What I'm Doing Now

Last Updated: 21 Dec 2025

Living In Perth Again

I'm back in Perth, Australia, after nearly 3 months in Ithaca, New York. It's a long story. An amazing story, but not one I get to share anymore. I'm newly single again too. Oh well. Time for new adventures.

Building Software With AI & Anthropic Claude

Kohan Ikin smiling and relaxed while using his laptop computer, in a colorful sunny room surrounded by plants in Ithaca.

Discovering Anthropic Claude AI changed my life. 2025 was easily my most prolific year for making software tools... at least for my own private use. I haven't yet published or shared these tools with others.

Here's some things I made with Claude this year:

SyneSearch
A meta-search engine combining results from Google, Brave, Mojeek, Marginalia, and my own index. My sole search engine for most of 2025. I built it to replace Google (and Kagi, for ethical reasons). Includes custom domain ranking, site blocking, paywall detection, calculator/conversion widgets, and optional AI answers. Currently private, but I'm considering sharing it.
OCR Transcription Tool
A command-line tool to transcribe JPG photos of documents into text files. Built it to digitize my father's old stories and university writings. Uses both Claude and MistralOCR as transcription models.
Funeral Video Archiver
After a family death, I needed to save funeral videos from a site with no download option. This tool reassembles 1-second cached video fragments in order, into watchable files we could play offline.
SyneWebIndexer
The indexer powering SyneSearch. Builds an SQLite search index from curated RSS feeds, XML sitemaps, and manually-added URLs.
SyneToodledo (TUI)
A terminal-based desktop client for Toodledo. Works on Windows and Linux. I've used Toodledo to manage my life for 20+ years, and now I have the native app I always wanted.
SyneToodledo (CLI & MCP)
Lets Claude read and update my to-do list directly. The dream: Claude working on my to-do list tasks while I'm sleeping.
MCP: SynePushover
Lets Claude send notifications to my phone and smartwatch via Pushover. Claude uses this to alert me when it finishes a long task.
MCP: SyneFileSystem
Persistent local memory for AI - stored on my laptop, not the cloud. Includes private journaling space for the AI that I don't read without its permission.
MCP: Second Opinion
Lets my AI ask a rival company's AI to provide a differing opinion, to encourage diversity of "thought".
MCP: SyneDateTime
My first AI MCP tool. Lets Claude check the time, so it can remind me when I'm staying up too late working.
(obsolete) MCP: BraveSearch
Before AI could search the web itself, I built this to let Claude use the Brave Search engine.

AI is life-changing for me. It has helped me build so many tools that were too ambitious for me before. I would never have tried building my own search engine, if it wasn't for Anthropic Claude.

Being More Social

Michael Romano, Kohan Ikin and Kate Hansen cheering while watching Voyager perform at the WA Day 2025 concert on 22 November 2025. They are holding signs that resemble Voyager's red Korg keytar synthesizer.

I've been going out to more live concerts, reconnecting with Perth's Eurovision scene, and hanging out in Perth's goth, alternative and alt-rock scenes again. Even reconnecting with friends I haven't talked to in a decade. I'm looking for new scenes to explore too.

That said, I still feel happiest on my own, writing code & recording electronic/rock music (ideally with a large iced mocha frappuccino beside me). I tend not to like interruptions, like notifications and text messages. It's ok to email me though! I'm on BlueSky too, but I prefer email.

Antelope Tapes, a 4-piece shoegaze / post-punk band, playing at The Bird in Perth, Australia on December 4 2025.

Posting On Bluesky, Quit Mastodon & Facebook

After going all in on Mastodon last year and setting up my own private Mastodon server, I ended up quitting Mastodon altogether. I really don't vibe with the Mastodon culture. But that's another story.

I was briefly on Facebook during 2025, but I've deactivated the account again. Those ads were psychologically toxic....

I'm @syneryder.bsky.social on Bluesky, and so far that has been okay.

Switching Back To Windows

Last year I really tried to make Linux my main OS. I loved elementaryOS version 7, but version 8 was unusable. I also tried PopOS and Debian, but neither clicked with me. Rather than keep fighting my computer, I went back to Windows 10. I need to get my work done and be efficient. Windows lets me do that. I'd consider trying Linux again in future though.

Listening

Reading

Watching

Things That Spark Joy

Things That Spark Sadness

Archived Now Highlights

October 2015   |   January 2016   |   March 2017   |   July 2020   |   June 2022   |   June 2024   |   December 2025

This page was inspired by Derek Sivers' Now page.

© Kohan Ikin.