My ranking of In Flames discography as of 12/3/2025. Subject to change based on re-listen or mood change.
Unranked: Lunar Strain because Anders = In Flames
My opening entry on this relaunched blog was discussing how I recently did some self-learning with AI using Google's Gemini CLI. That work really sparked an enthusiasm for me to keep working with AI, and my focus was around summarizing news headlines which I continued to work on automating. My first versions were just simply outputting the headlines in command line and wrapping them in the "cowsay" command. (Think: echo $daily-news | cowsay ). But, before I knew it, I found myself thinking this should be better served as a web platform where people could get a quick update of daily news. I made pretty quick and early progress, and my inspiration to keep working towards building something tangible continued...
I was able to use AI to help me get started by solving some challenging code logic, creating some website graphics, and even setting up an automation pipeline to generate updates on a daily basis. It was honestly very enlightening to me to see how fast somebody with some motivation could use AI effectively to bring an idea to fruition. AI has some scary potential impacts, and some uses that I think we need to be careful about instrumenting. But, the simple point is that I could not have brought this idea to life without it. I can write code, yes. But it would have taken me weeks to do this without AI just from the technical perspective, not to mention graphics, publishing, etc.
With this backstory, I'd like to announce Cow Says Daily News.com. The name represents my early use of the cowsay command brought to a more modern web-based experience... CSDN was launched this week, and I've been making some fine tuning/tweaks since launch. I hope people try it and enjoy using it. It was fun to build, and if it's helpful at all, I'll take that as icing on the cake. Feel free to check it out. Bookmark it if you like, or subscribe to receive a daily email update of top news headlines.
🐮https://www.cowsaysdailynews.com
Overall, I'm really happy with what's been built. CSDN is certainly a labor of love, but one that I wanted to bring to fruition. Although the experience was entirely educational on my part, I think there's a chance people might actually use it and get a benefit from what it can do. Here's our chief correspondent!
I chose the Ghost.org platform to host the site, largely because I'm a big fan that they are open sourced. I also wanted to open source my code that gathers news and brings CSDN to life. So, if you're interested in checking it out, here's the Github Repo.
Thanks for reading
I’ve been trying to make a more focused effort recently to dedicate at least a portion of my Fridays to getting “hands on” with new tech. This effort usually ends up taking a back-burner unfortunately because my work has been pretty busy recently. I maybe get around to trying out new tech 1 Friday a month. Today though, I was able to spend a few hours and it has been a particularly fun thread to dive into! So much so, in fact, that it has me inspired to reboot my personal blog here on Substack. :-)
Today I decided it was finally time to give the Gemini CLI a real test drive…
Sure, I’ve installed the Gemini CLI a few times and given it some basic tire-kicking in my CloudShell on the GCP console. This time though, I wanted to try out some real use cases and get to some more technical outcomes. I did some searching around and finally started out by running through this codelab which really did a nice job showing how you could take AI to the next level. There’s just something fun about running advanced AI tooling within a terminal environment. Look how cool it is. You feel like Neo hacking the Matrix just by using the tooling.
In less than 30 minutes, I had set up my environment, used AI to query and summarize news articles from the command line, and set up connections to MCP servers for Github and BigQuery natural language tooling. It was immediately useful. I was querying and summarizing news articles. I was such a fan of the output that myself instantly wanted to have this output to start my day:
✦ Here’s a summary of the latest news in the US today, November 7, 2025:
Government Shutdown and its Impact:
The US is experiencing its longest government shutdown in history, leading to significant disruptions. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has reduced flights by 4% in “high-volume markets” to maintain air traffic control safety, potentially causing thousands of flight cancellations and delays at major airports across the country, including Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Orlando, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Houston, and Chicago.[1][2] The Trump administration has also asked for an emergency pause on a judge’s order to fully fund SNAP benefits.[3][4]
Developments Related to Donald Trump:
* The Supreme Court has allowed Trump to block passport sex markers for transgender and non-binary people.[5][6][2]
* Trump pardoned Glen Casada, a Tennessee Republican convicted of federal public corruption charges.[5]
* New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Trump loyalist, announced her bid for New York governor.[5][7]
* The Trump administration reached a deal with Cornell University to restore research funding.[3][7]
* Trump is expected to meet with Hungarian leader Viktor Orban at the White House.[8][3]
* There are ongoing discussions and analyses regarding Trump’s popularity and the impact of the government shutdown on his administration.[5][1][2]
Other Notable News:
* The death toll from a UPS plane crash at Louisville airport has risen to 13.[5][2]
* The NCAA has banned six men’s basketball players for manipulating performances in a betting scheme.[5][1]
* Dallas Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland died at the age of 24.[5][6][4]
* Seven people fell ill at Joint Base Andrews after a suspicious package was opened, leading to evacuations.[1][7][9]
* An immigrant was sentenced to time served in Wisconsin after a judge allegedly helped him dodge ICE agents.[5][1]
* A film festival in New York was canceled after China put pressure on directors.[5]
* The Senate is preparing for a key vote on a new approach to end the government shutdown.[4][7]
* Elon Musk’s new pay package was backed by Tesla voters.[9]
