Jacob Emcken

De-stressing with Lego

The last couple of years, I’ve been finding stress at work more often than I’d like. Apparently, experiencing problems, having the skill to address it, but not being allowed to, is something that really gets to me.

So much that I don’t even feel like working on side projects, open source and writing posts on my blog.

Enter Lego

A local AI setup using Ollama and Open WebUI

Until recently, my AI usage has been limited to ChatGPT and a bit of Midjourney.
No Copilot, no Claude, no nothing.

The most serious thing I’ve used AI for, was getting ChatGPT to give feedback on paragraphs for new blog posts, and Midjourney to help create featured images for blog posts.

The few times I’ve tried using AI (read ChatGPT) for programming related stuff, I very quickly got frustrated with the lack of quality in the responses. To be fair, I’ve mainly wanted it to create Clojure code, and Clojure’s niche status and very different syntax are likely the main reason. That, and the fact that ChatGPT is the “wrong” tool for the job.

Anyway, I’ve acquired some hardware to build a local AI, including a second-hand Nvidia RTX 3090 with 24Gb vRAM, and I thought I’d document and share my progress so far.

Stumble upon in June 2025

I have started a journey to disentangle myself from Big Tech — at least partly. So far, I’ve avoided boarding the Facebook train altogether (including Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok). And after finishing the book “Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams (recommendable by the way), which describes her experiences from inside Facebook, my JOMO choice feels even better. Apparently, friends and family still invite me to their birthdays using alternative (old-fashioned) means 😅 You know, like phone calls, SMS, and sometimes even face-to-face — weird!

Consistent code style for Clojure function definitions

A Clojure function is often defined with name and arguments on a single line:

(defn some-function [with-several arguments]
  ...

and the following post is about why I will advocate for a multi-line alternative:

(defn some-function
  [with several arguments]
  ...

Trust, not surveillance, cultivates freedom

I remember the feeling it triggered when I heard a Danish politician claim:

“With surveillance, freedom increases.”

— Nick Hækkerup, 2019