It's a joke that has been done to death, but it is true. Naming things is one of the hardest aspects of Computer Science. It affects the readability, maintainability, and every facet of the lossy interface between the concept in your mind, and the cold reality of the code. This…
HomeAssistant is something I'm sure everyone is aware of - an open source tool for managing your smart home devices. I have used it for a number of years, starting with a rough and ready setup on a Raspberry Pi 3B. Back then, I only had three smart light bulbs…
This post is 50% a build log, 10% thoughts on vanity, and 40% about dev ops/project structure/CI/CD/etc. Everything should be easily navigable from the headings below. If you want to get in touch, find me on Mastodon, write me an email, or follow me on Github…
I have been self-hosting for almost two three years now, and one thing I have never quite figured out is how to monitor all the applications I host. At this stage, there are approximately forty running Docker containers so I really should have some means of monitoring what's going on…
During my move, the microSD card that was driving my LED matrix to show Spotify covers broke. As I'm stupid and had nothing backed up or in source control, I'm now tasked with recreating it from scratch. I'll be using Docker sitting on top of a Ubuntu 22.04 server…
DNS is infuriating to me. It exists in the uncanny valley of technologies where on paper I know a decent amount about it, but in reality I just flounder aimlessly and ultimately end up in an IRC channel somewhere spilling my woes to any (seemingly mystically intelligent) kind soul who…
I've thought for a while now that the Github contributions heatmap is a particularly uninteresting page. This thought popped into my head once more after reading a fantastic ebook on the fundamentals of Git, so armed with new confidence and knowledge of Git commits, I decided to fake contributions on…
Unless you're a very particular kind of person, project management and system infrastructure are the last things on your mind when you undertake a new side project or startup. For a side project, the fun is in taking the motivation from having an idea, prototyping an MVP as quickly as…