System & Network Admin

In the previous installment on UDP broadcasting and service discovery, the basics of both were explored, including an implementation in the form of NyanSD and its protocol. Contained in the comment…

Between the speed and reliability of modern desktop 3D printers and the abundance of powerful single-board computers, there’s never been a better time to build a personal computing device tha…

I’ll admit it: I miss the simplicity of /etc/hosts. There was something elegant about it. You wanted laserprinter to mean 192.168.1.40, so you opened a text file and wrote: 192.168.1.40 laser…

You almost certainly don’t have an application for the sort of accurate timekeeping that’s made possible by this enhanced version of [Cristiano Monteiro]’s satellite-backed time s…

We know, we know. Despite being called ESP32-Plane-Radar, this project from [Mateusz Juszczyk] isn’t actually using radar. But thanks to the round LCD this desktop gadget does a fantastic job…

Windows  XP  Embedded  is  the  operating  system and  development platform  delivering  the power of the Windows operating system in componentized...

If you aren't using Bunny Shield and have noticed anomalies in your bandwidth, read this guide to diagnose what's causing it.

Learn how to easily upgrade Debian 12 Bookworm to Debian 13 Trixie safely. Complete step-by-step guide with preparation, commands.

Configure Debian backports on Debian 13, 12 and 11 to access newer software safely. Covers DEB822 setup and install examples.

Use pv in numeric mode to stream integer percentages while copying a file, and update a Terminal Widget progress bar in real time. Same idea as the rsync progr…

Local area networks (LANs) that use technologies like Ethernet and Wi-Fi are incredibly useful for letting devices talk with each other. Yet a core problem here is knowing which devices are where o…

Sanitized excerpt from my private homelab repo

TkDesk is a graphical file manager for Unix and the X-Window System. This is free and open source software written in Tcl/Tk.

SSH port forwarding explained in a clean and visual way. How to use local and remote port forwarding. What sshd settings may need to be adjusted. How to memorize the right flags.

[I've already blocked entire countries to combat scrapers](/posts/2026/blocking-entire-countries-because-of-scrapers), [I update my `robots.txt`](/robots.txt) for well-behaved bots (and 403 any included in the list that access anything other than my `robots.txt`). In addition to these steps, I've started blocking traffic from IPs contained in [Spamhaus](https://www.spamhaus.org)' [DROP](https://www.spamhaus.org/drop/drop_v4.json) and [DROPv6](https://www.spamhaus.org/drop/drop_v6.json) lists.

[Navidrome released plugin support a few weeks ago](https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome/releases/tag/v0.60.0) and I've been working on implementing a plugin that scrobbles my listens to my own API endpoint. This has replaced my previous approach of regularly polling a private endpoint that sat unused in [Navidrome](https://www.navidrome.org)'s UI. It works better and uses a properly supported mechanism to meet my needs.

[Trwmato] wanted to spend more time listening to a normal radio to cut back on phone use. But the programming wasn’t quite right so, of course, the solution was to spin up a custom radio stat…

ATAboy is designed for retro computing enthusiasts, data recovery experts, and archivists. Read and write the oldest of IDE hard drives, without the need for an “in-between” vintage com…

Build durable, fault-tolerant functions in pure SQL. Retries, scheduling, parallel execution, and conditional branching — all inside PostgreSQL.

The standard answer to managing dotfiles on NixOS is home-manager. I've never used it, due to two aesthetic and one practical objection:

A cron job for every man, woman, and child.

The main termux site and help pages.

A practical guide to Docker networking through localhost, bridge networks, service DNS, published ports, Compose networking, and debugging container connection issues.

I have a hard time with focus, and my job is to write with a computer. So I made a computer just for writing! If you read descriptions for videos, say "Rocky Almadora" in the comments. If you're an...