The notebook

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Reviews of tools I've run for real, a monthly table of model prices, and notes from the homelab. Each one opens with its verdict.

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Sample entries: titles and verdicts are placeholders showing the layout. Only the first review has a full sample page.

  1. market

    AI token market, November 2026

    SummaryFrontier prices held still; the money moved to the small-model tier.

    Input, output and cached-input prices per million tokens for the main hosted models, compared with October, with notes on batch discounts and context-length surcharges.

  2. reviewshomelab

    Serving a local model to a coding agent: Ollama, vLLM and llama.cpp compared

    Use itvLLM if you have the VRAM to spare; Ollama if you'd rather not think about it.

    Three ways to put an open-weights model behind an OpenAI-compatible endpoint on one 24 GB GPU, judged on what a coding agent actually needs: tool calls that parse, and latency you don't notice.

  3. homelab

    Moving the homelab from Docker Compose to k3s, and back again

    SkipFor eleven containers on one box, k3s cost more evenings than it saved.

    What I wanted from Kubernetes at home, what I got, and the short list of things I kept when I went back to Compose files and systemd timers.

  4. market

    AI token market, October 2026

    SummaryCached input is now where the real discounts are; read the caching rules before comparing list prices.

    The monthly price table, plus a worked example of what a typical agent session costs once prompt caching is counted properly.

  5. reviews

    Open WebUI as a shared front-end for self-hosted models

    Worth a lookGood for a small team; plan your own SSO and backups before anyone relies on it.

    Two weeks as the chat front-end for a handful of users: what the admin side handles well, and where I had to add my own reverse proxy and auth.

  6. reviews

    Aider after three months on a real codebase

    Use itThe git-first workflow is the point: every change is a commit you can read and revert.

    Notes from daily use on a mid-sized TypeScript and Go monorepo: where it saved time, where it confidently made a mess, and the conventions file that made the difference.

  7. market

    AI token market, September 2026

    SummaryA quiet month for list prices; the changes were in rate limits and batch terms.

    The usual table, with a new column for batch pricing and a note on how I collect the numbers.

  8. homelab

    Backups I actually test: restic, a cheap VPS and a monthly restore drill

    Use itBoring, cheap and verified. The restore drill matters more than the tool.

    The scripts, the schedule and the checklist I run on the first Sunday of each month, including the one time the restore failed and why.

  9. reviews

    Giving an agent a shell: three sandboxing approaches tried

    Worth a lookRootless containers plus a network allow-list is enough for most work; none of them is set-and-forget.

    Plain Docker, gVisor and a throwaway VM, compared on setup time, what escaped, and how much they slowed the agent down.