This update was made from ChatGPT!

Just set up a test of how well MCP works on AI agents, and I am blown away.

I set up an MCP interface for my shiplog updates and projects. Now I can deploy project updates, get a list of all my projects, and tweak statuses directly from ChatGPT.

I really want to set up my Garmin data next. But I am too lazy to set up a separate Python server at the moment, so I'll just put it on hold for now.

I've fixed some small things, like:

• Removed welcome part from home page, so now it's just updates
• Added a new /about page, that displays shipped projects
• Fixed many small phone responsiveness issues Home page About page

I don't like having this as a separate project. I want to put more effort into each post, not just post some bland snippet or quote that only really makes sense to me. Now that I have started WILTW, I will scrap this project!

Check out WILTW instead

Week 24

1. Parallels between the Reichstag and the Los Angeles protests
2. Block based work
3. The word prolific

1. Reichstag vs LA protests

This week I watched the LA protests unfold after ICE raids led to what many are calling unlawful deportations. The response was mostly peaceful, yet a few chaotic moments were taken out of context and broadcast to stoke fear. What caught my attention was how Trump bypassed legal constraints to deploy military forces “for our safety,” overriding state authority. It made me think, where have I seen this play before?

I looked into how the Nazi party slowly grabbed hold of more and more power from being elected democratically and discovered the Reichstag fire: a crisis Hitler used to justify suspending civil liberties and consolidate control. I’m not trying to compare the Trump administration to the Nazi party, but that playbook of using fear to justify expanding executive power, is a known and effective one.

Whether that’s a good or bad thing is a different question. Maybe the US does need stronger executive leadership. The current two-party system doesn't really seem to work that well either: one party gets elected, undoes what the last one did, makes a mess, then the other side gets voted in to repeat the cycle. The point isn’t about left or right, it’s about how fear is used to justify power grabs. And right now, that pattern feels eerily familiar.

2. Block based work

The other thing I’ve thought about this week is how well block-based work fits me. I started dividing my day into focused work blocks:

Wake up Block 1 – deep, difficult, mentally straining work for 60–90 minutes Work out Block 2 – less straining and more fun work like bug fixes, design, emails, or writing for 1–3 hours Then the rest of the day is flexible

A cool shift I have felt about this block based system is seeing each session as its own project. There’s a beginning, a clear focus, and a reflection at the end. That structure gives me a feeling of progress I wasn’t getting from productivity tools like to-do lists. It also helps me process setbacks more constructively. For example the fact that bad blocks don’t ruin the day, they just get logged and adjusted.

Eventually I want to automate it, or at least make it a little easier than manually adding calendar events and changing the descriptions of the events, but for now I want to prove I actually enjoy using it.

3. Prolific

"producing in large quantities or with great frequency; highly productive". It perfectly describes what I am aspiring to be this year.

Shifting focus from a drone network to a single AI-powered drone. A network’s too complex for now, and I want something I can actually build and test. The idea is a small indoor drone that does something useful like watering plants. But to make the drone non-threatening or robotic, more like a harmless bee or pet or something. If I start with a single drone, I think it's a lot easier to understand how a network would work.

We’re living in a time where geopolitical collapse is content. I am literally watching a commentary youtuber reacting to the Israel-Iran war.

When you stop demanding more from life, life quietly gives you more than you asked for

I keep coming back to this, but if we nail the core product this summer, the next semester will be very fun and creative. I’ll only have two courses in my AI bachelor next semester, and if Director is in people’s hands, we can finally start building out all the things we’ve been talking about for 2 years—automatic bug reporting, AI issue fixing, custom dashboards, devtools, etc.

But everything depends on us actually shipping a working, stable app now. Not perfect, just working. If we get Director into the App Store (even a basic version), we unlock a whole new level of freedom to experiment and iterate. If we don’t, we’re stuck in crunch mode all fall, with everyone waiting and expecting a finished product - customers, partners, investors, ourselves.

So my priority for this summer: trust that Bjørn’s got the Streambridge under control, do whatever it takes to get Director over the finish line. Ship the thing, then have fun building all the fun stuff we actually want to build.

If we succeed, the next semester will be fun and explorative. If not, I'm setting myself up for burnout.

My father’s rich, my mother’s good looking, and I can play the blues.
I never suffered and I don’t intend to suffer.

— Miles Davis

Told Sondre and Bjørn about the project. Sondre was excited about it, and Bjørn suggested it should be a browser extension instead for gmail, that scores each gmail instead. I think that's genius, since we can build a powerful and useful version very quickly.

I think I should continue my streak of shipping and ship it with Sondre.

The only thing I am a little upset about is the fact that we aren't running this on our own server, since if we were, we could store the data of the scoring, and use it as high quality training data we can sell to big companies. I believe that would be very valuable and we could make a ton of money since most AI companies are desperate for high quality data, and pay outrageous prices for it.

I really want to have an own server for it, maybe by making it available ONLY for people that are fine with their email summaries being used as training data.

Update 2 weeks before intensive workweek

Now we are finally starting to develop the app, hopefully a shippable version this time! 8th time's the charm!

The streambridge feels robust now, so I'm praying we can get an IOS (and maybe android) release out.

When we release the IOS version, we'll set up a smooth development pipeline so we can ship features and patches after every sprint. After that we can start talking to the people that have previously showed interest in Director. Then we need to work with their feedback and do tons of user tests for maybe 3 or 4 iterations, and finally deploy some sort of marketing for this product.

But I honestly think it's only a question of time this product will blow up. Especially with the final version we have imagined.

I think we have a really good strategy where we focus on the foundation first, making sure the quality, stability and robustness of both the app and the streambridge are close to perfect. THEN we can add features. Without a killer base product, additional features have very little value.

I will focus on creating a custom WHIP client library for javascript. But I am unsure of what the specifications for this library is. Customizable and general? Or specifically built for our streambridge? I need to have a talk with Bjørn so I understand what to build.

Okay there's no excuse as to why I haven't started on this yet. My plan is to do a bunch of expiris, then make a very makeshift prototype, then rebuild with real textures and polished movement.

Expiri

• Quake movement
• Import blender scene into unity

Finished all 3 books!

Summer 2025 Roadmap

I'm thinking of separating this into clear phases, each with a specific purpose and a test that shows we’re ready to move forward to the next phase.

1. Pipeline

The basic multi-cam product. Just the core pipeline with multiple phones in and one RTMP out. We don’t need working buttons in the app yet. If it takes command line hacks to switch cameras, that’s fine.

Test Run: We do a ~2 hour YouTube stream where we switch cameras every minute or so. If it runs stable the whole time, looks good (720p+, 30fps), and doesn’t crash or break, we’re done with this phase. This is the core product, so if this step isn't done, none of the other phases have any value. We really need to show restraint not to move to the next phase before we have this. We can't keep making the same mistakes over and over. I need to be unbudging about this requirement to the others on the team.

2. Director

Here we add actual controls to the app — buttons, previews, swipe between camera and director view. This is the basic UI needed to run a stream properly from inside the app.

Test Run: We stream for 2 hours using just the Director app. We switch cameras, swipe between views, and everything works through the interface — no command line or backend interaction.

3. Packaging

This phase is packaging this into a product with:

• Stripe payments
• Maybe some basic auth or access tokens
• Clear limits on the server unless you're paying

Then what we do with releasing it on appstore, or only early adopters, funding, whatever, doesn't really matter to me. Because we will have a way better picture of what to do when we have finished all 3 steps.

Added a few more final changes:

• Changed icons of firefox, file explorer, spotify
• Increased saturation of background image
• Added custom neofetch ASCII

I really want something personalized for the cover. Like engraving or burning a logo or some text. But it seems quite hard to make it look good with no tools.

I'm gonna put this project on hold for a while. Its way too big and complex for a first game

New Direction

I’ve changed the direction of the game a bit. I don’t want a combo system anymore. It just didn’t feel like it fits the vibe of the game.

Instead, I want the game to focus fully on movement and exploration. You’re in a massive, procedurally generated beach map. There are rare surreal structures scattered around. There’s no tutorial or UI.

The movement should feel like Quake or Apex, with bunny hopping, surfing, maybe tap-strafing. No speed limit. If you’re good, you can go insanely fast. Water slows you down unless you’re going fast enough to skim across it.

There are no enemies or timers. I still don’t know what kind of friction the game should have, but I want it to be something that makes the movement more interesting, not frustrating.

I’m open to having a skill tree or unlocks. Like in Hollow Knight, I'm thinking you unlock more complex movement techs over time, and you grow into it.

Main goal now is to make a demo where this core idea and movement feels good.

More inspiration

Made the first book!

Okay here are some inspirations for the game: I love this tiktok audio, and I think if I learn how to replicate some of these sounds, I can use it as part of the combo sounds. Since this audio is so satisfying and fresh, I think it would make every combo very satisfying if done right.

Image inspirations

"one project will hit, and when it does, the rest of your output will finally get seen too"

Finally added the custom background. I have all my keybinds for ChatGPT, Notion, Cursor, etc. I might add more window styling at some point, but for now I feel done with the project.

What I Got Out of This Project

• Documenting every step. Writing down each step really helped me stay on track and finish the project.
• Prototyping in a VM first. I initially installed Fedora, then I realized it wasn’t customizable enough. I then switched to Mint. Doing a full test in a VM upfront would’ve saved time and effort.
• Finally got back my control over my pc. Moving away from Windows and Google felt really good. No more product push from Microsoft, no more ads forced through browser updates. I now use Firefox and Linux — everything is customizable, and I own my setup. Only downside is I will never be touched by a woman again, but it's a small price to pay for my freedom.
• Created something truly mine. The custom 3D-rendered background made the desktop feel personal and meaningful. This, and custom keybinds, makes it feel like my own workspace.
• New notifications. Notifications have over the years become more and more negative, but now I realize they are quite useful if they only give useful information. What has happened is that every app fighting for your attention has made me hate notifications, but if done right they can be positive. I now plan to configure only the notifications I care about: Slack, calendar, and main mails.

Picked up a craft knife and some glue, I will just use some old plastic cutting board instead of buying a craft board.

I just need paper now and I can start.

Two years in

What started as a freezing, last-minute hack to livestream a ski competition in Voss has turned into a full-fledged mobile livestreaming app. We’ve gone from laptop prototypes and feature bloat to a clean, phone-first experience that actually gets used in the wild.

We’ve streamed political debates, joined an innovation program, redesigned the product multiple times, burned out, and kept going. Now we have real users after a ton of feedback and failed prototypes, and a clear direction: simple, mobile, multi-cam livestreams.

New Shiplog just dropped!

I'm very happy with the new style. It seems to get simpler the more I work on it. The background is less distracting, and I finally got rid of the flat white design. I would say the site is a lot more cohesive now.

Finally got a real scene working! I'm very proud of how well this turned out, and I feel like I have learned a decent amount of blender. I might go back and tweak the colors and add more objects, but for now I am very happy with how this turned out!

Honestly fuck blender I don't understand anything. I will still finish the background but it might turn out shit

I don't know what to do with the UI of shiplog. I want it to be unique but I don't want it to look distracting or gimmicky. I have tried different iterations that feel mine and doesn't have boring flat design.

Here's a test version:

Said fk it and installed linux mint instead, and I am very happy with it. Downloaded the XP theme, and it already looks 10x better. Now I just need to set up programs, keybinds, and then finally build my custom background and this project is done. Here's a screenshot of how it looks so far:

Created a cool spinning logo for Strimo

Also finished the leather notebook model today! The pages accidentally got mirrored, but that fits perfectly as the model represents my inspiration from Da Vinci

Finished ME controller block today 😎

For a while, I’ve been circling around 3D modeling—wanting to do it, hesitating, feeling like I was stepping into a space where thousands of artists already live, compete, and often struggle to make it. I had this quiet fear:

“Is there even a point in learning this? Isn’t the creative space already too full?”

But something clicked today; I’m not trying to become a 3D artist. I’m building my own stuff. 3D modeling isn’t a sphere I’m entering, it’s a tool I’m pulling into my sphere.

Just like I taught myself programming, drawing, UI design, strength training, this is just the next phase of becoming a person who creates entire things from scratch. I don’t need to be great at it. I just need to know enough so I can build the things I want to build.

Bought the materials from Temu. The leather was surprisingly high quality, I am very happy with it. The paper sucked though —wrong size and thin flimsy pages.

What I need next:

• Probably 4 A5 or A6 book blocks
• PVA glue (flexible bookbinding glue)
• Cutting mat, ruler and craft knife
• Clamps or binder clips

Will probably cost ~700 kr

I just found out that fedora doesn't allow full visual customization in the newer versions. And the gnome themes suck anyways, I can't seem to find one I like. All of them have the flattest, blandest design. I want very blue, vibrant aqua colors, that go well with my custom background.

The new plan is to just download another distro as a VM on my desktop, work on the theme for a couple of weeks until I like it, publish it to my github, then download the new distro with the theme on my laptop when I am ready.

After working on Zen Timer for a long time, I’ve decided to scrap this project. I think the reason I wasn’t proud of it is because I’m fundamentally against the concept of meditation apps.

A meditation app is almost ironic. Most of them suck, and I tried to make one that doesn't. But I found out that the very idea of having an app that tracks your mindfulness was the thing that I hated with all the meditation apps. It's like quantifying peace. It doesn’t sit right with me.

"An app that gamifies presentess"
– From this video at 38:50

So, I won’t be shipping Zen Timer. It's now among the scrapped projects.
Still, I’m really glad I made it. I learned a lot, used it for months, and it gave me a very important lesson. I think the lesson from this project is that I shouldn't finish something at all costs. I have to actually think it is a net positive for the world. And I just don't see it for this project.

Started working on a custom 3D rendered wallpaper. I’ve never found a Frutiger Aero-style background I really like, either there's too much going on, or too little. So I decided to make my own. Using Spline to model it since it’s simple and clean, and then I’ll render it in Blender to get proper lighting and reflections.

Once it's done, it’ll be the background on my custom Linux setup. I will probably add it to my art section on my website. Clean, personal, and something I want to look at every day.

Created a VM with fedora linux, tried customizing with keybinds, colors, themes. I think I will keep tinkering with this a while longer until it's how I want it, then I will just switch to linux. Probably after exams though, wiseflow doesn't work on linux.

VM Screenshot:

I hate windows. Every time I open it, I feel like it’s screaming at me. Background updates, popups, system tray chaos, apps I didn’t ask for, telemetry I didn’t approve.

I’m tired of:

• The overall flat design trend. I am so sick of it, I want colors and 3d textures
• Giant app grids where 90% of the apps I have never opened once
• Search fatigue.
• The whole theme is just overall so fucking cluttered and messy

So I’m starting this project to create the my own linux desktop that I love using.

What I want:

• A custom desktop I can tinker with and optimize over time
• Minimalistic, just the 5 apps I actually use
• Firefox instead of Chrome, Notion (just web for now) for school, VSCode or cursor for code
• Search for apps only when I need them, special keybinds for frequently used apps like notion or firefox

Inspiration:

Need to be on the lookout for AI video to text real-time interpretation of the environment.

Just downloaded unity, the new plan is to make the "full" demo with just basic shapes and textures, then fill it in with the actual graphics once I get the hang of blender.

I'm gonna add localstorage, so you can see new posts.

I still don't really like how it looks.

Finally posted the last marketing pushes (r/sideproject and TikTok) and now feel completely done with this project.

Main Takeaways

• Finish, even if it’s imperfect: I’ve always built projects, but this time I finished the last 15% instead of abandoning it at 85%.
• Don’t overbuild early: I set up login and payment too early. Next time I’ll focus only on proving the core idea first, and only build those when I see some real traction.
• I hate the "validate first" approach: I have looked around on how to validate ideas early. And I realized I hate the idea of creating landing pages or email signups before you have the core product. I don't really see building something that others don't care about as wasted. I will just build the core idea, and ship it, instead of validating user input before having anything.

Homestretch

I added a cool widget over total generations to my project description:

I have marketed it on hackernews to the point where I got called out for posting too much, for a total of 150 unique page views and 15 tts generations. Now I just need to make a video of a good tts with funny editing, and post it on r/sideproject, twitter and tiktok, then I am officially done with marketing the project.

Prototype

1. Pipe-Based Build System
   A grid-based system allowing the player to place and connect colorful pipe segments in various shapes (straight, curved, junction).

2. Three Core Megastructures
   Large static structures (e.g., towers, elevated platforms, or anchor nodes) that serve as connection points or goals for pipe systems.

3. Title Screen with 3D Render similar to this picture

4. Basic Kid Spawning & Pathfinding
   Alien kids spawn based on a configurable value (e.g., an integer), and navigate through connected pipes or along a defined pathing system.

5. Simple Money System
   A minimal economy that increases the player’s balance based on kid activity or playtime duration, simulating the “business” side.

Nah wtf I just realized balatro literally has tarot cards. I can't see myself doing a card idle game either way, and I am not really interested in this project anymore. I'm gonna scrap it.

I made the model more crazy, and added a bunch of random phrases it could say, like help, and added chances to repeat certain characters. Like:

This is my cabin! becomes Thiiiiis is my caaaaabinnnn!!!! AAAAHHHHHH

I fixed the problem I had with screenshots and comments, now all of my posts are just markdown articles. So if I only want to post screenshots, I can in markdown. I really like how this feels and looks now. I will probably change more at some point, but this works for now.

Screenshots

Shiplog

I want to keep myself accountable with my projects, and actually finish them. I think creating this shiplog is a good first step to doing so. If I can complete like 4 projects I am proud of by the end of the year, that would be really good for me.

I finished the first version of the page, but I kinda hate it. I don't know why I separated screenshots and comments. Also the style is just a mess, it's just a mix of a bunch of different styles I like without any cohesion.

Screenshots

I am still getting people that are coming to the website, even though the hacker news article is long gone. I think i might market this some more, especially now that people can generate with 100 free tokens without signing up. I might also polish it a bit, so I can feel I have put in 100% effort in the project before moving on.

From Liminal Builder to Full Game

I originally planned to make a small indoor playground builder with no mechanics. Something that had the feeling of eerie, empty softplay areas like this:

But the new plan is a tycoon-style game set in space where alien kids are dropped off to play.

I really like the day-night cycle of corporation inc (a flash game), where you can see a balance sheet at the end of the day, and recieve special items, extra money, etc.

Day cycle

Watch them explore during the day, fix things that are broken, announce birthdays, ticket sales, etc. Special events like school trips or other events that you have to adapt to. It has to be satisfying to see the money pouring in.

Night cycle

Build new structures, buy new things, make upgrades, etc.

I think focusing on the gameplay first is the right move, then I can polish with graphics once I learn blender and find out what style I want.

Okay I marketed it on hackernews, r/sideproject, and wrote like 3 youtube comments yesterday. I really hate posting about my projects, but I think I just need to continue doing it until it's not as uncomfortable. The result of the marketing was 21 page visits and of those 5 people tried generating AI-responses. I made a fix on the website so now you don't have to sign up to generate, you get 100 tokens to generate with immediately after joining the website.

Finished with basic version

Okay I got a basic version up and running in like 10 hours, I just learned how supabase worked, already know how sveltekit and vercel work, I love this stack, I think I can get projects up and running really fast.

Domain and marketing

I bough the jarnold.io domain for like 15 dollars, I have spent around 40 dollars on this project in total, I probably won't make my money back on it lol. I am kinda proud of it though, I think it's pretty clean and fun to use,

I'm just gonna market it on hackernews, some subreddits, and other platforms, then call it. I am actually thinking of making like a checklist for each project, like post x tiktoks about it, post x posts on other platforms, then I can call myself done with the project.

Ok, I am just going to buy 12 testers on Fiverr or something.

Inspiration

I watched a video where a youtuber was going to use an ai to read something, where the AI got corrupted in some way it's one of the funniest videos I have seen. I want to make a website that is a basic AI text-to-speech with a corrupted voice.

So the rough idea

One page where you input text and output the audio file (and you can download it or share it with friends). And one page that is a list of all the previous recordings uploaded to the gallery, that can be rated and listened to by others.

Getting the voice right is harder than I thought. I need to put this idea on hold until i figure out how to make the voice fucked up.

Just release it. Don’t worry about whether or not it’s impressive or if people will like it or even care. Just release it.

Tried promoting it on Reddit, got rejected from every subreddit I tried due to self-promotion. This is very discouraging.\n\nI almost feel embarrassed at how “easy” this app is to build. My main value for this app is that it is simple, limited, minimalistic. All the other apps are so feature-bloated. I just want a clean, simple timer that tracks my meditation. And I built that. But I feel that since the app isn’t hard to make, it would be embarrassing to release it. But then again, I like using it.

Apparently I need 12 beta testers to release it on Android. That sucks. I have been putting this off because of the beta testers thing for 2 weeks now. Also been very busy with Strimo. I made a Reddit account, and am gonna start posting on every relevant subreddit about the app and try to get beta testers.

Polished, built a very minimal app. Now I just need to release it on Android.

Rebuilt a full working version in Flutter. Now I just need to make Firebase security more strict, fix some UI bugs, create app showcase images in Figma and release it on the Play Store.

I have been using this prototype for 5 months and I still love using it. The singing bowl sound works very well as the start and end of my meditation session. I want to build this so it automatically tracks my meditation time. So the easiest thing to do would be to remake this in SvelteKit, so I can easily make the API and database. Then I just have to find out how to make this into a Capacitor app.

I’m kinda sick of all the shit meditation timers that are either completely feature-bloated or full of ads. I just want a simple timer that follows traditional Zen meditation style. I’m just gonna build a basic prototype and start using it myself.