Commit Messages and PR Descriptions That Help Everyone
Practical patterns for writing commit messages and pull request descriptions that speed up reviews, preserve intent, and keep projects healthy. Includes templates you can drop into any repo.
Backups with Restic on AWS
A practical guide to backing up to AWS S3 with restic, restoring data when you need it, and managing retention so costs stay sane.
Home Lab Changes Since 1.0.0
A practical walkthrough of the homelab repository changes since 1.0.0: Immich photos stack, backup improvements, a Zigbee2MQTT migration, safer redeploys, and a tidier blog deployment, plus upgrade notes.
Optimising My Office Climate with Home Assistant
A look at how I stabilised the climate in my garage-office using a heater, circulation fan, extractor fan, and dehumidifier — all automated through Home Assistant.
Back on the Blog: An Update After a Busy Summer
After a busy few months of work, renovations, and family time, I’m back to posting. Here’s a quick update on what’s been happening and what to expect next, including some upcoming Home Assistant projects.
Lake Garda: Espresso, Castles, Chaos
A week at Lake Garda that mixed ferries, castles, Eurocamp pool time, and standout espresso, with a faulty hire car and a few storms that became part of the story.
One Month on a Raspberry Pi 5
After a month using a Raspberry Pi 5 as the daily machine, general work and coding are smooth, heavy CAD and slicing stay on the desktop, and the constraints noticeably improve focus and output.
Automate GitHub Projects with Actions
A tiny workflow file adds newly opened issues and PRs from multiple repositories to one GitHub Projects board, with a PAT for permissions and no Enterprise upgrade needed.
Internet Failover with the Netgear LM1200
How I added a Netgear LM1200 4G modem as a backup connection for Virgin Media outages, ensuring seamless failover and uninterrupted connectivity.
Ansible and Docker Swarm on a Raspberry Pi Homelab
A Raspberry Pi cluster managed with Ansible and Docker Swarm, using NFS for state, Traefik for routing, and a small set of services like Home Assistant, Gitea, Portainer, Pi hole, and Uptime Kuma, plus the lessons learned while building it.