Ken Kousen

Playing so much Spider Solitaire while waiting for Claude Code to respond I almost tried to explain to my wife that the game is all about hysteresis effects and cyclomatic complexity.

Fortunately I caught myself in time and decided to stay married

But I see "snow", which means something better different

Tales from the jar side: A Nano Banana Skill, UI Testing made simple, Anthropic vs Pentagon, Anthropic vs China, DevNexus, and the usual Social Media silliness I made a paper airplane, but it wouldn't fly. It's just stationary. (rimshot)

Tales from the jar side: A Nano Banana Skill, UI Testing made simple, Anthropic vs Pentagon, Anthropic vs China, DevNexus, and the usual Social Media silliness open.substack.com/pub/kenkouse...

Snowfall outside my window

Go outside, they said. Touch grass, they said.

A generated photorealistic image of a fluffy cat with glasses reading Help Your Boss Help You in a library

I built a Claude Code Skill that helps you craft optimized prompts for Google's Nano Banana image generators. It asks you targeted questions, then generates a natural-language prompt following Google's official guidance.

See the comment below the gist to install:
gist.github.com/kousen/f7c66...

Tales from the jar side: My Trek/Java video, Gemini 3.1 lags, More OpenClaw drama, DevNexus, and the usual social media stuff A genie granted me one wish, so I wished to be happy. Now I live with six dwarves and work in a mine. (rimshot)

Tales from the jar side: My Trek/Java video, Gemini 3.1 lags, More OpenClaw drama, DevNexus, and the usual social media stuff open.substack.com/pub/kenkouse...

Partial screenshot, there is a lot more on the site!

Here is the new (and long!) #JavaFX #LinksOfTheWeek, published on www.jfx-central.com/links.

Thanks to
CommonGround_2048
@johanvos.bsky.social
@gluonhq.com
JabRef
@tom-doerr.bsky.social
@lidianycs.bsky.social
@logorrr.bsky.social
@hansolo.eu

1/2

What would be the fun in that 😂

I totally agree, btw. I'm just tired of all the approvals. Now I'm just waiting for the inevitable disaster

Thus the word yolo (which is what Gemini called it on their CLI)

Fine. I give up. Added to .zshrc:

alias ccyolo='claude --dangerously-skip-permissions'

What could go wrong?

Tales from the jar side: RAG video, My clawdbot's wins and losses, the SaaSpocalype, and the usual social media silliness My son asked if training to be a locksmith would be worth it. I told him it would open a lot of doors for him. (rimshot)

Tales from the jar side: RAG video, My clawdbot's wins and losses, the SaaSpocalype, and the usual social media silliness open.substack.com/pub/kenkouse...

Happy Valentine's Day to those who celebrate, or you can add Massacre if you don't.

Whatever. You do you ❣️

My clawdbot (or whatever it's called now) reminded me that Valentine's Day is tomorrow, so for the first time in years I'm ready ahead of time.

That almost, but not quite, paid for the entire exercise

Tales from the jar side: Moltbook implodes, OpenClaw is okay, a RAG demo, My dad's favorite player passes away, my SB pick, and the usual social media silliness When you hear talk about Super Bowl babies born nine months from now, remember that Valentine’s Day is also this week.

Tales from the jar side: Moltbook implodes, OpenClaw is okay, a RAG demo, My dad's favorite player passes away, my SB pick, and the usual social media silliness, open.substack.com/pub/kenkouse...

Temperatures at 7 am this morning, according to Google

McMurdo Station, Antarctica: 21 F
Nuuk, Greenland: 25 F
Marlborough, CT: -3 F

All I can say is, brrr 🥶

Tales from the jar side: Clawdbot née Moltbot née OpenClaw, Moltbook and emergent behavior, The Boss still rules, and the usual Social Media silliness Do train conductors get tunnel vision? (rimshot)

Tales from the jar side: Clawdbot née Moltbot née OpenClaw, Moltbook and emergent behavior, The Boss still rules, and the usual Social Media silliness open.substack.com/pub/kenkouse...

Google weather showing it's currently 1 deg F and should make it to 12 by noon

Told a friend I would meet him for lunch, but only if the temperature exceeded the hour.

We're meeting at noon. It's going to be close.

Presentation at jChampions Conference, called "When One Agent Isn't Enough: Experiments with Multi-Agent AI", along with links

My presentation at the (free!) jChampions Conference is in about 45 minutes. If you're able to attend, be sure to say hi during the live stream :)

Conference: jchampionsconf.com
Live streams: www.youtube.com/@JCh...
Tickets: www.eventbrite.com/e...

#Java #JChampions

Minnesota National Guard members have arrived at a federal building and were directed to distribute donuts, coffee, and hot chocolate to anti-ICE protesters. Guard members were issued reflective vests so they would not be mistaken for federal agents.

Tales from the jar side: Snow, NFL, Dealing with current chaos, Agentic Java, Null Pointers, and the usual social media stuff Someone called my phone, sneezed, and hung up. I'm getting sick of these cold calls (rimshot)

Tales from the jar side: Snow, NFL, Dealing with current chaos, Agentic Java, Null Pointers, and the usual social media stuff open.substack.com/pub/kenkouse...

The Twin Cities aren’t playing when they say Abolish ICE.

Here’s another graphic for our Minnesota friends.

THE POPE'S STILL GOT IT

What's the final score?

Tales from the jar side: Spring Boot 4, Agentic Java coding, Launch Library API, Spring AI Skills, Stand with Minnesota, and the usual social media nonsense HELP! I need to re-home a dog. It’s a small terrier and tends to bark a lot. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll jump over my neighbor’s fence and get it for you. (rimshot, c/o @DadSaysJokes)

Tales from the jar side: Spring Boot 4, Agentic Java coding, Launch Library API, Spring AI Skills, Stand with Minnesota, and the usual social media nonsense open.substack.com/pub/kenkouse...

The reason why RAM has become four times more expensive is that a huge amount of RAM that has not yet been produced was purchased with non-existent money to be installed in GPUs that also have not yet been produced, in order to place them in data centers that have not yet been built, powered by infrastructure that may never appear, to satisfy demand that does not actually exist and to obtain profit that is mathematically impossible.

From Reddit via an AI newsletter. It's a perfect encapsulation of the IT world at the moment.

Presumably caffeine will help you muddle through tomorrow's newsletter :⁠-⁠)

Tales from the jar side: AI and Jevons paradox, AI violinists, the JVM Weekly magnum opus, and the usual social media silliness Aliens are going to be so confused when they show up to overthrow our leaders and we offer to help. (rimshot)

Tales from the jar side: AI and Jevons paradox, AI violinists, the JVM Weekly magnum opus, and the usual social media silliness open.substack.com/pub/kenkouse...

Totally agree

Tales from the jar side: Called it, jChampions conference, Agents vs MCP, Ralph Wiggum plugin, and the usual social media silliness Plagiarism: Getting in trouble for something you didn't do. (rimshot)

Tales from the jar side: Called it, jChampions conference, Agents vs MCP, Ralph Wiggum plugin, and the usual social media silliness open.substack.com/pub/kenkouse...