ben

Hey! I'm Ben. Check out my website to learn a bit more about me: www.concourse.codes

gemini 3.8's take on a frutiger aero "early web" town site for pittsfield, ma not as interactive as claude sonnet's but i did appreciate the SVG placeholder of the "mt. greylock live vista" considering that does not exist on the real pittsfield site nor did i prompt that peep: pitsfield.yay.boo

claude sonnet 5.5's take on a town website per my (random) specs. check it out here: pitsfield.yay.boo #webdev #ai #softwaredev #html

asked 10 ai models to make a frutiger aero "early web" webpage for the city of pittsfield, massachusetts. it needed to include a 'town square' live visitor feature, some msg board, some image dithering option (cuz why not), and selectable color themes. only one got it right: pitsfield.yay.boo

thinking of making a climate-oriented hackathon type group. anyone interested in joining? #greensky #webdev #climate #softwaredev

proud to share that my climate-focused "LLM as RSS" news dashboard v1.0 is officially up! feel free to check it out & lmk whatcha think :) newsdash.concourse.codes #greensky #webdev #software #climate #ai

can anyone share insights on their experiences on using VS Code + GitHub Copilot versus Claude Code or Codex? Trying to assess how useful these harnesses are #webdev #softwaredev #dev #code #ai

still working on my AI-powered climate news dashboard that gets all the local news from X location and puts it in one place. Nothing mind blowing but pretty cool to see it come together #greensky #webdev #softwaredev #webapp #climate #dev

is it a pursuit of passion or fear of failure that is having me spend hours on my lil AI-assisted climate news dashboard side project... without sharing with anyone. remains to be seen #softwaredev #devsky #software #sideproj

just dropped a smooooth Liquid DnB track for the first single on my new eco-centric / solarpunk hiphop & dnb project - "CyberSolar;; Grass is Greener" peep 'cyber nutrients' ya dig!! any support is appreciated as well 💙 stoicdapoet.bandcamp.com/track/cyber-... #musicsky #music #solarpunk

came across some neat climate-focused web apps recently that approached the topic in a fun way. love this, want to see more fun and practical approaches to climate than just "we're screwed" #GreenSky

Finally published the first in my series investigating if the MassSave energy program in MA can be considered environmentally just! The first blog post is here: concourse.pika.page/posts/is-mas... And you can explore the site here: rej.concourse.codes #greensky #climate

bit of a funk for the past month, feeling back and ready to rumble. building a single online repository for my ongoing projects, check it out: borice.exposed/artifacts/

been exploring #ollama recently to see how local LLMs work. started off with gemma3:1b, real small, runs quickly, smoothly. Answers are a bit off for fact checking.. but!! Got on airplane, was doing some html coding.. forgot syntax, asked Ollama, got some correct answers! point proved! #software

fellow #greensky people - what's your strategy for fighting against this kind of attack on in-progress renewable energy projects? (Boston Business Journal article behind paywall, archive link here) #sustainability #climate archive.is/cIhXz

having fun exploring the world of solarpunk. very much resisting the urge to start a solarpunk blog to share my discoveries xD #greensky #solarpunk

After a day of dead-serious reporting on Trump's and Vought's attempted demolition of @ncar-acom.bsky.social, it's worth re-upping Woody Allen's 1973 "Sleeper" portrait of this climate research hub. The black and white photos are from NCAR's online archive (link is in my post below). #saveNCAR 🧪🌏

sharing this article on pesticide use with #GreenSky www.mlive.com/news/2025/12...

do you use multiple online identities for various hobbies/pursuits, or all under one name? i've got my artist account and my dev/other account. i feel that's fair, but sometimes feel like representing opinions under both. thoughts? #bluesky

plenty of ideas streaming out of AI-genned apps, what are some that you've found to be quite useful?

Two more AI-dev observations: - I am actively using Google AI Studio multiple times a week, it is fantastic for all those neat ideas that come tumbling out - Once projects get too big for ^ , moving to Firebase Studio is some shiiiiiii!!! Don't do that! Painfully rebasing to local now. #webdev

Actually, I am quite impressed by the smoothness of the developer experience when it comes to whipping up neat little app ideas using Google AI Studio. I'm as much of a google skeptic as anyone but however they have built up the instructions behind the tool is solid #webdev

Started a blog in 2025 as more of a personal journal kinda thing, have had a lot of fun. Reaching my free tier limit and that's okay; feels like a good time to start fresh. The problem? I want a Concourse blog. But also a newsletter? But they should be different? No clue! stay tuned ;)

been tinkering with Google AI Studio and am impressed with Gemini's recent models for code generation. I think GPT-5 & Claude Sonnet 4.5 are probably better for complex codebases, but as far as conversationally building apps goes - Gemini 2.5 is pretty solid. Thoughts? #webdev #ai

back to coding up HTML websites and really enjoying it lol #webdev

went offgrid for a week last month and have since lost most desire to "be active" online.. feels wonderful (a little lonely?)

despite the doomerism in my last post, having fun working with the Gemini and OpenAI api to build user flows. anybody find any fun ways to utilize these APIs themselves? #webdev #softwaredev #dev

still searching for a good spot to reflect on recent learnings, ponderings, and development udpates. Trying out DEV (dot) to. A bit of a lazy first post but felt good to get the juices flowing about a creative topic. dev.to/concourseben...

some more simple updates to improve the general smoothness & quickness of this rebuilt table in braindump. I can't tell if I feel dumb / wasting time by doing this stuff or it it's slightly rewarding & satisfying to built out some basic features myself #webdev #softwaredevelopment

okay, actually stopping myself mid-session before going way down the rabbit hole lol. how do people like Tanstack Table? i custom-built my table for braindump just for kicks but at this point it feels unnecessary, thinking to use something proven. thoughts? #webdev #softwaredevelopment

Someone roast my awful UI for picking the color based on a track? I consider myself a generally creative person but UI is apparently definitely not my strong suit LOL. #webdev #ui #ux #softwaredev

at what point do you look at a side project and say, "I need to start fresh " versus, "I need to push thru to solve this"? I'm super far into a project that I'm realizing could have been done better on several fronts, but I've put a lot of effort in. #webdev #softwaredevelopers

what's your go-to morning drink, if any? ik some of y'all get real fancy lol. im over here with my cafe bustelo, only the most authentic all-natural instant coffee😆 #webdev #softwaredevelopers #tech

what was the first website that ever made you stop and say "dang! this is cool"?? #webdev #internet #softwaredevelopers

I'm merging The Concourse with my shortlived music-focused creative newsletter from last year. If you're curious, come on in to The Concourse! The Concourse Meets: Sto's Universe concourse.beehiiv.com/p/theconcour...

I don't LOVE working for a massive corporation but it is def interesting to see what large scale enterprises are trying to do with AI stuff from the inside, I'll give em that. Some interesting stuff. #softwaredev #webdev #ai

read an article on ppl using ChatGPT for therapy, dubiously. felt a lil overwhelmed today, dumped out some thoughts. results? ... honestly really helpful, actually 😳 #chatgpt #webdev #mentalhealth

I've dug myself into a "new & shiny" feature hole... how do I get out of this? (my passion proj app has a bunch of half-working "neat" features) I'm overwhelmed. Any suggestions? #webdevelopment #softwaredev #dev

The Perks of Living in a Simulation - some playful thought & ideas in another issue of The Concourse. A brief ode to simulation games - their usefulness in real-world skill building, involuntary escapism, and endless possibilities #newsletter

*laughs in short bursts of highly stimulated productivity*

constantly reminding myself that it's okay to take a vacation even when I feel like I ought to be doing more in my career... ... doesn't always work

The second installation of The Concourse newsletter has arrived! A weekly update on all things going on within my universe - mostly a focus on culture, climate, cities, coding, creativity, and conversation. Interested? Come on in, there's plenty of room :) concourse.beehiiv.com/p/concourse-...