It is starting to feel like spring here in Texas. The plants are still mostly dormant, but the air no longer smells like winter. Here and there, a splash of color from a bloom or a plant pushing up through the ground. A time for growth and change.
This newsletter is getting an upgrade. Up to now, it's been a weekly note letting you know I published a new blog post. That's fine, but I have more to share with you than a link. Going forward, you will get a quick update on what I've been working on, what I'm learning, and anything interesting I've found during the week.
This week, I took an interest in local AI. These are smaller models that run on my MacBook Air through a tool called Ollama; no special hardware or network connection needed. There is an opportunity for local AI to power small but meaningful automations. I vibe-coded a prototype, letting an AI write the code while I steered with feedback. The result wasn't perfect, but it has potential. I'll be writing more about the experience soon.
I also spent time this week finishing up drafts for all 25 posts in my SQL for Python Developers series. I'm excited to share them with you. I'll be doing some editing work over the next few weeks and will have them queued up soon.
And of course, I published the 9th post in the series this week, on optimizing resources by limiting your results with a WHERE clause.
What I'm Learning This Week
I've been working through a learning roadmap on RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and vector databases. I was taking a broader LLM engineering course, but I realized I wanted to go deep on one thing instead of wide on many. Vector databases feel like the natural next step after SQL, and I'm already seeing how the concepts connect. More on this as I dig in.
I'm trying something new with this newsletter. Do you like it? What do you want to hear more about? Hit reply and let me know, or find me on LinkedIn, Bluesky, or Mastodon.
-Jamal