I’ve been using Home Assistant for about seven years now, starting back when I was living in a small apartment. At the time, my setup was modest: I used the IKEA Smart Hub (when it first launched) to tie together all my apartment’s lights. As I got more comfortable with automations, I also began building custom hardware like temperature and …
Over the last decade, I’ve spun up quite a few landing pages to gauge interest for upcoming products and features. Back in the day, there were platforms like Launchrock that made it simple to collect email addresses and maintain a waitlist. While Launchrock (and later Typeform, etc.) provided decent user experiences at the time, the end goal was always …
In my previous article, Launching a Video Podcast in 2024: My Journey and Lessons Learned, I shared my experience of starting a podcast. Since then, I came across some intriguing research revealing that 43% of podcast listeners prefer audio-only formats. This got me thinking—by offering my podcast solely as a video feed, I might have been missing out on a …
Update: Check out my blog post All Roads Lead to DSLRs This blog post is inspired by the new wave of “Build in the Open” movement, where I want to share my experience and data. In 2023, I embarked on a new adventure: launching a podcast. The idea was simple yet exciting — bring friends and experts to discuss topics they’re passionate about, …
A while back, I wrote about how I’m using Tailscale to secure my local service, thanks to Tailscale’s built-in certificates. This greatly improved the security of my local environment. Combined with the rather sophisticated ACL policies, you can lock things down pretty well. That gets you pretty far, but I wanted to secure some services that …
A decade ago, I created “Are They Using Google Apps” to address a simple yet crucial need: determining whether a remote party was using Google Apps (now Google Workspace) to decide if I should send them a Hangout invite for a meeting (or something else). Fast forward to today, and I am thrilled to introduce a revitalized and enhanced version of …
Introduction Back when I was living in a snug studio flat in London, I began my home server adventure with a Raspberry Pi 3. This move to a settled lifestyle came after years of living as a digital nomad, during which I had fully minimized my personal belongings to adapt to a constantly mobile life. The shift to a more permanent base in London marked a new …
I’m excited to share with you something that has been in the works for some time - sbomify, my latest venture aimed at transforming how Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) are managed, shared, and worked on. As we navigate through the complexities of modern software development, the need for maintaining stringent security and compliance has never been …
What are captive portals? Lately, I’ve been doing some digging into captive portals - you know, these things that pop up when you try to connect to the WiFi at a coffee shop or hotel. In essence, they are very simple: You load a web page that usually requires you to tick a box or enter your email. If the system is satisfied with the input above, you …
In 2011, when Apple launched the Mac App Store, it opened doors for developers. Around the same time, our project, YippieMove, had plateaued because Google released its own email migration tools, taking away a lot of our customers. Seeing the Mac App Store as a big opportunity, we decided to jump in and create something unique for its launch. That’s …