Posts

A locked Terraform state file in an S3 bucket, reachable from several machines while a dead laptop is crossed out

Terraform on Proxmox: Declaring My Homelab VMs

How Terraform provisions my Proxmox VMs for Talos: what IaC brings, provider gotchas, k8s-friendly VM settings, and my tfstate’s move to self-hosted S3.

A YAML file with readable keys and padlocked values being committed to a git repository

SOPS + Age: Committing Secrets to Git, Safely

How SOPS and age let me commit Talos and Kubernetes secrets to git: envelope encryption explained, .sops.yaml rules, alternatives, and gotchas.

A large just key on a keyboard fanning out to recipe chips for secrets, talos, flux and terraform

Just: The Command Runner My Homelab Was Missing

Why I replaced ad-hoc shell scripts with just: discoverable recipes, modules, and safer secrets workflows for a homelab Kubernetes repo.

A PostgreSQL elephant pod hopping from the last pending node to an already-upgraded node during a rolling upgrade

Talos Rolling Upgrades: When a PDB Blocks the Drain

A single-instance PostgreSQL and its PodDisruptionBudget deadlocked my Talos rolling upgrade. How drains fail, and how to sequence around it.

A crossed-out SSH terminal next to a machine config file driving three Talos nodes

Talos Linux: Kubernetes Without SSH in My Homelab

Why my homelab Kubernetes nodes run Talos Linux: an immutable, API-driven OS with no SSH, no shell, and machine configs versioned in git.

Ghost haunting a Zigbee network with smart plugs and light bulbs

The Case of the Haunted Smart Plug: Debugging Ghost Zigbee Group Memberships

My dishwasher smart plug kept turning off with the bedroom lights. The culprit? A ‘ghost’ group membership stored in the device’s firmware that survived removal from zigbee2mqtt.

Animated washing machine card on a dashboard

Home Assistant: Smarter Appliances with Washdata & Animated Cards

Stop guessing if the washing machine or dryer is running. Learn how the new Washdata v0.4.0 update pairs perfectly with HA-Animated-cards for a beautiful, informative Home Assistant dashboard.

A pangolin fixing holes in a firewall wall

How I Teamed Up with a Pangolin to Close the Holes in My Firewall

Learn how I replaced my traditional reverse proxy setup with Pangolin’s zero-trust tunneling approach - zero open ports at home.

Renovate: Automating Docker Image Updates with Pull Requests

Learn how to automate Docker Compose image updates using Renovate. A GitOps approach to keeping your containers up to date.