Written rules did not stop my coding agents from posting in a stranger’s GitHub repo or taking down my server, so I added hooks and resource limits that enforce what the rules could not. ...

I decoded the Bluetooth protocol of my Micro-Air EasyStart soft starters from the vendor’s Android app, with help from Claude Code, and now read their compressor data into Home Assistant through ESPHome. ...

I moved this blog from WordPress to a Hugo static site, and the real work was not converting the posts but keeping every inbound link since 2008 working. ...

There are many good guides on the internet on how to use and configure Cloudflare Tunnels, Traefik, and Let’s Encrypt, using wildcard certificates, and Cloudflare Access, for authenticated home lab network access. This is yet another such guide, but using a single wildcard subdomain for remote homelab access. An advantage of using a wildcard subdomain is that the Cloudflare DNS and Tunnel and Access configuration only needs to be done once, and thereafter all access changes can be controlled through local homelab Traefik configuration. Another advantage is that services being exposed are not directly inferable by looking at DNS record names. ...

[Late post] I finally got around to installing permanent under eave roofline RGB lights, and I’ll share my experience and opinion of the Mattos RGB Trim I used. See my previous post and post on RGB holiday lights for background. I pre-ordered Mattos Engineering RGB Trim in December 2021 and received the shipment end of January 2022. The boxes have been sitting in my garage for a year, and I just got around to installing them mid December 2022. ...

I replaced my aging UniFi Security Gateway Pro and slow Circle Home Plus with a Firewalla Gold Plus, giving me gigabit speed firewall and parental controls in a single easy to use and actively developed device. Why Firewalla? We have 1Gbps internet, and I want a feature rich firewall that can operate at line speed. We do configure Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, etc. (homogeneous control remains lacking) child account restrictions, but I also want content control and visibility for any network connected devices. Firewalla is at the intersection of high speed and visibility and parental controls. ...

Last year was the first time I used RGB holiday lights for decorative outside lights, and this year for Halloween I started with some Halloween pumpkins. I used a Boscoyo Pumpkin King and a Goofy Gourd because they are printed in color so they look good day and night. The Pumpkin King stands 95" / 2.4m tall, so it took a little extra effort to assemble and mount. Last year I used wood planks as backing on my coro props, but that made hanging them a bit awkward. This year I used aluminum channel (cheap 1m sections of DIN mount rails) connected with short sections of thick wood dowels. I notched the channel so that I could hang it flush on the pillars using flat head screws, much easier. And as I did last year I spray painted the back of the coro black to make it blend in as the back is visible from the house entrance. ...

Every year on the hottest days and coldest nights, with the HVAC on, our bedrooms are either too hot or too cold, and I installed FLAIR Smart Vents to try and remedy the situation. In this post I am sharing my experience with the FLAIR installation and configuration, and my opinions and mini review of the Flair vents. Background First some history and background, skip to the installation or conclusion section for TL;DR. ...

eNom really borked their datacenter move resulting in two days and counting of no DNS. I first noticed the issue Saturday (15 Jan 2022) night when my inbox remained clean for several hours, yes, I am one of those people that like to keep email organized and the inbox clean. A bit of head scratching and googling led me to a reddit post laying blame on the Enom Data Center Migration gone wrong. I registered my first domain in 2000 over a dialup modem. Over time I’ve registered several more domains with several registrars (based on regional or TLD requirements of the day). In 2006 I consolidated all my registrations with eNom, in 2011 eNom transferred my account to BulkRegister, and in 2020 BulkRegister transferred my account to Hover. So, today I am a Hover customer, and Hover is an eNom reseller, using eNom DNS services. ...

What started as a small project quickly snowballed; taking way more time than anticipated, going through multiple scrapped plans and hardware changes, my fingers still hurting from making cables and pushing pixels through corrugated plastic. But for all the overkill, it does look pretty. It started when I ordered two strands of Govee RGB patio lights offered as a Black Friday special. Installed them, and they seemed to work fine, until the next night, when the lights did not return to the previous state, just white. Our holiday light outlets are powered sunset to 11pm, and although the Govee app does have an option to remember the last state, it did not work when completely powering down, only when using the soft power button, fail. ...