My friend had told me about tailscale as a way to easily connect my mobile phone to my computer while not on the same network. I was didn't know stuff like this existed and that it was free. This opened up a whole new world for being able to easily access a ton of random websites and tools running on my home PC.

I waited a long time, hoping to buy a cheap mac mini, but the RAMMageddon raised the prices of all machines and I ended up buying a super cheap mini-pc for ~40,000 JPY. For the stuff I was doing I definitely didn't need a mac mini but I was sad that I couldn't get one.

Anyways, with a mini-pc and linux up and running I got to work creating random tools for myself. First was a website that I am writing this blog post in. This blog is hosted using Gatsby and its all simple markdown files. I asked Codex or Gemini (I forget which since they are all the same) to build out this website. I didn't need anything crazy, just a place I can write markdown, upload some photos, and create a post. This has been amazing since the blog is mostly just photos so it was nice to be able to take a photo and then immediately publish it as a blog post.

Next, I was curious about my energy usage. I once again had my robot friends try to set up a small server to pull energy usage data from my Nichicon battery. This website was sadly less useful since it couldn't tell me how much energy I am drawing from the grid. It was still kind of neat though.

My most recent invention was collapsing multiple websites tracking busses I frequently take into a single website. My robot friends only just created this one so I don't know well this will work but for now I am optimistic. Especially since I can just change it to suit my needs if need be.

And that is the best part of all of this. These tools are easy enough to create now with AI and also tailor fit to what I need. I don't like AI since it has made work less fun but I do love it for these small personal apps.I do encourage folks to give it a try. Especially to the 3 people who might read this blog.