This is the homepage and blog of Wesley Dean https://wesleydean.com en-us Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT What happens when creativity is reduced to ones and zeroes? — I feel a sense of existential dread. Not the old dread -- although that never went away -- a new one. Many years ago, skilled tradespeople worked hard to build great things like chairs and bookshelves and bed frames and sinks. Human beings would devote years and years to perfecting their craft and... https://wesleydean.com/blog/creativity-and-ai/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/creativity-and-ai/ Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT Why documentation matters now more than ever — Documentation Is Not Dead in the Age of AI. It Matters More Than Ever. LLMs (Large Language Models) and AI are very good at producing code quickly. Sometimes, AI can generate in minutes what would take an experienced developer days to write. It's similarly very common to use AI to "update this... https://wesleydean.com/blog/documentation_and_ai/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/documentation_and_ai/ Wed, 01 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT When your AI / LLM says it'll do the thing.. eventually. — I recently wrote about how LLM hallucinations are unfortunate, several failure models, and how to work around them. This is a rewrite of that article for a more technical audience. Same advice, same problems, just worded differently. Long Processing This one is my least favorite pattern. It sounds... https://wesleydean.com/blog/hallucination_delays_technical/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/hallucination_delays_technical/ Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT When your AI / LLM says it'll do the thing.. eventually. — LLMs Don’t "Do" Things, They Talk About Doing Things Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT can be incredibly helpful. They can explain ideas, rewrite emails, summarize documents, and answer questions in seconds. But there’s something important to understand: They don’t actually do... https://wesleydean.com/blog/hallucination_delays/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/hallucination_delays/ Tue, 17 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Getting Renovate to run locally in Jenkins to approximate Dependabot — All of the repositories I own on GitHub -- public and private -- have Dependabot configured to update repository dependencies. Since almost all repos have at least MegaLinter configured to run when commits are added to a pull request, there's always something that needs to be watched. My default... https://wesleydean.com/blog/renovate_jenkins/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/renovate_jenkins/ Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT Getting Ollama (LLM) running in a jail on a FreeBSD-based TrueNAS CORE system — The Hardware NAS Server (Alhoon) I have a pretty beefy system in my home lab to provide Network-Attached Storage (NAS) services. The system has dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2680 processors running at 2.70GHz with a total of 32 cores. The NAS server has 128GB of RAM, but no GPU. What it lacks in... https://wesleydean.com/blog/jailed_ollama/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/jailed_ollama/ Wed, 04 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT An update on how scrum worked over the last year — Background In December of 2024, I talked about using scrum around the holidays to manage and schedule household activities. Here's the link: How We Used Scrum to Schedule our Holidays What we were really trying to protect was peace: fewer surprises and more shared clarity. A few things have changed,... https://wesleydean.com/blog/update_on_household_scrum/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/update_on_household_scrum/ Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT A few short updates on Wes Dean's FOSS projects — I maintain a few Free / Open Source Software (FOSS) projects, most of which are hosted on GitHub under my GitHub.com/wesley-dean account. Here are the highlights: upload-sarif-to-defectdojo now has cleaner documentation, better git branch detection, error messages, improved dry-run functionality,... https://wesleydean.com/blog/202602_project_updates/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/202602_project_updates/ Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT a walk through security incident essentials for everyone, from designers to developers, sales to security engineering, entry-level to executive" — How Can Security Incident Essentials Help Mitigate Major Breaches A departure from my MegaLinter articles on Flexion's blog, this is an exploration of security incident essentials and how they can help manage the impact of major breaches. https://wesleydean.com/blog/how_security_incident_essentials_can_help_mitigate_major_breaches/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/how_security_incident_essentials_can_help_mitigate_major_breaches/ Fri, 17 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT How to use Let's Encrypt SSL / TLS Certificates with RouterOS — Background Mikrotik produces a variety of exceptional networking products including routers, switches, access points, and much more. Many of their devices run an operating system known as RouterOS. RouterOS provides a variety of interfaces, including a terminal, a web interface, API access, and... https://wesleydean.com/blog/letsencrypt_routeros_ssl/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/letsencrypt_routeros_ssl/ Fri, 27 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT How we used Agile planning to manage our holiday break — Background Every year, I take a few weeks away from work in order to disconnect, recover, and change my routines. A few years ago, I took three weeks off fo work and it was transformative. I was active, I lost some weight, my blood pressure went down, my energy went up, and I was able to come back... https://wesleydean.com/blog/how_we_used_scrum_to_schedule_our_holidays/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/how_we_used_scrum_to_schedule_our_holidays/ Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 GMT Tuning MegaLinter for Optimal Performance — MegaLinter Performance Tuning The fourth of my articles about MegaLinter on Flexion's blog, here's a process for Tuning MegaLinter for Optimal Performance and save time and money! https://wesleydean.com/blog/megalinter-performance-tuning/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/megalinter-performance-tuning/ Wed, 13 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT Tips and Tricks to Unlock MegaLinters Full Potential — MegaLinter Tips and Tricks to Unlock its Full Potential The third in my series on MegaLinter on Flexion's blog, here are Tips and Tricks to Unlock MegaLinter's Full Potential . https://wesleydean.com/blog/megalinter-tips-and-tricks/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/megalinter-tips-and-tricks/ Tue, 05 Nov 2024 00:00:00 GMT a step-by-step guide on getting started with MegaLinter — How to Get Started with MegaLinter: a Step-by-Step Guide The second of my MegaLinter articles on Flexion's blog, this is a step-by-step guide to getting started with MegaLinter . https://wesleydean.com/blog/how-to-get-started-with-megalinter-a-step-by-step-guide/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/how-to-get-started-with-megalinter-a-step-by-step-guide/ Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMT Five ways MegaLinter Upped our DevSecOps Game: Flexion Blog — 5 Ways MegaLinter Upped our DevSecOps Game Check out my post on Flexion's blog describing 5 Ways MegaLinter Upped our DevSecOps Game ! https://wesleydean.com/blog/5-ways-megalinter-upped-our-devsecops-game/ https://wesleydean.com/blog/5-ways-megalinter-upped-our-devsecops-game/ Wed, 29 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT