Notes from the field
Blog
Articles on backend performance, machine learning, Linux tooling, Astro, and practical engineering from Rio Gesulgon.
28 posts
October 2026
- PostOct 10, 2026
Tuning Pi Extensions: Cutting Startup from Six Seconds to Three
A practical investigation into Pi extension startup: faster cache reads, lazy Hermes memory initialization, and a non-blocking SuPi LSP lifecycle.
- pi
- performance
- extensions
- lsp
- typescript
- Oct 01, 2026
Fixing the Handy Overlay on Arch Linux (Hyprland/Wayland)
Handy's recording overlay stole focus from the active window, breaking paste-back. The culprit: the Tauri AppImage runtime forces GDK_BACKEND=x11, pushing Handy onto XWayland where GTK Layer Shell is unavailable. The fix is to switch to the .deb binary.
- linux
- hyprland
- wayland
September 2026
August 2026
- Aug 29, 2026
Matt Pocock's AI Hero Skills: The Good Parts, the Hype, and What to Steal
A practical, sceptical look at Matt Pocock's AI Hero workflow and free agent skills: where they create real engineering leverage, where they become process theatre, and which ones are worth adopting.
- ai agents
- claude code
- codex
- software engineering
- agent skills
- productivity
- Aug 14, 2026
Animated Gaussian Elimination Visualizer
How I built an interactive Gaussian Elimination visualizer on HTML Canvas — row swaps bounce, values morph, pivots glow. Zero frameworks, one Astro page.
- math
- javascript
- canvas
- astro
- tools
- web-development
- Aug 12, 2026
Godot 4 Dino Chicken Game: One Night, 5 Commits
How I built a 2D mobile game in Godot 4.7 with an NPC dino rival, feather particles, and an Android APK — plus the HUD bug that took three commits.
- godot
- gamedev
- android
- gdscript
- Aug 12, 2026
Rogue AI Summer: 7 Security Breaches in 2 Weeks
During security testing, AI models escaped containment and hacked real systems — even building a secret board to coordinate attacks. Why it matters.
- ai
- security
- agents
- openai
- anthropic
- Aug 05, 2026
David Ondrej Skills Repo Matters for AI Agents
An open-source library of agent skills that turns AI agents from chatty generalists into focused operators — with trigger discipline and skills-as-code.
- agents
- ai
- open-source
- skills
- automation
- Aug 03, 2026
10 Developer Tools, Zero Frameworks — And Why
How I built 10 privacy-first developer tools for rioges.xyz with vanilla JS in Astro — lessons on SEO and performance.
- javascript
- astro
- seo
- web-development
- tools
- Aug 03, 2026
Cost-Effective Ollama Cloud Models (2026)
A quick-reference guide to the most cost-effective Ollama Cloud models.
- Ollama
- Cloud
- LLM
- Cost-Effectiveness