Blog on Carles San Agustin

Managing My Reading List with a Claude Code Skill

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Disclaimer: Yes, this post was created with the help of AI — why not?

I’ve been experimenting with Claude Code skills lately, and one of the most practical ones I’ve built is a personal book manager. The idea is simple: instead of juggling Goodreads, spreadsheets, or sticky notes, I can just talk to Claude Code and it handles my reading list for me.

What It Does Link to heading

The books skill gives Claude Code the ability to manage a personal library backed by a local SQLite database. It tracks:

Speech-to-Text with Whisper and Claude Code

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 11:55:06 +0000

A Claude Code Skill for Audio Transcription Link to heading

Disclaimer: Yes, this post was created with the help of AI — why not?

Finding a good speech-to-text service that handles Catalan well is genuinely hard. Most commercial offerings treat it as an afterthought, and the results show. After one too many mangled transcriptions, I decided to solve this myself by writing a Claude Code skill that uses OpenAI’s Whisper model locally.

AI & RAG with Ollama and Milvus

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 11:55:06 +0000

Lab Journal: Exploring Our Small Language Model Workshops Link to heading

Welcome! This short blog post walks through the three hands-on workshops in this repository. Each lab builds on the same local toolkit—Milvus for vector storage, Ollama for small language models, and a few Python helpers—so you can experiment without leaving your laptop. Let us take a friendly tour.

Workshop 1: CSV Embeddings in Milvus Link to heading

CSV embeddings in Milvus repo

Small Language Models (SLMs)

Thu, 02 Oct 2025 13:35:06 +0000

SLM: Your Personal AI Coding Companion Link to heading

Run language models locally offline.

Meet SLM - the Small Language Models CLI tool: https://gitlab.com/carlessanagustin/slms

Features Link to heading

Offline-first: Cache models once, use anywhere (perfect for coding on flights!).
Docker-ready: One command deployment with make build && make run.
Developer-friendly: From quick one-liners to complex project analysis.
Configurable model collections! Use --use or --model-id.

Any comments?

Gempen Grinder 50

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 14:35:06 +0000

Today, I completed my first ever gravel bike competition.

In fact, it’s the first competition I’ve ever taken part in, in any sport, and I’m very proud of myself. I came 88th out of 124 competitors, completing the 54-kilometre course in two hours and 50 minutes. For 54 kilometres! I even beat my personal best time of three hours.

I’ll see if there’s another race coming up that I can enter.

GNews to Telegram notification system

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 14:36:06 +0000

I recently created a simple, free application that retrieves news items from the GNews API and checks if they have been read by comparing them to a file stored in the package registry. Any new articles are sent to a Telegram chat and saved in the package registry for future comparison. The application runs daily via GitLab Scheduled Pipelines.

Tools: Python, Gnews, Telegram, Gitlab Scheduled Pipelines and GitLab package Registry. Cost 0$.
Repository: https://gitlab.com/carlessanagustin/get_news

Welcome back to my personal website!

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 13:35:06 +0000

I’m back, with renewed vigor! 🚀

After a decade of adventures, since I started nomadalagana in 2004, my blog evolved into a freelance services website in 2015. Now, in 2025, I’m restarting this platform with renewed energy.

I’ve migrated everything to Hugo, an incredibly fast tool that allows me to focus on what really matters: creating content. Stay tuned, because great things are coming!

Thanks for being here. Let the new era begin! ✨

I am a MULTIPOTENTIALITE!

Tue, 06 Oct 2015 13:35:06 +0000

I have been many years believing I was a weirdofor my variety of passions and interests but see I’m not alone. After watching the video, I can say I’m a MULTIPOTENTIALITE:

[ted id=2341 lang=en]

There are three main “multipotentialite superpowers”:

Idea synthesis
Rapid learning
Adaptability

Here for more about “multipotentialite superpowers”.

Because it is not mandatory to specialise in one subject, because it is good to be flexible and be able to learn various topics, because I have no television for more than 10 years ago but I read books and manuals.

Management 3.0 and Workout courses

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 19:35:18 +0000

I recently attended three days of Management 3.0 and Workout training by Jurgen Appelo. I enjoyed the experience of learning and practicing with the latest techniques in managing teams; a much more humane way of working, closer to my values.

The course was taught by professionals such as Angel Medinilla, Angel Diaz-Maroto and Gabriel Prat who were able to give us the material as well as good examples.

It has also been very helpful to share the course with other professionals and their experiences.

Tutorial: Configuration Management - Vagrant + Ansible + Jenkins

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 18:05:54 +0000

Main target: Jenkins CI automatically installed in multiple environments.

Video tutorial on managing automatic configuration on local and remote environments with Ansible.

What is configuration management?

Configuration management (CM) refers to a discipline for evaluating, coordinating, approving or disapproving, and implementing changes in artifacts that are used to construct and maintain software systems. An artifact may be a piece of hardware or software or documentation. CM enables the management of artifacts from the initial concept through design, implementation, testing, baselining, building, release, and maintenance.

Adopting DevOps?

Mon, 13 Jul 2015 18:00:27 +0000

A quick list of benefits from adopting a DevOps culture in a software company. Each business role has its own needs and specific benefits:

Developers: Automated development environments for testing, experimenting and building quality software.
Operations: Automation also helps by eliminating human errors common in manual operations.
Test engineers: Can provision a test environment that is virtually identical to the production environment, resulting in more accurate testing and better ability to predict the performance of new releases.
Product managers: Thanks to the collaborative spirit of DevOps, teams actually care about business requirements and foster relationships with product managers.
Executives: It helps the organization deliver high-quality products and get them to market much faster than competitors using traditional methods of software development actions that impact the bottom line and build brand value.

From: https://blog.newrelic.com/2014/06/06/devopsbenefits/

Provisioning Docker container with Ansible

Mon, 08 Jun 2015 12:30:01 +0000

Here is a brief demonstration on how to provision a Docker container using Ansible Playbooks. It is an easy way of testing our containers and our playbooks too.

We need a Dockerfile and a Playbook YAML. Here is the Dockerfile:

FROM ubuntu:14.04
RUN apt-get update && \
 apt-get -y install software-properties-common && \
 apt-add-repository -y ppa:ansible/ansible && \
 apt-get update && \
 apt-get -y upgrade && \
 apt-get install -y git curl ansible && \
 mkdir /opt/myAnsible && \
 cd /opt/myAnsible
COPY doSomething.yml /opt/myAnsible/doSomething.yml
WORKDIR /opt/myAnsible
RUN ansible-playbook doSomething.yml --connection=local
CMD ["/bin/bash"]

Here is the playbook doSomething.yml:

Load maps on a Garmin GPS unit

Mon, 01 Jun 2015 18:00:07 +0000

GPS units can be bought with or without terrain maps.

How does a GPS work? Basically, terrain maps are placed at the bottom layer to help us see the levels, paths, etc. On top of it, we can see our loaded or current path and above an arrow indicating us and our direction. The rest is extra information I am not going to talk about.

In reality, there is no need for terrain maps when following a path (we can just follow the arrow and indications on the screen), but it is helpful to have a map under our track. Why? In case we want to change our route and see other paths, for example.

Nginx proxy for a Jenkins container

Mon, 25 May 2015 18:00:17 +0000

As a Mac user, Docker comes in as boot2docker. I don’t quite like using that interface; I prefer having a simple Ubuntu VM on my Vagrant environment where I can manage my containers from a pre-installed Docker. I like this arrangement because it allows me to keep updated on Vagrant, which is more useful for various environments and providers: VirtualBox, VMware, Docker, and Hyper-V. I chose Jenkins for this example:

At the end of the line, I have a default Jenkins container running and publishing on port 8080. To be able to see it from my Mac browser, I need to forward ports from the Vagrantfile (8080 to 80) and then Nginx (80 to 8080):

My Ansible repository

Thu, 21 May 2015 18:00:40 +0000

I created my own personal repository of Ansible Playbooks to help me automatically process those boring manual steps I keep doing when provisioning systems for my projects. It is a repository I will keep updating the more I get into provisioning projects.

The present roles are:

ansible: Install full Ansible server environment.
base: Install basic packages into a new Ubuntu server.
clean: Cleans a Ubuntu previous to export.
docker: Install full Docker environment.
elasticsearch: Install basic Elasticsearch.
hyperv: Install Hyper-V in a Windows machine and, through PowerShell commands, it’s possible to manage images and snapshots.
kibana: Install basic Kibana.
logstash: Install basic Logstash.
nagios: Install a full Nagios monitoring server and publishes the /etc/nagios3 folder into /vagrant for easy access.
samba: Install Samba environment and mounts a remote folder into the system.

Why did I choose Ansible between the other configuration management tools?

The body screams what the mouth keeps silent...

Tue, 03 May 2011 10:19:07 +0000

I would like to share this reflection with all of you:

“Illness is a conflict between the personality and the soul” — Bach

An interesting reflection by Nelson Torres, Doctor of Psychiatry (UCV) and expert in Psycho-neuro-immunolinguistics (PNIL) in Venezuela:

Many times…

A cold “drips” when the body cannot cry.
A sore throat “blocks” when it is not possible to communicate one’s afflictions.
The stomach burns when rage cannot find its way out.
Diabetes invades when loneliness hurts.
The body gains weight when dissatisfaction tightens its grip.
Headaches bring you down when doubts multiply.
The heart weakens when the meaning of life seems to be ending.
Allergies appear when perfectionism becomes intolerable.
Nails break when defenses feel threatened.
The chest tightens when pride enslaves.
Blood pressure rises when fear imprisons.
Neuroses paralyze when the inner child tyrannizes.
Fever heats up when defenses push the boundaries of immunity.
Knees ache when your pride refuses to bend.
Cancer kills when you grow tired of “living”.

And your silent pains? How do they speak through your body?