Code on the Fastest Largest AI Chip Ever Built
I tried the research preview of OpenAI's GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark in Cursor; it's very fast and very addictive.
Jack's Tech Blog
Exploring home automation, cloud architecture, and artificial intelligence.
Latest posts
95.7% Faster: D1 Read Replication for My Australian Users
Enabling Cloudflare D1 global read replication reduced cumulative D1 read latency from 1,800ms to 78ms for users in Australia - a 95.7% improvement.
Where does that purple gradient come from?
Exploring why AI-generated designs often default to purple gradients and what this reveals about training data bias.
Starlink Mini as a failover
I recently picked up a Starlink Mini to use as a backup connection for my home network. The underlying technology is fascinating - thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit delivering broadband almost anywhere. With the new £4.50 standby plan, it's an excellent way to keep things online.
Extracting Xcode 26.3's Claude Code Prompt
A journey from TLS decryption and Frida patching to a surprisingly simple solution for extracting the system prompt that Xcode feeds to Claude Code.
7 Months With Solar Energy: 2025
A detailed breakdown of my first year with solar panels - generation, consumption, battery usage, and costs analysed.
macOS 26/iOS 26 Safari WebSocket Upgrade Failures - CONNECT vs GET Request Bug
I discovered Safari/iOS 26 has a critical bug where it sends CONNECT requests instead of proper WebSocket upgrade requests, breaking connections. This issue is only apparent when using Safari with iCloud Private Relay enabled. Here's how I debugged it and what I found.
Controlling Eight Sleep with an ATOMS3 Dev Kit
A hardware interface for Eight Sleep temperature control using an ATOMS3 Dev Kit, displaying current bed temperature, sleep stage, and bed state on a small screen with button control for temperature adjustments through Home Assistant.
Using Trooli FTTP with a Ubiquiti Dream Machine (IPv6)
A technical guide for configuring a Ubiquiti Dream Machine to work with Trooli's FTTP service in the UK, including steps to obtain PPPoE credentials and set up IPv6 connectivity by bypassing the provided Technicolor DGA4134 router.
How I used GPT-4o to rewrite and improve all my Home Assistant automation titles and descriptions.
A technical walkthrough of using GPT-4o to automatically generate clear, descriptive titles and descriptions for Home Assistant automations from their YAML configurations.
Automating My Home Assistant History - AI-Powered GitHub Releases for Automation Tracking
A technical walkthrough of using GitHub Actions to automatically track Home Assistant automation changes. The workflow uses AI to generate commit messages, creates versioned releases, and maintains a chronological history of smart home configuration updates.
How I Automated Home Assistant Updates with GitHub Actions
A GitHub Actions setup that automatically updates Home Assistant Core and OS versions when new releases are available. Uses Renovate for version detection, Tailscale for secure remote access, and the Home Assistant CLI for executing updates.
Eight Sleep Pod 3: My initial thoughts
I have owned the Sleep Pod 3 for coming up to 30 nights now, here are my initial thoughts.
Home Assistant Yellow: 5 Months Later
My review of the Home Assistant Yellow 5 having used it for 5 months.
Building helpful contextual chat bots is easy using OpenAI's Assistants (part 1)
How I used OpenAI GPT-4 and OpenAI Assistants to build a bot that answers questions around DigitalOcean's documentation.
Automating Docker image updates in a Home Lab
In this post I explain how to introduce Renovate into your docker-compose setup, this allows us to pin docker image versions in our docker-compose but also declare them as dependencies that Renovate will raise pull requests for when a new image is published.
Running Rook / Ceph on Kubernetes
In this guide we will deploy a Rook / Ceph cluster and give some working examples of consuming RWO Block and RWX Filesystem storage.
Dell Wyse 3040 as a WireGuard Router
A guide to repurposing a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client as a WireGuard VPN router with AdGuard for DNS and DHCP services, achieving speeds up to 850Mbps.
Kubernetes (DOKS) and Netmaker
Netmaker is a platform for creating fast and secure virtual networks with WireGuard.
1Gb Internet at home - Cuckoo broadband & Ubiquiti Dream Machine
I recently switched from using a HP T730 Thin Client running OPNsense as my home router to something more 'off the shelf'... a Ubiquiti Dream Machine Special Edition. My OPNsense router ran absolutely fine and I absolutely loved the reliability and performance it gave me.
How to deploy Ghost on DigitalOcean App Platform
Deploying Ghost on DigitalOcean App Platform.
Home Assistant / Google Assistant local connectivity
Configure Google Assistant to communicate directly with Home Assistant over your local network using mDNS, eliminating the cloud roundtrip for faster smart home control.
Running cloudflared on OPNSense
I use cloudflared to provide a secure tunnel to my home resources. I struggled to find any instructions for running cloudflared on OPNSense so here is a quick how-to.
iCloud+ Custom Email Domains is slightly better now
An updated look at iCloud+ Custom Email Domains in 2022, covering the new catch-all support while highlighting remaining limitations around DNS validation, Apple ID coupling, and email alias restrictions.
Automatically decrypting, unlocking and mounting an Unraid array at boot
Unraid is my favourite NAS OS to run at home. It's super easy to get setup and administer.
Adding a LSI 9211-8i to a HP MicroServer gen8 & flashing IT mode in 2022
I recently installed a LSI 9211-8i HBA into my HP MicroServer gen8 as a replacement for a PCI-e M2 SSD adapter that kept putting my filesystem into read-only mode.
Have a lightning fast blog and host it for free using Github Actions and Cloudflare Workers
There are so many ways to build and host a blog for free nowadays. In 2020 I am using Hugo, Github Actions and Cloudflare Workers Sites.
Replacing 'ring ring' with the Jurassic Park theme song using a PBX
Today I learnt something new. The 'ring ring' you hear when you make a phone call isn't generated by your phone, your network or even the country you're in, that noise is generated by the receiving ends phone system, and this means it can be customised.
Getting WireGuard VPN to Work with EE 4G / 5G in the UK
WireGuard VPN refusing to connect on EE mobile data? The culprit is IPv6. Here's a simple iOS profile fix that forces IPv4 and solves the problem.
Home Assistant - Nest Thermostat
A workaround to integrate Nest Thermostat with Home Assistant using Wink as a proxy, bypassing Google's developer program restrictions after the Works with Nest program changes.
Automating Alexa Guard
A creative Home Assistant automation that uses Google Home's text-to-speech to trigger Alexa Guard when leaving the house, enabling automatic smart alerts for smoke alarms and glass breaking.
Sky Broadband - Transparent DNS proxy
Unfortunately this means they now proxy all your DNS traffic using a transparent DNS proxy, regardless of what DNS resolver you have set on your client.
Social attack against Subscriber Identity Module (SIM cards)
How attackers can social engineer mobile carriers to issue replacement SIM cards, bypassing two-factor authentication, and steps you can take to protect yourself by using authenticator apps instead of SMS-based codes.
IPv6 over IPv4 at home, today
In this article I explain how to enable IPv6 connectivity from any desktop in less than 5 minutes.
Investigating the dirty world of phishing emails
A deep dive into a NatWest phishing email, tracing the attack through compromised Joomla sites in Poland and Ukraine, and revealing how attackers chain together vulnerable systems to avoid detection.
Have a lightning fast blog and host it for free
I recently migrated my blog from Wordpress to Silvrback to Ghost. I was very happy with Silvrback, it's an excellent writing platform. In the end I got fed up not being able to change how my site looked (no theming), so switched to Ghost.
Organising a massive photo collection
Organizing my photo collection has been incredibly liberating these past few days. I set out to de-duplicate, sort my photos into some sort of folder structure, shrink their file size down somewhat without affecting the quality of the images and then finally automate this for the future.
Virgin Media, why are you manipulating my traffic?
Virgin Media why does www.google.com resolve to host-62-253-8-99.not-set-yet.virginmedia.net? What a funny name for a PTR record, but seriously, why are you manipulating my traffic?
Everpix is awesome
I use Everpix to backup and organise every photo I've ever taken – all 27,159 of them.
Securing your digital world
Everything requires a password. A long time ago it bugged me that I couldn't think of something secure so I visited a web page that randomly generated passwords for you and I used the same 8 character password ever since, it contained 1 number and 7 letters one of which was uppercase.
YubiKey and Mac OS X FileVault
If there's one thing I seem to be obsessed with lately and that's security. I've never had any of my accounts hacked but that doesn't stop me. It happens all the time though and working in IT I should know how to prevent it.