ngmarley.com

You Need to be Freedommaxxing

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t believe Anthropic is actually doing age verification for new accounts … yet, … I can? This company seems to have the most brain-dead leadership I’ve seen, maybe ever.

Something is wrong in the halls of Anthropic. There’s a mind virus, something warping the thoughts of the people within.

Age verification isn’t required by any government mandate (yet), but here we are. And this is after Anthropic completely nerfed their models,

Reduce Friction

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Everything I try and do, I try to reduce friction.

By the way, I internalize so many of my beliefs and philosophies such as this, that I start to assume other people share them. Or if not, that they’re low IQ and don’t have the intellectual or mental capacity for e.g. consideration of how their actions affect others. Anyway…

I try and design or suggest the UI needs that make sense. Why 3 clicks when I could be one? Why any clicks if not necessary? Usually this means “reduce/remove” visual clutter as well.

Open, AI-enabled Tools are the Future

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

(Thanks OpenAI for ruining any kind of normal title I could have had for this post.)

Claude Code is great, but you know what would make it even better? Me being able to use any model that I want, not just Anthropic models. In the end, when all this AI novelty wears off and people start to regularly integrate AI into their lives as a regular part of their augmentation, the tools which will persist will be model-agnostic.

Change

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

It’s funny how much things change over a decade or so.

I’m back in a town I haven’t been to in 10 years. My wife and I first came here together in 2012, then once again in 2015 to visit my parents. This was before we had kids, so things were different for us too.

I walked into the Starbucks yesterday. The same Starbucks where I’d sat w/my wife around 12 years ago, I remember looking at the newspaper headlines every day, and writing about whatever it was and its correlation to either government incompetence or police corruption, or both.

Once, Never Again (Ichi-go Ichi-e)

Thu, 09 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Buttercup, newly introduced to the family

Our family cat Buttercup died this morning, or last night, sometime during the night.

He was killed by some animal — a coyote or a bobcat or similar. Brittany found his body in the backyard over by the kids’ swingset / play set. I’m devastated. We all are—he was the perfect kitty. Tolerated EVERYTHING the kids did to him. We had him for about 7-8 months or so, since he came to us in February, in the winter.

My Coffee House that Never Happened

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A beautiful sight

When I was around 20 or 21 (half my age ago), I wanted to start a coffee shop.

I’ve loved the coffee house vibe, e.g. from Friends. Loved coffee, lattes. Who doesn’t?

The hamburger shop/grill across from the university’s computer science department had just shut down. And it was a perfect location, because it was a corner that stuck into the university.

How do I get into Bitcoin?

Fri, 01 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A one-week plan, by day:

Day 1: Go sign up at coinbase.com, add your bank account there.

Day 2: Login to Coinbase.com and buy $10 worth of Bitcoin.

Day 3: Download the Blue Wallet app on your app store. Pick Add Wallet -> Bitcoin -> Create. Write down the special backup seed phrase ON PAPER, and put that paper in your passport.

Day 4: Login to Coinbase.com again. Send some Bitcoin (e.g. half of it, around $5 worth) to your phone app. This is a big step if you’ve never done it before. Feel free to ask for help.

Priorities - Freedom is the Goal

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Gotta start ’em young.

Last night I saw this Instagram clip of Bob Odenkirk answering the question of who he’s most jealous of. His answer? “Anybody who’s got young kids.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/DMtE6dnSrlN/

That’s the goal, that’s the best job of all — being a good, present parent. IYKYK. It’s the best time of life, the most hectic, and you just want a break. But at the end of it all, you wish you’d had more of this time. Someday, the shoes and toys won’t be scattered all over the living room floor. And you’ll wish you had the time back.

Everything is an Offer

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Everything you see in life was or is at some point an offer that somebody created, and someone else (e.g. you) paid for. You traded stored energy (money) for a thing which provides Value to you.

“Value” is vague and thrown around often but it’s the worth that you assign to a thing. If the value (perceived benefit) is not worth the cost, you don’t buy that thing. Simple as.

For Mental Clarity, Write Daily

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Clarity - daily writing, 1st thing in the morning, This seems to bring me the most clarity, and direction in life. Show me what I’m missing. The direction I need to be headed.

This was previously not an issue for me but since I’ve gotten into such a murky life situation, especially without having work over the past year, and after having lost Asami, I feel like I need to realign on this. My brain used to work differently, I used to think much more strategically. And it’s hard to think strategically when you’re in a survival mode situation, especially after prolonged many months at a time.

Opportunity is Disguised

Mon, 28 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Opportunity doesn’t always look like opportunity. It’s disguised.

A couple opportunities I’ll have tomorrow:

Sports App

I’ve been talking with someone in Alberta who does hockey stats, and he’s wanting to launch an app to use AI to improve on old, clunky UIs. There’s a clear, underserved market for this. How could I best serve him (without thought to my own interests for now — just try and help).

Transitions

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Sunrise over a rural southwestern Missouri hayfield field w/a round haybale and native trees in the background.

Some days I wish I had my old blog because it’s easier just to write whatever I want about whatever I want. I haven’t started a Substack yet. So I feel like I have to create something that’s polished or that’s directed in certain way or has a theme, whereas my personal blog is just whatever the hell I wanted to write because it was mine. It was raw and real and it was about me, I didn’t have to go with a certain theme or something. And maybe I don’t have to do that with a Substack blog either, I don’t know.

Passed the AWS DevOps Pro exam

Fri, 05 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Two days ago I sat the exam and passed with an 83% overall!

Here are my actual scores and domains:

Overall Score: 83%

Topic Level Scoring:
Domain 1: 75%
Domain 2: 87%
Domain 3: 100%
Domain 4: 100%

I’m actually surprised that I did this well, as I was a bit nervous and not sure if I’d pass or not. I did spend a couple hours the night before studying CloudFormation (WaitCondition & WaitConditionHandle), OpsWorks and Elastic Beanstalk.

AWS DevOps Pro - Practice Exam Passed

Sat, 29 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Last night I spent a couple hours reviewing my previous exam answers and writing down what I would have done differently and why. I also played around with OpsWorks and ElasticBeanstalk a bit yesterday so that I could better understand those technologies… and then took the exam again this morning.

I passed this time, and here are my new results:

Domain 1. 72% (Continuous Delivery and Process Automation – passed this time, and the only change)
Domain 2. 75% (Monitoring, Metrics, and Logging)
Domain 3. 100% (Security, Governance, and Validation)
Domain 4. 100% (High Availability and Elasticity)

AWS DevOps Pro - Practice Exam Take 1 (Failed)

Sun, 23 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Just failed an AWS practice exam for the first time!

I currently hold all 3 associate certifications and am going for the DevOps Pro certification next.

Was actually a bit surprised! Fortunately the parts that I failed are the parts that I really don’t care about and will never use (ElasticBeanstalk and OpsWorks). Unfortunately, we’re still tested on those bits and I’ll have to study up. Since I got a 60% overall score, I really think I could have got a “pass” if I’d gotten just one or two more answers correct.

HD Wallet Standards for Interoperability

Tue, 28 Feb 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Note: I originally wrote this in April 2016 while traveling thru Asia and kept it in my private log area until now.

Many different software vendors have produced different HD (e.g. BIP32-compliant) Wallets, and it’s nice, but the supposed features/benefits of HD wallets aren’t really able to be used except by the most-technical of end-users. That’s because the HD standard is both really flexible (by enabling a multitude of derivation paths), and because multiple standards are used by wallet software vendors, some of which are conflicting, and each developer will use whichever standard he/she thinks is best, without regard to interoperability or what’s best and easiest for the end-user.

Where Apple Went Wrong...

Tue, 01 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

People don’t give a shit about things like a “Touch Bar” with emojis and the ability to pay for stuff via ApplePay. People don’t care about ApplePay, or about “eliminating cash”. And, although governments want to eliminate cash for other reasons, Apple is not the entity which is going to do so.

You know what people want?

Good hardware and software that works well.

Honestly, I don’t even think anybody cares whether their laptop is 0.005 inches thinner or 4 ounces lighter, but the ability to have 32 or 64 GB RAM is fucking huge. HUGE, I say.

What is Docker? (And good luck finding out.)

Thu, 16 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s an example of how technical people still can’t explain things:

I search for “What is Docker”, and I even get to the “What is Docker?” page on the official website:

But as you can see, I still don’t get a straight answer.

This page tells me what Docker allows me to do … and what Docker containers are… (but I still need to know what Docker is first).

Some Things That Will Be Obsolete in 5 Years

Tue, 14 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Just 20 years ago, the world was a completely different place. And in 20 years, it’s going to be completely different than it is today. Everything’s gonna change. Lifestyles, standards of living. It’s already in progress. We just don’t always see it that way.

Think about it: can you imagine a time before YouTube? That’s just ONE service that’s changed the way we learn, share, entertain and, in some cases, make a living.

Precious

Sat, 28 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Our cat Precious passed away today. She’d been with us for the past 5 years (almost to the date). It seems like much longer than that. She was around 18 years old, and we’re not 100% sure of her exact age.

She was white with a bit of grey, mostly on her ears and face. And her tail was really beautiful, w/dark grey rings all the length of it.

She was a generally scared being, most likely from some early trauma or maybe a fight with a brother or sister at an early age. Precious, or “the princess” as we sometimes called her, was very selective of who she would approach, and only a few people were ever able to get close enough for comfort — her “inner circle.”