Les Orchard <me@lmorchard.com>

The Model Context Protocol is an open protocol that standardizes how applications provide context to LLMs. The Model Context Protocol Server (MCP) integration enables using Home Assistant to provide context for MCP LLM Client Applications. For example, you can control your lights from Claude Desktop

A few days ago, I posted about a personal project that I've been working on for the last few weeks: Mr. Chatterbox, a chatbot trained from scratch on Victorian-era literature. I have to admit, I was totally blown away (and a little frightened!) by the reception. Whenever I post about personal projects, I'm used to them being politely ignored. The fact that this wasn't ignored surprised me mightily. I also received lots of questions about how Mr. Chatterbox had been trained, what tools I have used, whether he had been really trained from scratch or just fine-tuned, etc. I was only half-prepared to answer these queries because I was not expecting this to receive any attention! So, with what free time I had on an otherwise-busy family weekend, I sat down to write this narrative documentation.

Code Rush is a documentary following the lives of a group of Netscape engineers in Silicon Valley. It covers Netscape's last year as an independent company, from their announcement of the Mozilla open source project until their acquisition by AOL. It particularly focuses on the last minute rush to make the Mozilla source code ready for release by the deadline of March 31 1998, and the impact on the engineers' lives and families as they attempt to save the company from ruin.

A small part of me is sad at what is lost. A bigger part is excited about the possibilities of the future. I’ve always had more ideas than time or energy to pursue them. With AI at my command, the problem changes shape. I can comfortably take on complexity from which I previously shied away, and I can take a shot at any idea sufficiently formed in my mind to prompt an AI — a whole skill of its own that I’m actively developing.

A few years ago, I was looking for a way to add interactive code sandboxes to my Markdown files without embedding third-party iframes, like the ones from Codepen or Codesandbox. Those services are great and I use them all the time to share demos, but I’ve never been a fan of using them on a blog since you have to jump back and forth between your local Markdown file and an external site to make changes to the demos. Plus, they typically load lots of JavaScript.

Describe what you want to see and watch your feed compose itself around you.

As an actor or author you don’t send your body or stunt double to attend interviews or sell autographs at comic con. Don’t create a virtual double that posts for you on social media when you can’t be arsed or feel overwhelmed. Take that overwhelming feeling and write about it, showing the world that your mental health is as fragile as the one of the people who follow you and read your work. Be human and only there when you can be there.

You think of something new and express it - through a prompt, through code, through a product - it enters the system. Your novel idea becomes training data. The sheer act of thinking outside the box makes the box bigger.

A lot of people I speak to don’t realize that their tickets are now prompts, and if we continue using them the way we used them pre-AI, they will poison your context. The words on the ticket shape what an agent considers in scope and constrain its reasoning. A fragment produces fragment-shaped work.

J.K. Rowling has made it abundantly clear that she will continue using her fortune to harm transgender people.

Scientists have developed a breakthrough “superfood” for honeybees by engineering yeast to produce the essential nutrients normally found in pollen. In controlled trials, colonies fed this specially designed diet produced up to 15 times more young, showing a dramatic boost in reproduction and overall health. As climate change and modern agriculture reduce the availability of natural pollen, this innovation could offer a practical way to support struggling bee populations.