SumGuy's Ramblings
The art of wasting time.
Docker, self-hosting, AI/LLM, Linux, and DevOps — explained by someone who learned the hard way. No fluff, no enterprise jargon, just practical stuff that actually works on real hardware.
Recent Posts
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Photon vs ESPHome: ESP Firmware Compared
Particle Photon 2 vs ESPHome for ESP32 projects: cloud lock-in, OTA updates, Home Assistant integration, and which firmware wins for self-hosters long-term.
11 min read -
Postgres vs SQLite for Home Lab Apps
SQLite is brilliant until you need concurrent writes, replication, or online migrations. Here's the actual line where Postgres earns its keep.
12 min read -
SOPS + age: Secrets in Git
Stop the .env-in-1Password dance. SOPS encrypts secrets per-key, age provides modern crypto, and git stores them safely. Here's how to ship it without footguns.
12 min read -
Self-Host a Local AI Coding Workhorse
Run Gemma 4 or Qwen3-Coder locally via Ollama or llama.cpp in Docker, then delegate mechanical coding tasks to it while Claude handles the thinking. Free tokens, zero leakage.
14 min read -
ddrescue vs TestDisk vs PhotoRec
Drive is dying. Which tool do you reach for? ddrescue clones, TestDisk repairs partitions, PhotoRec carves files. They're a workflow, not rivals.
14 min read -
Zigbee Coordinator Showdown: Sonoff vs ConBee vs SkyConnect
Sonoff Zigbee Dongle Plus-E vs ConBee III vs SkyConnect — pick the right Zigbee USB coordinator for your Home Assistant home lab or apartment setup in 2026.
11 min read -
WebAuthn & Passkeys for Sysadmins
Passkeys finally killed passwords for real users. Here's what WebAuthn actually is under the hood, and how to roll passkeys out on your self-hosted services.
14 min read -
Give Your AI Agent a Cheap Intern
Stop burning expensive AI tokens on boring grunt work. The overseer/workhorse pattern routes mechanical tasks to a cheap model and saves more than you'd think.
12 min read -
Borg vs Duplicacy: Dedup Backup Wars
Borg is open-source classic with SSH targets. Duplicacy has lock-free multi-source magic but commercial GUI. Here's which backup tool to pick.
13 min read -
Owntracks + Home Assistant: Private Location Tracking
Stop feeding Google your daily commute. OwnTracks + MQTT broker + Home Assistant gives you real presence detection without the surveillance capitalism overhead.
10 min read -
KVM/QEMU/libvirt: CLI Workflows
virt-manager is fine, but real homelab automation lives on the command line. virt-install, virsh, cloud-init — provision VMs in seconds, not click-by-click.
11 min read -
BirdNET-Pi for Self-Hosted Bird Identification
Turn a Raspberry Pi and a cheap USB mic into a self-hosted bird ID station using BirdNET-Pi and Cornell ML audio models running entirely locally offline.
10 min read
