I did it ... with the help of OpenCode

I have been using Nushell for quite a number of years. It provides a unified CLI interface on various Linux distros and Windows. The learning materials for Nushell is surprisingly scarce. There is an HTML book on their web site but I would like to read either a paper book or a PDF on my ebook reader. I suspect at certain point they probably will publish the book (and I will definitely get a copy!) but before that, I have to get my hands dirty and compile the PDF file out of the markdown files from their GitHub repo. 

I have tried a few times in the past but there were alway some minor problems and I just did not have the time nor the patience to iron out all the tiny little problems. Today it suddently came to my mind that maybe this is exactly the kind of task for AI. So I fired up my OpenCode terminal, chose the free DeepSeek Flash model, and ask it to compile a PDF book using Quarto. In about an hour's trial and error (without my intervention at all), it produced a nicely formated PDF book of 329 pages!

I am amazed!

Get all Go modules up-to-date

 This is the secret weapon that I have been looking for. In the Rust ecosystem, there is the cargo commands. 

The final piece of the puzzle: Margins.jl

 With the arrival of margins.jl, the Julia ecosystem for data analysis is finally complete. 

Manjaro Immutable

 This is huge. Over the years, the only complaint I have got against Manjaro is that sometime the updates can break the system. It does not happen often but when it does, it is very annoying. I assume this will eliminate the breakage problem once and for all! 

Using yazi on Windows

 Yazi is my favorite file manager on Linux. On Windows, however, I have been having trouble with file previewing and file opening. Today I asked Google Gemini about this and the answer was:

---

3. Important Windows Requirement: file

Yazi uses the file command to determine if a file is "text" or "image." Windows doesn't have this by default.

• Recommendation: Install Git for Windows. It includes a file.exe utility.

• Tell Yazi where it is by adding this to your Nushell env.nu (open with config env):

  Code snippet

  $env.YAZI_FILE_ONE = 'C:\Program Files\Git\usr\bin\file.exe'

---

This actually solved the problem.

Agents.jl vs. Vanaha.jl

 Some very informative discussions here.

Introduction to Julia for R users

 Useful information for R users here.

This is another one.

NLRX tricks

 I just realized that it is possible to combine `runtime` and `stopcond` options to accommodate the situation that most NetLogo simulation runs can reach equilibrium but some cannot. In my case, I used the following code:

runtime = 300,

stopcond = "all? turtles [happy?]",

With amazing results. 

Vim + VSCode tips

 I find this post super helpful.

Vmware Workstation on Windows 11

 I finally figured out why Vmware Workstation virtual machines are so slow on Windows 11. Here are the steps:

1. Disable Hyper-V on Windows, following the instructions here. 
2. Install the virtual machine system.
3. If typing in the virtual machine is slow, the fix can be found here and here.

This is especially important because now Vmware Workstation is free for personal use. This is the instruction to follow. 

Some of my CLI environment set (before I forget)

 First, integrate Zellij into the default shell (https://zellij.dev/documentation/integration) such that as soon as a terminal program (alacritty in my case) is started, Zellij is started.

Second, tweak the Zellij configuration file to make the Nushell the default shell. This way, as soon as Zellij is started, Nu is also started.

Install Starship and integrate it with Nushell (https://starship.rs/guide/). This way, as soon as Nu is started, Starship becomes the default prompt. An example can be found here (https://starship.rs/config/)

Install Yazi and integrate it with Nu, as described here (https://yazi-rs.github.io/docs/quick-start).

The modern CLI stack

Useful article here. The Rust language has really made a difference!

I would also add Amp/Helix editor and Yazi file manager to the list. 

Useful themes for Nushell and Helix editor

 I like the Nord theme for Nushell from this repo and the Sonokai theme for Helix from this repo. 

The Great Linux Distro Dilemma

 This is an interesting review of the current Linux distro world. My current favorite is MX, which is Debian-based, very reliable, and totally no fuss. 

VMware workstation is now free for personal use

 I was thinking about renewing my VMware workstation license using grant money but then I find out that it is now free for personal use. But you do need to follow the instructions here and get rid of the old license information. 

Copilot for Obsidian

 Copilot is another nice Obsidian AI plugin. The other one is Smart Connections. 

Julia performance

 This article has a few valuable references for benchmarking Julia vs. R vs. Python code. 

Interactive visualization using Agents.jl

 From this post, it is straightforward to create an interactive interface that is similar to the one found in Netlogo. 

TidierData and dplyr

 TidierData is a Julia implementation of the dplyr R package. This post is very informative. 

How to use Visual Studio Code in a web browser

I find this post helpful. I have set up a vscode-server on my home workstation so that I can access it from multiple client machines. The Google Chrome Desktop also looks quite interesting and worth  further investigation.