My AI Learning Materials and News Feeds (Updated)

Forewords This is the 3rd time updating the lists, where I added a section of Prompt Engineering upon requests since it is a good starting point for those not into self-hosting nor theory. The term “Prompt Engineering” is a bit controversial but people will get better understanding after learning the listed materials. As a lifelong self-learner, I use all sorts of methods to learn new things, and AI is what I’m currently into. Although I’ve been using AI tools since 2022, my background wasn’t focused on AI. So, like everyone else, I had to do some “AI For Dummies” level study in order to get more involved. Below is a list of learning materials that I find very helpful for myself to get started with and might also be helpful for someone else in the same situation. ...

July 8, 2025 · 6 min · Jun

Revisiting Voice Cloning with GPT-SoVITS and so on

Forewords My last article on voice cloning is more than a year ago, and here we are again for adopting some latest advancement. Refering to some Chinese source such as this blog and this video, I was attempting to adopt new tools for my audio book service, such as CosyVoice, F5-TTS, GPT-SoVITS, and fish-speech. But before we start, I recommend to: Install miniconda for dependency sanity wget https://repo.anaconda.com/miniconda/Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh && sudo chmod +x Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh && bash Miniconda3-latest-Linux-x86_64.sh Setup PyTorch environment as needed and confirm with python -m torch.utils.collect_env ...

June 11, 2025 · 8 min · Jun

Migrating Harbor instance from Linux to WSL2

In the past, I have covered how to set up Ubuntu in WSL2 and hosting local LLMs with Harbor, now I want to migrate my Harbor instance from baremetal Linux into WSL2 so that I don’t have to set it up from scratch. First thing to do is to open firewall port netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenport=33811 listenaddress=0.0.0.0 connectport=33801 connectaddress=172.xx.xxx.xxx On Linux hardware: copy Harbor files from /home/username/Harbor /home/username/.ollama On Windows hardware: connect the USB drive containing Harbor files and run ...

May 26, 2025 · 1 min · Jun

Upgrading/Fixing Cheapskate's AI Server

This is the server I build back in 2023, based on a moded Dell Optiplex 3010 SFF motherboard with i5-2300 and Tesla M40. I wasn’t planning to put an Xeon E3 back then but something happened which changed my mind. After approximately 1.5 years of 24/7 running, my CPU power extension cable melted. This is just like the PCIe to EPS adapter situation last time, so I have to replace it with a heavier gauge (something better than the cheapest like above). ...

February 22, 2025 · 4 min · Jun

Self-hosting Local LLMs (DeepSeek-R1) Easily with Harbor (Ollama+Open-WebUI+SearXNG)

Lately, there is a need of private chatbot service as a complete alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. So, I decide to implement one at home and make it accessible to everyone in my household alongside with my network printer and NAS (OpenMediaVault). In the past, I used to recommend people using Llama series for English tasks and Qwen series for Chinese tasks. There was no open-source model that’s strong enough in multilingual tasks comparing to proprietary ones (GPT/Claude). ...

January 26, 2025 · 5 min · Jun