Andrew Shell's Weblog

In August, I paused my Keto diet. I was traveling a lot with my daughter for summer vacation, and you might be surprised to find it's hard to eat Keto at Circus World. I had plateaued and been out of ketosis for over three months (since the new job), so I'm guessing it's related to cortisol.

My plan was to restart once she started school again in September, but I haven't. It's disheartening because I've regained about 40 lbs from where I was in August. I started the diet back in October 2024, the Monday before Halloween. Maybe that's a good time to restart and recommit to my diet.

Just about a week ago, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during one of his college debates. Since then, a war has erupted between people who celebrated his death (or said they thought he had it coming) and those who believe that political violence is never acceptable. I've had a... Read more →

For the last few weeks, I've been playing around with Claude Code and have found it to be very useful. In particular, I've been leveraging it to modernize my RSS Cloud Server project, which has been on the back burner for several years.

It's very much AI-assisted and not "Vibe Coding" because I know specifically what I want to be improved, and I'm running everything through my extensive tests and doing code reviews. It's allowing me to take months of work and compress it into hours.

The biggest variable is that I'm so stretched with my new job that I haven't had the mental bandwidth for side projects. Using Claude Code has allowed me to start checking things off my to-do list and giving myself more margin.

I decided to share my ThothGPT System Prompt which I'll keep updated as it changes and evolves.

I've been using a variation of this prompt, first with ChatGPT and now with Claude for several months. It has been an indespensible tool in my recent journey of self development.

I could see myself writing a mini-book and/or video tutorial about my journaling process. If this seems interesting, please reach out.

Two weeks ago, I started a new role at PetPlace, and it's been incredible. The responsibility, the challenge, the potential for growth. Everything I'd hoped for. But there's been an unexpected side effect. I can feel myself getting close to burnout. This isn't your typical... Read more →