I quite like the Iosevka font for terminal

 

In this picture it is on the Zellij multiplexer in an Alacritty window.

This is how I view the top AI models

 

Comic Code Reviews

1. Paste this into Claude Code or Cursor: “Review PR 13968 (this branch). Plan a comic strip to help code reviewers to understand what is going on/how the code works. Anthropomorphize if that will help.”
2. Paste what you get into gemini.google.com after this prompt: “Make a comic-strip jpg for this: <paste it here>” 

This example is from React #13968 – the initial hooks implementation.

Switching to lighter apps (and cool things about the Orion browser)

Cursor, iTerm2, and Edge/Arc/Zen were taking up a lot of memory on my MacBook, so I am going on a bit of a memory diet and switching to lighter apps:

• Instead of Cursor which is Electron-based: Zed, which is written in Rust and should be faster.
• Instead of iTerm2, Alacritty + tmux. Alacritty is a single-window terminal, so I need tmux to handle the tabs. At first I was a bit scared of tmux but now I kind of like it - it's fun to play around with and customize.
• Instead of Edge, Orion which is Webkit-based (by the makers of the Kagi search engine). Working out so far. Supposed to use less memory than Chrome.

Things I'm noticing about the Orion browser

• Having separate dock icons for different profiles (Work and Personal) seems good
  
  
  

• There is a bug with Open external links in: Last Active Profile - seems to open the first profile that was opened rather than the last profile that was active. You can choose which profile to open by clicking the appropriate dock icon.
• The vertical tabs are threaded.hierarchical - opening a tab from a webpage opens a page under the current tab. It's interesting - haven't seen that before. 

• To get the new-tab shortcut (⌘-T) to put your cursor in the address bar so you can type something immediately, set New tabs open with: Empty Page
• When it prompts to ask if a website should access my location, one of the options is Never For This Website, which is useful and something I haven't seen in other browsers

• I believe for each extension you have the option to set which sites it is enabled for, which is nice
• On a pinned tab, to reset to the pinned URL, use Cmd+click.
• You can right-click a page and choose Summarize. A pane will appear on the right with a summary. If you move to a different page and want to summarize that, click the Summarize button on the lower right of the pane.

• Tabs show a thumbnail preview when you hover over them:

• It has a way to create a dedicated app for a website (Tools > Install This Site as an App)

Things I'm noticing about the Orion browser for iOS

• Orion for iOS has vertical tabs, which is space-saving

• The iOS app has so many configuration options - it's great

• The iOS app is the first iOS browser I've seen that lets you in tall Chrome and Firefox extensions? I haven't tried this though. 

Things I'm noticing about Alacritty

• The colors were a bit washed out. Fixed by switching to the xterm theme: import = ["~/.config/alacritty/themes/themes/xterm.toml"]

Things I love using my command-line AI tool for

Here I am going to build a list of things I love using my command-line AI tool for - I use Amazon Q Developer CLI:

• Resolving merge conflicts
• Making a ChatGPT prompt to tell me what I need to do today. It pulls events from Google Calendar (via ChatGPT Google Calendar integration), todos from Todoist (via Todoist API), and todos from Streaks iOS app (via Mac Shortcut)
• Committing and creating a PR in one step using this prompt: create a branch with an appropriate name (don't use a slash; the Jira ticket is <Jira ticket number goes here>), commit, push, use gh to make a pr (follow any pull_request_template.md files), give me a 1-liner I can paste into Slack (like "PR to foo the bar: https://github.com/SemanticSugar/sludge/pull/3174") then open the pr in a browser. At the bottom of the pr description, put: Made with ❤️ with Amazon Q Developer CLI
• Figuring out if I need to water the lawn this week using this prompt: replace month and year in this URL https://www.flowworks.com/network/rainfallstats/statsopen.aspx?externalRequest=surreyrain&siteid=32&sitefullname=Surrey%20Municipal%20Hall&measid=1226&month=6&year=2025 and use curl to figure out how much it rained in Surrey in the past week in inches
• Code review a PR using this prompt: Review PR <PR number goes here> (<branch name goes here> branch). Use gh to check the PR description and comments for context. Are there any bugs or inconsistencies?
• Understand a PR using this prompt: for the PR, show me the changes in this PR and annotate them line-by-line or every few lines to help me to understand the changes (except for the test code). Feel free to rearrange the order of the code if that would tell a better story. Prefix any comments you add with Q:
• Create a Jira ticket for a problem: <paste Slack conversation here> make a jira title and description, save it in ~/Junk/jira.md, and open it in cursor
• Summarize current chat and save it to a file: Today is {YYYY}-{MM}-{DD} Choose a descriptive filename that I can use to save the context of this conversation as - something like /Users/jonaquino/Documents/AI_Conversations/2025-07-23-foo-bar-baz.md. Use today's date. Save a summary of this conversation to that file.
• When I'm on-call at work, I have Amazon Q Developer CLI connected by MCP to PagerDuty and to our company wiki (Confluence), so I can ask things like:
• what are my pagerduty incidents?
• check if the success file is there now
• any runbooks in confluence about this issue?
• check ~/projects/udp to see if there is a DAG for AttributionsLinkedin
• recheck if the s3 file is there now

Favorite apps and tech

Here are some of my favorite apps and tech:

• SimpleLogin – Privacy tool for creating email aliases to protect your inbox.

• 1Password – Secure password manager for storing and autofilling credentials.

• 1 Second Everyday – Video diary app that stitches daily clips into a timeline.

• ChatGPT – AI assistant for writing, coding, research, and everyday tasks.

• Drafts – Quick-capture notes app that sends text anywhere.

• Edge – Microsoft’s fast and feature-rich web browser.

• SwiftKey – Smart keyboard with swipe typing and predictive suggestions.

• Obsidian – Knowledge base app for linking notes in a personal knowledge graph.

• Perplexity – AI-powered search engine for natural-language questions.

• Amazon Q Developer CLI – Command-line AI assistant for developers.

• iTerm2 – Advanced terminal emulator for macOS with rich features.

• Todoist – Popular task manager for organizing projects and to-dos.

• Cursor – AI-powered code editor that helps with debugging and refactoring.

• NuPhy Air75 V2 – Sleek mechanical keyboard with low-profile switches.

• Raycast – Productivity launcher for commands, shortcuts, and extensions.

• Araxis Merge – Professional file comparison and merge tool.

• Bartender 4 – Utility for organizing and hiding Mac menu bar icons.

• DaisyDisk – Visual disk analyzer to find and clean large files.

• DBeaver – Universal database tool for developers and analysts.

• Gmail – Google’s email platform with strong spam filtering.

• Google Drive – Cloud storage and file sharing service.

• Google Docs – Online collaborative word processor.

• Google Sheets – Web-based spreadsheet tool with real-time collaboration.

• Shottr – Lightweight screenshot and annotation tool for Mac.

• LuLu – Free, open-source firewall for blocking unwanted network connections.

  ActualBudget – Self-hosted budgeting application that you use for tracking budgets and spending, functioning as an alternative to apps like YNAB

  LazyGit – A simple, fast terminal UI for Git commands, making common Git operations easier to visualize and perform.

  micro – A modern, lightweight terminal-based text editor designed to be intuitive and easy to use.

  Zed – Blazing-fast collaborative code editor by creators of Atom. Minimalist yet powerful.

  Orion — A fast, lightweight macOS browser built on WebKit, focused on privacy, extensions (Chrome/Firefox support), and native performance.

  Alacritty + tmux – Alcritty is a fast, GPU-accelerated terminal emulator focused on simplicity and performance. tmux is a terminal multiplexer that lets you split windows, run multiple sessions, and persist terminal state across disconnects.

  Stats – A free, open-source macOS menu bar app that shows real-time system information like CPU, memory, disk, network, battery, and sensor usage.

  
  

Claude Code vs Amazon Q Developer CLI

• Cost
• Claude Code:  $20/$100/$200 with various usage limits
• Q CLI: $20/month with seemingly no usage limits
• Saving past chats
• Claude Code: Automatic saving; retrieve using /resume
• Q CLI: Manual saving with /save; retrieve using /load
• Command permissions
• Claude: Can whitelist individual bash commands. Can persist whitelist between sessions.
• Q CLI: Can't whitelist individual bash commands, just bash in general. Whitelist does not persist between sessions.
• Annoyances
•  Q CLI: For some reason, I need to login every day. 

ChatGPT vs Gemini vs Claude

 

 

ChatGPT

• Best-in-class image generation
• Vibe coding often has errors and i fails to fix them
• Sora video generation (video only)
• Conversational memory across chats
• Personable audio chat (less stiff/terse than Gemini)
• Has a dedicated desktop app (like Claude but unlike Gemini) 
• Generate shareable HTML apps from chat (Canvas)  
• Bad at working with tabular data 

Gemini

• Update: Nano-banana image generation is even better and faster than ChatGPT
• Vibe coding works the firsst time.
• Deep Google ecosystem integration (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Maps, Sheets)
• 1M token context window (can handle massive documents)
• Veo3 video + audio generation (more complete than Sora). YouTube training data powering video generation
• Conversational memory
• Real-time web access through Google Search
• Good at working with tabular data 
• 2.5 Flash model is faster than ChatGPT 5 at text and image generation

Claude

• Vibe coding: haven't tested it yet
• Extensive tool integrations and flexibility
• Generate shareable HTML apps from chat (Artifacts) 
• Natural, personable voice conversations (less stiff/terse than Gemini)
• Has a dedicated desktop app
• Good at working with tabular data  

 

ChatGPT vs Gemini

 ChatGPT (paid) advantages:

• Better image generation than Gemini
• Audio chat is more personable than Gemini, less stiff/businesslike/terse
• Unlike Gemini, ChatGPT's Deep Research asks clarifying questions before starting. 
• Really good analysis of people relationships 

Gemini (paid) advantages:

• Better video generation (with audio)
• 2 TB Google Drive space
• Google Calendar, Docs, Sheets integration
• Automatically does web searches without having to click a Web button
• 1-2M context window vs 128K
• Handles large amounts of spreadsheet-type data pasted in - ChatGPT misses a lot 
• The Gems feature is really good, especially one in which I asked it to be "a Catholic spiritual director, drawing on the wisdom of the saints and Catholic tradition." The advice was a lot meatier than when I tried the same in Claude.
• Can add an event to Google Calendar via screenshot or picture
• Can ask questions of the current spreadsheet, PDF, or doc in Google Drive. 
• More comprehensive and precise answers than Claude for "how to" questions
• Takes what you told it about yourself in the custom instructions and weaves that information into its responses more than ChatGPT.

Claude (paid) advantages:

• Integrations feature lets me query Atlassian Confluence
• Audio chat is more personable than Gemini, less stiff/businesslike/terse  Audio chat is customizable with instructions in Claude Project. Gemini Gems don't have audio chat.
• Unlike Gemini, Claude's Deep Research asks clarifying questions before starting. 

Zen Browser

 I have been trying out Zen Browser for a few days and am quite liking it as a replacement for Arc Browser for which support seems to be getting discontinued.

 Zen is better than Arc for:

• Seems to use less memory
• Open source 
• Extensions are shared between Spaces - you don't need to reinstall extensions for each Space 

Arc is still better than Zen for:

• Cmd+T can access extensions 
• Little Arc windows 

General reasons to prefer Zen/Arc over other browsers:

• Vertical tabs
•  Spaces (dedicated space for a profile and its tabs)