I think there is value in sharing what software you use—and, more importantly, how you use it. I often think that real life usage examples are easier to understand than presentations. This is not sponsored – these are simply my impressions of tools I use. Tailscale – a better VPN, or a virtual intranet? My high-level explanation of Tailscale is that it is essentially a virtual intranet – a tailnet – that connects your devices no matter where they are. It also includes several useful services, and the free tier cover my use cases. ...

I write these summaries to structure my own thinking about AI/LLM-assisted development — and to have something to look back on (and probably cringe at) in the future. What has happened in the last 3–6 months AI/LLM prices are increasing Local and mobile models are surprisingly capable CLI-based AI tools continue to work extremely well AI/LLMs remain excellent for search, explanation, and learning A wave of buzzwords: skills, multi-agent, CLI, MCP, plan mode AI tools still make mistakes, especially in uncharted territory AI/LLM prices are going up GitHub Copilot is changing its pricing structure this month. Anthropic and others are restricting the use of fixed-price subscription keys with third‑party tools like OpenClaw. The trend is clear: pricing will increasingly reflect actual resource usage — and it will be higher. ...

We all know that we should pin GitHub Actions that come from external repositories. If a repository is compromised, pinning to a specific commit SHA can prevent malicious code from accessing your secrets during a workflow run. We also know that we rarely do this. My reasons were: It adds extra work SHAs is hard to read and verify I assumed Dependabot did not work with SHA-pinned actions After reading this tweet (recommended reading), I learned that you can actually combine SHA pinning with Dependabot updates. The trick is to include the human‑readable version as a comment after the SHA. ...

Like many IT people I do technial support for friends and family. When I see the same issue in multiple households, it’s time to find a permanent fix rather than a quick patch. The Symptom A printer connected to the local network suddenly appears “offline” or “disconnected” in Windows. Reinstalling the printer fixes it temporarily, but this isn’t a sustainable solution for a household that just wants things to work. ...

Microsoft regularly asks me to renew my Azure certifications. To do that, I have to answer multiple choice questions about specific Azure services. In most cases an AI/LLM would answer those questions better than I would. In real projects, I look up details when I need them — networking quirks, Azure Container Instances behavior, subnet rules. But certification expect you to memorize these things, even though day‑to‑day work rarely requires it. ...

I watched DHH’s demo of the Once deployment tool and where he vibe coded a demo app, and I figured I should try to do the same. Three hours and roughly twenty prompts later, I had a publicly available web app up and running. It is written in ASP.NET, has database access, schema migrations, zero-downtime updates, social login and a semi-generic system for reporting. It works – and I didn’t write or modify a single line of code myself. The AI/LLM coding capabilities impressed me. I could have built the same thing without AI, but it would have taken far longer. ...

I often find that you need to use a product for a while before you understand its “true purpose.” Reading about it only gets you so far. The real use case tends to reveal itself after some time in the real world. This is my experices with FIDO2 security keys. What a FIDO2 security key actually is Before buying my first keys — a YubiKey and a Google Titan — I hadn’t done much research. I just knew that some of the “cool kids” used them to protect their accounts. ...

There are many ways to host web applications. You can run them it in the cluod or on-premises, using everything from “copy some PHP files into a folder” to full container orchestration on Kubernetes — and everything in between. My Requirements I optimize for deployments with: Zero downtime — users shouldn’t get kicked out during updates. This means the application must be stateless, with all state stored externally. (Also useful when I inevitably get millions of users 😊) Proper HTTPS Low operating cost Fast and easy to updates Your requirements may be different, but mine are tuned for a homelab software developer who deploys often to a professional‑looking “test environment.” Updates should be simple, quick, and not disrupt anyone using the app. ...

After more than a decade of running Synology NAS devices in my home, I’m making a significant change to my setup. This post explores why and what I am will be doing. Why Have a NAS? I’ve had multiple Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices in my home over the last 15 years - Synology boxes for more than 10 years. A NAS can serve many needs like: It can replace OneDrive, DropBox, iCloud, Google Drive. It can host your media Automatic backups of computers Depending on the NAS, the more capable Synology supports lots of applications for domain management, office work, and run Docker containers. It can provide disks to other machines using iSCSI and more that I have not explored. ...