Best of Kevin’s bubble - August 2026
Hell my fellow Humans,
This month I have some “interesting” stuff in there. Enjoy ☺️
Links
This one really hit home with me. I need to admit that I also hate it when I realize that someone didn’t even took the time to write in their own words what they have to say. Since I of course also use a bot for my code reviews and also let the bot comment on GitLab I started adding a “🤖 KVN (bot) speaking 🤖” prefix. So it is on the one hand-side easier for my colleagues to know who actually answered but also for me easier to distinguish between what I wrote and what I prompted. Let’s see this month how good that prefix works out.
Another chatbot topic and another one that I can’t proof of course, but I do get the same feeling. As a frontend engineer myself seeing the difference between the code that “my” bot generates and the code that the bot of non frontend engineers generate is always quite fascinating. And I guess it does make sense. I always need to think about Optimization lessons we had at University in which we had a 3 dimensional “mountain range” with many valleys and dependent on where our optimization algorithm started, it found a different local minimum. If it was lucky it actually found the global minimum, but usually it doesn’t.
Giving a bot the context an “expert” of the field has probably gives it a “better” starting point that leads it closer to something that expert actually wants. This is by the way also the reason why I talk to my bot like as if I was talking to a coworker. Because, since it is trained on human text and since I am convinced that people work better when you talk to them in a nice tone, it feels only logical to me that the bot also gives better results if you are nice to it. But again, nothing I can really proof. At least I know that I also feel better when I don’t treat it like a code generating slave, but like a helpful and loveable tool.
Be ready to get lost for some minutes 😄 Next to the nice art style and the easter eggs EVERY WHERE, I also learned that the creators of this came up with their own video format in order to support this website. As a frontend developer myself I also wondered how they did, if it’s overlapping gifs, or some big video, but then how does it load so smoothly? Well that is exactly why they came up with their own video format in order to support this lazy loading of the animation that we can see on the site. Stuff like this is what the web was made for 😄
Art
This month I started drawing. Well “started” sounds weird, since drawing is such an integral part of being a kid. So let’s say I started drawing more often. We started a new TTRPG in our game group (Lancer by Massif) and next to it being ultra fun so far, the art in its book is also just so inspiring. So I finally configured Krita on my laptop so that it works with my Stylus and started drawing my own first character art. Behold, Gert aka Reboot
I know, I know, I should resign from being a developer and should become a full time artist. But before I start my career as professional character artist, let’s see where this drawing journey bring me.
Books
This month I also read some good books again. And also some disturbing once like 1984. Well you can read more below.
Ich kann es natürlich nicht beweisen und online hab ich nichts dazu gefunden, aber ich hab das Gefühl, dass große Teile des Buches mithilfe eines chatbots geschrieben wurde. Es waren sehr oft viel zu viele Worte für eine Info die man auch in Stichpunkten wieder geben können, was dazu führte dass ich teilweise lieber die prompts statt den output gelesen hätte 😅
Trotzdem fühlt es sich so an wie wenn die infos wissenschaftlich belegt sind und zumindest in meinem Kopf Sinn machen. Jetzt steht es an die Tipps aus dem Buch anzuwenden um mich hoffentlich etwas gesünder zu ernähren. Let's hope this works out ✊
Wow ... I am speachless. What abdepressing book. Especially in times of Trump, Palantir, Dobrinth, flock cameras and so on and so forth. I will need to sit a bit on the concept of "doubelthink", and ask myself what things I naively accept allthough they make no sense.
I am trying not to be too spoilery.
Keeping in mind that Matt is an American (probably) it almost feels like he is trying to send a message out to his fellow citizens. And I love it.
A few years back I read a block article about a DnD DM that intentionally gender swapped all NPCs in a written adventure, as he was sick of all "important NPCs" to be men. His male players found it so absurd that they mostly encountered women, that they immediately thought that there needs to be some kind of conspiracy going on.
This is how little the representation of women in leading roles is, that it needs to be a conspiracy if they are in all leading roles.
And then there is this book. Almost every important role is filled with a woman. And it's not the "typical" trope women doing toxic masculinity things in order to be taking seriously. Every women is complex in her own way. I really love how Tamsyn wrote her cast of characters.
And then, and I think this is not too much of a spoiler, after two books of characters fighting through this horrible world they live in this book starts so wholesome. A twist I was certainly not expecting, especially in this world. Like it says on the cover, "you will love Nona and Nona loves you"
And with this I once more wish you a nice month ☺️
Cheers,
Kevin