Author: Ross Wintle

This lo-fi ambient music mixer is very cool. Scroll right down. Probably best on desktop?

https://www.midlife.engineering/

By which I mean… for a £20 pocket-sized keyboard it’s surprisingly good.

Way better than typing on a screen. But clearly not something you’ll type War and Peace on.

That’s an iPhone 13 mini in the photo, for the size comparison.

This is just brilliant from @rachelcoldicutt.bsky.social. It's five years old. But so much resonates with me RIGHT NOW

"Delinquent Telephone Activity – Let’s make a scene and rebel against Big Tech"

https://medium.com/careful-industries/delinquent-telephone-activity-f75f815d6e9a

Party in a shared Google Doc sounds like weird fun. A great write up…

https://onezero.medium.com/party-in-a-shared-google-doc-d576c565706e

RE: https://scottodon.com/@skc/115957612396522002

I don't know what this is – do you?

Apparently the NYT has a new 2-player word game. So just a note that I too have a 2-player word game that’s free, no download, no login, no tracking.

It won’t be as good as NYTs but it has all the benefits listed above.

You play by passing web links back and forth!

https://words.pico.games/

Discovered the handmade, privacy-aware, in-browser "delphitools" today. Generators, converters, image tools. All happens in the browser. Really good.

https://tools.rmv.fyi/

h/t Click'n'Clacks: https://newsletter.clicksnclacks.com/subscribe

I have found this little tool invaluable recently. I guess, sadly, I’ve internalised thinking in social media posts a bit. I often want to get a thought out by posting it in short-form.

This little app gives me the relief and buzz of posting something, but without the risk of sharing things I shouldn’t.

(Although, as I have mentioned before, I'm sure that one day I’ll post to the wrong app and regret it!!)

I've coded up a little private journalling app that's like a one-person social network. I've called it "YouSky”. It's free.

https://yousky.veryuseful.app/

It has replies and hashtags. Works kinda like you expect. Pretty basic. But does a job.

This is 100% private. No servers. No tracking. No cookies. All data stored in your browser.

You can export to a JSON file if you want to backup or move your data.

RE: https://phpc.social/@ramsey/115948619533304726

I’m sure the words and the photos are from different press releases…

My kids are so much more excited about watching a movie on BluRay disc than streaming a movie.

CAN I PUT IT IN?

CAN WE WATCH THE EXTRAS?

WHAT DOES IT SAY ON THE BOX?

Wonderful.

I’m gonna shut up about LLMs and vibe coding now.

For all my skepticism of new AIs and my many objections, I like to think I’m curious and open minded.

The experiment is done. My thoughts are out of my head. Back to normal.

And yes, yesterday I was telling you not to do this. You still shouldn't! Unless, like me, you know what you're doing.

I can because I've been here before and have a system that lets me do it without risk.

This whole process has only reinforced my opinions from yesterday.

Yes, despite being an AI doom-speaker, I tried using a app-builder to make a simple, social-media-like, private, journalling web app.

This post explains what I did and why, and outlines the development process I took, including the point at which I decided the AI wasn't up to it and started making it manually. 🤷

https://rosswintle.uk/2026/01/building-a-1-person-social-media-web-app-with-llms-ai/

The app has no instructions, but you can try it out. It’s all private local data. No login. You can see it at https://yousky.veryuseful.app/

RE: https://crikey.social/@ross/115918360331356251

Regarding this, I have literally seen a public web app app today that lets me type any message I like into a box and have it saved as content on a URL on the internet that I can send.

Totally anonymous.

All fun and well-intentioned stuff. But no thought about the implications.

Does the LLM not ask if you are really sure this is a good idea?

Apparently not.

“Like ‘slop’ text, images and videos, the ability to create small, personal apps and websites with LLMs is fascinating. But I don't believe it's ultimately good for the creators or for the users.”

https://rosswintle.uk/2026/01/trust-me-you-dont-want-to-make-little-personal-apps-especially-not-like-that/

I've been writing this on-and-off all weekend. Much longer than I thought it would be.

Lol. I asked Base44 (AI app builder) to re-write my simple app that I got it to generate as a single-file HTML + AlpineJS app rather than a React app with a build process.

The output start like this…

export default function Home() {
return (
<div dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{ __html: `
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@collinsworth/115905649117385860

This is very good. Well done Josh on both the dadding and the writing.