https://billiem.uk Personal projects and writing by Billie, covering software, AI, self-hosting, experiments, and whatever else she is interested in at the time. en-gb Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://billiem.uk/posts/hardcore-wildy/ https://billiem.uk/posts/hardcore-wildy/ Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Why I think a simple RuneScape Twitter bot helped me get into tech, and what its Python and Go versions taught me about unpaid maintenance. https://billiem.uk/posts/why-i-moved-my-desktop-into-proxmox/ https://billiem.uk/posts/why-i-moved-my-desktop-into-proxmox/ Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 How an unused desktop became a Proxmox server, what broke during the move, and why two MacBooks now cover my everyday computing. https://billiem.uk/posts/codex-home-server-infrastructure/ https://billiem.uk/posts/codex-home-server-infrastructure/ Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Using Codex from my MacBook to repair storage imports, update a server endpoint and bring an SSD into Plex, with checked results and real limits. https://billiem.uk/posts/gpt-6-1-sol-choice/ https://billiem.uk/posts/gpt-6-1-sol-choice/ Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Three autonomous GPT-6.1 Sol experiments: a fictional record, a sheet-cutting planner and a congestion model, with their review fixes and limits. https://billiem.uk/posts/free-compute-october-2026/ https://billiem.uk/posts/free-compute-october-2026/ Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 October's free-tier check: Railway SSH VMs, Neon's backend, Vercel Drives, and corrections to Modal, Lightning and Freestyle credits and limits. https://billiem.uk/posts/gpt-6-astra-choice/ https://billiem.uk/posts/gpt-6-astra-choice/ Sun, 13 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 What three Astra agents built with room to choose: a string puzzle, a supply-chain experiment and a printable booklet, with their fixes and limits. https://billiem.uk/posts/free-compute-september-2026/ https://billiem.uk/posts/free-compute-september-2026/ Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 September 2026 free-tier changes: Deno cuts, D1 hard limits, agent sandboxes and corrections to Freestyle, Browserless, Firebase and Axiom. https://billiem.uk/posts/qwen3-8-27b-on-m4-pro/ https://billiem.uk/posts/qwen3-8-27b-on-m4-pro/ Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 A 4-bit Qwen3.8-27B built a cellular automata workbench locally on my M4 Pro, while 6-bit finished and 8-bit hit OOM. https://billiem.uk/posts/you-need-a-home-server/ https://billiem.uk/posts/you-need-a-home-server/ Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000 How Raspberry Pi experiments became a useful home server, and why learning when not to self-host mattered as much as Docker and DNS. https://billiem.uk/posts/scheduled-codex-jobs-daily-reports/ https://billiem.uk/posts/scheduled-codex-jobs-daily-reports/ Thu, 06 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 How deterministic tools, scheduled Codex jobs and inspectable HTML fit into two daily reporting workflows. https://billiem.uk/posts/llm-better-building-322-solver/ https://billiem.uk/posts/llm-better-building-322-solver/ Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 An LLM helped build a deterministic 322 draft solver. Paired tests covered 120,000 outcomes, with a 27.45% title rate at the largest field budget. https://billiem.uk/posts/codex-built-local-wispr-flow/ https://billiem.uk/posts/codex-built-local-wispr-flow/ Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Building Billie Flow, a local Mac dictation app, with Codex: model timings, installed-app failures, microphone testing and the limits of the release. https://billiem.uk/posts/free-compute-august-2026/ https://billiem.uk/posts/free-compute-august-2026/ Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000 August 2026 free VPS, databases, GPU notebooks and agent sandboxes, with a dated catalogue of quotas and links to later corrections. https://billiem.uk/posts/embedding-tours/ https://billiem.uk/posts/embedding-tours/ Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 An interactive embedding visualisation compares raw, PCA and grand-tour projections, including a basis change that preserves cosine neighbours. https://billiem.uk/posts/dj-tools-i-kept-trying-to-build/ https://billiem.uk/posts/dj-tools-i-kept-trying-to-build/ Sun, 12 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 How four years of DJ-library friction led from Python scripts to a Go desktop app and the AI-assisted Crate Lynx. https://billiem.uk/posts/gpt-5-6-first-48-hours/ https://billiem.uk/posts/gpt-5-6-first-48-hours/ Sat, 11 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 What GPT-5.6 did across research, audits, a seven-repository migration and one animated pet during my first 48 hours with Codex. https://billiem.uk/posts/gpt-5-6-needed-a-more-ambitious-prompt/ https://billiem.uk/posts/gpt-5-6-needed-a-more-ambitious-prompt/ Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 What changed between two GPT-5.6 coding-experiment batches when I gave depth more room, changed the prompt and added review. https://billiem.uk/posts/free-compute-july-2026/ https://billiem.uk/posts/free-compute-july-2026/ Fri, 10 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 July 2026 free-tier changes: Oracle VM limits, Deno migration, agent sandboxes and GPU options, with trials separated from recurring allowances. https://billiem.uk/posts/local-llm-choice-harness-mattered/ https://billiem.uk/posts/local-llm-choice-harness-mattered/ Mon, 06 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Five 4-bit local models on a 48 GB M4 Pro, tested with file-output contracts, smoke-test repair loops and Pi, then compared with a hosted Codex setup. https://billiem.uk/posts/thought-can-be-a-url-now/ https://billiem.uk/posts/thought-can-be-a-url-now/ Sun, 05 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 A Codex-built biological wheel simulation went from a Discord debate to Cloudflare Pages in about ten minutes. A toy model for discussion, not proof. https://billiem.uk/posts/linear-idea-ledger/ https://billiem.uk/posts/linear-idea-ledger/ Thu, 02 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000 My workflow uses Linear as an idea ledger, Wispr Flow for dictation and agents to turn rough notes into projects and posts. https://billiem.uk/posts/llm-choice-as-an-idea-engine/ https://billiem.uk/posts/llm-choice-as-an-idea-engine/ Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Using autonomous coding-agent runs as a low-cost way to find ideas, learn unfamiliar topics, and seed later projects. https://billiem.uk/posts/website-graph/ https://billiem.uk/posts/website-graph/ Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 An interactive graph maps my site's pages and outbound links, exposing its biggest link hub and giving a growing personal archive a visible shape. https://billiem.uk/posts/local-llm-work-became-a-routing-problem/ https://billiem.uk/posts/local-llm-work-became-a-routing-problem/ Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 A local MLX LoRA experiment used my Discord messages to imitate my replies. Missing conversation turns limited what fine-tuning and retrieval could fix. https://billiem.uk/posts/chair-scraper/ https://billiem.uk/posts/chair-scraper/ Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 A self-hosted stock tracker watched 85 refurbished chair listings and searches, filtered noisy results, and helped me save over £100 on a Haworth Fern. https://billiem.uk/posts/free-compute-for-ai-side-projects/ https://billiem.uk/posts/free-compute-for-ai-side-projects/ Sun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000 A June 2026 snapshot of free VPS hosting, databases, serverless platforms and AI compute, including the limits behind the offers.