02 · Notes from the bench

the blog

What got built, what broke, and what I learned doing it. Occasionally useful, occasionally just thinking out loud.

Jailbreaking your NordicTrack treadmill
Latest·Home Assistant·07 SEPT 2026·10 min
Jailbreaking your NordicTrack treadmill

There is nothing more frustrating than buying hardware and having that limited in its functionality behind a subscription. I got tired of iFit on my NordicTrack and so using Claude Code to help me, we jailbroke and then wrote our own control software.

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202614 posts
07 Sept
2026
Jailbreaking your NordicTrack treadmill
There is nothing more frustrating than buying hardware and having that limited in its functionality behind a subscription. I got tired of iFit on my NordicTrack and so using Claude Code to help me, we jailbroke and then wrote our own control software.
Home Assistant·10 min
06 Sept
2026
Your first AI agent: Cowork, OpenClaw or Hermes?
A friend messaged me this morning asking how to build their first agent, and whether to start with Claude Cowork, OpenClaw or Hermes. Here's my thinking on this topic.
AI Tools·6 min
18 Jul
2026
How to make a sphere or dome in Minecraft
A sphere is just a stack of circles that grow to the middle and shrink again. This free generator shows you the exact circle to build at every layer. Slide through them, read the pattern, and stack your way to a clean sphere or dome.
Minecraft·3 min
09 Jul
2026
How to make a circle in Minecraft
Minecraft is a world of cubes, so a smooth circle is impossible, but a convincing one is easy once you know the trick. Use the live generator below to pick a radius and read the exact block pattern, then follow the steps to build circles, cylinders and spheres block by block.
Minecraft·4 min
26 Jun
2026
How to reduce your Claude Code token usage (and your bill)
Claude Code bills by tokens, and most of the waste comes from one place: a bloated context window. Here are eight practical habits that cut token usage and cost without slowing you down, and how to watch the numbers as you work.
AI Tools·3 min
05 Jun
2026
How to track your Claude Code usage in real time
Claude Code's subscription plans meter usage in rolling windows, and nothing derails a deep session like hitting a limit you didn't see coming. Here's every way to keep your usage visible, from the built-in command to a glance at your menu bar, and when each one is the right tool.
AI Tools·3 min
18 May
2026
The 5 best Home Assistant air quality cards
Air quality data lands in Home Assistant as a pile of raw numbers. These five HACS cards turn it into something you'll actually read, each with a different idea of what 'at a glance' means.
Home Assistant·4 min
30 Apr
2026
How to add air quality to your Home Assistant dashboard
Whether you own an air quality monitor or not, you can have live PM2.5 and CO₂ on a Home Assistant dashboard in about fifteen minutes. Here's the whole path: getting the data in, picking a card, reading the numbers, and automating on them.
Home Assistant·4 min
14 Apr
2026
The best browsers for Mac in 2026
Every browser claims to be the best; almost none say who they are not for. This is an honest look at the macOS browsers worth your time in 2026: what each is genuinely good at, and the trade-off you make by choosing it.
macOS Browsers·3 min
27 Mar
2026
How to stop browser tabs eating your Mac's memory
Open Activity Monitor on almost any Mac and the browser is at the top, holding gigabytes hostage for tabs you haven't looked at in days. Here's why that happens, what the built-in memory savers actually do, and the structural fix, hibernation, that frees the memory without losing your place.
macOS Browsers·5 min
10 Mar
2026
How to choose a truly private browser for your Mac
Every browser calls itself private now, and the word has been stretched to mean anything from 'blocks some trackers' to 'has a dark window mode.' Here are four questions that separate marketing from architecture, and an honest look at how the browsers you'd actually consider on a Mac answer them.
macOS Browsers·4 min
24 Feb
2026
Word count, character count and reading time: a writer's cheat sheet
Word count, character count and reading time each answer a different question, and picking the wrong one costs you a truncated headline or a rejected essay. Here is when each matters, the limits worth memorising, and how reading time is really worked out.
Web Tools·2 min
03 Feb
2026
Colour codes explained: hex, RGB, and building a palette that works
A colour is just three numbers, but the formats (hex, RGB, HSL) send people in circles. Here is what each one means, how to lift the exact colour from any image or screen, and how to turn one colour into a palette that holds together.
Web Tools·2 min
15 Jan
2026
How to calculate percentages (the plain-English way)
Percentages trip people up because the word hides three or four different questions. Here is each one, with a formula you can remember and a worked example, plus a free calculator when you would rather just type the numbers.
Web Tools·2 min