Automate your Unifi network firewall and traffic rules with Home Assistant

Harness the potential of Unifi network traffic rules for your home network by integrating them with Home Assistant. Let's dive in and unlock!

Setting up and leveling up your homelab - a comprehensive guide

I'm writing this homelab guide to share some of the things I've learned, so if you're starting out or looking for what to do next, perhaps you can grab an idea or two for your setup. I would always advise starting small, getting comfortable, and then deciding if you are ready for more.

Upgrade your online privacy and security on any budget

I hope to convince you that good personal online privacy and security is essential, accessible, and works on any budget.

Load balanced and highly available local DNS with DNSDist and Keepalived

Caution: prepare to enter the over-engineering zone! I assert that your homelab can have one local IP address for DNS that will be fast & resilient across a high volume of requests, survive several physical and virtual machine failures, while never failing to resolve or respond.

Run a free AI coding assistant locally with VS Code

Wouldn't it be awesome to use a local LLM as your personal AI assistant on the daily, subscription-free, completely offline, and even in VS Code? Type "y" to continue.

Highly available Pi-hole setup in Kubernetes with secure DNS over HTTPS DoH

Previously, I wrote an article about how to set up two or more Pi-hole instances using Docker Swarm, which has worked quite well for me up to this point. I've since decided this setup was too easy and wanted to move from Normal to Hard mode and bring Kubernetes into the mix.

Remotely access your home computer from anywhere, quickly and easily

I'm a huge fan of reverse proxy tunnels. Accessing private networks, like your home network or homelab, in this way is generally considered more secure than using a VPN or exposing ports to the public internet on your router. This will get you up and running in 5 minutes; anyone can do it.

Level up your casual gaming skills with a pro controller

I'm a little older, and my reaction time is a little slower, but I can claw some of that back with a bit of button mapping and retraining. Casual doesn't have to mean settling for the stock option.

Web Browser SSH Terminal to Homelab with Cloudflare Zero Trust

I'm continuing to discover new and exciting ways to access my Homelab and home network when I'm away or using a device I don't personally manage...in this case, securely, without a VPN or WARP client

Replace your Homelab VPN with Cloudflare Zero Trust

Zero Trust is a platform for small businesses and enterprises to offer secure access to their networks and applications...which sounds perfect for my five-user household 🙂; oh, and it's Free!

Load balanced highly available Cloudflare tunnels with Docker Swarm

It's to set up your secure tunnels directly to Cloudflare on bare metal or within virtual machines. Why stop there? Let’s make them easier to manage and highly available by containerizing multiple tunnels across several physical devices

Use your domain with Cloudflare to securely access services on your home network

This guide will walk you through securely exposing Plex, your NAS, and other services while away from home. All while avoiding UPnP and traditional port forwarding, which is typically less secure and more complex with only one dynamic IP address.

Homelab

Highly available Pi-hole setup with secure DNS queries to Cloudflare

Forget the Adblock browser extension. It's time to level up your home network to block unwanted ads and trackers across all of your devices. Pi-hole is an open-source project that has been around for a while and makes this dead simple.

Remote Work

Remote work vNext - Level up your home office setup

In my opinion, Remote is here to stay. Companies that have embraced this will likely lead the pack to the most desirable places to work and are already innovating and transforming shared workspaces, embracing frequent travel, and offering home office perks.

Docker

Using Ngrok through Docker for local service development on Mac

Corporate policy restrictions got you down? Me too! I've struggled to find a reliable solution for local Slack, Github, or cloud development when Ngrok, the most commonly used tool for exposing services locally, is restricted by either a local execution policy or via OpenDNS (or similar)

Azure

Connecting the Enterprise with Azure Event Grid and Serilog

In all companies, large and small, there is no One app to rule them all. The reality is that there are often dozens, sometimes hundreds, of apps/services/tools/etc that we use to help ourselves or to provide services to our clients.

Reviews

BUILD-fest 2017

I had a great time getting my yearly injection of the future as Microsoft sees it. The Azure, The Windows, The AI, and The .NET all got The Love. Azure even received the coveted day one keynote slot, so from my perspective, we got right to the good stuff.

DevOps

Working with the Azure Storage REST API in automated testing

Testing! Every developer's favorite topic :). For me, if I can save time through automation, then I'm interested. Automated testing for a developer typically starts with unit tests, which, even if you don't subscribe to TDD, you've written at least one of them

Leadership

Leveraging technology to improve your people management

Managing large teams well is no small task. Meeting regularly and taking handwritten notes is a great start, but how can we do it all without adding additional time?

Slack

Fun with Slack Commands using Azure API and Function Apps

In this example, I'm using an Azure API app with Easy APIs enabled (formerly mobile services...but better) and the preview version of the Azure Function app.

Reviews

My takeaways from BUILD 2016

There was a lot of information to ingest at BUILD this year. Whether you're working with Xbox, Azure, Windows, or even Linux containers, I would find it surprising that there wasn't at least one announcement that touched your development universe.

Slack

Your friendly Email to Slack migration guide

I've been along for the ride since the beginning of Slack, and even with its flaws, I can finally see a future without email.  So I've put together this list of tips on making the transition away from email a little easier.

Code

Quick Tip: Alias Hub as Git on Windows

If you use Git with GitHub, the Hub wrapper utility by GitHub is a better CLI option for working with your personal and org repositories.

Azure

Running your Azure WebJobs with the Kudu API

I have a love-hate relationship with the Azure portals. Some days it's fast and lets me do exactly what I want; other days, like today, I want more control over how my stuff runs.