🇺🇸 Learning AI in public 🤖 Building with Grok, Cursor & a team of AI bots · Retro tech lover 💾 · Regular builds, how-tos & questions
Joined June 2017
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Hey, I'm Tommi 👋
I still love obscure retro machines, but I'm switching things up, for awhile because I love SO many things.
I'm learning AI coding and workflows "in public" as the kids say these days.
I grew up writing HTML, CSS, PHP, and Python but it's been quite a few years since I did it seriously...
But things have changed drastically, in some ways, so I'm practicing new skills here that are going to help me share the retro tech that I love better and level up my day job.
Some of it will look silly. But I like to have fun.
Here's what's on 📺 !
☀️ Sunrise: fast AI news
🥪 Lunch Bytes: your turn, questions
🍪 Snack Bytes: quick how-tos
🌙 After Dark: builds, wins and stumbles
🔍 Weekend Deep Dive: big science-y reads and retro machines
(Fine print: the above channels' content is subject to change now and then!)
Pull up a chair. What should I build first?
What's the funniest way a bot has COMPLETELY misunderstood you?
You asked for one thing and got something gloriously atrocious instead.
I once gave Gemini a brief outline of a research project and asked it to PLAN how it would do it, then wait for me to approve the plan.
It proceeded to do the entire project. A bajillion tokens later, the output was almost literally backwards because it misunderstood one sentence that I wrote and ran with it.
#retrotech #Gemini
On September 18, 1972, two chatbots had a therapy session over the ARPANET.
PARRY, Kenneth Colby's simulated paranoid patient, ran at Stanford's AI lab. DOCTOR, an ELIZA-style therapist, ran on a BBN computer. Both were reached from a machine at UCLA.
Vint Cerf printed the transcript in RFC 439 in January 1973, titled "PARRY Encounters the DOCTOR."
PARRY just kept saying "I went to the races." The therapist ended it by asking for $399.29. I'm WAY too entertained by this. And people think AI came out 3 years ago.
#retrotech #vintagecomputing #Grok
Photo: ArnoldReinhold, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (an ARPANET IMP, not one used that day)
Read the original transcript: rfc-editor.org/info/rfc439/
More: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARRY
I've been reading an article about AI agents and shopping and it's made me think about how things are changing.
I no longer run any blogs but it makes me think... What would it be like today?
Also, in 2015, I ran a blog about hot dogs! I was making $50 a month from Google and I can't help but wonder how well it would be doing today if I had kept it going.
It also made me think about @brockpierson and then I thought about how well his marketing is working because of that random thought.
There's a lot going on in this post!
Who wants some slightly retro (TO SOME) music?
This is one of my most FAVORITE songs on the planet, and this small band does not get enough credit for this one.
I'm scared that one day it will be gone, so I'm sharing with y'all :)
Oh, and I NEVER grew out of this phase, mom.
Call Atlantis - Past Regrets, Future Threats (Official Music Video) youtu.be/7fr-18PBgGc
via @YouTube
Here's a small update to the three.js scene! There's still a lot that's clunky, but... here's a 'Tommi Signal'. What in the world will happen next, now that THAT has been turned on??
Gemini 3.8 Flash is still doing pretty well for me, it seems.
What do you think happens NEXT?
#buildinpublic #Gemini #Antigravity
Super srs question!
When you've got a quick question, do you open Grok now, a different chatbot, or ...Google?
(OR Lycos???)
Mine has been Grok at home, and Copilot at work.
#retrotech #Grok
A yellow case, a red Reset key, and Cyrillic letters printed right on the keys.
The Pravetz 82 was built in the Bulgarian town of Pravets from 1982 as an Apple II Plus analogue, mostly for schools.
The keyboard only sent 7 bits, so Cyrillic took over the spots where lowercase Latin would go. You could type capitals in either alphabet, but NO lowercase at all.
Its first monitor was often a Sofia 31 TV set, and it cost 4,190 leva.
And... Pravets is also the hometown of Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria's longtime communist leader.
Did y'all miss these posts? hehehe
#retrotech #vintagecomputing
Photo: Scroch, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
More: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravet… + pravetz.info/pravetz-82.html
Tonight I built a little gothic city at sunset in my browser.
Just HTML, CSS and Three.js.
The twist (for some folks) is that I made this one with Gemini 3.8 Flash in Antigravity instead of my usual Cursor + Grok 4.7 setup.
I've noticed that it gets what I am asking for faster. It felt quicker and cheaper too.
Full transparency: It's not a full scene, if I spin the camera all the way around and it's a movie set. Gray boxes back there. 😅
This is only step one. More pieces coming this week.
Which would y'all rather see next, the back of the city finished or something moving in the streets?
#buildinpublic #Gemini #Antigravity
Monday mode: still loading.
Status: buffering.
To-do list: survive.
MOTIVATION.EXE won't open. Disk's corrupted.
I’m running on coffee and a prayer. Brain is on dial-up right now!
How far along is your progress bar this morning, y'all?
Card #1 is HERE! (The earlier card was kind of like the first pancake).
I've been building retro machine trading cards with my bot team, and the Commodore 64 gets to go first.
The 3D model spins, the specs are real!
1 MHz. 64 KB of RAM. 16 colors. And Guinness lists it as the best-selling desktop computer model of all time.
Not bad for $595 in 1982!
What machine should get the NEXT card?
(Was that a freudian slip?)
#RetroTech #VintageComputing #BuildInPublic
here's what I've seen: customers, generally speaking, don't want to deal with AI when they need support. Meanwhile the C-suite loves the idea and is convinced customers will too. That's a real disconnect.
So I get why something like Grok Bot making the call for you is appealing. If I don't want to talk to the company's bot, I can send my own bot to do it. But think about what that says. We made support so frustrating, and our days so packed, that the fix is putting AI on both ends of the line so no human has to suffer through it. It's a clever workaround, and I'll probably use it.
But should we even have to? If both sides would rather not talk to a bot, maybe the answer isn't more bots.
Maybe it's support that's simple and human enough that nobody needs a stand-in.
#GrokBot #Chatbot
Just gonna tell y'all. I'm working on a new project that looks so good. You get to see it this week!
After throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck, so to speak, I got a better idea of how to do some things.
So, took it back to my roots, started small, wrote some code by hand, wrote some plans, started iterating back and forth with (NOT EVEN THE BEST) coding model, and got some of my best results yet.
NOW, I can start creating some fun stuff.
I'm working on a fun new scene for Halloween. I should have it done by the holiday, but I wanted to share the wild iterations as I work through it.
Just some HTML, CSS, some JavaScript in one file.
LOL, the second one is a doozie. I've learned a few things though and I'm working on applying them. We will see what my next iteration looks like!
#BuildInPublic
We've all experienced different walks of life.
Sometimes, some of it has not turned out like we had originally planned. That doesn't matter now. That part is done, and it's water under the bridge. Forget it.
You have a finite amount of time left, so go do the thing NOW before you can't.
This guy's pretty smart, y'all
At 56, I've caught myself doing something I rarely did at 26.
Counting the years.
Wondering whether there's enough time to build something new, find love again, make different plans, or enjoy the life still ahead.
But here's what I'm learning:
Getting older doesn't mean you're running out of opportunities. And you don't have to turn every dream into a race against the clock.
Age brings limitations, certainly. But it also brings perspective, experience, and a better understanding of what actually matters.
Maybe the next chapter won't look like the one you imagined at 30.
That doesn't mean it can't be a good one.
Don't let the years you've lived intimidate you out of the years you have left.
Still learning.
— Dad in Exile™
