The Blooog !!

I write about technology, gnu/linux, startups, cooking, hicking, blues and mooore !

My Life as a Gitlab instance: How I use GitLab to manage almost everything

In my previous article about note-taking, I mentioned that I use GitLab for my side projects and learning. But that barely scratches the surface. I actually use GitLab for far more than that, and in this post I want to share how it has become the backbone of how I manage almost everything in my life. Why GitLab? First, I believe that almost everything in life (including work) can be tracked using an issue tracker and documented in Markdown files. GitLab excels at both. ...

I accidentally contributed to Terraform

Before I start telling you how I contributed to Terraform, I should admit that the title is a little clickbait 😅! Not totally, but just a little. The goal of this blog post is not to tell you that I contributed to Terraform or to brag. The goal is to share my take on Open Source contribution, which I came to after countless conversations with various people in the community and some small and humble contributions. ...

Local OSS LLMs for Noobs like me

One of the many things I’d been procrastinating on was running a Large Language Model (LLM) locally. One weekend, I finally decided to do it. It was supposed to be simple, but my curiosity wouldn’t let me just follow a guide and move on. I wanted to actually understand the ecosystem and how everything works, without diving too deep into the math or internals. Here’s what I learned, from a complete beginner’s point of view: ...

From Oujda to Taroudant: Another 3000KMs through Morocco

After the 2022 journey from Nador to Azilal, Here we are again with another trip and new adventures. This year, I wanted something different, something a little unconventional. So my choice what to go through the Morocco-Algeria border from Oujda in the North to Draa Valley in the south. The trip before trip This trip turned out to be one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. I met incredible people, discovered breathtaking places, and lived through moments that truly moved me. Most importantly, I learned a lot, both about Morocco and about myself. ...

All You Need to Know About UV

I’ve been working with uv for over a year now, and honestly, it’s awesome! It gradually replaced my Python ecosystem tools one after another, and at this point, I rely on it for nearly everything. Since, uv is relatively “new”, I decided to write a quick blogpost about it. Let’s dig in. Python versions: replacing pyenv First things first: Python versions! pyenv is a great tool and a very powerful piece of the Python ecosystem. However, it can be quite complicated to set up, especially if you’re not a Python developer. ...

THS: My Note-taking framework

One of the things I’ve struggled with for a long time is note-taking. I’ve tried different tools and setups, but I never found one that really worked for me. I Was Doing It Wrong After many failed attempts, I sat down with myself about a year ago and decided to stop everything I was doing and ask: why hasn’t anything worked so far? Here are some takeaways from this reflection: ...

THS: GPG'ing everything

THS: The Holy Setup - A series of blog posts about my computer setup. Road to Valhalla Treat Your Dotfiles Better Life on the Web GPG’ing My Setup I am currently working on The Holy Setup again. One of the coolest things I did was redo my GPG setup after discarding my old key and replacing it with new keys and a new setup using Ansible. First Steps After decrypting my pass secrets, I moved my GnuPG config folder to $XDG_DATA_HOME to avoid dotfile clutter in my home directory. Then, I generated a new GPG key pair. ...