Public tidbits and discoveries that aren't worth a full blog post but that I still wanted to write about. Some posts here may be written with AI assistance. If you want the handwritten versions, head to the Blog. No guarantees of accuracy, utility, sanity, or anything else provided. Also cross-posted to nik.tw.
All Notes
SQL IDEs that support DuckDB
I’ve been hacking on a project with DuckDB, and was shocked to discover that DBGate (my usual goto app for working with SQL dbs) doesn’t yet have support for it (though there’s a PR out for it, so hopefully there will be soon)
How to setup MacWhisper so you can talk to your computer for free
MacOS has had dictation features for a long time now, but the built-in dictation functionality is absolutely terrible. Luckily these days it’s pretty easy to set up a fast and easy decent dictation flow, and it doesn’t even cost anything (if you’re on a mac).
Get the latest Cursor right now (even if the update is still rolling)
tl;dr
brew install --cask cursor
Slightly longer version
brew install --cask cursor
Cursor does rolling software updates, which means that it can take anywhere from 1 hour to many days for your version of Cursor to update itself to the latest version. Not a problem normally, but if you got sucked into the latest hype wave and want to try out a new feature but it hasn’t rolled out to yet what do you do?
Getting Audiobookshelf on Your iPhone (Even When TestFlight is Full)
Audiobookshelf is an open-source audiobook server that’s a pretty great alternative to apps like Audible. Unfortunately, its iOS app isn’t officially available on the App Store yet (it’s usually distributed through TestFlight). Worse, their TestFlight is often full, making it hard for new users to install.
Editing images with Google Flash 2.0
Google’s Gemini Flash 2.0 made some waves when it came out with it’s ability to edit images, and it’s pretty cool. As of Mar 16, 2025 they’ve gotten scooped by OpenAI’s multimodal GPT4 capabilities, but those are only available inside the ChatGPT app for now while Google’s offerings are available over their API (for free no less!)
Fancy screen recording on the cheap
I wanted an easy way to record screencasts and optionally have my webcam showing over the recording in a bubble and be able to zoom in and out. Screen Studio basically lets you do all of that and makes it really convenient and easy, but it’s also expensive and screen recording is something that I do just often enough to wish I had a better solution but not often enough that I’m willing to pay $100 for the privilege.