From building ships to shipping builds: how to succeed in making a career switch to software development
A big career change is scary, but I’ve seen it happen successfully, twice. Here’s what I’ve observed.
My horrible Fairphone customer care experience
How a few bad experiences turned me from a brand evangelist to someone who has sworn off of Fairphone products in the foreseeable future.
Lenovo ThinkCentre M900 Tiny: how does it fare as a home server?
I was itching for a new project, so I got one.
We get laptops with annoying cooling fans because we keep buying them
We can fix this, but it will require some effort on our part.
Home is where the home server is
It was moving day, but for my home server.
The coffee machine ran out of memory
Words that I never expected to say.
About the time I trashed my mother’s laptop
This is what happens when you know just barely enough to be dangerous.
Fairphone Fairbuds XL review: admirable goals, awful product
I gave the Fairphone Fairbuds XL a go to see how well they stack up in real life. Unfortunately, not that well.
I yearn for the perfect home server
I’ve thought a lot about the performance, cost and power consumption trade-offs of home servers. Maybe too much.
Turns out that I’m a ‘prolific open-source influencer’ now
I’m not sure if I should take it as a compliment or an insult. Probably the latter, given the circumstances.
IODD ST400 review: great idea, good product, terrible firmware
I bought and tested a Ventoy-like device that allows you to boot all sorts of installation media and operating systems, all on one device.
Feature toggles: just roll your own!
It’s one of those build-vs-buy discussions where the build option is genuinely better in 99.99999% of the cases.
I’m done with Ubuntu
A few busted upgrades and the heavy-handed push of a software packaging solution has ruined Ubuntu for me.
Why my blog was down for over 24 hours in November 2024
Everything I learned from an incident that made me consider switching careers. It was a close one!
Backing up another PC with a single Ethernet cable
If all you have is an Ethernet cable, then everything looks like a temporary storage device.
My very first Dungeons and Dragons campaign
It was the nerdiest thing ever, and I loved it!
The IPv6 situation on Docker is good now!
It’s not often when a piece of software has genuinely improved, which is why this is worth celebrating!
How to build a fleet of networked offsite backups using Linux, WireGuard and rsync
You have offsite backups of your most important data, right? Right???
What I’ve learned running Linux and Windows off of USB flash drives
I took some USB flash drives I had around and put Windows and Linux on them, here’s how it went.
You can use almost anything as a key file for your encrypted storage device
Yes, you can decrypt your storage with a picture of your cat.
Your Wi-Fi might be terrible because of Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS)
My Wi-Fi kept dropping out until I learned about this fun little feature. Here’s how to fix it for good.
The best laptop is the one somebody else had
The value of used business-grade laptops is unreasonably high, and I love it!
ThinkPad as a server: third time’s the charm
Turns out that using stable and performant computers as a home server is way too boring for me.
The Fedora Linux starter pack: everything you need for a smooth experience
Fedora Linux is a great Linux distribution, but it has a few quirks that can impact your experience. Here’s how to fix them.
So you want to migrate to Kubernetes: observations from a software developer
I’m not an expert in Kubernetes, but I’ve been involved in migrating services to it. Here are my observations.
My blog successfully survived a scheduled power outage
Look, ma, no downtime!
I encourage you to write a blog
Writing a blog has been an incredibly rewarding experience for me, and I encourage you to give it a try.
How to copy media off of an iPhone the hard way (using Linux)
If your iPhone doesn’t show any photos when connected to a PC, then this guide may help you out.
How I ended up working as a software developer
A few seemingly unimportant experiences and choices can lead to big things.
Running my ThinkPad T430 with an eGPU in 2024
Not all experiments end up being successful.
No HDMI port on the ThinkPad T430? No problem!
Yes, you can fit a HDMI port in the ThinkPad T430, no crazy modifications required.
About the time my ThinkPad T430 ran with an external GPU
I had dumb ideas during my university days as well, but the budget was smaller.
How to save an old printer from the e-waste pile with a Raspberry Pi
Turning a 15-year-old Canon PIXMA MP250 printer into a network printer was much easier than I initially thought.
They make USB-C cables with displays now!
How to turn something as ordinary as an USB-C cable into something that a lot of nerds will want to buy.
Steam Deck: I like it
It runs Linux and you can peek under the hood if you want to, but that’s not the point.
ThinkPad T40: it can still run modern Linux, for now
Not bad for a laptop originally released in 2003.
OpenWRT, ISP modem and dynamic IP addresses: how to fix connectivity issues without rebooting your router every time
The solution proposed might be a bit specific for my particular setup, but hopefully useful to someone out there.
The hidden media play/pause/stop keys on the Lenovo ThinkPad L390 Yoga
How a few accidental key presses revealed the presence of media playback control keys on my ThinkPad L390 Yoga.
Monitoring energy usage with smart plugs, Prometheus and Grafana
My obsession with measuring the power consumption of my devices reached a whole new level.
Lenovo ThinkPad P14s gen 4 (AMD): it doesn’t suck under Linux
I’m just as surprised as you are.
How to take down production with a single Helm command
Incident? No, I prefer to call it a ‘premature deprecation event’.
Fairphone 5 long-term review: notes on 1 year and 3 months of use
I voted with my wallet and bought a Fairphone 5. Here’s what I’ve learned after 1 year and 3 months.
My very first career day
I had the opportunity to speak at a career day for the first time!
Oops, I published my drafts!
Spoilers!
FOSDEM 2024: my experience, some notes and tech tips
I’m sleep-deprived, completely exhausted, but incredibly excited about the whole experience. Here are my notes, impressions and a lot of pictures about FOSDEM 2024.
My cat water fountain comes with a spicy USB power adapter
It turns out that you can’t trust any USB type A power adapter to be within spec.
The simplicity of the modulo operator: how I scaled an inefficient solution on a legacy system
Sometimes the best solution is the one that works well enough and can be cranked out quickly.
Control - how to make a game enjoyable for casual audiences
How one toggle in the game settings allowed me to enjoy a notoriously difficult game.
The optimization treadmill: why I keep changing my computing setup all the time
A short explanation about what drives me to experiment with new hardware setups in my self-hosting hobby.
Zimaboard: the closest thing to my dream home server setup
I gave in to my impulses and bought myself a small single board computer to be my power-efficient home server, here’s how it went.
My trip to the Communication and Laptop Museum in Estonia
I ended up going to a small museum run by a passionate enthusiast in the beautiful countryside of south-east Estonia while on vacation, here are my notes on it.
Steam local network game transfers are a game-changer
Setting up a Steam LAN cache has never been this easy, so I went ahead and did some testing with different configurations.
The IKEA-powered homelab on a wall
This pegboard can fit so much compute power on it!
Why you might not want to publicly self-host a Wikipedia clone
Does not apply if you like spam. No, not that one.
My experience at the k-space hackerspace hackathon
I went to the hackathon, built some useful stuff and only did stupid things about 4 times!
How I blew up my backup server (Valve pls fix)
All of this could have been avoided if I didn’t insist on making backups of my Steam Deck.
I held a talk about my self-hosting adventure!
I had the opportunity to talk about my self-hosting adventure and share some tech tips at k-space, the hackerspace in Tallinn, Estonia.
Dell Latitude 5411: the Linux compatibility sweet spot
It’s a jet engine with an integrated furnace, but at the same time it fits into the Linux compatibility sweet spot. Not great, not terrible.
Life is maintenance, maintenance is life
You can’t ignore maintenance, be it in software or other aspects of life, and here’s why.
Tiered storage: use the right tool for the job
A short ramble about something I realized over the years with my self-hosting setup.
I looked at this site on the Wayback Machine
I took a look at my site through the Wayback Machine and found that it used to belong to a political candidate in Estonia.
TOMO M4: probably the coolest power bank I’ve owned
All the reasons why I find this particular power bank to be really neat and why it could realistically be the last power bank I buy.
LattePanda V1 - my experience with a Raspberry Pi alternative
I got a LattePanda V1 and gave it a go as a Raspberry Pi replacement for my self-hosting setup. Here’s how it went.
Shrinkflation, SanDisk style
A cheap USB stick and the marketing around it caused disappointment, more at 11.
ThinkPad as a server: the follow-up
The ThinkPad as a server is back, this time with a couple of adjustments.
Anything’s a portable speaker if you’re brave enough
All about that time I converted a JBL soundbar into a portable speaker
About the time I used Google Drive as a CMS for a web app
A short story about using a popular tool in ways that you might not have thought of.
What changing the CPU on a laptop looks like
Quick demonstration of a CPU replacement in a ThinkPad T430.
HoloISO: the unofficial Steam Deck experience on your PC
I tried out HoloISO, the project that brings the Steam Deck experience to PC-s, on my ASRock DeskMini X300. Perhaps gaming on Linux isn’t dead after all?
I have a ‘Dall UD19PB ThundeRbglt Dock’: my experience with the HP Elitebook 845 G9
I’ve tried out newer laptops before and it was nothing short of a disaster. Is this HP any different, or do I need to go back to my ThinkPad T430 again?
I finally found an use case for my Raspberry Pi Model B+
I take a severely underpowered computer and make it do something useful.
Recovering a password-protected ThinkPad T60
An illustrated overview about the process of clearing the supervisor password from a ThinkPad T60, based on guides that some smart and persistent people have written.
Testing a cheap ExpressCard to NVMe SSD adapter on my ThinkPad T430
I got curious about an ExpressCard to NVMe M.2 NGFF adapter I saw on Reddit, so I got one to try out myself, ending up with a total of 4 SSD-s on my ThinkPad T430. Yes, four.
The minimum viable fan control script
Some assembly required. No, not that one.
Accidentally turning the ASRock DeskMini X300 into a semi-passively cooled PC
Experimenting with my fan control scripts ended up with an interesting discovery.
Overcoming hardware limitations: the time-to-sleep script
Sometimes the least technical solutions end up being the ones that I’m the most proud of. This is probably one of them.
This site will be offline on 2022-08-17 between 18:00-19:00 EEST
what 4.8 EUR/kWh does to a mf
I tried out the CyberPower UT650EG UPS
Small and very efficient, but not quite ideal for all use cases. At least it hasn’t caught on fire yet!
btrbk is awesome
I ramble about a tool that is great for taking regular snapshots on the btrfs filesystem.
The absolute state of Bluetooth audio in 2022
Whose idea was this?
Disabling the crappy Broadcom Bluetooth adapter in your ThinkPad T430 running Linux
If you have ever felt frustated with the Bluetooth experience that your ThinkPad T430 offers you, especially after upgrading the WiFi adapter to one that also has Bluetooth capabilities, then this article might help you out.
Can a laptop from 2012 be a viable home server?
I took a spare ThinkPad T430 and put all my home server workloads on it. Here’s how it went.
Trying out VR on an AMD Ryzen 4000 series APU
A quick and dirty experiment: can the integrated graphics on an AMD Ryzen 4000 series APU run Beat Saber?
Strangling your service with a Kubernetes misconfiguration
Short story about a fun and simple way to shoot yourself in the foot, Kubernetes style.
Oversimplified guide into snapshots on the btrfs filesystem
Oh, snap(per)!
My self-hosting setup has an UPS now, here’s my experience with it
UPS, I did it again 🎵
How I treat my urge to hoard data
Something is better than nothing.
Surviving the front page of HackerNews on a 50 Mbps uplink
Overview of basic analytics during that one time my blog post got traction on HackerNews, and the steps I took to prepare for just this occasion.
ASRock X570M Pro4 motherboard overview
Quick overview from someone who does this thing as a hobby, focusing on PCIe connectivity, fan control and the poor state of AM4 socket and UEFI upgrades.
ASRock DeskMini X300: the future form factor of desktop PC-s?
Honey, I shrunk my desktop PC!
Why I went back to using a ThinkPad from 2012
How trying out new laptops and messing with my personal computing setup motivated me to go back to a laptop that some would call ancient.
VR, VFIO and how latency ruined everything
Alternative title: “Honey, I completely changed my server setup again!”
Self-hosting Wikipedia using Kiwix
Hosting your own Wikipedia instance has never been this easy!
Tech rants: PC-s use way too much power in 2021
Quick rant about the state of PC-s in 2021 regarding power and resource usage.
DIY cloud gaming: NVIDIA and Moonlight
Comparing the experience that AMD and NVIDIA can provide in a DIY cloud gaming setup.
DIY cloud gaming setup with VFIO, Parsec and AMD
A build log of how I set up my own ‘cloud gaming’ setup, including all the issues I faced and attempts to fix those.
Testing GPU passthrough on AMD Ryzen 7 5700G APU
A quick overview of my experience with setting it up on a small PC box and things to consider when attempting this yourself.
Turning leftover PC parts into a decent gaming PC
Putting the ‘reuse’ in ‘Reduce, reuse, recycle’.
AMD Ryzen 7 5700G: first impressions on Fedora 34
Or ‘How to downgrade your CPU at great expense!’
How to mess up a simple ThinkPad X230 BIOS flash and how to recover from it
At least it won’t end up in a landfill!
I’ve reached the self-hosting endgame
If all you have is a powerful workstation…
Tech tip: eliminate HDD humming noise
Silence your hard drives with this one weird trick! System administrators hate him!
Whacky setups: seedbox on a wall
This is what happens when someone takes the meaning of ‘brute force’ too literally.
How to start your self-hosting adventure: a high-level overview
Getting started is probably the hardest step.
My server setups throughout the years
From repurposed old PC-s to the elusive minimum viable server.
My attempt at archiving nfscars.net
Nostalgia is one hell of a drug.
Database optimization adventures on low-end hardware
Who would have thought that performing basic database optimizations could be fun?
Things I’ve learned during my self-hosting adventure
$HOME wasn’t built in a day.
How to fix ZFS pool not importing at boot
You have probably tried Stack Exchange and reddit at this point, so what do you have to lose?
Quest towards energy efficiency part 1: the water heater
Alternative title: ‘Obsessing over things that nobody else cares about’
How to make digital copies of your old video tapes
Or ‘Wow, I did not know that VLC could do that!’
What running out of SATA ports looks like
How I slapped two hard drives on a long PCIe x1 card.
Running on fumes
0GB ought to be enough for anybody.
Stupid project ideas: the War Machine
Maybe not stupid, but definitely stupid expensive.
Disk is OK
It’s all good, man.
How I fixed one hardware issue with another one
Two issues make a solution after all.
This page looks better in the app
I’m not sure it does.
The little Wi-Fi AP that could
Depends on your definition of could.