Published May 8, 2026, 4:30 PM EDT

Nolen began their writing career in 2019, with three years dedicated to editing the Creative section at MakeUseOf . Their expertise lies at the crossroads of technology and creativity, covering areas like photography, video editing, and graphic design.

Outside of work, you'll often find Nolen diving into a good book, writing their own stories, or playing video games.

The longer I use my local LLMs , the more I realize how much of the "local models feel worse" experience is often just a settings problem. I've spent the last few months playing around with a bunch of settings and parameters . Local AI is still a relatively new concept to me and I'm learning as I go, so naturally, I often come across useful tips that should have been so obvious to me in hindsight.

I'm using LM Studio as my runner, primarily because of the easy interface.…