What I'm up to - June 2025 - Philip I. Thomas

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media.

What I did in last month

On Contraption Company, I published An app of one's own about building a personal app for life automation, and How I built a chatbot with my dog about vibe coding.
Spent Memorial Day weekend in LA. Driving through the remains of the Palisades Fire was sad and eerie.
Recovering from a bike crash and subsequent wrist surgery. I'm navigating the world with one functional hand for the next six weeks.
Saw Craig Mod speak in San Francisco as part of his Things Become Other Things book tour. A topic that stuck with me from the talk: taste-skill gaps.
Been busy working on Chroma, and we published a blog about our usage-based billing systems.

Articles: Europe Built Trains, America Built Highways and Regret. In Washington, as in other American cities, homes for sports teams are the only kinds of homes that still get built - "Municipal leaders fixate on big-ticket projects because it takes so much money and time to obtain the necessary permission to do anything that only the big things are worth attempting." Slop is everywhere. A Visit to the ‘Best Bike Shop in the World’, The Claude 4 system card had some fascinating insights, including a self-preservation instinct for the LLM.
Books: The Optimist shared an interesting perspective on the current AI trend, including how Y Combinator missing out on OpenAI.
Shows: My recovery has been aided by The Pitt, Borgen, and the latest season of Clarkson's Farm - which are all fascinating for different reasons.
Videos: Fascinating design of the Virco 9000, America's school chair.
Tools: I have been using SuperWhisper to assist with my current one-handed life - It has been great. I saw many Reviver e-ink license plates in LA, though I still don't understand their purpose