A public notebook about technology, cooking, running, and whatever I am learning.

How I imported 60,800 photos from an unreliable external hard drive

I had an old NTFS external hard drive containing photos, videos, documents, and a lot of disorganised files. Reading it on my Linux machine was painful. Some folders or files could lock things up just by trying to explore them. The photos were particularly important. I wanted as many useful

Setting up the storage my homelab needed

I thought setting up the SER5 meant installing Docker and running services. Then 400 GB of family photos made me take storage and backups more seriously.

The first time I changed my home network, I took down the internet

My ISP router kept slowing down the house. Replacing it with a second-hand Xiaomi and OpenWrt gave me a more stable network, after one stressful evening offline.

The two reasons I built a homelab

I had been interested in having a homelab for years, but hardware is not cheap and I had never found a reason strong enough to commit to it. Then I had two.

What made Linux stick

Gaming kept sending me back to Windows. After almost twenty years of trying Linux, Bazzite finally removed the reason to leave.

AI did not teach me to cook. It removed the friction

How I use AI to adapt recipes, build weekly shopping lists, and remove enough planning friction to cook for my family three times a week.

If the context is clear, the prompt can be simple

I thought better prompts were the answer. The real problem was that my AI assistant could not see enough of the system.

When VS Code belongs in the Distrobox

A broken Codex extension sent me through VS Code, Distrobox, and Flatpak before I realised the editor belonged inside the container.

I thought I needed to build a content application

I expected to build a TypeScript content factory. One AI interview later, I had a file-based system and a real Rooibos Italia post without writing an application.

I only wanted to sync a few recipes

I spent three days avoiding a $5 app before realising my existing homelab could sync Obsidian between Bazzite and iPhone.