Local Thanos on Kubernetes
I run Kubernetes in my homelab and use the (now classic) Prometheus/Grafana stack for monitoring everything. In my experience, the thing that Prometheus does not do well is long-term storage. Prometheus’ own database is fine for a few days storage, but performance and reliability quickly degrade. There are quite a few solutions to this problem, but I choose to use Thanos, partly because Kube Prometheus Stack has very good support for it.
OpenClaw: My first experience with a self-hosted AI Assistant
Recently, I decided to jump on the latest AI bandwagon. While cloud-based large language models are powerful and convenient, I wanted complete control over my data, plus the satisfaction of running everything on my own infrastructure. Enter OpenClaw — a personal AI assistant that runs locally and integrates with messaging platforms you already use.
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Cheap Yellow Display and Home Assistant
As I have mentioned previously I have been been gradually Home Assistant-ifying my home. Of course, part of that means having a some control panels around. I have tried an old tablet, but was not really happy with the results. At some point I leaned about the so-called “Cheap Yellow Display” (CYD). This is a small TFT display bolted directly to an ESP32 microcontroller.
There are a few things that make this interesting:
Including Bible Passages in Hugo
I have a few posts in my mind that will need me to include bible passages in the pages. I could just quote them, but that is no fun and I am happy make a lot of effort to be lazy.
I am using Hugo to power this site, so I decided I would add a shortcode that would allow me to do it via an API. There are a few decisions to be made first.
The Current state of Linux Audio Production
A few years ago (becoming many years ago now) I was a Linux loving sound engineer. I am also a guitar player with a family which means I have not been much of a guitar player for a while now.
Well, I recently got a new (to me) laptop to replace my Pinebook Pro and I have decided to dip my feet back into music production. With that in mind I feel I can add to the conversation by giving how things are going after a few years away.
Using Umami with Hugo
Umami is a self-hostable web analtics system similar to Google Analytics. From my point-of-view it has several advantages compared to Google Analytics:
- Data Ownership: it is self-hosted so the data is stored on my own server
- Privacy: Google Analytics uses cookies, so can be problematic to comply with certain privacy laws such as GDPR.
- Simplicity: I am a sysadmin, not a data scientist. Umami’s interface is very simple compared to Google Analytics. Granted, this is partly because it does less, but it is fine for me.
This site is hosted on Gitlab Pages and I run Umami on my K3s which has an ingress controller accessible from outside.
Forgejo on Kubernetes
I (and my sons) want to be able to host code and other text locally, so I decided to run on it on my K3s lab.
The first decision to make was which platform to use. I have used Gitlab for years at work and love it, but it is quite a beast to administer and run. I have used Gogs and Gitea in the past and they are far more lightweight than Gitlab, so I decided to use Forgejo
New Home Lab
Where better to start than how my lab is working.
My home lab is not one that has really been planned, rather I acquire/buy things as the opportunity arises. It really has 2 things:
- NAS
- Kubernetes
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First Post Back
The other day my wife mentioned that I had not been blogging for a while. I looked and it turns out the last post was 4 years ago! I am not really sure what happened, but for whatever reason blogging went on the back burner,
Anyway, I am back on it now and have plenty of things to write about. I am still in tech, although things have changed. I have moved on from Claranet and am now at Ubisoft. Also, I am no longer an individual contributor, but have moved into the world of Developer Relations. If you do not know what DevRel is, Kelsey Hightower has the only definition you need:
Experience Buying a Chinese Bike Frame
I’ve recently decided to change my bike frame as I developed a tendonitis due to my beloved Felt F95 actually being too big. As we are also looking to buy a house, my budget was quite limited. This put a nice shiney Cannondale SystemSix well out of my reach, so I decided to give a Chinese frame a try.
This is not as shocking as it sounds because of the realities of the bike market.