Category: Uncategorized

After tax season wrapped up, I found myself revisiting my home backup strategy. Years ago, I came across the classic 3-2-1 backup rule: It’s a solid rule of thumb—simple, memorable, and effective against data loss due to drive failure, theft, ransomware, or natural disaster. What I’ve Been Using Until recently, my setup looked something like…

Most developers and homelab enthusiasts want secure, zero-config access to their home network from anywhere—without exposing ports or struggling with dynamic DNS. Tailscale offers this using WireGuard and NAT traversal, but for privacy, control, or cost reasons, you might prefer to self-host your coordination server. This post walks through: Why Tailscale? Tailscale creates a secure,…

It’s tax season… and even though I’ve technically been “paperless” for a while, my actual document management? Yeah—let’s just say it hasn’t kept up. 😅 While procrastinating (YouTube rabbit hole, naturally), I stumbled across a video about Paperless-ngx—a document management system that supposedly auto-tags your docs based on heuristics (aka smart guesses). Intrigued, I gave…

The ESP8266 and ESP32 are among the most popular microcontrollers for Internet of Things (IoT) projects. Their robust Wi-Fi capabilities, versatility, and affordability make them perfect for creating smart home devices that can integrate seamlessly with platforms like Home Assistant and Alexa. This post walks you through starting a project to develop a smart IR…

In today’s rapidly expanding digital landscape, IPv6 is becoming increasingly critical for ensuring efficient and secure internet connectivity. Whether you’re managing a small home network or administering the infrastructure for a small business, making the transition to IPv6 can significantly improve your network’s scalability and performance. For Cogeco ISP users with UniFi networking equipment, enabling…

I’m old school. I love the scheduling service crontab. 0 4 * * * /opt/homebrew/bin/brew update > /dev/null 2>&10 4 * * * /opt/homebrew/bin/brew autoremove > /dev/null 2>&1 meaning, I run $> brew update every day at 4am, as well as $> brew autoremove, to prune anything Brew feels is not needed. — Have yet…

Requirements: Fresh install instructions: If you don’t forget/drop the original devices, you’re going to need to do a factory reset. Reset button for 10 seconds. On APs, wait for the LED to flash. May want to unplug and plug back in the POE ethernet. Switches, just hold down for 10 seconds. Remember your old wifi…

I recently reinstalled PHP, and noticed that xdebug would not work from within phpstorm. Getting the message “Connection was not establish”. The way to fix that, was just to ensure that we’re using the proper port. Xdebug 3.x, uses port 9003. Where as Xdebug 2.x used 9000. To fix this, change your phpStorm preferences for…