Tim Jones

There is a particular kind of software project I used to dismiss before it began: anything too specific, too personal, or too tied to a strange collection of hardware and an awkward workflow that nobody else shared. Even when the problem annoyed me every week, I could not justify spending days building the solution, so the sensible choice was to work around it. That calculation has changed because modern AI coding tools let me build software for an audience of one. I can create a widget for a device I own, a dashboard for a workflow only I have, or an entire scripting system around a collection of hardware that no commercial developer would target. ...

“Vibe coding” has become the tech industry’s latest favourite buzzword. Depending on who you ask, it’s either an undisciplined hack where engineers blindly mash tab until something compiles, or a magical utopian future where software writes itself. In practice, neither extreme captures the reality. Real vibe coding isn’t about surrendering your brain to the LLM; it’s about shifting your role from a typist to an architectural director. And frankly? It is utterly addictive. ...

Getting certified is usually a beautifully boring process: you study, you book your slot, and you pass (or at least pretend the failure never happened). My journey to passing the Anthropic Claude Certified Architect - Foundations (CCAR-F) exam yesterday, however, was anything but standard. Buckle up. This is the story of how a platform migration, a sneaky total programme overhaul, and an embarrassingly stupid AM/PM booking mistake turned a simple exam into a bureaucratic adventure. ...

A few weeks ago, I picked up a Mac mini for a very specific reason: I wanted a box I could leave running, close enough to “infrastructure” to be dependable, but still personal enough to feel like mine. That machine ended up becoming the home for OpenClaw, and OpenClaw has ended up being one of the more interesting shifts in how I think about local AI agents. Not because it’s perfect. It absolutely isn’t. ...

Last night, I was sprawled on the sofa watching some low-quality UFO’s-are-real show on Prime when an idea hit me: what if I built a simple app to experiment with paywalls and tiered subscriptions? Not because I had a grand business plan, but because I was curious how long it would take to spin up something functional from absolute zero. Three hours later, Paint Vault was live on Replit—a minimalist hobbyist tool with Stripe-powered subscriptions and Clerk authentication. ...