This article explores the importance of treating collaboration tools with the same unrestricted access as conventional office utilities like pens, papers, or telephones. By avoiding barriers and encouraging free use, ...
Exploring Taxonomy: A Thought-Provoking Talk by Alex Wright
This article delves into a talk by Alex Wright at the Long Now Foundation, exploring the fascinating concept of taxonomy across different societies. It questions why taxonomies are universally 5 or 6 levels deep and e...
Sucks to be me - From Blackberry to iPhone to Blackberry Again
An unexpected visit to the Apple Store after shattering an iPhone screen, revealing surprising service inconsistencies and policy variations across locations. Learn about the challenges and costs of cosmetic damage, t...
The Complexity of Managing 212 RSS Feeds: A Blogger's Challenge
The author shares their experience with managing 212 different RSS feeds and blogs, highlighting the struggles with taxonomy, workflow, scanning articles, linkblogs, and the limits of current feed reading applications...
What Should Google Buy Next? A Strategic Insight into Future Investments
In this article, the author revisits a previous conversation on what Google should invest in next, covering aspects like data mining, pattern recognition, GIS, real-time monitoring, algorithms, and the connection betw...
The Machine That Dreamed in Plot
Reflections on computer-based storytelling models like BRUTUS, MINSTREL, and MEXICA, alongside thoughts on creativity, authorship, and the soul of narrative.
Exploring Web Services, Computing Theory, and the Future of Technology
An in-depth article providing an understanding of web services, computing theory, and a look at the future. Geared towards those in the enterprise and web development sectors, this article explains web services from a...
93-year-old blogger - It Bothers Me That I Have To Go
I saw this on Digg, and thought I would like to share it with my friends, and save a copy of it for myself.
Playing it Cool, Playing it Fast! Playing it on the Computer
So I copied my entire iTunes music library to my iBook today. I had to leave my podcasts and my audible subscriptions and audio books on the PC as they took up about 20gb. After everything was transferred I installed ...
Microsoft teams with Creative Commons
Microsoft tonight announced a new partnership with Creative Commons, the organization dedicated to providing content producers a legal alternative to “all rights reserved” copyright law, to offer a new tool for easy i...
Step 1 - Reply by Chat
I have always thought that the logical direction for chat and email was the same. At some point in the future the only difference between them will be if you are there to answer the chat. Looks like Google gets this a...
A Little Calendar App I'm building
The following code is a calendar application I’m building in JavaScript. It needs a couple rounds of refactoring (to get rid of document.writes and to make it more object friendly). The next step will be to make it h...
Example of XMLHttpRequest
Learn how I am using XMLHttpRequest for asynchronous web requests to improve my website's interactivity and user experience.
Thoughts on a Potential Google Internet OS
An in-depth analysis of Google's potential development of a web-based operating system that integrates Mail, Blog, Social Network, Pictures, Search, and more. Drawing parallels with the early PC market, this article e...
Integrating iTunes with TypePad: A Simple Guide
Learn how to integrate iTunes with TypePad using a program that updates your TypePad list with the songs you're currently listening to. This guide offers simple instructions and ensures your favorite tunes are always ...