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Argv.Now

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What is this /Now page about and why?
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A “Now Page” is an idea attributed to Derek Sivers. It’s a page on a person’s website that explains what the individual is currently focused on in their life. Made to give a summary and status update similar to what one might tell a friend they haven’t seen in a year, a “Now Page” provides a big picture that isn’t typically conveyed by other social media updates. It offers a reminder of their priorities and can help in refocusing or decluttering their current tasks or agendas. The idea behind this isn’t for business benefits, but for personal reflection and information for those curious about them.

about nownownow.com

2025
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June 30
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Geeking out on:

  • Browsers: It’s set that The Browser Company is killing their Arc browser project . It’s the best browser I’ve ever used, but apparently they’re investing all their resources on their Dia browser . I don’t think Dia browser is a daily driver, and instead it should only be used for research. I’m planning an exit plan. (Maybe Zen Browser is next? ) not sure how I feel about Firefox at this moment.
  • I’ve been using Raycast since May, and it has improved my experience on MacOS by 100%. No more trackpad gestures and trying to find the program I need, less Cmd+Tab and multiple desktop arrangement madness, less mouse involved. Everything is there, available with 1 keybind! I wish I had known it earlier!
  • Tinkered with a couple of custom MCP servers/clients setup also in Raycast, ended up needing to know UV, the new python package/dependency manager , and so far it’s excellent. I think I can safely migrate from poetry now.

Interesting reads:

  • Your brain on ChatGPT : MIT Researchers found in a preliminary study, how cognitive debt piles up and we tend to engage and strengthen our skills less and less, the more we use ChatGPT for certain tasks, because we’re essentially delegating “the task of thinking” to it, resulting in less retention, less capacity for recollection of our work (In this case, the control groups were tasked to write an essay). In my words, I’d say “We don’t fully own our work”.
  • A couple of very interesting, and coincidentally related videos:

May 27
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Website Migration

I’m moving back from Notion + Super.so, and this WIP website is currently the backbone of the future product of this migration.

Geeking out on, learning

in 2023, I tried to learn the Rust programming language just for curiosity, but it didn’t turn out to be more than a 2-week mental gymnastics exercise “regime”, since I didn’t have a specific purpose in mind, other than “Let’s see where this gets me”.

I’ve been learning Golang since April, but this time with projects in mind. So far I’ve done:

2024
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July 27
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  • /now pages: Trying to figure out a way to “condense” all this /now pages - They are scattered and I’d like to have them condensed in a more organized manner. There are jewels in previous entries that I just don’t want them buried in a dark corner of this site.
  • This website: It is now 70% done, with the Knowledge Center being the last piece I want to put together. It’ll be a large section…
  • AI Usage: Just discovered Daniel Miessler’s Substrate project and I’ve been pondering “what if” we had a personal second brain by leveraging AI (Not just cool tools like Notion)…
  • Cybersecurity: Setting up Deepfence Threat mapper (An open source CSPM tool) - Haven’t had time to dive too deep into it but so far it has features that really interest me.
    • Maybe in the future I can integrate it with Wazuh SIEM to enhance the best of both worlds.
  • Cybersecurity & Homelab Projects: I’m restructuring my “second brain” in Notion - Too many ongoing, past, backlog research & implementation projects to process - This week I improved my own knowledge & project system to only focus on 2-3 non-critical exploratory projects at a time.
    • Might document them somewhere in this website.

Watching & Reading:

  • Devouring Joe Rogan’s Podcast with Jordan Peterson:

Joe Rogan Experience #2180 - Jordan Peterson

  • Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act

Music:

  • Improving my guitar picking technique - A lot of bad habits I need to fix that prevent me from playing faster.
  • I’m obsessed with Slice the Cake’s Odyssey to the west album and its deeply symbolic lyrics. In my opinion, a masterpiece of modern Technical & Progressive Deathcore - It’s been ringing in my head for most of July now..

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVfJ1cseBY4&list=PLULo9PhjRDXiItDmjyihY7jEKoL26At_I

July 16
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Random

Week 3 of Going Carnivore. So far everything is very good. My sleep is improving enormously. No more insomnia. I sleep 6.5 hours on average. Not because I want or need to; I just go to sleep when I feel like sleeping, I wake up whenever my body wants to (This days it’s been 6:30 - 7:00 am which is awesome).

June 23
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Geeking out on

Kubernetes:

  • Learning Kubernetes the proper way, with the goal of understanding how to actually implement a proper security monitoring for a cluster/node, and what is K8s’ threat model. I’m not yet deep into Managed K8s like AKS/GKS/AKS/etc. because although they are still container clusters, they’re more abstracted from the developer/admin and the rules change a little bit there.

Kubernetes Security:

  • For this I’m using Falco, trying to incorporate its logs and alerts to Wazuh SIEM. Haven’t accomplished it yet, as I need to figure out how to implement Filebeat, or falcosidekick to either:
    • Route syslog events to Wazuh, or
    • Route raw JSON events to Wazuh by creating custom decoders (I don’t know if I will need to do that yet)

Wazuh SIEM:

  • I also upgraded my homelab’s Wazuh server to the latest version 4.8, and I’m liking it so far, but I’m having trouble with the vulnerability management visualization. Everything else is awesome.
  • Trying out and integrating SOCFortress’ Copilot for friendly visualization of events/alerts.

Random

  • Started Carnivore diet on June 20. I have high expectations of it, primarilly because I’ve done it in the past, and I remember my body and mind felt like a Formula 1 car in 2018/2019. I’ve also been binging Youtube for testimonies about Carnivore diet and I deeply resonate with them. Mainly this guy  and This guy . It’s just insane. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t experienced it before.

The main reason I’m doing it is because:

  • I’ve gained weight, and I’ve indulged way too much in the past 2 years.
  • Burnout, depression, brainfog, constant stupid anxiety and dread REALLY have become so serious it’s a top priority thing to treat. Also, being an IT professional requires a very structured and disciplined thinking to make good decisions and tackle multi-level challenges, so I really need a well-tuned brain to be efficient and not overwork so I have time and energy for other things.

I may blog, or publish results someday…

  • Considering Air Fryers for my meals: I had my doubts about air fryers but my kitchen is full of grease and I need to clean it twice a day, and if an air fryer reduces this mess, then I’ll be the happiest. I hate being stuck on small things like cleaning a greasy stove with grease all over the place, so the emotional ROI might be worth it.
  • Perfume: Still rocking lattafa Wajood. It’s slowly becoming my go-to. It’s not my favourite but I’ve been wearing it a lot this past few months.

Pondering

  • I’m not 100% convinced on how this Hugo website looks, but I’m not willing to spend the next few days deciding on a new platform, testing, and countless hours on this. I may just revamp it to a more easy to read HTML/CSS formatting.

May 4
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  • Added AI Groq API to my tool Termbot ; I’m still testing it, but so far is super fast (Approximately 50% faster than OpenAI API for GPT-4 Model).

Geeking out on

  • Getting theoretical about Cybersecurity: Taking the NIST RMF and SP 800-53 courses at nist.gov .
  • Planning to “open source” my Debian setup. After the 5th time in my life setting up my debian installation, it’s now a hassle more than it is joyful..
  • I’m very surprised by Pi.ai  - For me it’s like another ChatGPT but it seems to have a great way to be more “human” and supportive.
  • Notion AI Q&A  seems like a very promising feature!
  • Reading through the MITRE D3FEND Matrix

Pondering

  • How, in popular culture (Movies specially), the “God” figure is portrayed as a humble, often poor and quiet character, while the Devil is associated with elegant, educated, wealthy, charismatic, and bad ass characters… ¿?
  • Very interesting idea from Dan Koe :

“Discipline Comes From Clarity, Not Force. (…) It’s not something that’s supposed to be difficult. It is the byproduct of knowing what you want and accepting nothing less from yourself. It is the byproduct of an ordered mind. That is, maintaining a clear vision for your future and filling clarity gaps with education and action. (…)” - Idea taken from his latest newsletter.

I always thought “trying” to discipline ourselves was itself a losing battle; this same “try” means implicitly that we don’t really want to do something. It’s a downhill mental battle. Joseph Murphy  urges us to stop implying effort; to stop implying mental blocks. When we recognize a mental block, we’re literally fortifying a block in our minds.

Interesting Reads

  • Reading The Universal Cloud Threat Model by Securosis . MUST READ for Cloud Security professionals. May write about this insights in the future.
  • Alex Hormozi’s unconventional common sense about work  in one of his videos has made me realize how superstitious we become about rituals, and what we really need to live fully. I mean, is a “morning routine” the definitive setup for hyper-productivity and stress-free life, or is it just another “standard” we set up with ourselves, and when conditions aren’t set, we feel miserable, and since we decided we “depended” on this ritual, the whole day is ruined? Again, our own beliefs working against us. I just decided I wouldn’t really need to “try to” (Read above) be disciplined. It seems like common sense but maybe we shouldn’t care if it is Wednesday, Sunday, if it’s 5 am, 2pm or 11 pm, if the stars aligned correctly; just get things done and relax/go out whenever we need to.

Random

  • Perfume: Rocking Lattafa’s Wajood . I never understood what “salty”, “marine” profiles meant in perfumery, but now I completely get it with this one; this is definitely “marine”. It doesn’t seem to be compared with Tom Ford’s Oud Minerale by other people, but I think it’s very similar, or at least with the same profile.

April 19
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Geeking out on

  • Improved my command line efficiency by 100x with Zoxide. Zoxide + FZF  = 🔥
  • Demo by Dreams of Autonomy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aghxkpyRVDY&pp=ygUMbGludXggem94aWRl

  • More new Linux CLI tools I’m using that are helping me a lot:
    • TheFuck
    • “cat” replacement: Bat
    • “ls” replacement: Exa seems no longer maintained, but Eza
  • Perplexity.ai pro perplexity.ai
  • Started using pipx instead of poetry > pipx

Pondering

  • ROI for using public AI LLMs like ChatGPT, GPT4 API, Perplexity, etc. Looking at the benefits, one of the significant upsides offered by AI tools is the tremendous time-saving efficiency. These tools can expedite such tasks as content creation, coding, finding answers, and providing work assistance. The speed factor empowers you to accomplish more in less time, even if the AI output may need a bit of fine-tuning. Also, the quality and accuracy of AI-generated content can enhance the caliber of our work. Sometimes the machine output might not be perfect, but it’s often high-quality, well-researched, and accurate (It all depends on our prompt engineering skills).

Opportunity Cost: Imagine what else you can achieve using the time you’ve freed up from offloading tasks to AI – you could pursue higher-value work, learn new skills, or perhaps better manage your work-life balance. But as with anything, there are risks and challenges associated with AI tools too. These involve privacy concerns, inconsistent results requiring fact-checking, and require a learning curve to best utilize the AI optimally. Taking into account all these factors, you can accurately assess the net benefit that AI tools bring to your situation.

  • Efficiency: As I use AI LLMs as my “copilots” for a lot of tasks, a limitation I see is not in my tools, but in my ability to think clearly, state problems clearly, communicating clearly, and typing fast which require some time and effort at times. This is definitely an interesting “problem” - I’m way slower than my AI Assistants…

Now Reading & Researching

I keep reading “The science of getting rich” by Wallace Wattles. It’s been challenging my mindset by allowing me to “see” growth and progress around me (My profession, industry, etc.). My default is towards negative emotions so a more positive and a mood that literally focuses on opportunity and abundance is a huge mindset; at least to have a comparing perspective and standpoint of things. Gratefulness is of course a huge thing to practice always.

April 6
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Geeking out on

  • Using krita  for Doodling this website’s figures with my old Wacom stylus.
  • Tried Neovim  but didn’t like it - Way too many bells and whistles. I’m staying with Vim for now.
  • Unleashing the power of Linux Aliases for Termbot , weaver  and other tools. I don’t know if I’m becoming lazy but I’m way faster in my workflows.
  • Reviving little by little my knowledge center in Notion  - Considering moving everything to Gitbook; the custom domain “hack” by fruition isn’t working for me. It’s A LOT of work and the unmemorizable URL defeats its purpose (Quick access, quick review).
  • Using snyk  for security scanning my Python projects.

Pondering

  • Vulnerability Management feels Archaic and something that needs a modern approach. Pondering about Alan Weiss’  idea of “Cyber Security being a habit”.
  • About the real future of professionals and human potential and AI. Check this out:

Random

April 1
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Doing

  • Polishing my Python Skills to build useful tools like termbot  and other WIP projects.
  • I’ve been glued to Perplexity.ai  and ChatGPT  for some time now to try to make the most of them.
  • Tinkering with OpenAI and Anthropic’s APIs (Python SDKs).
  • Rebuilding my Homelab (Which I may write about someday).
  • Waiting for a good Sci-Fi movie to be released…

Books & Study

Amazing book, basically about encouraging readers to enter the “growth mindset” - The idea of contrasting mindsets like coping vs. thriving, creative vs. competitive, and constricted vs. expanding. In Stoic philosophy, there is the concept of focusing on what is within one’s control (thriving mindset) vs. worrying about external circumstances beyond one’s control (coping mindset)[1]. Buddhism also emphasizes accepting reality and detaching from desires and aversions. Coping vs. Thriving. More recently, author and entrepreneur Michael Gerber contrasted a “technician mindset” focused on daily tasks and putting out fires (coping) with an “entrepreneur mindset” focused on vision and growth (thriving). Coping vs. Thriving. Other thinkers like Robert Greene, Carol Dweck, and Tony Robbins have also popularized the idea of an abundant, growth-oriented, creative mindset leading to “thriving”, as opposed to a scarcity-based, fixed, competitive mindset leading to “coping”. Definitely a short book to be devoured, and digested more than once.

Great book which is a mix of old self-help (Like 7 habits of highly-effective people, which actually has the same structure), but condensed into quick and easy to follow everyday life actionble steps to become:More engaged with our everyday life and increase our energy levels and happiness.More “prolific” in the quality output in our work (And discovering what our PQO - “Prolific Quality Output” actually is) Sounds corny but it’s as useful as we make it.

Random

Articles & Researching

Random Cybersec & IT reading material:

J Armando G
Author
J Armando G
Cybersecurity & General Tech Enthusiast