hello world

007: 🔇 Turn off witty messages in Gemini CLI

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I use LLMs for tasks that don't require heart or passion or creativity. Given how much my tech stack favors Google, it's unsurprising that I use Gemini CLI. I found myself searching for gemini cli turn off witty messages. (I wasn't sure where to start in the docs.)

The stop displaying clever messages while the CLI is working (or at least add a robust option for the user to tell it to stop) issue I found is Open but there's a comment with a config suggestion:

Add this to ~/.gemini/settings.json:

    "accessibility": {
    "disableLoadingPhrases": true
  }

👍 It worked for me and I gave the comment its tenth upvote.

For a file this size, I like how gron renders the output:

# gron ~/.gemini/settings.json
json = {};
json.security = {};
json.security.auth = {};
json.security.auth.selectedType = "oauth-personal";
json.ui = {};
json.ui.accessibility = {};
json.ui.accessibility.disableLoadingPhrases = true;
json.ui.theme = "Ayu";

I have written at length on brie.dev about using gron for other purposes..

-- Brie

006: 📍 Using a specific version of Python with uv

Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

There are a few different ways to request a specific version of Python when using uv.

🔖 I like to use Python Documentation by Version to list the available version. Building on the last post about getting EOL info via the CLI, you could also use:

uv tool run --python 3.11.6  --from norwegianblue  eol python

That will print the full version string for each minor release. (Depending on what exactly you're trying to do, that might not be helpful.)

The --python 3.11.6 tells uv to use Python 3.11.6.

✅ Check the Python version

You can specify the Python version and check the Python version all in one go:

# uv run --python 3.12 python -V
Python 3.12.8

Let's say you wanted to get the path to that Python 3.12.8 executable. Enter uv python find.

# uv python find 3.12

📝 If you have used a non-default location for UV_PYTHON_INSTALL_DIR, you'll need to take that into account.

If you want to check with version of Python and get a path to the executable that uv would use by default, you can use uv python find 3.12.

📍 Pinning the version in `.python-version`

The presence of a .python-version file in the working directory (and any parent directories) can be used to pin a particular Python version. There is even a uv python pin command that can be used to generate said .python-version file. The docs note that the --python works with most uv commands. It looks like uv python pin is one of the commands where --python is not accepted.

# uv    python pin 3.12
Pinned `.python-version` to `3.12`
# cat .python-version
3.12

The --python flag takes precedence over .python-version, as I would expect.

🌞

005: 🔭 HOWTO Query data from endoflife.date info with the norwegianblue CLI

Sun, 26 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I am a big fan of endoflife.date for finding out when a particular version of an OS, progrramming language DBMS or cloud service will go end-of-life or stop getting support.

uv tool run --from norwegianblue  eol python

Output Formats

The eol tool provided by the norwegianblue package supports a range of output formats including Markdown:

 uv tool run --from norwegianblue  eol gitlab --md | head -n8
| cycle |  release   | latest   | latest release |  support   |    eol     |
| :-----| :--------: | :--------| :------------: | :--------: | :--------: |
| 17.8  | 2025-01-16 | 17.8.1   |   2025-01-22   | 2025-02-20 | 2025-04-17 |
| 17.7  | 2024-12-19 | 17.7.3   |   2025-01-22   | 2025-01-16 | 2025-03-20 |
| 17.6  | 2024-11-21 | 17.6.4   |   2025-01-22   | 2024-12-19 | 2025-02-20 |
| 17.5  | 2024-10-17 | 17.5.5   |   2025-01-08   | 2024-11-21 | 2025-01-16 |
| 17.4  | 2024-09-19 | 17.4.6   |   2024-12-10   | 2024-10-17 | 2024-12-19 |
| 17.3  | 2024-08-15 | 17.3.7   |   2024-11-12   | 2024-09-19 | 2024-11-21 |

...and YAML:

# uv tool run  --with pyyaml  --from norwegianblue  eol ruby --yaml

...and JSON:

Print the version and release date of every version of nginx that is not EOL:

# uv tool run   --from norwegianblue  eol nginx --json | \
jq '.[] | select(.eol == false) | {cycle, releaseDate}'
{
  "cycle": "1.27",
  "releaseDate": "2024-05-28"
}
{
  "cycle": "1.26",
  "releaseDate": "2024-04-23"
}

For a version that is EOL:

# NGINX_VERSION="1.10"
# uv tool run --from norwegianblue eol nginx \
--json | jq --arg version "$NGINX_VERSION" \
'.[] | select(.cycle == $version) | .eol'
"2017-04-12"

Versions that are still getting support will look like this:

# NGINX_VERSION="1.27"
# uv tool run --from norwegianblue eol nginx \
--json | jq --arg version "$NGINX_VERSION" \
'.[] | select(.cycle == $version) | .eol'
false

004: 🧪 Testing ArchiveBox release candidate 0.8.5rc50 -- with uv

Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I found myself wanting to test out the v0.8 Release Candidate for ArchiveBox. Since setting a custom port is very easy, running multiple instances of archivebox is trivial:

uv tool run archivebox@0.8.5rc50 init

uv tool run archivebox@0.8.5rc50 manage createsuperuser

uv tool run archivebox@0.8.5rc50 server 6789

🎊 We are up and running!

Let's set up the rest of the dependencies:

uv tool run archivebox@0.8.5rc50 install

🧪 RSS Parsing

The improvements to RSS parsing are of particular interest to me.

🐘 Let's attempt to backup my toots:

uv tool run archivebox@0.8.5rc50 add --parser=rss --depth=1 https://infosec.exchange/@brie.rss

No dice: AttributeError: object has no attribute 'title'.

uv tool run archivebox@0.8.5rc50 add --parser=rss --depth=1 https://brie.dev/rss.xml

Errors were reported. The command completed successfully after several minutes but nothing appears in the UI.

AttributeError: object has no attribute 'updated_parsed'

🏆 I was successful in parsing my private and public Pinboard feeds.

It is interesting to observe some of the flags that are passed to Google Chrome:

--virtual-time-budget=15000 
--disable-features=DarkMode
--run-all-compositor-stages-before-draw 
--hide-scrollbars 
--autoplay-policy=no-user-gesture-required 
--no-first-run
--use-fake-ui-for-media-stream 
--use-fake-device-for-media-stream "--simulate-outdated-no-au='Tue, 31 Dec 2099 23:59:59 GMT'"
--screenshot "https://brie.dev/troubleshooting/"

🧪 Webhooks

Let's try adding one via the UI! It works. It looks like the version is not parsed properly in the user-agent that is printed in the webhook payload:

"--user-agent",
      "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/128.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/{VERSION} (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/)"

🐾 Next Steps

For my production ArchiveBoxes, I think I would definitely want to parse through the webhook payload to filter things so that...

I am notified of some failures
I get a digest of successful ingestions and updates

🔭 Observations

➕ The UI is a bit prettier and that's nice!
➕ Things go better when all dependencies have been met.

🕸️ ✋ 💯 HTTP 500

I can induce a HTTP 500 by...

attempting to delete a snapshot with any data saved
looking at any /change URL
leaving Referenced model blank when adding a webhook

📚 READmore

Congrats on being an enthusiastic internet archiver! 👌

003: 🐍 Notes and hints on using 🌞 uv

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I have been using uv since January 1st. In this post, I'll quickly go through some of my favorite things about uv.

🌞 Getting `uv`

It is not necessary to curl into your shell to get the uv executable. 🚀 There are releases available.

Using `uv`

🐍 Python console

uv run python3

🕸️ Web server

uv run python -m http.server
uv run python -m http.server 8888

🥺 Handling dependencies with `--with`

Let's say you want requests with that Python console

uv run --with requests python3

🧰 Using tools

uv tool run pastebin-bisque

uv tool run --from mitmproxy mitmweb

If the tool has not been used previously, it will be retrieved automatically and then executed. You can even specify the version to be used.

📜 Running scripts

 uv run --with argparse,datetime,passgen,faker,requests \
    python main.py --no-feature 4 lol.txt  dundermifflin.com

🔖 That's an example incantation of faux-credential-dump-generator.

🔭 What's next?

I'll continue using uv in earnest for the rest of the month at least. It has lived up to the promise of being a stand-in replacement for pip and friends. I have yet to find something in my workflow that is not supported by uv. I have not introduced any reliance on "uv only" ways of doing things.

My decision on how fully to adopt uv will depend on what path the community follows to an extent. I am rather happy on the road we are on at the moment.

📚 READ more

uv under discussion on Mastodon
UV — I am (somewhat) sold
uv - The Next Evolution in Python Packages? -- this is episode 453 of Talk Python['Podcast'] with guest Charlie Marsh

002: Pocket RSS Feeds in 2025 + ArchiveBox Scheduling

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

🆒 Pocket RSS

While I was working on my Pocket -> ArchiveBox automation, I noticed that ArchiveBox had an example for how to import from the RSS feed provided by Pocket. It looks like that is a feature that might now be defunct. Apparently, Pocket's RSS feeds have been discontinued. Pocket RSS purports to replace that functionality so I decided to give it a go.

I got an error the first time I attempted to authenticate.
I tried again and it worked. I got RSS and JSON feed URLs.

docker-compose run --rm archivebox schedule \ 
  --every=day https://pocket-rss.com/feed/blahblahblah

That's the command from the Scheduled Archiving docs that will be useful for where we left off yesterday:

Next, I’ll configure archivebox to ingest the file that is written to periodically.

🚀

The command to run will look like this:

docker-compose run --rm archivebox schedule \ 
  --every=day ./box/pocket-favorites.txt

🤭 The math checks out:

[!] With the current cron config, ArchiveBox is estimated to run >365 times per year.
    Congrats on being an enthusiastic internet archiver! 👌

✅

The "Pocket -> ArchiveBox" setup is complete and in "maintenance mode" now that it's operational. The functionality at Pocket RSS gives me an RSS feed of the things that I 💾 save in Pocket that I can save in ArchiveBox. The snippet that I wrote yesterday will give me a way to import the things that I ⭐️ favorite in Pocket so that I can bring them into ArchiveBox.

001: Pocket API + hands on with uv

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

I have made Pocket a part of my 2025: year of data. I have Pocket connected to exist.io. I want to have a copy of the items in Pocket that I care about. I want to solve that problem by saving my ⭐️ Pocket favorites in my ArchiveBox instance. Today, I wrote some Python to do exactly that: ⭐️ Save Pocket Favorites to a file.

Next, I'll configure archivebox to ingest the file that is written to periodically.

🔖 Bookmarked Along the Way

Pocket API: Retrieving a User's Pocket Data

🧰 `uv`

While I was at it, I gave uv a quick try: it's a tool that purports to be an extremely fast Python package and project manager, written in Rust..

Quoting the README:

Migrate to uv without changing your existing workflows — and experience a 10-100x speedup — with the uv pip interface.

It writes dependencies to pyproject.toml by default. That does represent a change in my workflow. I'll keep using it for a while because the highlights do sound interesting and I wrote a fair amount of Python.