From Voice to Value: Building My Whisper + Notion AI Pipeline

When Voice Became a Workflow

On any given day, my INTP brain brims and overflows with *cool ideas* to streamline apps, tools, workflows, and User Experience across virtually every product or tool I touch.

I can't help it. It's an innate curiosity to understand how things work, what makes systems go, and how to make them go better.

For some, it's philosophical questions that keep them up at night (What is the meaning of life? Where do thoughts go?). For me, it's the idea that won’t let go—the one that whispers, "This could make that boring/repetitive process so much better."

Often these ideas stem naturally from the many side projects I dive into.

Photo by Polina Zimmerman

One of those ideas sparked while writing my book—a passion project I’ve been developing over the last year using the notebook system popularized by Mary Adkins and The Book Incubator. Like many great authors—Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, JK Rowling, Stephen King—I draft by hand.

But being an INTP means my thoughts fire off in a thousand directions, often showing up while walking my dog or driving.

I voice-record myself dictating story beats, scenes, or thoughts when inspiration strikes. That, combined with 40,000 words scattered across apps and platforms created a monster.

To make things work for me, I often voice record myself dictating parts of my book using Google Recorder when the spirit strikes, or in Notion, or even in the form of messages I send myself via Slack. What an editing nightmare!

From GNOME Lockout to XFCE Rebirth: How I Rescued My Linux System and Built My Own Toolkit

📌 TL;DR

After a GNOME session failure locked me out of my Ubuntu desktop and left me trapped in TTY purgatory, I rebuilt my system using XFCE. I didn’t stop there — I automated the post-install process, hardened the environment, and published the toolkit on GitHub.

This is how I reclaimed control and made it portable for Future Me (and possibly, for you).

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🔥 1. The Breakdown

My system booted straight to a black screen. GNOME was toast. No desktop. No cursor. No shell.

Just me, a blinking login prompt, and the cold comfort of TTY3...

I could log in… but I couldn’t do anything else. I didn’t want a Band-Aid. I wanted the cure.

So I decided to rebuild my desktop environment from the ground up.

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🔧 2. Enter XFCE (My Minimalist Sledgehammer)

I chose XFCE for one reason: it works.

It’s fast, stable, and doesn’t get caught up in the GNOME/Snap drama.

Here’s what I did:

• Purged GNOME, GDM3, and all the loopback snap devices clogging up my mount table

• Installed XFCE and its essential packages (xfce4, xfce4-goodies, lightdm)

• Locked in the session default using .dmrc

• Cleaned up the login manager so LightDM wouldn’t try to load a ghost session

Within minutes of logging in, XFCE reminded me what a functional desktop is supposed to feel like.

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🛠️ 3. Building the Toolkit

I didn’t just fix it — I turned it into a repeatable system.

I created:

• postinstall-finalize.sh: Hardens the system with UFW, ClamAV, smartd, Psensor, suspend rules, and more

• bootstrap.sh: Instantly pulls and runs the setup from GitHub on any machine

• .dotfiles.dmrc: Ensures LightDM loads into XFCE every time — no more login roulette

• A GitHub repo to house the whole damn thing and help anyone else in the same mess

🔗 GNOME-to-XFCE Rescue Toolkit on GitHub

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⚙️ 4. What It Automates

• XFCE session lock-in

• UFW firewall (deny incoming, allow outgoing)

• ClamAV antivirus with weekly scan scheduling

• smartd disk health monitoring

• XFCE suspend/power tweaks

• Autostart setup for tools like Stacer and Psensor

• Clean break from Snap loopbacks and GNOME overhead

I call it minimalism with teeth.

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🧭 5. For Anyone Else Stuck in TTY Hell

• Don’t reinstall.

• Don’t rage-quit Linux.

• Don’t think you have to keep living in GNOME’s shadow.

You can purge it. Replace it. Harden it, and make the system yours again — on your terms.

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🧪 Want to Use It?

Here’s how to bootstrap a clean, hardened XFCE rescue:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/catatwork217/gnome-to-xfce-rescue/main/bootstrap.sh
chmod +x bootstrap.sh
./bootstrap.sh

Want to clone it manually instead?

git clone git@github.com:catatwork217/gnome-to-xfce-rescue.git
cd gnome-to-xfce-rescue
chmod +x postinstall-finalize.sh
./postinstall-finalize.sh

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💬 Want to Contribute?

Fork it. Break it. Rebuild it.

Add your own flair, or just keep it bookmarked for the next time your display manager betrays you.