field notes from the workshop
I tinker on servers and fix things the hard way — by taking them apart. Shed Stack is a running record of the gear, the builds, and the bugs that bit back: self-hosted, DIY, and none of it bought off the peg.
# shed stack — status board
the log
I've run all three DNS ad-blockers. Pi-hole is the classic sinkhole, AdGuard Home is the modern dashboard, Technitium is a real DNS server with blocking attached. Here's which one you should run.
Everyone swears by Arch until it bites. I wanted new kernels and current packages, but I wanted a parachute more. CachyOS, snapper, and a change of habit that took some getting used to.
Almost 100 internet connected devices, every last one phoning home. The fix wasn't better gadgets, it was deciding who on my network gets to talk to the outside world. AdGuard Home plus some very strict VLANs.
I'd been guessing at my own hardware for years. One evening wiring every box into a single dashboard, and within a week it flagged a disk that was quietly heading for a full stop.
A headless OpenWebRX receiver on an RTL-SDR dongle. No screen, no app, just a browser tab that turns any device in the house into a shortwave and scanner console.
on the bench
This very blog. Plain static HTML and CSS, no build step, no comment spam, RSS only. Runs on my own rack and costs nothing but the electric bill.
runningWiring a light sensor into my Home Assistant plant cards so the countertop garden stops getting watered on vibes. Half finished, half the fun.
on the benchA self-hosted task list, synced to Home Assistant so the house can nag us instead of each other. Still very much in the 'install and see' phase.
setting upTelegraf agents per box, all feeding one InfluxDB, drawn in Grafana. Caught a dying disk a week after I built it.
runningthe stack
the phones, the tvs, and other excuses to keep it running
spec sheet