THESE WORDS ARE HUMAN

I am committed to continue writing my own words on this blog sans AI. I am considering using AI in the writing process and for editorial reasons. However, I want to ensure that I am writing in an authentic style. Ideally I would train a model on all of my existing digital writings. It would be useful for education purposes and developing my voice.

MY PERSONAL PROJECTS WILL LEVERAGE AI

As of 11/25/2025, I am embracing AI and becoming a vibe coder.

Unless explicitly stated, any commit after 11/25/2025 is suspect to being made with generative AI tools like Cursor.

For the past decade, my career has been in software engineering. The way I did things ten years ago and today are radically different. The tools are ever-changing. I used to use cmd-f in PDF textbooks to try to answer my questions, ask questions on Stack Overflow, or simply dig into source code. I remember how hard it was to learn C and shell scripting back in the day without proper direction towards which book to learn it from. Today, like never before, we have instant answers. Copy-paste coding has long been the industry standard for getting things done quickly. It’s not artisanal. But it’s effective. Now with coding agents, it’s like copy and paste coding grew up. It’s fast. It’s wicked fast. Speed of thought fast.

I’m blown away by how fast I’ve been able to spin up my ideas and get them going. But it still kind of sucks here and there. It seems a better model comes out every few weeks.

Mirrored Keyboard Update

A while ago, I posted about building a mirrored mechanical keyboard. I’m now capable of typing at 30 wpm peak speed on it (via a typing test online). I find it very useful for creative writing because it puts a physical limit on how fast I can transmit my thoughts and allows me to synthesize them longer. I have had an ineffable experiences that can best be described as such: the part of my brain responsible for moving my fingers is now responsible for coming up with the words to write and vice versa.

H11Y Tool for generating a mirrored PDF

Putting both of the prior topics of AI codegen together with the benefits of dual dominance, I have

I had once worked on a python tool for flipping a pdf around vertically such that it would appear as though being reflected in the mirror. I was successful but it wasn’t packaged up nicely in a way to distribute it. No one would use this tool except the most desperate and the most desperate would have already made their own by just looking at my code.

Fast forward a year later, and I’ve updated everything into a neat little program that can be installed using brew.

So if you’ve been wanting to start practicing reading mirrored text you can go ahead and follow the instructions here.

Aside about Dual Dominance

San Diego local author Jim Houlliston is working with neuroscientists to study the effects of reading mirrored text. He believes that exercising the brain while visually processing mirrored text can lead to miraculous physical healing via balancing out the brain’s hemispheres. Give his bidirectional book a read if you are interested in the hypothesis of better living through dual-dominance.