https://julz.dev Software developer. I build things. and think about things. and maybe write about them. https://julz.dev/posts/dbos-and-fly-sprites.html https://julz.dev/posts/dbos-and-fly-sprites.html Wed, 04 Nov 2026 22:04:40 -0400 Fly sprites are a new VM deployment model (they’re fast starting/fast pausing persistant VMs) Really good for a cheap dev or demo; or some particular workers and spinning up AI related. DBOS is a… https://julz.dev/posts/llm-as-time-traveller.html https://julz.dev/posts/llm-as-time-traveller.html Wed, 04 Nov 2026 22:04:40 -0400 ‘We’re literally running out of science fiction topics faster than we can create new ones’ History LLM via: Hacker News https://julz.dev/posts/make-design-system-via-claude.html https://julz.dev/posts/make-design-system-via-claude.html Wed, 04 Nov 2026 22:04:40 -0400 Claude is really good at distilling a site into a style guide and then use it for future designs. Really nice ‘how to’ here:… https://julz.dev/posts/spec-driven-development-and-ddd.html https://julz.dev/posts/spec-driven-development-and-ddd.html Wed, 04 Nov 2026 22:04:40 -0400 DDD is a great tool for approaching a technical problem: useful concepts and useful methodology to write the code. Of course these days we can (debatably!) defer that code-creation to AI. Perhaps we… https://julz.dev/posts/the-last-museum.html https://julz.dev/posts/the-last-museum.html Tue, 03 Nov 2026 15:48:49 -0400 TIL The last museum : I love a good museum! This gives me the chance to at least appreciate their contents, even if I can’t get to see them in person. I particularly love the historical graphic… https://julz.dev/posts/laws-of-software.html https://julz.dev/posts/laws-of-software.html Tue, 03 Nov 2026 15:48:49 -0400 This is a great resource of all the things to know. Or at least to quote to appear like you know https://lawsofsoftwareengineering.com. Quick review: Some of them I don’t really understand, but I… https://julz.dev/posts/make-an-audio-book-for-free.html https://julz.dev/posts/make-an-audio-book-for-free.html Tue, 03 Nov 2026 15:48:49 -0400 TIL: pdf to audio. Neato. https://pdftomp3.com/connect-ai But what I’d like is to chop it up into chapters and turn the audio into a personal podcast. https://julz.dev/posts/docling-the-python-document-reading-library.html https://julz.dev/posts/docling-the-python-document-reading-library.html Tue, 03 Nov 2026 15:47:29 -0400 Just discoverered the excellent docling library TL;DR: it reads a variety of digital document formats and converts them to (eg) markdown - ready to slurping into an AI. I’ve got a downloaded pdf book… https://julz.dev/posts/make-a-forwarding-phone-number.html https://julz.dev/posts/make-a-forwarding-phone-number.html Wed, 28 Oct 2026 16:35:17 +0000 Either use this service : https://app.burnerapp.com or…apparently Twilio does this neatly: You can forward incoming calls from your Twilio number to another phone ==using Twilio Studio or a Twilio… https://julz.dev/posts/clever-django-testing.html https://julz.dev/posts/clever-django-testing.html Wed, 28 Oct 2026 16:26:48 +0000 this project only tests the new and changed tests; this speeds up the day-to-day & is one of those ‘why didn’t I think of that!?’ projects! https://github.com/FarhanAliRaza/prongs https://julz.dev/posts/constraint-theory-and-ai.html https://julz.dev/posts/constraint-theory-and-ai.html Mon, 19 Oct 2026 10:20:29 -0300 My current thoughts is that AI is really good at prototyping and version one - when the scope are tightly managed and simple. And the reason this type of development is so quick and satisfying is… https://julz.dev/posts/robot-txt-files-for-llm.html https://julz.dev/posts/robot-txt-files-for-llm.html Wed, 07 Oct 2026 10:56:03 -0300 Just as a ‘robots.txt’ file directs web scrapers, a llm.txt file is there to direct our new AI overlords. The famous ‘lighthouse’ accessibility scoring now includes checks for it too - a new category… https://julz.dev/posts/simple-style-html-page.html https://julz.dev/posts/simple-style-html-page.html Fri, 02 Oct 2026 10:45:54 -0300 TIL: CSSBED : simply add a default style to bland HTML with this default CDN stylesheet. Eg make a boring page at least Tufte-styled. I’m surprised how frequently this comes up - just want a bit of a… https://julz.dev/posts/why-not-just-use-html.html https://julz.dev/posts/why-not-just-use-html.html Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:51:15 -0300 Accordions Dropdowns Modals Slider menus Page transitions : Been waiting for this for a while (surprised noone is using it much yet tbh) And don’t get me started on simple Alpine.js & HTMX…!… https://julz.dev/posts/canadian-politics.html https://julz.dev/posts/canadian-politics.html Thu, 01 Oct 2026 09:25:47 -0300 This site - I side with.com is super interesting. It tells me that there’s political parties out there that I didn’t know about, but agree with! That’s good to know.. https://julz.dev/posts/nicer-ai-posters.html https://julz.dev/posts/nicer-ai-posters.html Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:23:02 -0300 Turns out that if you ask nicely and go into detail on the exact era/style and feeling, that’s what you get. I just asked chatGPT to create an image: This comes out quite tastefully imho. Reference https://julz.dev/posts/glossary-of-ai.html https://julz.dev/posts/glossary-of-ai.html Wed, 30 Sep 2026 11:40:57 -0300 This new phase of Generative-AI calls for a new vocabulary of experiences. I’ll add the one’s I’ve found & add the new experience that need a name. AI Slop : That’s Simon Willison’s coining. Amazing… https://julz.dev/posts/pdoc.html https://julz.dev/posts/pdoc.html Wed, 30 Sep 2026 10:57:22 -0300 I feel a bit late to the party, but pdoc is amazing. Tl;dr : Take the code and provide internal API documentation. https://julz.dev/posts/specification-pattern.html https://julz.dev/posts/specification-pattern.html Wed, 30 Sep 2026 10:57:22 -0300 It’s good to get a name for a thing. This is a great example of this principle. In a nutshell, let’s create a DSL to capture the business logic. How it works is clever and functional too.… https://julz.dev/posts/jev.html https://julz.dev/posts/jev.html Thu, 17 Sep 2026 19:00:54 -0300 til: JEV New LLM AI dropped: JEV . This is a bit more specialist: * it’s cheaper and faster ($42 Per Billion input tokens!) * it does classification So for a particular type of question, it’ll be… https://julz.dev/posts/python-wrapture.html https://julz.dev/posts/python-wrapture.html Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:52:09 -0300 Today (via Simon Willison) learned about ‘ wrapture ‘ Looks like a new take on monkeypatching - which always gives me a pause figuring out paths! And in other news:Less TILs then usual as I got a… https://julz.dev/posts/the-history-of-the-web.html https://julz.dev/posts/the-history-of-the-web.html Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:52:09 -0300 Just read this history article: https://www.artmann.co/articles/30-years-of-br-tags : super interesting. Obviously there’s going to be omissions and it’s a personal recollection, but curious to see… https://julz.dev/posts/types-in-python.html https://julz.dev/posts/types-in-python.html Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:03:06 -0300 This blog post is great. . I’ve integrated a lot of the ideas in it; the idea of using newType frequently is especially powerful. Dataclasses are the best recent additions to Python! Data Transfer… https://julz.dev/posts/papercraft-and-more.html https://julz.dev/posts/papercraft-and-more.html Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:01:03 -0300 TIL: There’s a hobby and a bunch of tools to make 3D paper sculptures! Unfolder discussion Pandafold Same but for fabric plushies: plushify Blender plugins Blender plugin 2 How fun! https://julz.dev/posts/worse-on-purpose.html https://julz.dev/posts/worse-on-purpose.html Fri, 28 Aug 2026 09:00:28 -0300 ‘worse on purpose’ : Joins the dots between corporate buy-out; company gutting and coasting on the brand-name recognition. Looking at you Pyrex . (My glass pan exploded into a million shards and I’m… https://julz.dev/posts/about-ai.html https://julz.dev/posts/about-ai.html Fri, 10 Jul 2026 12:44:34 -0300 This is a set of notes I’ve been chewing over for a while - so not a ‘today I learned!’ Anyhoo: onwards There’s a lot of hype and hidden motivations and forces behind the AI boom. The first is the… https://julz.dev/posts/organizational-slimemould.html https://julz.dev/posts/organizational-slimemould.html Wed, 24 Jun 2026 16:02:46 -0300 TIL: Organizational Slimemould Like many of these ‘TIL’ I came across this some time ago. But today, I’ll say I found it useful - again.. This presentation is a great example of conveying a message.… https://julz.dev/posts/new-colourspaces.html https://julz.dev/posts/new-colourspaces.html Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:00:08 -0300 I’ve done enough CMYK printing (and been surprised often enough with how different it looks from what I see on my screen (if you know you know!)) to be interested in colour on the web.. Seems there’s… https://julz.dev/posts/brew-postgres.html https://julz.dev/posts/brew-postgres.html Wed, 01 Apr 2026 17:54:44 -0300 TIL how to make sure my brew installed postgres is not running. It auto-restarts so we have to stop it properly! Hence killport 5432 doesn’t work. Use brew services list …to give the list of… https://julz.dev/posts/resiliency-engineering.html https://julz.dev/posts/resiliency-engineering.html Wed, 25 Mar 2026 10:12:11 -0300 This video is great : Velocity NY 2013: Richard Cook, “Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems” & this one too : Velocity 2012: Richard Cook, “How Complex Systems Fail” In a nutshell: ‘resiliency’…