Just over 90 days ago I was laid up for a bit due to surgery and during that time I moaned, I groaned, then I got familiar with Claude Desktop and its MCP servers. The first most fabulous thing ever was that the symptoms tracker I built came up with a name for the health troubles that have dogged me since 2007. I started doing the OTC treatments for it, and wonder of wonders, most of the symptoms went away. A new lease on life as I’m about to turn sixty is pretty amazing.
Having turned the clock back twenty years, I had a go at Claude Code next, creating a fork of Chroma’s MCP server called Parabeagle. I’ve wanted to revive the Disinfodrome document indexing service that was shut down in February after NGOs and reporters all scampered for safety. I have one court case I am actively working, the Cicada 3301 vs. Michigan State University stuff, and there are a couple others I am quietly watching for various reasons.
There are two commercial things I am doing, both of which I expect to survive the AI bubble bursting, and both of which should actually do better in the event that the tariff circus triggers a serious recession. Both of them involve employing both ChatGPT for research and Claude for creating software. I haven’t said much about what they are and probably never will, there’s just a quiet anonymous Github account with some private repos.
But in public I am obviously pretty excited about what’s happening with AI, so let’s have a look at that.
Attention Conservation Notice:
Despite the AI bubble bursting there HAS been a massive change in how things are done. Corporations are trying and failing with it, but individuals who can handle change are doing well. This will be me musing about what I’m doing and which sources are influencing my thinking.
Development:
I stopped self-describing as a software developer over thirty years ago. I’ve done a bunch of stuff since then, often involving creating software, but I am an INTEGRATOR, my forte is taking a pile of stuff that might work together, and coaxing it to run steadily.
My Github had never been more than a dumping ground for random small utilities I’ve created or stuff I need to mirror between multiple machines. That all changed last summer, today the nealrauhauser Github account has live projects on it, and I’m trying to contribute more than just problem reports to other developers.
Parabeagle is in stable condition, but it needs a lot of work to take it to the next level. I’m going to integrate it with MindsDB so it’s a team oriented, web accessible service. That’s another thing that could be commercialized and I’ve been approached about doing just that. I’m not modding MindsDB, I forked it so I can learn more of this Python based system and its many connectors.
I’m keeping my fork of Memento-MCP up to date, since the author hasn’t touched it in six months, and memento-mod is there so I can learn TypeScript. Once I understand the particulars of that knowledge graph system, brainz will become a Python based MCP server that provides similar capabilities. It will likely follow the Parabeagle model, permitting users to switch between multiple graphs that do not overlap.
The Maltego and Substack SNA stuff are vaguely related. This is another area where I might get some commercial work, but it’s not nearly so far along as the other things I’ve mentioned.
Influences:
I’m doing this stuff because of Matthew Berman. After several false starts with various AI things, something he said got me moving. This is from memory, as I didn’t understand how important it was at the time, so I’m not sure which video has it. What he said was just an aside really, about the generational nature of AI usage.
Boomers - AI is a strange new search engine.
Millennials - AI is a new thing I can connect to familiar tools.
Zoomers - AI is an operating system, a whole new way to do things.
Yes, he really did just completely ignore Gen-X, but we’re used to that. Even so, I got the message - I had been looking for Millenial style use cases, but was basically stuck in Boomer mode. Hearing this at a time when I was first tinkering with Claude Desktop was auspicious. I found MCP, got a bit familiar with it, and then AI graced me with a new lease on life. I have not watched everything Matt does, but a good third of it proves to be important for me setting my direction.
I just discovered AI News & Strategy Daily by Nate B. Jones and I was immediately hooked. Several of the sections in this were immediately applicable. They confirmed what I am doing. They gave me insight into what I should be doing next. And half a dozen associates got messages from me containing this video, a timestamp where to start watching, and a closing “there will be a quiz”.
The Power Law of AI was personally really inspiring for me. I’ve always had this ability to easily do a certain set of tasks related to networks and sense-making that surprises other people. Things that are readily apparent to me are seen as amazing by others. I’d be amazed if this capability could be turned into a way to have much less inspiration, while cashing checks the same size as the other senior engineers here in the Bay Area receive.
Geopolitics:
The left side shows normal military flights over Europe, the right is from about 0200 on Sunday, October 5th. All of the ISR and C&C planes that have swarmed over Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states for the last month are still there, but they’ve turned off their transponders. There has not been an invocation of NATO Article 5 yet, but one must understand the Russian worldview - they’ve long thought themselves to be at war with NATO, and the “less than war” stuff they’ve been doing since Zapad 2025 IS war in their eyes.
Having survived Able Archer 83, I can recall when things were last this tense, but the Reagan administration was firmly in control of itself, despite the president’s decline. That is not the case in 2025. I think Putin has no choice to move, but when he does their oil industry will get hammered into tiny pieces in short order, effectively ending the Russian state as we know it today. I really hope we can avoid a nuclear exchange.
Closer to home, Trump has not been seen since Tuesday. Recall 25th Amendment from the start of September, the first time he disappeared and the world started wondering if he was dead or incapacitated. This photo from September 11th clearly shows a man who has had a stroke. Our sickly 4th Estate has partly accepted the spin about there being a problem of violence needing military intervention in large cities, but mysteriously only those that voted against Trump.
Even so, the Six Republican Factions are in the process of choosing sides and the succession process is going to be an embarrassing banana republic sort of thing, like the Charlie Kirk “mourning” expanded a thousandfold.
Conclusion:
The world is about to lose two strongman rulers who utterly depend on each other, and I know this only because I occasionally glance at various Signal chats during the day. I’m over here just trying to get enough beans for a burrito and it’s not moving as quickly as I had hoped, but the big picture is amazingly promising.
AI isn’t working for corporations. It is working for humans who can see ways to employ it. Picking up a pile of random tools and making something that pays the bills for a couple years is pretty much all I’ve ever done. If I can survive long enough to get to a specialist appointment in early December, I should be done with the last linger symptoms of that long term health problem. I’m very much hoping the world doesn’t burn to ash, because it really looks like 2026 is gonna be my year.
If you’re looking at this and scratching your head, here are some suggestions.
ChatGPT Plus is $20/month and it’s great for overall research, it has Projects so you can keep your stuff sorted, it remembers conversations, and it’ll write little programs for you if you need to curate some data. There is no MCP integration at this level, I think that starts with the $200/month Pro service.
Claude Pro is $20/month and it’ll work with both Claude Desktop and Claude Code. If you’re any sort of a developer, this is what you want to have. Both of those tools support MCP integration, it’s got Projects, but it does not do a good job of remembering past conversations.
I’ve played with Copilot, Gemini, Lumo, and Perplexity. None of them inspire me to spend money, except Lumo, which I have because it’s part of ProtonMail.
As a rule I’d say if you are not at least doing the $20/month ChatGPT, and feeling like you’re getting some serious value from it, you are behind the curve. This does not have to be an Apollo mission launch, you can Oregon Trail it just fine. You get up in the morning, put one foot in front of the other, and you’re twenty miles closer to your goal come sundown.
No matter how far down you are, that spending is a dividing line. Do whatever you must to come up with that first $20. I let my cell phone service die last month, partly for safety’s sake, but also because I get a lot more out of ChatGPT/Claude than I do a tiny tattle tale computer in my pocket.