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.
Textual 取代 ApexCharts
最初的报告系统是一组静态仪表盘，用 GitHub Pages、JavaScript 和 ApexCharts 构建。它通过日志解析器和 CSV 导出文件，从我的挖矿环境获取数据，再渲染为清晰、可交互的图表。原型开发快，基本不用维护，视觉效果也不错。但它始终游离于核心系统之外，更像外挂的边车，而不是驾驶舱。
为什么选择离开
那套架构不是已经坏了，而是设计上就比较脆弱。它依赖松散耦合的脚本、触发式或定时更新，以及一个会暴露过多挖矿基础设施信息的部署模式。从内网发布公开的 HTML、JS 和 CSV，背后的假设是表现层就应该放在运维层之外。对于 Monero 来说，这种透明度未免过头了。我们的社区非常重视隐私。
这对于普通爱好者的环境倒也没问题。但对于 db4e 这样的系统，部署、日志和指标相互关联，需要严格限定访问范围，而不是对外广播。
转向 Textual
我改用 Textual，不是因为浏览器方案彻底失败了，而是因为它让我能把所有功能重新收拢到统一界面中。我不想再管理前端与后端之间的分界。我想要一个实时系统界面，可以直接在节点上运行，访问日志、实时状态和部署控制。
Textual 做到了。它原生运行在终端中，却有现代化的表现力。我能把状态视图、日志面板甚至历史图表放在一起，旁边就是控制整个系统的开关和按钮。与浏览器仪表盘不同，它不会泄露我不想公开的东西。
再见，ApexCharts
ApexCharts 依然出色，但我已经不需要它了。它曾经是一个补丁，而如今我有了更优雅的终端内解决方案。如果以后还想用浏览器查看，我会把它放在有身份验证的 API 后面。现在，遥测数据就待在它该待的地方：运维控制台里。
再见，GitHub Pages
Textual 的 UI 已经具备当初让我采用 GitHub Pages 的报告能力。再见了，GitHub Pages。
一个系统，一套思路
Textual 让我做到了 Urwid 做不到的事：将部署、监控与报告整合进一个一致的应用中，真正实现统一视图。正是这种转变，让 db4e 终于开始像一个完整的平台。
2026
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