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What began as a tracked chassis with a camera and basic remote control has become a test platform for local AI, computer vision, autonomous navigation, embedded safety, sensor fusion, and custom mechanical design. It can be driven from a browser, make navigation decisions using a locally hosted vision model, fall back to onboard obstacle avoidance, and report what it sees and why it chose its next…
From MS-900 to AZ-305 in Weeks — Not Years Most people treat certifications like a slow grind. I am doing the opposite. I have already completed MS-900, I am about to pass AZ-900, and I am lining up AI-102, AZ-204, and AZ-305 within a matter of weeks. That is not just momentum. That is strategy. And if you are wondering whether stacking certifications this quickly is actually worth it, the answer…
Certifications matter in IT. They validate knowledge, open doors, and give clients and employers a standardized reference point for your skill set. But certification preparation can be expensive, unfocused, and easy to abandon when life gets busy. This post covers the exact approach I am taking to earn the Microsoft Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 certification, structured, budget-conscious, and…
I have been remoting into Windows machines for over a decade. Domain-joined, workgroup, across VPNs, across the internet. RDP is one of those things that just works once you flip the toggle and open port 3389. Until it does not. This week I spent hours chasing an RDP failure on an Entra-joined machine. The machine was on the same subnet, on the same switch, plugged into the same network as the…
I have been running Wazuh for a while, but it was mostly doing vulnerability scanning and basic log collection. This week I went through the process of turning it into a proper XDR platform with file integrity monitoring, rootkit detection, active response, and - the part I am most interested in - AI-powered alert analysis using my local Ollama server. Everything runs on Proxmox LXC containers. No…
I posted about Proxmox requiring three nodes for High Availability and got a reply explaining the split-brain problem. It is worth writing up because this is one of the most misunderstood topics in virtualization, especially for anyone running two-server clusters and calling them "HA." The short version: every hypervisor requires three votes to do proper HA. The difference is how each platform…
Every time you open a browser, send an email, stream a video, or check the weather on your phone, something happens before nearly any of that traffic moves across the wire. A query fires off to a system so fundamental to the internet that most people never think about it. That system is the Domain Name System, and it is still one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure on any network.
Every time you open a browser, send an email, stream a video, or check the weather on your phone, something happens before nearly any of that traffic moves across the wire. A query fires off to a system so fundamental to the internet that most people never think about it. That system is the Domain Name System, and it remains one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure on any network.
I run five Proxmox nodes spread across two physical sites connected by a WireGuard site-to-site VPN. One site is a cluster. Between the two sites, I manage around 50 virtual machines and containers, two Proxmox Backup Servers, two TrueNAS instances, GPU passthrough for local AI workloads, and Veeam Agent backups for Windows workstations. It sounds like a lot. It is a lot. But after a recent…
Step-by-Step: Install and Configure Pi-hole with the Proxmox Community Script This guide covers a full technical setup for Pi-hole on Proxmox using the Community Scripts installer. It includes: creating the Pi-hole LXC assigning a static IP verifying DNS is working configuring your router, ISP modem, or firewall DHCP server to hand out Pi-hole as DNS fallback options when your ISP equipment does…
Why Home Assistant Is the Ultimate Smart Home Platform (And How to Build It the Right Way) Most “smart homes” today aren't actually smart. They're cloud-dependent, subscription-driven, and locked into a single vendor ecosystem . If the internet goes down, half your house stops working. If the company changes its pricing or kills a product line, you're stuck replacing devices. That’s not…
Why Many Home Lab Builders Are Moving from UniFi Cameras to Reolink + Blue Iris For years, UniFi Protect has been one of the most popular surveillance systems for home lab enthusiasts and small businesses. It looks great. The interface is polished. And the integration with UniFi networking gear is seamless. But over the past few years, a noticeable shift has started happening in the home lab and…
Part 2: Set Up Nginx Proxy Manager on Proxmox with Cloudflare DNS & pfSense In Part 2 of this series, we're setting up Nginx Proxy Manager (NPM) inside Proxmox so we can start exposing our local services with clean HTTPS URLs and valid SSL certificates . This is where the home lab starts feeling real . Instead of accessing Home Assistant with something like: http://192.168.1.20:8123 …we'll be able…
Why Proxmox Is One of the Best Hypervisors You Can Run in a Home Lab There’s something incredibly satisfying about owning your infrastructure. Not renting it. Not trusting it to some mysterious black box. Actually owning it. That’s the spirit behind home labs, and it’s exactly why Proxmox VE has become one of the most powerful hypervisors available to builders, tinkerers, and serious self-hosters.…
From Zero to Segmented: Installing pfSense CE the Right Way (With VLANs That Actually Teach You Networking) Most home networks are flat. One LAN. One WiFi. Everything trusts everything. Your laptop can talk to your smart bulbs. Your TV can talk to your NAS. Your IoT camera can reach your workstation. That’s not a lab. That’s a liability. If you want a home lab that actually teaches real…
Building the Foundation: Where a Real Home Lab Actually Begins Key principle: Terminate TLS at a single reverse proxy. Expose one entry point. Keep everything else internal. That’s discipline. The Real Reason to Do It This Way This isn’t about running Plex on better hardware. This is about understanding: How packets move How identity works How segmentation reduces risk How public DNS interacts…
Deploy Hugo to Azure for Free!!! Overview This guide walks through moving a locally developed Hugo site to Azure Static Web Apps (SWA) using GitHub Actions . The goal is a workflow where: You develop and preview locally GitHub Actions builds the site Azure Static Web Apps deploys it globally No servers are managed manually This assumes: You already have a working Hugo site locally You are using…
Posting to Hugo is easy So now the site exists. The theme is wired up. The local server is humming along on localhost:1313 . And then you hit the real question: How do you actually post something? This is where Hugo stops being “a static site generator” and starts being a habit. Writing posts is the entire point, so let’s document that workflow while it’s still fresh in my head. No cloud, no…
This is How It All Starts: Documenting My Hugo Odyssey Hey there, fellow tinkerer. If you're anything like me, a developer who's spent too many late nights wrestling with bloated CMSes, you know the thrill of stripping things back to basics. Static sites? They're the minimalist's dream: fast, secure, and zero server-side drama. Today, I finally carved out time to dip my toes into Hugo, the…