Another Aquaponics Rose
My little basement aquaponics setup has given me another miniature rose!!!
一天学 Delphi
我有一位潜在客户，经营着几家科技公司，其中至少一家使用 Delphi 编程语言与客户系统集成。他对我说的一句话是：“去学 Delphi！”
Delphi 主要用于 Windows 平台，并配有 Embarcadero 提供的集成开发环境（IDE）。这个 IDE 是高度集成、以组件为核心的快速应用开发（RAD）环境，既有用于拖放组件的可视化设计界面，也有为组件添加行为的代码编辑区。
开发 Delphi 应用时，你通常不用 VS Code、Emacs 或 Vim，而是使用 Embarcadero 的 IDE：RAD Studio。
从 Linux 转向 Windows 上的 Delphi
我是 Linux 人，这才是我的主要专长，但我也能适应其他环境。我从微软下载 Windows 10 ISO，在 VirtualBox 虚拟机中安装系统，注册 Embarcadero 账号，再安装 RAD Studio Community Edition。
接着，我创建了一个 GitHub 仓库，配置 CNAME 记录，以便直接从仓库发布一个完善的项目网站。
环境准备就绪后，我启动 IDE，简单探索一番，就开始动手了。
最精简的开发路线图
我一直相信实践是最好的学习方式，因此计划用 Delphi 开发一个小应用。我选择了一个简单的联系人管理程序，用来保存姓名和电话号码。
因为完全是在陌生领域摸索，我花时间规划了一个最小化的开发路线：
经验教训
很高兴地说，我只把项目折腾成“一团麻花”一次，最后不得不用 Notepad++ 把它救回来。不过也因此学到了东西：
- 重命名组件时使用 IDE，免得把项目拧成麻花。
- 给 UI 组件起有意义的名字，让代码具有自说明性。
- 规划很重要，分阶段推进的方法确实管用。
结论
Embarcadero 的 RAD Studio 让我惊喜：用它构建一个能运行的应用，速度比预期快得多。我原以为过程会很艰苦，结果不仅很投入，甚至相当享受。
如果以后需要在 Windows 上开发 GUI 应用，Delphi 会是一个很有竞争力的选择。
更重要的是，这次经历再次证明了我在工作中依赖的一项能力：进入不熟悉的环境，迅速建立工作能力，并在短时间内从摸索推进到可运行的系统。在这个过程中，RAD Studio 不只是需要学习的新技术，更是帮助我完成任务的工具。
2026
Git Automation
Some of you may have read my Git Battles post, where I talked about how I developed and a documented a Git workflow.
My blog in Simplified Chinese
I recently built MyCount to track website visitors to my projects. I found that that over 40% of my visitors were from China, and that 35% of those used a Ch...
MyCount: Website Analytics & Marketing
I have a future project in mind which will require a Dynamic DNS service. I created BMDynIP for that purpose. After building the service, I wanted a simple a...
DiskHA - Disk Replication, Health Checks, and Email Alerting
I run an NFS server on my network. I use two large drives and a cron job to rsync the data to provide basic data protection. This solution will not save you ...
Animating Ax3l Playing Snake
I’ve been tinkering with various incarnations of Patrick Loeber’s Train an AI to Play Snake tutorial for a while now. It’s my relaxing goto project that’s fu...
Dynamic DNS Service
This project started as a cron job and a flatfile and -honestly- that would work perfectly well for a small home setup. Say, two or three machines. I’m curre...
Local GeoIP Database
The Bear & Moose GeoIP Project provides an easy-to-use GeoIP service for your applications and for interactive lookups.
An LLM to organize my Movies
Our first TV was a small black-and-white thing where, on rare occasions, we’d watch Animal Kingdom. Then Beta and VHS came along, and you could watch them at...
From Prototype to Product (4/4)
Fr3d worked: It could talk to the Snake Lab, propose changes to the RNN configuration, run experiments, look at the results, and try again. It proved the ide...
Prompt Engineering 101 (3/4)
The Snake Lab had become a proper server, with a ZeroMQ API, configuration validation, a database, and a way to run experiments independently of the client. ...
The Evolution of Snake Lab (2/4)
In my last post, I setup a locally hosted LLM running on an old HP Z440 and wrote a crude little conversation loop. I generated random numbers, fed them to t...
Local LLM Writes Haikus (1/4)
This is part one of a four part blog series. In this post, I download, install and setup some software to prompt a local LLM to write haikus…
From Seed to Signal: AI FX
In the first post, AI FX was still mostly a seed: a repo, a PyPI package, and an idea about using automated FOREX tooling as a learning lab. Since then, the ...
Simulating the Power Grid
A potential client pointed me to Empowering the Energy Transition Through Fast and Flexible Network Simulation. The article describes an Open Source project,...
Delphi in a Day
I have a prospective client who runs a small group of technology businesses, at least one of which integrates with clients using the Delphi programming lan...
A Small Experiment: AI FX
I’ve spent some time around trading systemsL At Merrill Lynch, I supported the Order Audit Trail System (OATS), a compliance system required by NASDAQ. Its p...
A Rosebud from the Guppies
A Rosebud, a Few Guppies, and a Quiet Little Ecosystem
2025
My Art on Etsy
I setup an Etsy Storefront to sell high quality, museum grade prints of some of my artwork.
Python systemctl Wrapper
I’ve been working on Db4E, my Monero deployment, operations and analytics platform. It uses Linux systemd to spin up manage Monero, P2Pool and XMRig instance...
AI Snake Lab
AI Snake Lab is an interactive reinforcement learning sandbox for experimenting with AI agents in a classic Snake Game environment — featuring a live Textual...
The Power of Pictures
You know that saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”? In programming, I’d argue it can be worth a thousand lines of code…
Caring About Constants
This post is about using constants in your code. Why it matters, what the benefits are and how you can do it well. I’m sad to say, I learned this the hard wa...
Where’d They Go? Welcoming 17 Racoon Tiger Shrimp to the Tank
This week, I introduced 15 raccoon tiger shrimp—plus a surprise 2 bonus—to my aquarium. After a proper acclimatization, I released them into the tank… and ju...
Why I Built Db4E
When I first started experimenting with Monero mining and self-hosted infrastructure, I did what everyone else does: I downloaded the Monero software, the P2...
Releasing with Git
Let me be honest: Git has punched me in the face more times than I can count. Every time I think I’ve got a smooth release flow down, Git yells, “Not so fast...
Documentation Matters
I was burned by opaque documentation: I’ve been building a modern terminal UI in Python using the excellent Textual framework. It’s sharp, fast, and honestly...
Textual Replaces ApexCharts
The original reporting system was a set of static dashboards built using GitHub Pages, JavaScript, and ApexCharts. It pulled data from my mining setup — via ...
Pivot to Textual
I’ve been deep in the trenches with my Db4E project — pulling together Monero mining infrastructure, MongoDB integration, and a bunch of orchestration magic....
Released Db4E SystemD
I recently published a small Python module to PyPI and GitHub: db4e-systemd, a lightweight wrapper around systemctl that lets you control services (start, st...
NIKU Farms
I received my order from NIKU Farms, YAY! It’s a meat delivery that my sister, Corinna Ghaznavi, gifted me this Christmas. Every two months I receive this am...
The Main Website
As part of my goal to be more visible in the world, I setup this domain i.e. https://osoyalce.com. I use it to publish information about the projects I’m wor...
Reviving the Blog
It’s been a while since I started and then abandoned this blog. My last post was in June of 2024!!
Changing the Blog Site’s Layout
I decided that I didn’t like the way that the main blog page looks. I am using GitHub to host the website and am using a fork of the jekyll/minima theme. My ...
2024
Aquaponics Update #1
It’s in the construction phase. I need to complete the water circulation process. I bought a fiber glass kit for this (and also to fix my kitchen sink!).
What I’m working on
The XMR Mining Farm complete with this eye-popping chart The Bear and Moose Knowledge Base My resume MyZODB - A Place to Store Everything