Dev, Travel, Blogging

Over a decade of progressive professional software development experience in conjunction with more than two decades as a hobbyist developer has pushed me to reduce the burden of support and cost of delivery by writing highly-maintainable software of the highest caliber.

This blog is intended to be a personal collection of experiences/rants, journaling to tech related, things and other things that may be appropriate to share in a blog.

• 6 Features You Should Enable On A New OPNsense Installation

  Just installed OPNSense? Start here.

  Posted on July 15, 2025

  

  

  Recently, I replaced my consumer router with a custom OPNSense build to handle routing for my home network. It’s been quite an adventure in learning about DNS, routing, aggressive firewall rules, and more details about networking. As a software engineer, this hasn’t been one of the stronger sets of my... [Read More]

  Tags:

  • opnsense
  • home networking
  • network security
  • dns
  • wireguard
  • crowdsec
  • zenarmor
  • vnstat
  • firewall
  • certificate authority
  • local dns
  • vpn
  • self-hosting
  • linux
  • router replacement
  • privacy
  • telemetry blocking
  • custom network
  • network monitoring
  • open-source

• How to Ask Questions About YouTube Videos Using Open-WebUI & Ollama (All locally)

  Posted on July 3, 2025

  Ever wanted to ask a question on a Youtube video and didn’t want to watch the whole 1hr video? Same here. With Open-WebUI and Ollama - you can. Even better: It can be done locally and fairly efficiently. [Read More]

  Tags:

  • open-webui
  • ollama
  • youtube
  • youtube summarization
  • ai summarization
  • rag pipeline
  • hybrid search
  • local llm
  • gemma3
  • ai video analysis
  • rag
  • youtube questions
  • document retrieval
  • llm applications
  • chat with videos
  • open source ai
  • prompt engineering
  • ai tools
  • selfhosting
  • tech tutorial

• Remotely Accessing Your Local AI Services with Wake-on-LAN & a Web Proxy

  Posted on July 1, 2025

  After a decade of relying on laptops, I recently built a desktop PC and transformed it into a dedicated AI server. While equipped with powerful components, including a high-end Nvidia graphics card, I prioritized energy efficiency through power management. I configured the system to suspend when idle and utilize hybrid... [Read More]

  Tags:

  • AI
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Wake-on-LAN
  • WoL
  • Home Server
  • Linux
  • Docker
  • Networking
  • Raspberry Pi
  • AI PC
  • Remote Access
  • System Administration
  • Ollama
  • Low Power
  • Serverless
  • Automation
  • Network Configuration
  • Wireless
  • Intel
  • Self-hosting
  • Mediatek

• Kafka in 2025: A Clean Docker Compose Setup Without ZooKeeper

  Posted on June 26, 2025

  Kafka has changed a lot in the last few years. Zookeeper has been removed, one Kafka docker container maker has stopped making containers, and the configurations have changed. [Read More]

  Tags:

  • kafka
  • docker
  • docker-compose
  • kafka-setup
  • zookeeper
  • kraft
  • bitnami
  • kafka-docker
  • kafka-configuration
  • kafka-broker
  • containerization
  • kafka-topics
  • kafka-listeners
  • kafka-without-zookeeper
  • kafka-tools
  • kafka-hosts
  • kafka-networking
  • devops
  • data-streaming
  • kafka-deployment

• Following Up on 'New Adventures', the progress so far

  Posted on June 18, 2025

  Previously I wrote a blog post about what my next adventure will be in software development. I had quite an ambitious list of things I wanted to learn and accomplish. However, life happens and I wasn’t able to accomplish nearly what I set out to, theres still time, but that... [Read More]

  Tags:

  • blog
  • website
  • development
  • liquid
  • XML
  • XSLT
  • Jekyll
  • AI
  • automation
  • coding
  • site
  • writing
  • coding
  • proxyai
  • ollama
  • qwen
  • rag
  • openai
  • copilot
  • chatgpt
  • github
  • elixir
  • rust
  • self-hosting
  • localai

• Project: Page Recommender

  Posted on June 17, 2025

  This page documents a previous project that was done in the early years of my schooling. The reason for posting this on the blog is due to an ongoing effort to modernize the site. [Read More]

  Tags:

  • projects
  • pagerank
  • apachelogs
  • parsing
  • java

• Project: Financial Stock Strategy and Simulator

  Posted on June 17, 2025

  This project is a system of sub-projects that manage a large collection of securities and quotes, updates the data, tests strategies, and compares performance. [Read More]

  Tags:

  • project
  • java
  • hibernate
  • soap
  • xml
  • postgresql
  • junit
  • jasperreports
  • bash
  • dsl
  • bigdata

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