I've been experimenting with AI-assisted development tools for the last couple of months, and Claude Code has pretty much become a permanent fixture in my workflow at this point. I'm running it on an Arch Linux server at home — an Omarchy setup I've been tweaking for a while — and using it across multiple projects simultaneously. But getting it to a place where it actually works the way I need it to, especially while travelling, took a solid two weeks of trial and error. So I figured I'd write up what I landed on, in case anyone else is banging their head against the same problems. The Problems Before ...

Many people by now have heard of the 'miraculous' GLP1 drugs which include the original Ozempic (Semaglutide), and of course Mounjaro (Tirzatrupide). Semaglutide was the original GLP1 agonist which was released to help diabetics reduce their blood sugar and weight. Tirzatrupide is similar in how it works, but it adds a second component against GIP. The two work synergistically to reduce appetite and improve insulin handling. I'm one of those unfortunate people that has always struggled with my weight, despite trying my best to exercise lots of get outside as often as I can. Starting from about ...

In August of 2025 I decided to try and take everything we know (or don't know) about long COVID-19 and my own particular lab results and try to see if I can nudge myself back to health. My action plan, which I'll link to below, involves rougly 90 days of anti-inflammatories, JAK stat inhibitors, anti-virals, and several immune modulators. The goal is to try and address whatever it is that's causing my system to still be on high alert. Pre-Trial Labs Here is a list of my labs before starting this experiment. For a detailed overview of all of them, visit my main page. Foundational metrics: eGFR ...

Summer 2023 Hospital Visit I went to Switzerland to visit some friends in May of 2023. At some point during the trip, everyone in the co-living space got sick with some type of viral infection. I don't think anyone thought it was covid19, but none of us tested, so I really don't know. What I do now is that about a week after I got back to Spain from Switzerland, I started experience shock-like sensations in the facial nerves of my face. I had a dental x-ray the day before, and at first was worried it was too strong or something. The shocks got worse, and started hitting my optical nerve as well, ...

One of the inherent problems with getting a long covid diagnosis is immediately coming to terms with the fact that most doctors aren't comfortable treating patients with that diagnosis, and if you're lucky enough to find one, very few offer any suggestions. We've been instructed repeatedly to pace ourselves, get a good sleep, drink lots of water, take our omega 3s. But outside of that, we haven't been offered many solutions, certainly not enough for most people to regain any quality of life. After I received a long covid diagnosis here in Spain by two specialists (and here it's called covid persistente), ...

On the morning of February 17, 2024, at approximately 10am in the morning, my brain exploded. I had known it was going to happen, or at least something bad was about to happen, for a few days. On February 15th, two days prior, I woke up feeling extremely confused and agitated. I went to take out the garbage at one point, but was stuggling to figure out what I was doing and where I was. I called a taxi on my phone and got it to take me to the hospital, at which point I got a bit lost. When I finally got to see a doctor, I told her desperately that there was something wrong with my brain. They ...

I set out last week to try and build a bare-bones repository of WordPress plugins and themes and an associated management plugin. For the most part, I think I managed to get done what I wanted, although I still haven't started the actual update mechanism for it. There are already great Github updaters, including Github Updater and Repoman. But at some point I want to add the ability to verify cryptographically signed ZIP archives, and that will require some code on the client site. But the results of that marathon coding session are now available online at The Not WP Repository. Juniper/Author The ...

As most people in the community know, over the last few months things have pretty much gone to shit in WordPress-land. Every time you think it can't get any worse, it somehow manages to. WP Engine won their preliminary injunction against Automattic and Matt Mullenweg, which meant that about a week ago, the status quo was mostly put back in place - that meant, amongst other things, the Advanced Custom Fields plugin was returned to its rightful owner, WP Engine, and the loyalty checkbox on WordPress.org was removed (and then strangely replaced with a pineapple on pizza pledge box instead). Most ...

A few weeks ago, I sat down with my WordPress installation to see how difficult it would be to actually use a different API endpoint entirely instead of the default WordPress.org site. As others have pointed out, there are roughly 1,500 hard-coded WordPress.org links throughout the code, pointing to various API endpoints and reference documentation. What I discovered is, despite what some people are parading online, that there is no real easy way via the code to swap out the API entirely. In fact, the HTTP API within WordPress is probably one of the least useful APIs in terms of being able to ...

I posted the other day about how, after 18 years of WordPress, I finally migrated this blog to another framework. While I started evaluating various popular frameworks like Astro and Hugo, I had some initial problems handling the type of content I had added to my website over time. Eighteen years is a long time to be writing, and WordPress itself changed quite a bit over that period of time. For example, much of my older content has various short codes intermixed within it, which doesn’t really translate well to a new system. Considering I have a bit of time on my hands while I visit some family ...

This is my first post ...

This is my first post in a long time, as you can tell. One of the reasons I'm writing an entry is due to what's been going on in the WordPress world. In case you've been living under a rock, there is currently a big public battle going on between Matt Mullenweg, the company he runs, 'Automattic', and a rival called WP Engine. I can only speculate as to the real reasons for this public spat. On its surface, one side claims it's about a trademark dispute. But based on the actions of that same side, it seems to be some poorly thought out plan to exert more control over the community, and to attempt ...

Stock is one of those things that seemed magical before I made it. I had purchased a few cooking books, and many recipes said to use ‘vegetable stock’, ‘chicken stock’, ‘beef stock’, or ‘fish stock’. At that time I was used to buying bouillon cubes to take the place of stock, but decided at some point to try making a homemade stock. Not only is making stock at home easy, but it’s a simple way to use up leftover pieces of vegetables and bones. I’ve grown accustomed now to making a chicken dinner on the weekend, and immediately afterwards putting the left over pieces into the pressure cooker to ...

The Italian Mountain range known as the Dolomites is famously home to several amazing long distance thru hikes known as the Alta Vias, the High Routes. Many of these are old trails from World War I, complete with Via Ferratas, difficult stretches of climbing where a person needs to physically link themselves to metal guide wires. It’s been on my wishlist for a few years now to actually walk one of these routes, and I may finally have the chance. A few months ago I started planning to do one of long distance hikes in Italy this summer. At the time, I wasn’t sure if the situation in Europe would ...

With the COVID19 state of alarm shortly ending here in Spain, I’ve been slowly getting myself ready to do some long distance hiking. My original plan, before COVID19 hit the world, was to hopefully make it to Italy in the summer of 2021 to do a 10 day hike through the mountains. Whether or not that happens this summer is anyone’s guess, but I’m still going to act like it may happen, which means I need to start training for a high-altitude hike in the mountains. For the last month or so I have been trying to hike 15-20km of the Camino de Levante every week or two just outside of Valencia to get ...

I was looking through some of my old posts recently, particularly with regards to COVID-19 and the first lockdown here in Spain, and realized I hadn’t done an update in a while. Strangely, it’s going on the one year anniversary from when this all started. I had friends visiting from Canada when this all began, and as each day went by more and more activities were suspended in Spain. The first inkling of trouble was that the tickets we had to a futbol match here in Valencia were ultimately cancelled. Thinking nothing of it, we decided to purchase other tickets to see Madrid play, and those too ...

This last weekend I finally got around to writing up my trip report for my hike along the West Highland Way in 2018. Now that that’s out of the way, I’m thankful I can finally get around to posting my thoughts on the Great Glen Way. The Great Glen Way for all intents and purposes can almost be looked at as the second half of the West Highland Way (WHW). While the WHW finishes in Fort William, the Great Glen Way literally starts where it leaves off. After I finished the WHW, my friend Tony and I took the train to Edinburgh to relax for a few days. Heading back to the Great Glen Way was essentially ...

While I’ve done my fair share of hiking in my life, as I’ve gotten older I’ve gravitated more towards multi-day hikes rather than single day hikes. I certainly enjoy an afternoon hike on a weekend, but there’s something magical (and inherently challenging) about hiking for days or weeks at a time. In 2017 I did my longest hike yet – the Camino de Santiago in Spain. I spent 28 days walking from St. Jean Pied de Port, France, to Santiago de Compostela, Spain, a distance of roughly 800km. When it was over, as I hobbled around Santiago de Compostela letting my feet heal, I told myself that my days ...

I realized this morning that I haven’t really given an update since I was smack-dab in the middle of our lockdown here in Spain. Most of us here spent 98 days essentially locked up in our apartments, only venturing outside to quickly get some groceries or to go to a pharmacy. It was one of the most intense and invasive lockdowns of any country anywhere, and many people here really struggled to cope with it. While I didn’t mind being at home, especially since I had many renovation projects on the go, the inability to even go for a walk or to get exercise was really difficult mentally, and most ...

Tomorrow marks the end of the third week of forced quarantine here in Spain, and unfortunately at this point there still is no end in sight. At the start of this week both the active cases of COVID-19 as well as the number of deaths seemed to be on the cusp of plateauing, but yesterday brought new highs for both. I normally try to stay up each night until midnight, mostly to see what the latest numbers are – while they aren’t complete, usually there is an update shortly after midnight that gives some indication of what the next day may look like. And so far many of those updates haven’t been very ...