u/columbcille

Certainly other subs talk about backpacks and bags, but most don’t consider unique needs that we have as work hobos.

My commute is western New Jersey to Westchester County, NY by separate legs of bus and train.

A few months ago, I grabbed the Topo Designs Global Briefcase and I freaking love it. It’s really roomy with just enough organization for tech (I do a 13” laptop and a 10” tablet with all cables, adapters, power bricks, etc.) and other stuff. You can wear it as a messenger or backpack.

Its front pockets are a little fiddly because of that configuration option, and you really have to make sure they’re zippered shut before going into backpack mode, or stuff may fall out.

Even with that concern, it’s the best bag I’ve had for a long commute. It doesn’t look like I’m going on a safari or camping. I could (and I guess I do) live out of this thing. I’ve got everything I need in there and still have room to spare for the stuff that might need to make a single trip back and/or forth.

All of that said, I’m really jealous of folks who I see on my mega-commute each morning who carry practically nothing. Fellow bus and train warriors, entering battle practically empty-handed … I’m not sure how they do it.

Another "... so I built my own" post from a vibe coder, but this project took on a bit of a life of its own and I'm pretty proud of it. I'm offering it here completely free/open source for anyone who wants to play or offer feedback. There's a "buy me a coffee" button on the repo, but I have no plans to charge, etc. You need to have some technical chops to install/run, but it's pretty simple.

So, here's Hermes Notes. Imagine if Capacities and Obsidian had a web app child, and Ollama was the midwife. Here are the key features:

• It's self-hosted on localhost or on your own server so that everything stays yours.
• It's just for you. You can invite other people to have their own workspace, but there's no teaming, sharing, collaborating to get in your way.
• Create "blocks" of different types, with the ability to make new types by specifying different text, relational, file upload, and other kinds of fields.
• Built-in block types include: note (with markdown live preview, linking, and image embedding), task (with recurrence), event, person, project, and more.
• Gather blocks into "collections" using a simple but powerful and multi-level query builder: everything from typical ordered/unordered lists, table views, and calendars to visual/interactive canvas and "matrix" views, allowing you to make everything from kanban boards to Eisenhower charts that can add/remove tags or change task status as you slide things around (so that moving a task to a "Done" kanban lane, for example, marks it done).
• In a canvas collection, links can actually matter and can create tracked relationships between blocks. Draw an arrow connecting a task to a project, and that task can become part of that project.
• Pull in calendar feeds to keep your schedule close and in context.
• Tag stuff.
• Use daily notes, and build them out with your own blocks/collections (e.g., daily note can have your task inbox, and/or a kanban board, etc.).
• Build out a weekly review process that walks you step-by-step through tasks to keep yourself organized.
• If Ollama is nearby, connect AI models to talk with an in-app agent that can do stuff for you (like "Make me a canvas of all tasks that are in the 'do' region of my Eisenhower matrix, and drop in a post-it suggesting how to approach those tasks given what's on my calendar for the day") and to embed user-specified fields for semantic similarity search.
• Connect Claude, Hermes AI (not affiliated), LMStudio, or any other MCP-capable AI client/agent to an MCP server, which offers about two dozen tools (and growing).
• Export stuff to Obsidian-compatible .md files.
• Add banners, colors, and other visual flair.
• Fiddle with collapsing/expanding stuff, sorting manually or by properties, filtering the heck out of stuff, arranging in chips/masonry walls/lists/etc.
• Lots more, with a lot more coming! I vibe-coded this with 30+ years as a "deep hobbyist" in GTD, bullet journaling, and more, so I need it to be flexible to keep up with my Frequent and Disruptive New Ideas About Organizing Myself (which, prior to this, had me changing apps/systems a little too often) without making assumption about how I should work like all of those apps/systems tend to do.

Repo is here:

https://github.com/jpmoo/hermesnotes/

Some screenshots:

https://preview.redd.it/ncw3751nt6gh1.jpg?width=3164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e2351c0391c3b8836fc345aac3b2ac12f95dc424

https://preview.redd.it/4daosa1pt6gh1.png?width=3164&format=png&auto=webp&s=007d8180c7a5ff0424424160ede720855686ddef

I currently have a beefy mini-PC doing good work through an oculink connection to an RTX 3060 12gb GPU, running g Ubuntu and Ollama. This whole thing cost me about $1500, and I’m ready to upgrade. It’s served me well in developing some training/coaching apps utilizing local AI, but I need to run bigger models to get better results. I’m looking at unified architecture now.

I can’t seem to find anything easily available now with unified architecture at 128gb for under $3k. Maybe Mac Studio M5 Max fills this gap at some point.

Any suggestions for something now, though?

I've seen conflicting information about static IP for residential customers. Here are the two things it feels like are consensus points from everything I've been reading:

• You can get a static IP as a residential customer if you can find the right person to talk to. The normal customer service contacts tell you that it's limited to a business plan. Asking for an "account specialist" could help.
• You have to be use their router, though. You can't have a static IP and connect directly into your own router.

Can anyone confirm if either/both of these are true?

Hi, all. I've moved my notes in Cursor (which is just VS Code with AI bolted on). It works better than Obsidian for my workflow, particularly with MCP/AI integrated so much deeper than I can get elsewhere. I do a lot of light and vibe-coding, but my primary work and interests aren't tech. That said, I've always been intrigued with the IDE as PKMS hub, and this is the best crack at it I've had (having used eMacs, Atom, and others over the years).

I started working on some plugins for my own needs. Infinite canvas, for one. There are a few, but not for everything Obsidian does (and the other things I wanted to do).

Then, after a couple of bourbons, I had AN IDEA. I created a plugin that gives an infinite canvas, but renders it like a topographical/contour map. Just did it for fun to see what it would be like. (And, the bourbon.) You can rotate in 3D, raise/lower elevation of notes, moves notes around (which shifts the lines), have linked notes connected by roads that prefer lower elevations and avoid (if possible) steep slopes ... I did it as a lark, just for fun. A child of 80's tech, I love this kind of look.

But ... can you imagine any features that would make something like this (and its metaphor) truly useful? Or, just a novelty? Maybe some smart placement/elevation based on different qualities or semantic relationships to other notes? Putting semantically similar notes into regions? Mapping routes to/from semantically close notes to develop new lines of thought?

For example, drop a note and it will them automatically pull in linked and semantically similar notes, arranged with one another in their elevations/distances/etc. based on different criteria ... now you have a Region of Thought. But, what can you do with it?

A lot of plugin-empowered infinite canvas platforms (like Obsidian) can do this kind of thing in 2D without looking like a screenshot from a 1980's arcade game. But, does this metaphor of a landscape with elevation and potentially different kinds of terrain (water versus forest versus mountain versus ...) based on semantic similarity or other qualities unlock anything that could be original and helpful? Or, am I just heading toward Carcassonne but with notes instead of cards?

Dunno. Help!

​Screenshot:
https://imgur.com/a/KXWu0Z1

After a year (give or take a week), I noticed Gen 2 battery life was degrading significantly. Just like everyone else.

I reached out to RingConn and they are replacing free of charge with another Gen 2. Just like everyone else.

(Kudos to RingConn for this!)

But … where does that put us all a year from now? I imagine in the same place. Should we be satisfied with 2 years (even though we needed two rings to get it), and ready to pay for an upgrade to a long-in-the-tooth Gen 3 (which should be showing us by then if it has the same issue) with Gen 4 probably not far around the corner? Or, should we still be expecting consideration from RingConn for the defect in Gen 2?

I commute from NW New Jersey to Westchester County, NY. I currently drive but am researching mass transit options (every few days or so) to recover some time from being behind the wheel. There’s a Metro North stop near my office, but not really close enough to walk. Biking, though …

I’m looking at folding bikes like Brompton. They’re a bit pricey but seem best and lightest in class. They look a little silly in photos. Not sure I’ve ever actually seen one in the wild.

I’d be doing bus to Port Authority, short walk or subway to Grand Central, then train to the office. I’d bike that last leg from the train, and would be lugging the bike folded through the rest of the commute.

Anyone have any experience with these? Any good?

Here's another Claude-coded plugin to fill in a gap that I needed for sharing notes to various apps more cleanly ... export your current multipage note as a single stitched (top-to-bottom) PNG. It lands in your EXPORT folder.

https://github.com/jpmoo/scrollexport

I vibe-coded this in Swift to be a clipboard manager, file dropbox, and calendar. Then I added a snarky AI commentator with productivity/focus scoring.

1.0 Beta 1 release is here:
https://github.com/jpmoo/notchnik

Just beginning with this! Eager for thoughts/suggestions.

Note: AI is optional, and is completely local. It depends on Ollama installed localhost or on a reachable server. For models, I'm getting good results using mistral-nemo:12b (on an Ubuntu server with an eGPU on my home network), but you might need a smaller model if you have lower memory/specs. App uses accessibility settings to see and track your activity, and will also have access to whatever's on calendar feeds you enter in the calendar pane. It also considers actual browser tabs if you give it access, but not incognito/private tabs. Different AI personality profiles are available, including generic (not snarky), Bob Dylan space cadet, Heath Ledger Joker, a jaded jackass who is just there to roast you (that's what you have in the screenshot below), and ridiculously corporate. ("Let's put a pin in this, and circle back later to revisit its alignment to our 'why!'")

Lots of plans, including a place to define a custom personality, media controls, maybe a plugin architecture for add-on modules, and more.

Completely free/open source! Enjoy!

Clipboard manager.

AI commentator giving its, um, thoughts on your morning work.

A glimpse of the productivity and focus reporting/tracking/scoring stuff.