Background on the tools I build, the ones I discover elsewhere, and other things I'm learning.
Bouquin is a Python/Qt notebook that treats each day as a page, encrypts everything with SQLCipher, versions every change, and - unusually for a notepad - can track time and invoice for it. Features are modular and toggleable.
Read moreA technical walkthrough of publishing a directory of files to IPFS via its HTTP API from Python: content-derived CIDs, the multipart form-data trick that makes go-ipfs treat separate uploads as one folder, and using IPNS to keep a stable pointer at the latest version.
Read moreAn archived 2016 field note on sysadmin communication: proactive status updates, incident reports, plans, rollback plans, and why silence damages trust.
Read moreAn archived 2016 field note on high availability: failure domains, quorum, STONITH/fencing, service tiers, disaster recovery, and when HA creates more risk than it removes.
Read moreAn archived 2016 field note on troubleshooting Linux systems: pattern recognition, avoiding premature fixes, gathering evidence, and keeping a reusable trouble log.
Read moreAn archived 2016 field note on production monitoring: service health, infrastructure metrics, security signals, logs, and the difference between seeing symptoms and understanding a failure.
Read moreAn archived 2016 field note on infrastructure security: risk management, patching, intrusion detection, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, and common operational security pitfalls.
Read moreAn archived 2016 field note on Linux configuration management: known state, version-controlled infrastructure, repeatability, recovery, and why snowflake servers become expensive.
Read moreAn archived 2016 field note on continuous deployment: how automating production changes can reduce risk, improve feedback, and make releases routine rather than frightening.
Read moreA howto for qvm-start-deps: a dom0 script that recursively starts a qube's declared dependencies (Split SSH vaults, service qubes, custom cross-qube relationships) before the target, using qvm-features as dependency tags.
Read moreA walkthrough of building a private AI assistant over Signal - with conversation memory, an emoji-driven context reset, a sender allowlist, and a choice between local Ollama inference and a cloud API.
Read moreI passed my Victorian marine licence test, but the fixed official practice tests bugged me - same questions, same answer positions, every time. So I built BoatRules.au: a quiz that shuffles everything every sitting, mixes playable horn audio with SVG buoy and light schematics and text questions, and leans on spacing, interleaving, retrieval practice and dual coding to make the rules actually stick.
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