How It’s Made: Sapphire Paw

Having seen similar pages🌎, maybe it’s worth writing something about how sapphirepaw.org is made.

I sit at Virtual Desktop 1 with my main account, open a terminal, head to the directory where I’m going to write, and open the file in gVim (Linux and formerly Windows) or MacVim.  If it’s an article, then the first command is :read template.html.twig but otherwise, I open something for reference to get the bones, and start writing.

There’s a “front matter” that I’ve hacked in, because it was a useful concept for adding a few features like the publication date.  In practice, it looks like this:

{#
    "title":"How It’s Made: Sapphire Paw",
    "navTitle":"How It’s Made",
    "written":"2026-05-09"
#}

It’s a Twig comment with JSON inside.  The CMS knows to look for it, and to parse it as JSON.  The CMS itself is pure hand-written PHP, last edited before LLMs were powerful enough to even seem useful.  That, in turn, is ultimately derived from some PHP that was written in about 2006.

The text itself comes out of my brain and is pushed into the computer through, at least over the past decade or so, a ~2026 Logitech K250 Bluetooth (not the other K250, apparently); a Microsoft Natural 4000; or a Microsoft Wireless Keyboard 3000 v2.0.

I generally run across an idea somewhere, scribble it on a sticky note, and put it on my desk to write about.  This system helps things get written, because they’re in view and taking up space I can get back by finishing posts.  This is the same tracking system for Decoded Node🌎 to keep posts flowing “weekly when available” there.  In a rare peek behind the scenes, there are currently four notes:

1. no AI (this post, actually)
2. it’s time to go to Debian (copy fail 2 / dirty frag thoughts)
3. LLM as ‘malware’ - this is an intelligent attacker (DROP DATABASE production;)
4. thrift is a virtue (much-delayed response to a podcast)

My goal overall, with Sapphire Paw and to some extent Decoded Node, is to write in my own voice, which necessarily needs me to bring my own thoughts and creativity.  I’m not chasing fame, impressions, money, or influence, so there’s no point in “doing numbers” by putting up some warmed-over salad.🥗 Rather, I want informative, or at least opinionated (if occasionally crotchety) writing.  My Articles page doesn’t say “joyfully and unapologetically biased” as a joke.  Well, okay, it does, but it’s a serious kind of joke.

The only possible exception to this is if a space thriller/romance story appears here.  In that case, I did work on the plot outline with the assistance of a local LLM, as part of a set of experiments on whether local models are any good.  (tl;dr: no.)  However, the cringey scenes and bad writing would still be all my own.

I’m a craftsperson at heart; I can’t bring myself to accept LLM-quality output.